Bill McKibben sings the Climate Change Blues

My interview with environmentalist Bill McKibben is up on the Progressive web site and also out in the magazine's dead tree edition. McKibben is a fascinating, driven and somewhat gloomy fellow. Talking to him was both exhilarating (as he looked forward to a post-fossil-fuel era) and downright terrifying as he talked about how far we have to go to get there. In honor of the soon-to-be inauguration of Barack Obama, here's one quote about our outgoing prez:

The Bush Administration was precisely the wrong thing at the wrong time

McKibben's climatological bottom line? The human race must change now, as in right this minute, or face a truly lousy future.

The Liar in Chief really did goad us into war

By Diane Silver

People DIED and continue to die because of this. In today's top read, The Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism unveiled a report that showed:.

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

Am I angry? Oh yeah. Shouldn't all Americans be furious?

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius takes high numbers into State of the Union response

By Diane Silver

Chosen to give the Democratic response to Dubya's State of the Union speech, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius will coast into that appearance with a 64 percent approval rating in her home state. That's the word today from a SurveyUSA poll taken Jan. 16 and 17.

Sebelius's approval numbers have tumbled some since reaching a high of 70 percent just three days before her administration blocked construction of two coal plants. Since that announcement, her approval rating has taken a hit in Western Kansas. That's where the two plants would have been located.

In what is the most conservative part of the state, though, Sebelius reached a staggering height of 76 percent approval on Oct. 15 just before the coal plant announcement. She dropped to 43 percent in the month after the announcement, bounced up again in December and then dropped a bit to 58 percent approval in Western Kansas in this newest poll.

Sebelius will speak immediately after George W. Bush finishes. The State of the Union is scheduled for 8 pm Central, 9 pm Eastern, on Monday.

I'll say this for Sebelius. She's finally giving me a reason to tune into a Dubya State of the Union.

BREAKING: Kansas governor hits the REAL big time

By Diane Silver

I guess being a Democratic governor in a red, red state has its perks. Kathleen Sebelius has been chosen to give the Democratic Party's rebuttal to George W. Bush's State of the Union on Jan. 28.

This is good news for Sebelius, Kansas and for the idea that red-state leaders DO have something to say to the left and right coasts.

For those of you wondering who the heck this Sebelius person is...

She is a moderate Democrat, but she has been supportive of fairness for all. On Labor Day, she signed an executive order protecting LGBT state workers from job discrimination. This was a first for Kansas.

The Wikipedia bio of Sebelius seems fairly accurate with a few mis-steps. The bio implies that it's odd for a governor of Kansas to be pro-choice. Not so. Her predecessor, Republican Bill Graves, also favored abortion rights. The bio says she has an out gay son, but I guess I'm the last queer in Kansas to know that. The material on her record as governor and insurance commissioner seems accurate, though.

The Cincinnati Enquirer has a good article about her early years growing up as the daughter of Ohio's governor.

And last, but not least, she just gave her own State of the State address last night.

UPDATE

The decision by the Sebelius Administration to block construction of two coal plants because of global warming was a first for the state and nation. Republican legislative leaders are loudly opposing the decision and claim they'll do everything to lift the road-block. Recent news reports claim behind-the-scene talks might be aiming at some kind of deal.

Unfortunately, the President of the United States matters

By Nancy Jane Moore

Over on the Freakonomics blog, Stephen J. Dubner suggests that the President of the United States doesn't really matter much. I usually find Dubner's ideas compelling, but I don't think I agree with him on this one.

When the Supreme Court put Bush in office back in 2000, I was disappointed, but I was also relieved that we finally had a decision. At the time I comforted myself with the thought that he couldn't do too much damage, assuming he didn't get to make too many Supreme Court appointments.

And without September 11, he might not have done much harm. Prior to the terrorist attacks, Bush was already unpopular and being tarred as the President from Enron. But after September 11, both the press and the Democrats gave him a great deal of support -- after all, the country had been attacked.

