Month: November 2005

The jig is up: The American public finally seems to be getting it — the administration’s top-ranking officials have been up to some real nastiness, and it is their hubris that has been their downfall. They think they can play us like patsies and rubes, and do what they want.

That’s what all the president’s men thought during Watergate, too.

From National Journal’s PollTrack (edited):

A new ABC News/Washington Post survey found:

• 59% of respondents think Rove should resign
• 30% think he should stay
• Nearly half said they thought Rove did something wrong in connection to the Plame case
• 26% said it was likely that what he did was illegal

Regarding former vice presidential aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s role in the leak:

• 70% said the charges against Libby represent a serious crime
• 26% said they represent a minor or technical crime
• 54% said Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald brought the case against Libby based on facts
• 31% said the charges were politically motivated
• 52% said the case indicates broader ethical problems in the administration
• 43% maintained that it’s an isolated incident

The spotlight on administration officials is not reflecting well on President Bush. The ABC/Post poll put his approval rating at 38 percent, with 60 percent disapproving (the highest ever recorded in the poll). Indeed, “on almost every key measure of presidential character and performance, the survey found that Bush has never been less popular with the American people,” the poll analysis found.

Two other new polls also show low numbers for Bush. An Associated Press/Ipsos Public Affairs poll put his approval rating at 37 percent, with 59 percent disapproving. And a new Zogby survey reported that 39 percent think Bush is doing a good or excellent job in office, while 61 percent rated his performance as fair or poor.

National Journal’s Congressional Insiders poll:

• 30 of 40 Republicans said they expect GOP lawmakers to become more independent of the White House in the next year
• One said House GOP members will need to “pivot away” and promote their own agendas
• 40 Democrats unanimously agreed that members of their party would likely become increasingly critical of the White House

The Insiders poll also asked respondents if they’d like to see Senate Democrats filibuster Bush’s high court pick, Samuel Alito.

• 30 of 40 Republicans said no
• 22 of 39 Democrats said yes
• 8 Democrats said no and 9 said it was too early to say

Twenty-six people, including 18 children and teenagers, have been killed in a human rabies outbreak in northeast Brazil in the past two months, the Health Ministry said Tuesday Nov. 1, 2005. The disease is transmitted to humans by blood-eating [vampire] bats, according to the Ministry.

All these cases were reported in the rural areas of the northeastern state of Maranhao, said the Ministry. The first death happened in August. Many houses in marshlands do not have screens in the windows and have large holes in the floor and ceiling, making it easy for vampire bats to break in, said the Ministry spokesperson. All the bat attacks took place at night.

The state of Maranhao borders the state of Para, where a
human-vampire bat rabies epidemic occurred in 2004. Ten vaccination and five bat-catching teams currently are working in the region to try to prevent the spread of the disease.

From 1986 to 2004, a total of 703 people have been reported killed by rabies in Brazil, and 84 of them were in the state of Maranhao, said the ministry.

Continued deforestation of the Amazon region has sent thousands of displaced vampire bats carrying rabies fleeing across northern Brazil. Rabies virus, which infects the central nervous system of humans, can cause death within a day from the onset of symptoms.

America’s big hangover: While we would hardly call the present era “morning in America,” it does appear that more Americans are waking up to the nauseating results of a reckless binge that culminated one year and one day ago in the election of George Bush.

Earlier this week, a CBS Poll found that Bush’s popularity had sunk to 35 percent – and that Vice President Cheney now had an amazing 19 percent approval. (Of course, Cheney doesn’t care about that – he has a consituency of one.)

Now comes the Washington Post/ABC News that shows that President Bush has lost ground on the last vestige of the artifice of character he and Rove created and projected out to the public – the false idea that George W. Bush has “character” and “integrity”:

On almost every key measure of presidential character and performance, the survey found that Bush has never been less popular with the American people. Currently 39 percent approve of the job he is doing as president, while 60 percent disapprove of his performance in office — the highest level of disapproval ever recorded for Bush in Post-ABC polls…

Overall, the survey underscores how several pillars of Bush’s presidency have begun to crumble under the combined weight of events and White House mistakes. Bush’s approval ratings have been in decline for months, but on issues of personal trust, honesty and values, Bush has suffered some of his most notable declines. Moreover, Bush has always retained majority support on his handling of the U.S. campaign against terrorism — until now, when 51 percent have registered disapproval.

Of course, even 39 percent is an incredibly high approval rate for the Worst President Ever. And it speaks to the power of the stagecraft of Rove and others who have successfully portrayed a strutting aristocratic popinjay as a man of the people.

Even so, those of us who were never fooled by the carefully stage-managed and tightly scripted presentation of Bush’s manufactured persona can take little comfort in the fact that majorities of Americans are beginning to rouse themselves.

The 20,000-plus dead and wounded service personnel are lost forever – as are the billions we continue to bleed in Iraq.

In another wanton display of sibling rivalry, Jeb is out to show W that he’s got nothing on Jeb, unqualified-and-crony-hiring-wise. The Gainesville Sun is reporting that Florida’s new education chancellor was a two-for-one deal, with her husband thrown in for good measure.

