Are we there yet?

This is music to my ears:

It isn't easy being a Republican these days, either. Bush's approval rating is at an all-time low, gas prices are near an all-time high, and Iraq continues to burn. Voters have an even lower opinion of the GOP-controlled Congress. Ideological disputes within the party make it hard for believers to pick sides, and incompetence at the top makes it difficult to follow through on the agenda items Republicans do agree on, like reducing the deficit. Bad news from Iraq and any number of scandals tied to the GOP erupt regularly. A month ago, the Republican political class was merely worried. Now its members are talking about "avoiding catastrophic losses." Conversations about the state of the party used to have two parts: all the bad news followed by signs of hope. I'm just hearing a one-act play now.

Quite encouraging…I’ve spent some time lately exploring the state-level blogs for Feingold. Then I found this mapwhich gives a good idea of how Russ is catching on all over.


Wow, impeachment seems to be gaining momentum, around the country if not in DC…

Enter the blogs. On Jan. 24, well before the Illinois legislator Karen Yarbrough stumbled over this state legislature loophole, blogger arbortender of DailyKos had unearthed the rule that another writer dubbed "Jefferson's Revenge". Fellow blogger Kagro X took the baton, and the blogs have been pushing the story and building the momentum ever since, from Vermont's various town- and countywide resolutions to the Illinois bombshell, through California's and now Vermont's state-level proposals. According to Steve Leser, Democratic state legislators in Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada and North Carolina are also considering either impeachment or censure proposals.
In any case, the three states already debating impeachment represent nearly 50 million Americans, or roughly 16 percent of the total U.S. population.

Full story here


Inside the Bubble

As the presidential motorcade moves north on Interstate 15 past the Strip, past the billboards for Danny Gans and the Chippendale dancers, an eerie silence envelops the highway, which is empty, save for the armored Cadillac limousines, the black Secret Service Suburbans, the press buses and vans and the massive police escort.

Continued


Real hypocrisy, surprise, surprise!

President Bush's retreat from the ambitious goals of his second term will proceed one small but fateful step further this Friday. That's when, after more than two years of stalling, the president will deliver a warm White House welcome to Ilham Aliyev, the autocratic and corrupt but friendly ruler of one of the world's emerging energy powers, Azerbaijan.
Here's why this is a tipping point: At the heart of Bush's democracy doctrine was the principle that the United States would abandon its Cold War-era practice of propping up dictators -- especially in the Muslim world -- in exchange for easy access to their energy resources and military cooperation. That bargain, we now know, played a major role in the emergence of al-Qaida and other extremist anti-Western movements.

Very interesting article about how in order to block his buddy Putin’s efforts to reassert control over former SSRs, Bush is more than ready to abandon his (alleged) principles, here


Consequences. Bush is so used to never having to face them, he probably doesn’t even consider that he has any responsibility for fiascos like the Chinese visit. Here’s some Asian perspective on that.

Considering how much time and effort was spent on the ceremonial details of Chinese President Hu Jintao's official visit to Washington last week, it is hard to understand how things could have gotten fouled up so badly.

This part is funny

Toward the end of the ceremony, President George W Bush was photographed grabbing Hu's jacket sleeve to guide him in the right direction. Hu looked down on Bush with obvious distaste as if to say, "Keep your mangy hands off me."

I saw that photo (sorry, no link) and that is exactly the look. for the whole sorry story