When you combine that support -- which involved going along with virtually everything and never asking questions -- with the effort by a number of people within the administration to strengthen the power of the presidency (see my earlier post on David Addington), you get a very powerful president. And this particular president has done so much damage with that power that it boggles my mind.

There's the unnecessary war in Iraq, which kept us from finishing the job in Afghanistan (a war I do think was necessary), tied up and demoralized our military, and made us more enemies than friends. There are his court appointments -- to the lower federal courts as well as the Supreme Court -- which, coupled with appointments by his father and Reagan, strengthened conservative control of the courts and put some extremists in powerful positions. There are the results of his appointment of incompetents -- see New Orleans. (I cannot think of any other US natural disaster in my lifetime where people's lives weren't more or less back to normal within a couple of years.) There's his abysmal environment policy -- probably dictated by his ties to the oil business -- which has put the US even farther behind in dealing with global warming. There are the tax cuts coupled with war expenses, which caused a huge federal deficit after Clinton had actually fixed the last one. And finally, there is his assault on civil liberties in the US and his approval of torture and complete lack of rights in dealing with "enemy combatants."

George Bush has left us in so deep a hole that I don't expect things to be fixed in my lifetime (and I'm planning to live a considerable number of years yet).

Now Dubner's piece suggests that he means the president is not that important because his actions don't really affect individuals on a daily basis. It's true that Bush's administration hasn't done much to my daily life, though it certainly has affected an awful lot of people in the military, particularly those in the National Guard who weren't expecting quite so much combat duty. And while his tax cuts and other supposedly probusiness nonsense has aggravated the economic distance between rich and poor in this country, a lot of economic changes are tied to globalization, which is going to happen regardless of who's in the White House.

But the long term damage he's done to the country, not to mention the rest of the world, is immense. It's structural damage, infrastructure damage. We aren't going to see all the results of it for years to come.

I'm not sure a new administration is going to be able to do a lot about any of these problems -- which fits into Dubner's arguments. We may not be able to disentangle ourselves from Iraq easily, any change in the courts will require years of moderate-to-liberal presidents with clout in Congress, and environmental issues get worse every day. It is possible that a good president will put the right person in charge of disaster relief and possibly even do something about our infrastructure problems, but the other things will take a long time and several administrations.

So I'd suggest that Dubner is right, to a degree. A president only has so much power when it comes to making changes and putting programs into place. But unfortunately, an incompetent surrounded by power-hungry associates can do an incredible amount of damage.

I just hope the country recovers.

Spiritual activism, political revolution & New Age fuzzy thinking

By Diane Silver

At first glance, the idea that political activists should act out of "awareness, compassion and love" seems both ludicrous and suicidal. But acting out of love is the first principle of what Carla Goldstein calls "spiritual activism."

For what it's worth, I wonder if she might be on to something. Following her principle might well provide the key to unlocking the solutions to our most pressing foreign and domestic problems.

I am not suggesting that we open our arms to al Qaeda and say, hey, I love you, shoot me, nor am I recommending that my colleagues in the gay rights movement expect to win equality by hugging Fundamentalists. I quake at the thought of such, shall we say, New Age fuzzy headedness.

Yet I also tremble at the idea that we are going to win our battles by seeking to become more terrifying than our opponents. Right now I worry that we are doing just that. It seems, at times, as if promoting ourselves as the biggest monsters on the block is our only strategy.

In Bush's War on Terror, threatening to kill anyone who threatens us and torturing the people we capture have become standard operating procedures. The neocon solution to terrorism appears to boil down to one simplicity: Kill all the bad guys.

Momentarily leaving aside the morality of such a tactic, I question it's practicality. We cannot, in fact, kill everyone who wants to hurt us. Even if we could, we could not keep from creating more terrorists as we kill the old ones. Every husband or wife we would leave behind could potentially become an enemy. Every brother and sister, every son and daughter, every friend, every acquaintance, every neighbor would have a rock-solid, deep-in-the-heart reason to hate us.

