Buyer's Remorse

It turns out that a lot of the people responsible for GWB's latest drop in the polls are not commie pinko liberals, or even wishy-washy moderates or independents. No, he's actually starting to alienate a few conservatives now. Not a majority, by any means -- for the most part they still march in formation, singing the praises of the Glorious Leader. But it's no longer unanimous, which is something. And even the holdouts, I think, are worshiping the manly-man leader they wish Bush was, and trying hard to ignore the underwhelming portrait that emerges from the, y'know, overwheming evidence and all. Why couldn't people have wised up before the last election, instead of getting a bad case of buyer's remorse a few months later? Now we're stuck with three more long, soul-crushing years of ol' whatsisname, which will turn out exactly the same as the last five. It's not like he's suddenly getting any more competent or less arrogant as time goes by. At least being a lame duck sort of limits the damage he can do in the time remaining, I guess.

A few recent examples of former core Bush supporters now having second thoughts:

• Conservatives in California
  
• Ohio Republicans
  
• Voters in Indiana
  
• Even some residents of 5 Southern states.
  

Some years ago, it was proposed that we go to a system where presidents are elected for a single six-year term. I'm starting to think this is an excellent notion. Looking at our past few two-term presidents, six years is roughly when the public gets sick of 'em, and it's about when they run out of ideas, political capital, and motivated staff who can get the job done. Of course, the absolutely logical and well-reasoned and not at all emotional response at the time was to point out that this is what Mexico already does. Which I think probably killed the idea right then and there.

Other thrilling political news and views:

• From an opinion piece titled Bush: The Procrastinator-in-Chief:
  

  
  First, the president admitted that he got us into a war that he was not going to get us out of. He acknowledged that when he is back in Crawford enjoying his retirement, clearing brush and shooting quail, American troops will still be in Iraq, fighting and dying for reasons that the majority of Americans have yet to understand, though the president keeps explaining and re-explaining them.
  

  
  
• If you talk to your lawyer on the phone, the NSA may be listening. None of that fancy-schmancy attorney-client privilege for us anymore, no sirree. Abolished by executive order, just like everything else.
  
• And don't expect any help from the Supreme Court, either. If you're an "evildoer", you have no Constitutional rights whatsoever. Scalia said so himself. It's not that I have any affection or sympathy for the evildoers, of course. By which I mean the actual evildoers. What alarms me is that the Bushies are trying to establish a precedent, so they can later apply the same methods and reasoning to people who have nothing to do with terrorism. A few years down the road, perhaps we'll be torturing confessions out of shoplifters, and hauling anti-Bush protesters off to Guantanamo, once the public's gotten used to the idea.
  
• The San Francisco Chronicle has an excellent series titled "War Without End", about the struggles of soldiers who've been seriously injured in Iraq.
  
• It's reported that Karl Rove himself is the source for those once-deleted, now recovered emails in the Plame case. Presumably they implicate someone other than Rove. A lot of people seem to think they might implicate Cheney, as Cheney and Rove have fallen out over the years. Grab some popcorn and pop open a cold one. This oughtta be good.
  
• Remember when GWB was first elected, and he said Latin America was his top foreign policy focus? That didn't turn out to be the case, for obvious reasons. I remember when he made that pledge, and I have to say I thought it was insincere from the get-go. Be that as it may, while George was busy obsessing about the Mideast, oil, Armageddon, and so forth, much of Latin America has decided they'd rather not be under our thumb, thank you very much. The Monroe Doctrine is dead, film at 11. Since the powers that be in the Beltway still can't imagine relating to anyone south of Brownsville, TX on a remotely equal basis, they're unable to come up with any effective policies at all. When condescending lectures don't work, they try a bit of ineffective saber-rattling, and when that doesn't work either, they lapse into sullen silence, like Latin America will come crawling back to us if we just ignore them long enough, or something.
  
• A fun opinion piece about Katherine Harris's run for a senate seat in Florida, titled "Cosmic justice for plutocrat?"
  
• The Georgia legislature's considering a bill that would adopt the Bible as an official school textbook. Not all fundies are thrilled about this, it turns out. Some of them feel that teaching about it without insisting on a single, literal interpretation would be worse than not teaching it at all.
  
• A good article dissecting the so-called "War on Christians" the fundies have dreamed up.
  
• In a similar vein, an article about a professor who proposes that human religious impulses can be studied scientifically. A lot of religious people don't seem to care much for the idea. Amazon carries his recent book on the subject.
  
• And here's a longish NPR piece about Kevin Phillips' new book American Theocracy, including a chapter from the book.
  
• On a somewhat lighter note, the local newspaper down in Melbourne, Australia is wringing its hands about the sad state of American cheerleading. Seriously.