Month: June 2005

Yet Another Devastating Poll on Arnold: How Low Can He Go?

Jon Ponder

With a year and a half left in his term as governor, it isn’t practical to start a Recall campaign against Arnold Schwarzenegger – and if I recall, the statute prohibits Recalls within 18 months of the officeholder’s next scheduled election. If there were a Recall right now, a new poll shows that Das Guber would lose:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has lost the support of nearly every segment of the California electorate, with a majority of voters now saying they are not inclined to re-elect him, a new Field Poll has found.

The governor’s once broad-based support has shrunk so much that just 39 percent of voters now say they are inclined to re-elect him, while 57 percent say they are not. The only groups willing to re-elect Schwarzenegger, who has yet to announce whether he plans to run next year, are conservatives and Republicans.

“He looks almost like a typical partisan politician in that profile, whereas last year, he had a unique standing most observers were marveling at,” said Mark DiCamillo, who conducted the poll from June 13 to 19. “He squandered the political capital he once had.”

What is really jaw-dropping is that Schwarzenegger is losing to both Democrats who have announced that they will run against him next year – state Treasurer Phil Angelides and Controller Steve Westly. Neither of these guys are even remotely household names.

Did Bush Operatives Fake Applause at Ft. Bragg Speech?

Jon Ponder

I watched the speech intermittently because I can’t bear to watch President Bush when he’s talking (or walking or sitting or standing still or, in fact, under any circumstances). But I did watch most of it, as much as I could bear. Playing the Bush Speech Drinking Game would have helped but I’d be drunk as a college freshman right now if I had.

Among his many shortcomings, President Bush is simply a horrible public speaker. Tonight, he was at his best, and it was painful to behold. He hit every syllable so his diction came off as clipped and overly rehearsed. He arranged his facial muscles into gernings of “I care” and “This is important” and “I’m Ronald Reagan” – just like as he’d practiced in front of a mirror it over and over.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Bush event without immediate reports of fakery:

ABC’s Terry Moran just reported that the only time Bush got applause was in the middle of his speech when a White House advance team member started clapping all on their own in order to cajole the soldiers into clapping, which they dutifully did.
So even the applause was fake.

And here’s an update from from DailyKos:

Apparently, Fox reported the ‘fake applause’ bit as well. Double ouch.

UPDATE: On CNN, Bill Schneider says the Gallup snap poll of mostly Republicans who watched the speech gave Bush a 46 percent favorable rating. Schneider said that what he’s hearing about the speech is that “there’s not a lot new information here.” The message is “stay the course.”

Bush Speech Drinking Game

Jon Ponder

Tonight should be interesting. If I were still in college, I’d propose creating a drinking game based on this speech. Drink a beer after every lie. Drink a beer every time Bush says “freedom,” or talks about September 11 as if those attacks had anything to do with Iraq. Drink two beers after every wildly unrealistic assessment that has no basis in fact. Drink a beer and a shot every time he says “Nukular.” Two beers, a shot and a kick to the head every time he thanks the troops around him for the sacrifices “we” know must be made. Anyone still standing after ten minutes wins a Kewpie doll.

— William Rivers Pitt in Truthout

Thanks Judy!

‘Denver Three’ Tossed Out of Fake Event by Bush Thug Posing as Secret Service Agent

Jon Ponder

Three attendees at a Bush Social Security rally in Denver in March – Leslie Weise, a lawyer; Karen Bauer, a temporary office worker; and Alex Young, a computer technician – were were summarily tossed out of the event, ostensibly because one of them had an anti-Bush bumper sticker on her car.

Except for Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown,” the story disappeared in the Old Media, until it re-surfaced today in, of all places, the New York Times:

Three months ago, the three were thrown out of a taxpayer-financed Bush Social Security event in Denver by a person they thought was a Secret Service agent, reportedly because of a “No More Blood for Oil” bumper sticker on one of their cars. Similar incidents have occurred at other presidential events around the country, and the three have not been silent since.

Last week they were in Washington demanding to know the identity of the “mystery man” who ejected them…

So does the Secret Service, which … said that it was continuing a criminal investigation into whether anyone had unlawfully impersonated a Secret Service agent, and that when the findings were concluded they would be sent, as is routine, to a federal prosecutor to see if charges should be filed.

And we all be holding our collective breath, won’t we?

The White House was having none of it.

“It’s clear that these three protesters are trying to advance their own political agenda,” Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said in an interview Friday. Asked who the mystery man was, Mr. McClellan did not respond and then said he had no interest in going over yet again the events in Denver on March 21.