More than that, every one of them would have a personal reason to be terrified of us. Bush and friends foolishly think that creating fear in our enemies will keep them from fighting back. But I ask: Would it stop us if we were in their situation?

I live in Lawrence, Kan., and sometimes I wonder what my neighbors would do it we were facing an occupation like Bush and friends have imposed on Iraq. Even if the invaders were first seen as liberators, how would Kansans feel this many years in and with so many of our neighbors dead or imprisoned? At what point would Kansans take up arms against the people who invaded our country?

Finally, if we felt like our backs were to the wall, and we had no chance except to fight back against the terrifying monsters or die, would we befriend the people who were scaring us? Or, would we fight back any way we could?

To believe that Iraqis and other Muslims are a different breed of human, that they they don't hate and fear and love like we do, is simply crazy. But that seems to be the neocon/Bush belief.

The same is true about domestic issues. Attempting to be the biggest monster in the room won't save Fundamentalists or lesbians or gays or Democrats or Republicans. At times, it seems that fear is the only political tactic that campaigns want to employ. It is true that fear does move voters for an election or two, but I wonder what we create when we only evoke fear in our campaigns? Does such a victory sow the seeds of the next domestic war?

And yes, I know that my discussion of these challenges is too brief and simplistic, but those are issues we can return to on other days. Such is the joy of a blog.

For this moment, though, here's why I think acting out of love and compassion is so important: Acting out of fear makes us stupid. Adrenaline pumps and the primal brain takes over. We don't take time to consider. We don't take time to find lasting solutions. Instead, we go into survival mode.

Personally, I think acting out of fear makes it hard for human beings to see reality. Above all, these days, a good sense of reality has got to be a requirement.

In the second column in her series on spiritual activism, Goldstein touches more deeply on the workings of that first principle, which is:

"We take action that is born out of awareness, compassion and love, not out of reaction, fear and anger."

Goldstein provides some first steps on how to open up and become more loving. My hope is that this modest post will provide some explanation as to why such activities are important.

The courage to open to our hearts has the potential to change everything. Goldstein writes:

As a result of my heartfulness practice, my activism has radically changed. It has gone from being something I do to accomplish a social change goal to a way of being. I have come to understand that the means and the end are equally important, which brings me to know that yelling at “the other side” (or my daughter) is doing exactly the same thing I am condemning – creating fear and anger. The more I get in touch with my own heart, the more I am in touch with the hearts of others and the more interested I become in cultivating peace rather than polarization.

This post continues a journey I began last week when I first commented on Goldstein's work.

I'm calling this a journey because I freely admit that I don't have all the answers, or perhaps even many of them. What I do have is an itch, a sense gnawing at me, that we have to change the way we do politics and activism, or we will never move forward as a nation. I plan to comment on each of Goldstein's columns on spiritual activism in the hope of sparking conversation and finding more answers.

Top "Tunes:" Libby & the Untouchables & the Supreme Court Blues

By Diane Silver

As we stumble about through sweltering humidity and numerous non-blogging assignments, here are some of In This Moment's recent hits to ponder.

Scooter Libby and the Untouchable Administration

Bush is No Churchill

The Supreme Court Blues

Former Attorney General Botches Case & the Religious Right Cries

The Sorrow of Guantanamo Bay

Independence Day musings: The dangers of patriotism

By Nancy Jane Moore

"I don't love my country."

Law Professor Brian Tamanaha wrote those words in a post on Balkinization called "Blood on the Hands of the State."

In the post, he points out that states, "in the name of some ideology, or some image of national purity or dominance, or in the name of religion, or simply to plunder," kill their own citizens or call them up to fight others, causing untold deaths.

He goes on to observe:

Learn this history and you will see the price patriotism exacts. For many reasons, I feel fortunate to have been born in the United States, but I don’t love my country. It has no love for any of us.

