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A phrase that should never come out of anyone’s mouth who supports this move
When is that accountability moment coming?
The Adults are Back In Charge
Pony
Charles’ tracking put’s the Bush Approval Trend at 28.9 percent. A new low.
Excellent analysis
The question remains one of how long the current slide can continue. Historically, presidential approval has rarely fallen into the 20s. While some polls are still giving readings in the 30s, the trend remains sharply downward. However, we are now approaching historic lows. An approval trend of about 29% implies we should see a range of polls between 24% and 34% if the trend stabilizes at its current level. Further decline would predict at least some individual polls that threaten to reach the all time low of President Truman at 22%. Given President Bush’s remaining substantial support among Republicans (CBS puts Republican approval in the current poll at 66%, but with Independent support slipping to 18%.) , a loss of that loyal support would seem necessary for a fall to such historic low levels. (Truman had much less support from Democrats than Bush has enjoyed from Republicans.)
Such a bottoming out would seem to require an open breach with Congressional Republicans, as a signal to rank and file that support of the President is no longer expected. With the immigration bill off the table, pressure for a break on that score is actually less now than last week. Iraq looms as the greater challenge, though that requires a shift of position from Congressional Republicans who have staunchly supported the war and criticized Democrats for supporting withdrawal. The double trick will be for Republican Congressional leaders to offer a face saving rationale for a change in Iraq policy while at the same time criticizing their party’s president for a failed policy. We’ve seen some efforts along this line last week. But will the floodgates open or can the President retain the support of his party on the most important issue of his presidency? If he loses that support, we will probably have to rescale the y-axis of our plots.
Bush Republican support is still at 66 percent which I find amazing given all that his administration has gone through.
I Just Don’t Get the Sense of Humor, Tony Snow Does Have Great Musical Taste
I want to thank our Chef, Paul Prudhomme, from New Orleans, Louisiana — one of the great chefs in America. Thanks for coming, Paul. (Applause.) I thank Tony Snow and his bunch of, well, mediocre musicians — (laughter) — no, great musicians. Beats Workin, thanks for coming. (Applause.) Kermit, come up here. Kermit, we’re proud to have you.
MR. RUFFINS: Well, thanks for having us.
THE PRESIDENT: Kermit Ruffins and the Barbeque Swingers, right out of New Orleans, Louisiana. (Applause.)
MR. RUFFINS: Thank you. Thanks for having us. We’re glad to be here.
THE PRESIDENT: Proud you’re here. Thanks for coming. You all enjoy yourself. Make sure you pick up all the trash after it’s over. (Laughter.)
God bless you, and may God bless America. Thanks for coming. (Applause.)
I get that he’s trying to make fun of Snow (who apparently has some excellent taste in music if he brought in Kermit), but it comes off as being kind of cruel to the musicians. No great overarching message here or deep insight into anyone’s character, just odd.
I Needed a Drink–And I had Several
After reading this on vacation:
“The Defense Department, with Feith, Cambone, Wolfowitz [and] Rumsfeld, was dispatching a person to Taiwan every week, essentially to tell the Taiwanese that the alliance was back on,” Wilkerson said, referring to pre-1970s military and diplomatic relations, “essentially to tell Chen Shui-bian, whose entire power in Taiwan rested on the independence movement, that independence was a good thing.”
Wilkerson said Powell would then dispatch his own envoy “right behind that guy, every time they sent somebody, to disabuse the entire Taiwanese national security apparatus of what they’d been told by the Defense Department.”
“This went on,” he said of the pro-independence efforts, “until George Bush weighed in and told Rumsfeld to cease and desist [and] told him multiple times to re-establish military-to-military relations with China.”
Routine military ties had been suspended in early 2001 after China forced a U.S. reconnaissance plane down on Hainan Island off Vietnam.
I need another drink. Every time I think they cannot outdo themselves, they prove me wrong.
Truly Fair and Balanced
Perhaps I was short below.
There is an important element to the story I’m missing. A view that hasn’t been taken into consideration. There are vital reasons to block inspection of cattle for E. Coli. After all, what about the E. Coli? Don’t they have 4th Amendment Rights Against Unreasonable Search and Seizure? The cattle too? Aren’t they covered by ADA since it’s an illness? Don’t they have a right to be slaughtered and eaten?
What if?