So these three citizens had valid tickets to attend a taxpayer-funded event but were tossed out by a Bush political operative who pretended to be a Secret Service agent in order to intimidate them.

This incident just about sums up life under Bush: Citizens who aren’t idealogically pure are removed from a fake event by a thug posing as a government agent.

Another Bad Poll for Schwarzenegger

Jon Ponder

Reuters:

The percentage of Californians who believe the state is headed in the wrong direction has climbed, propelled by those who disapprove of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s performance in office, according to a Field Poll released on Tuesday.

The leading [cause for pessimism among the 59% who believe the state is on the wrong track] can be summarized as “the governor is taking the wrong positions, [I] oppose his positions.”

The Field Poll found that 59 percent of Californians believe the state is on the wrong track, compared with 51 percent in February and an average of 52 percent in 2004.

Only 28 percent believe the state is on the right track, compared with 40 percent in February and an average of 36 percent last year…

It noted that among the 58 percent who disapprove of Schwarzenegger’s performance in office, 78 percent believe the state is “seriously off on the wrong track.”

By contrast, among the 31 percent who back the Republican governor, there is “considerable optimism” about the direction of California, with 64 percent saying it is on the right track.

The leading reason volunteered by pessimists for why they believe the state is headed in the wrong direction can be summarized as “the governor is taking the wrong positions, oppose his positions,” followed by the state’s lawmakers and elected officials are not doing a good job, and schools are performing poorly, according to the Field Poll report.

A Field Poll released last week found Schwarzenegger’s approval rating among registered voters plunging to 37 percent from 55 percent in February.

Blair Followed Bush into Iraq to Keep the UK Relevant

Jon Ponder

As you’ve no doubt heard by now, the Washington Post covered the Downing Street documents on its front page today. The article reveals a bit more than we had known previously about the motivations of British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the run-up to war.

It was clear from the getgo that Bush was risking everything on the Iraq war gambit so that he could be a “war president” when the 2004 presidential elections rolled around. (As an added bonus, there’d be all those Iraqi oil millions wating for him when he left office in 2008.) But I’ve never really understood what would lead Blair to risk his historical legacy by going to war for reasons he knew to be bogus and in a manner that was illegal in Britain. The Post article offers this explanation:

The first major British cabinet discussion on Iraq took place March 7, 2002, according to the memoirs of Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary who quotes several senior cabinet secretaries as raising questions about the war. “What has changed that suddenly gives us the legal right to take military action that we didn’t have a few months ago?” demanded David Blunkett, one of Blair’s closest political allies.

Blair defended his approach, Cook reported, by saying Britain’s national interest lay in staying closely allied with the United States. “I tell you that we must steer close to America,” Blair said, according to Cook. “If we don’t, we lose our influence to shape what they do.”

Yeah? And how’s that working out for you now, Tony?

Poll: Support for Bush and War Drops in North Carolina

Jon Ponder

President Bush will plead for support in a speech tonight that will be televised live from Fort Bragg, NC. There’s no doubt Bush has support on the military base, but among the Tarheel state’s permanent 8 million or so residents, not so much:

[A] statewide survey, conducted over the weekend for The News & Observer and WRAL-TV, found that 42 percent of active voters agree the war has been worth it, but 49 percent say it has not.

That’s a sharp erosion in support for the war since January 2004, when Bush defended the invasion of Iraq in a State of the Union address that kicked off his re-election campaign. Back then, the survey showed that 58 percent of Tar Heel voters said the war was worthwhile…

In all, 43 percent of the respondents said they approve of establishing timetables for bringing troops home. Forty-four percent disapprove of setting a timetable, with 13 percent not sure.

Franken: News Media Accepts Low Ethics from Fox

Jon Ponder

“[Fox news anchor] Bill O’Reilly took [leading Democrat senator] Joe Biden’s appearance on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos and deliberately misrepresented what Biden said. Biden was calling for an independent commission to look at Guantanamo and other US detention camps. When pressed by Stephanopoulos, Biden said that although he personally thought the US should close Guantanamo, he said that he had introduced legislation to get a bipartisan commission to make the recommendations.

“Two days later O’Reilly cuts it together to make it sound like Biden had simply said ‘Close Guantanamo’, leaving out any mention of legislation and independent commissions. Then O’Reilly himself said ‘I believe there should be an independent commission.’ He not only misrepresented what Biden actually said, he then claimed for himself the senator’s idea. I mentioned this to Howard Kurtz, who writes about the media for the Washington Post. He replied, ‘Well, people expect that of Fox’. No one in the mainstream press holds them to any standards at all.”

— Al Franken in the Guardian