As you might expect, he drew a lot of reaction to those comments, including comments from another law professor who observed on his blog:

Brian you may not love your country, but your country loves you, even if you don't know it. You are its raison d'etre. The fundamental purpose of a democratic country like the United States is to serve you and your fellow citizens. Representative democracy means that our elected officials are trying (albeit imperfectly) to look out for your interests, your benefits, your needs, and your wants. Your country seeks to protect your safety, your economic well-being, your property, and your freedoms.

In reply, Tamanaha -- after asking "Does my country’s heart beat faster when it thinks of me?" -- went on to make an important point:

I know he did not mean “your country loves you” literally (right?), although he did wax at length. But it is precisely talk like this that makes patriotism so dangerous, substituting metaphor and emotion for reason and careful evaluation. Much of his post consists of glorified abstractions of the state, slogans we repeat unthinkingly so often that they become truths in our mind.

I've been pondering Tamanaha's post. Like most Americans, I was brought up to see my country as "different." We are truly free; our government is chosen in the fairest possible way; history as taught touts our inevitable progress toward the greatest possible freedom; McCarthyism and Jim Crow laws were aberrations, eventually corrected.

So of course we should love our country, shouldn't we? That's real patriotism, right?

The Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War all made me cynical about the U.S. But for years I've still thought of our country as flawed, but fixable. Despite our excesses in the world, our hearts were in the right place. Eventually we would live up to our potential.

The Bush years destroyed my optimism. I have seen my country at its worst and it's an ugly sight -- the blatant abuse of raw power, without even lip service to the core principles on which the US was founded.

Perhaps this is inevitable, as Tamanaha hints in his posts. Perhaps a state can never really be "good" in that moral sense. Tamanaha suggests that the state will disappear, which makes me wonder what powerful institutions will replace it. Corporations, perhaps? Even in this day and age where government does little to rein in corporations, I find myself shuddering at what they might become with no state power to keep them in line. A powerful institution in which my voice might possibly be heard strikes me as preferable one in which my ideas will be stomped into the ground.

Perhaps I lack imagination, because I have trouble imagining a world without some large power structures unless I also imagine massive destruction and chaos.

But I digress, because what Tamanaha's post really made me think about were Shakespeare's history plays, particularly the ones set during the War of the Roses. People declared their loyalties to a king or a lord who wished to be king, and called that patriotism. Such patriotism became treason, of course, if the other man won. And none of those who sought power really had the good of England at his heart; none ever did anything for the common people who fought in his name.

Our country is supposed to be different, but is it? Our young people are dying in Iraq not for the greater good of us all, but because of the power dreams of those running the U.S. It is a farce to say they are serving their country, because the Iraq War is doing our country so much harm. Bush has exploited their urge to serve and used it for his own desires, much like all those kings and would-be kings of England.

In a democratic state, it is way past time we learned that patriotism does not simply consist of following leaders blindly. If we would have a country that we can love -- if we would have a country that might actually love its people -- we must stand up against it when it goes astray. While I completely understand why some people feel the urge to serve their country through the military -- particularly in these troubled times -- the misuse of that service is appalling. The country would be better off if people who want to serve put their energies into opposing our current leadership instead of following its orders.

There are more ways to serve one's country than with a gun.

Scooter Libby and the Untouchable Administration

By Diane Silver

What else can you call an administration headed by a president who thinks accountability and the laws of this nation are a joke?

George W. Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence in the Valerie Plame case is yet more proof that Bush does not believe that laws apply to him and his people. As the New York Times notes in an editorial.

Presidents have the power to grant clemency and pardons. But in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.

Bush was elected screaming against the immorality of Bill Clinton, yet Bush doesn't hesitate a bit to step outside of his own Justice Department's procedure to keep someone out of jail. And please, don't scream about the fact that Bush didn't completely pardon Libby. Jail was the penalty that really hurt in this case.

It is, in fact, the split nature of Bush's decision that makes this a complete farce. If the judicial system failed so decisively in this case, then Libby should have been pardoned completely. If the system did not fail, then there is no rationale for a president to step in and override only part of a judge's sentence.

There appear to be two systems of justice in this nation. One for the president's friends and one for the rest of us. Heaven help those of us who fall down on the wrong side of that partition.