Rick has a contest going to outdo the story. His first entry is pretty good
The Assault on Parody
Forget Al Gore’s Assault on Reason, the administration is carrying out assault on parody:
Via Chicago’s own Rick Perlstein we find that the USDA is fighting to stop a company from testing all of its beef for E. Coli:
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Arkansas City-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows.
Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too.
A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. The ruling was to take effect Friday, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal — effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge plays out.
Mad cow disease is linked to more than 150 human deaths worldwide, mostly in Britain.
There have been three cases of mad cow disease identified in cattle in the U.S. The first, in December 2003 in Washington state, was in a cow that had been imported from Canada. The second, in 2005, was in a Texas-born cow. The third was confirmed last year in an Alabama cow.
The Agriculture Department argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry. U.S. District Judge James Robertson noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on and said the government didn’t have the authority to restrict it.
The best line is this one:
The Agriculture Department argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry
I have about a billion snarky things to say, but really the straight story is the funniest.
Slight Delay on the Site Changeover
However, while I fix the technical stuff and get life back to normal, Charles Franklin has ended classes and produced a fine piece of work on the prevalence of the name Monica since the Lewinsky scandal.
Also, while everyone has been getting hyped by plummeting Bush poll numbers, up until the last few days, there hasn’t been much movement. You can have your Pony now with the blue (more stable) estimator at 32.2% and red (more sensitive) at 31.2%.
As Charles says though:
The bottom line: The model is not yet unambiguously insisting on a new downturn in approval. And it would be well to remember that we’ve seen this kind of a dip more than once this spring, only to quickly see a return to the recent equilibrium. So before declaring that decline is a certainty, we should remember that such a prediction has been wrong recently.
He also gives some good discussion on why immigration is unlikely to hit Bush any harder since last year it didn’t have much of an effect. For Bush to go any lower he’ll need to significant losses in his base–so far he’s hanging around 70% approval amongst Republicans as Charles pointed out in comments.
I can imagine some scenarios where Bush loses more support as Republican candidates run against him as the election nears, but I think he’s hit the floor for now. That’s entirely speculation, but I just don’t see how the political environment leads to a true crack-up of the Republican base. I can also imagine a scenario where Bush’s approval stays the same throughout the election and Republican Presidential candidates who abandon Bush lose significant primary support thus creating the situation where the guy (and they are all old aging white guys) who wins has to figure out how to attract people other than the base while not distancing themselves from Bush. I’m thinking the best illustration of that would be the medieval stretching machines used for torture.
Why Have a Board if You are Going to Write the Report
At the same time, Davis, a former Clinton White House official who had been named by President Bush to serve on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board, sent a letter to the White House and his fellow board members protesting the panel’s lack of independence. In recent months, Davis has had numerous clashes with fellow board members and White House officials over what he saw as administration attempts to control the panel’s agenda and edit its public statements, according to board members who asked not to be identified talking about internal matters. He also cited in his letters criticisms by the former co-chairs of the September 11 commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, that the board had interpreted its mandate too narrowly and was refusing to investigate issues such as the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere around the world.
Not Enough Time in the Day
After receiving the Reading First contracts, Best was able to sell his company, Voyager Expanded Learning, for $360 million. According to his critics, the company was valued at only $5 million a few years earlier, a figure Best disputes.
“At the time of the sale, the company that bought the program justified this to their stockholders on the basis that this program had done extremely well under Reading First and was very politically connected,” said Robert Slavin, a leading educator at Johns Hopkins University and critic of the Reading First program.
Slavin, the brother of an ABC News executive, says a program he developed was rejected by the Department of Education despite its record of success.
Best, of Dallas, denied his connections to President Bush helped him win any of the federal reading program contracts.
“I have gotten no help from anyone in the administration, and I’ve given more money to Democrats than Republicans,” Best told ABCNews.com.
But congressional investigators say Reading First contracts were awarded by the administration based on politics and financial ties, not merit.
“They designed it for their friends and cronies, and they ended up not designing the best program for America’s schoolchildren,” said Congressman George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.
In a report earlier this year, the inspector general for the Department of Education found repeated instances of conflict of interest in the Reading First program.
And it resulted in more phonics instruction than instead of balanced literacy. Bad for taxpayers, bad for policy, good for Bushies.