SurveyUSA's instant poll shows that I'm not the only person appalled by this. Sixty percent of those surveyed who were familiar with the case said the president should have left the prison sentence in place.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald says(with my emphasis):

We comment only on the statement in which the President termed the sentence imposed by the judge as “excessive.” The sentence in this case was imposed pursuant to the laws governing sentencings which occur every day throughout this country. In this case, an experienced federal judge considered extensive argument from the parties and then imposed a sentence consistent with the applicable laws. It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals. That principle guided the judge during both the trial and the sentencing.

We are all equals, except well, we aren't -- not with Bush in power.

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PHOTO: Who is that smiling man? Scooter himself.

Sunday reading: Bush is more like Neville Chamberlain than Winston Churchill

By Nancy Jane Moore

So says Lynne Olson, author of Troublesome Young Men, a book about Churchill and other young Tory members of the British Parliament who forced Chamberlain out.

What intrigued me the most about Olson's op-ed into today's Washington Post, though, wasn't just the parallels she drew between Bush and Chamberlain -- after all, as she points out, there's a certain amount of wishful thinking in comparing people to figures from history. Rather, it was her description of Chamberlain.

The shorthand definition of Chamberlain is that he was a wimp, that he appeased Hitler because he was afraid to stand up to him. But the truth is much more complicated. Olson asserts:

Like Bush and unlike Churchill, Chamberlain came to office with almost no understanding of foreign affairs or experience in dealing with international leaders. Nonetheless, he was convinced that he alone could bring Hitler and Benito Mussolini to heel. He surrounded himself with like-minded advisers and refused to heed anyone who told him otherwise.

In the months leading up to World War II, Chamberlain and his men saw little need to build up a strong coalition of European allies with which to confront Nazi Germany -- ignoring appeals from Churchill and others to fashion a "Grand Alliance" of nations to thwart the threat that Hitler posed to the continent.

She goes on to point out that Chamberlain muzzled the press, treated Parliament like a lapdog, and ignored the built-in checks and balances of the British system -- even refusing to take advice from his own cabinet. He was convinced that he alone knew what was right to keep the British people safe -- and the results were disastrous.

From Olson's take, Chamberlain appears to have been arrogant and stupid -- a dangerous combination. I gather she thinks he made the choices he did not out of fear, but out of the idiotic idea that he alone knew what he was doing and everyone else was wrong.

The op-ed is worth your time, and the book might help us all reevaluate how presidents, prime ministers and others should lead their countries.

The Bushies take aim at Mom & Pop pharmacies & the poor

By Diane Silver

I'm interrupting our normally scheduled debates to take note of a new Bush Administration initiative that threatens local pharmacies and millions of people around the country. Those most at risk are in rural areas and on Medicaid.

At issue is a new Medicaid reimbursement rule that could put retail pharmacies out of business -- particularly in rural areas. Not surprisingly corporate pharmacies like those run by Walmart would not be threatened by the change in Medicaid policy.

Enforcement of the new rule was scheduled to go into effect within a week, but it was delayed until the end of 2007 because of a scream of alarm from 109 members the House of Representatives. In a May 18 letter, both Democrats and Republicans asked Medicaid to delay implementation. Members of Congress from 39 states signed the letter.

The first report I've seen on this is coming from the Kansas Health Institute newswire -- a non-profit news organization that is run by some old colleagues of mine at the Kansas Statehouse. All of them are top-notch journalists.

Writer Jim McClean reports that some fear that if the new rule goes into effect -- and it could still happen -- small pharmacies might have to close.

“In short, the proposed rule would force retail pharmacies out of the Medicaid business,” the members of Congress said in their letter to CMS. “In many underserved areas, losing Medicaid business would mean these critical community pharmacies would go out of business altogether.”

That is not an idle threat, according to Brian Caswell, president of Wolkar Drug in Baxter Springs, who called the new formula “the biggest threat to pharmacies that we’ve ever seen. It is going to be the death knell for many rural pharmacies.”

The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office reported in 2006 that pharmacists would be paid an average of 36 percent below their costs under this rule.

This leaves the pharmacists and states with some awful choices. If the rule is enforced, then pharmacists may have to either close or cut off Medicaid clients, or individual states will have to foot the rest of the bill.

This points out once again one the big lies about Bush's tax cuts. Bushies claim to have saved taxpayers money, but many times the cost of essential services are just shoved off onto the states or to local governments. Taxpayers either pick up the costs of needed services or people suffer. Meanwhile, Bush and friends get to claim that they've saved people money.

This kind of doublespeak would be funny if it didn't hurt so much.

Congress could use new GAO report to take legal action against Bush

By Diane Silver

You have to get through the entire Washington Post story to get to the point, but it's there and it's clear: George W. Bush is using signing statements to set himself up above the law, and that has legal consequences for Bush and the nation.

In the second to the last paragraph of the story, The Post reports that at least one legal expert believes a just-released General Accounting Office report provides the evidence Congress needs to "take collective legal action against the White House."

The Post reports:

(T)he GAO's findings are legally significant, said Bruce Fein, a conservative constitutional lawyer who served on an American Bar Association task force that excoriated the president's use of signing statements in a report last year. White House officials have dismissed such concerns as overblown, suggesting that the statements were staking out legal positions, not broadcasting the administration's intentions.

But the GAO report suggests that the dispute over signing statements is not an academic one, Fein said, adding that Congress could use the report to take collective legal action against the White House.

"At least it makes clear the signing statements aren't solely for staking out a legal position, with the president just saying, 'I don't have to do these things, but I will,' " Fein said. "In fact they are not doing some of these things. You can't just vaporize it as an academic question."

Alternet has a good explanation of the signing statements controversy and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's role in providing legal cover for Bush.

Personally, I've never been able to understand how Bush or any president can justify ignoring Congress. The president has the power to veto, but this president ignores that Constitutional remedy for any disagreement with Congress and simply declares himself above the law.

If Bush and company are allowed to get away with ignoring the law, the Constitution will be weakened, and we will be paying the price far into the future.

Kansas Voice: Unloved Bush, Phill Kline faces test , soupy Kansas City air & more

By Diane Silver

Just in case those of you from out here in the wilds of Kansas missed the tiny headlines at the top of the page, here is a roundup of posts from my local blog, Kansas Voice.

By the way, that photo on the left is "clear." There's no need to adjust your screen. That's a snapshot of yesterday's smog in Kansas City. See below for details.

First, here are the latest posts from Kansas Voice.

Even in Kansas, Bush is unloved & kept in a bubble

Johnson County district attorney race tests religious right

No Really News: Phill Kline attacks Paul Morrison & George Tiller (Once again, it's the Phill, Paul and George Show, but this time God gets added to the festivities, and we learn about how a so-called "divine intervention" wasn't so divine after all.)

Meanwhile, out here in Red State America it is sunny, muggy and hot, hot, hot.

Neighboring Kansas City was under an ozone alert yesterday. There's something so wrong about that. If you have to live out on the Plains far from the bright lights of sophisticated society and the freedom of places like California and Massachusetts, you ought to at least be able to avoid pollution.

I drove into KC yesterday, and it was decidedly soupy. Ugh.
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PHOTO: This is a small part of a KMBC-TV photo of of yesterday's smog in Kansas City.

An attack on King George's "grandiose claim"

By Diane Silver

The New York Times has a nice editorial today about why the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling is so important as an attack on "the whims of one president with an obvious disdain for the balance of powers."

The editorial does not tackle the issue of whether the ruling will stand, but instead talks about why the legal reasoning is a strong attack on the imperial presidency.

Tuesday Reads: George Bush, Al Gore, impeachment & voter fraud

By Diane Silver

So much to read, so little time.

Salon.com tells us why our not-so-beloved President George W. Bush hasn't been impeached yet. The problem, says writer Gary Kamiya is that we're his co-conspirators.

Bush's warmongering spoke to something deep in our national psyche. The emotional force behind America's support for the Iraq war, the molten core of an angry, resentful patriotism, is still too hot for Congress, the media and even many Americans who oppose the war, to confront directly. It's a national myth. It's John Wayne. To impeach Bush would force us to directly confront our national core of violent self-righteousness -- come to terms with it, understand it and reject it. And we're not ready to do that.

Al Gore writes in his new book, The Assault on Reason, about how the Bushies have helped steer American culture into a dark place. We now live in a country, Gore says, where “reason, logic and truth" play a "sharply diminished role" in how we make decisions.

Slate takes a look at the lies about voting fraud and the death of the American Center for Voting Rights. (OK, that's not a Tuesday article, but it's still well worth a read.)

Hate crimes bill passes House, Bush threatens veto, life remains the same

By Diane Silver

The U.S. House has passed the bill adding sexual orientation to existing federal hate crimes law. George Bush, of course, has already threatened to veto it.

Neither the House nor Senate seem to have the voters to override a veto, and so life remains the same.

Andrew Sullivan has the best take on why this is all very two-faced, and Sullivan doesn't even like hate crimes laws!

Iraq & the logic that dare not speak its name

By Diane Silver

Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo writes today:

For all the endless debate about strategy and tactics, past and present about Iraq, it is astonishing how little the public debate in this country entertains the idea that the occupation itself is the cause of the unrest and violence in the country.

This isn't an original and unheard of concept. I know that. Indeed, it's common sense. But in our public debate it is what we might call the logic that dare not speak its name.

Marshall may well be right. His post is an interesting read.

In This Moment's Pamela K. Taylor made the same point in January in President Bush's Iraq Plan.

Bush tumbles into Nixon territory

By Diane Silver

Once again George Bush's approval ratings are so low that he's dipping down into the territory inhabited by Richard Nixon just before he resigned as president.

A Harris poll released today has Bush down at a 28 percent approval rating.

Although just about everyone, except Vice President Cheney, does better in the poll, all government officials, whether Republican or Democrat, are taking huge hits in public opinion.

Previous poll tracking can be found in:

• Can Bush Beat Nixon?
• Who will be the most hated president?
• Down he goes! The free-fall spring of George Bush

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Photo: While I was searching for a photo of Nixon, I came across this copy of his resignation letter. Somehow, it seemed appropriate to post it today. I had to crop it to get it to fit right.

"The most incompetent White House I've seen."

By Diane Silver

Uh huh.

David Ignatius at The Washington Post quotes GOP insiders and guess what? They echo what those of us out here in the heartland are thinking. (The emphasis is mine.)

"This is the most incompetent White House I've seen since I came to Washington," said one GOP senator. "The White House legislative liaison team is incompetent, pitiful, embarrassing. My colleagues can't even tell you who the White House Senate liaison is. There is rank incompetence throughout the government. It's the weakest Cabinet I've seen." And remember, this is a Republican talking.

There's more:

A prominent conservative complains: "With this White House, there is loyalty not to an idea, but to a person. When Republicans talked about someone in the Reagan administration being 'loyal,' they didn't mean to Ronald Reagan but to the conservative movement." Bush's stubborn defense of Gonzales offends these Republicans, who see the president defiantly clinging to an official who has lost public confidence, just as he did for too long with former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Call me crazy, but I thought the people in the White House were supposed to be loyal to the country and its people, not to a movement, not to a person.

George Bush's approval ratings tank -- nationally & in red state Kansas

By Diane Silver

Nationally, George W. Bush is beloved by 33 percent. I believe that's up a whopping 1 percent from last month in this poll released today.

In the heart of RepublicanLand -- Kansas -- Bush is loved (approved? tolerated) by a "huge" 37 percent in a survey conducted April 13 - 15. He's getting love from:

• 59 percent of the Kansas GOP
• 10 percent of Kansas Democrats
• 33 percent of Kansas independents

It can't be good news when that's the best you can do in the heartland.