The Department of Business and Professional Regulation hired Dennis Yecke last month. He is being paid $102,000 a year in his new position, about $5,000 more than the person who previously had the job. Yecke’s wife, Cheri Yecke, was named chancellor of the state’s K-12 schools in August and began her job last month. She is making $152,000 a year…

While she was education commissioner in Minnesota, her husband was appointed to an $84,000 position as a deputy commissioner with the state’s economic development agency. That appointment by Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty came during a hiring freeze, leading Democrats to rip his appointment.

”It’s just old-fashioned nepotism,” said Minnesota state Rep. Loren Solberg in a 2003 news release.

Cheri, who was forced to resign as head of education in Minnesota after her inability to separate church and state got out of hand, was the best person Jeb could find in all the land to run education in Florida. With a new report out that Florida ranks last in graduation rates for the second year in a row, at 56.8% (the national average is 71.5%), it’s not a stretch to think this woman really does represent the best and brightest to Jeb.

But her husband? Even some Republicans are skeptical.

”I find it hard to believe in the whole state of Florida we didn’t have somebody” qualified for the job, [Sen. Nancy Argenziano, R-Dunnellon] said. Requests to speak with Cheri Yecke were declined…Requests to speak with Dennis Yecke also were declined.

From National Journal’s PollTrack (edited):

Chumpin’ for Cheney: Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, pleaded innocent today to five felony charges of lying to investigators about leaking the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame. But a new CBS News poll shows that the public is unsure what to make of Libby or the allegations against him:

• 54% said they don’t know enough about the case to judge the validity of the charges
• 39% said the charges were likely true
• 70% either didn’t know enough about Libby to form an opinion of him or didn’t know how they felt about him
• 86% said the CIA leak investigation is an important matter
• 61% said the charges against Libby are serious enough to merit criminal prosecution
• 51% believed the case was politically motivated
• 43% regarded the investigation as a serious matter involving the honesty of the Bush administration
• 51% were unsure of Karl Rove’s role in the leak
• 14% said Rove likely did something unethical and 8% said he probably acted illegally
• 19% said Rove had done nothing wrong
• Nearly two-thirds said they suspected that someone in President Bush’s administration was responsible for the leak
• Bush’s approval rating hit an all-time low of 35% for the CBS poll

Heckuva job: The House panel investigating the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina has released some e-mail exchanges that A) contradict what FEMA Director Michael Brown said in his testimony before investigators, and B) make him appear even more ineffectual than we thought.

The Department of Homeland Security has provided more than 1,000 pages of requested e-mails to the committee. They involve Brown’s actions serving as what DHS’s “battlefield commander” on the ground in the days following the Gulf Coast disaster on Aug. 29.

Some of the e-mails provided by DHS and released Wednesday by the committee indicate that Brown had no appreciation for the situation and was completely clueless about what he was supposed to do:

For example, on Aug. 31 Brown received an e-mail from Marty Bahamonde, one of the only FEMA officials on the ground in New Orleans, saying “the situation is past critical.” Bahamonde said hotels were kicking people out, thousands were gathering in the streets with no food or water, and medical patients were going to die within hours.

“We are out of food and running out of water at the [Louisiana Superdome], plans in works to address the critical needs,” Bahamonde wrote.

Brown replied four minutes later: “Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?”
[…]

Losing battle: The illegal movement of infected poultry, especially fighting cocks and ducks, has helped spread the bird flu virus to seven provinces in Thailand, officials announced on Wednesday Nov, 2, 2005.

In the latest outbreak of the H5N1 virus, which has killed 13 Thais, laboratory results confirmed the virus in chickens and pigeons in the central province of Ang Thong, the Department of Livestock Department said on its Web site, .

Six of the seven infected provinces were clustered in central Thailand, with the other, Kalasin, in the northeast, where fighting cocks might have caught the deadly disease from those in the infected central region, livestock officials said.

“Kalasin, which had outbreaks last year [2004] from fighting cocks, is very far from the infected central region,” Livestock Department chief Yukol Limlaemthong said.
[…]

Gay friendly? “In college, Samuel Alito led a student conference that urged legalization of sodomy and curbs on domestic intelligence, a sweeping defense of privacy rights he said were under threat by the government and the dawning computer age,” reports the Associated Press.

President Bush’s choice for the Supreme Court, in a report written years before ubiquitous personal computers made electronic privacy the everyday concern it is now, warned of the potential for abuses by officials and companies collecting data on individuals.

Three decades before the Supreme Court decriminalized gay sex, Alito declared on behalf of his group of fellow Princeton students that “no private sexual act between consenting adults should be forbidden.” Alito also called for an end to discrimination against homosexuals in hiring.

As a federal appellate judge, Alito has built a scant record on gay-rights issues and a mixed one, at best, on privacy matters generally, in the view of civil liberties advocates who are still examining his opinions.

But they saw in the 1971 report a prescient thinker taking on issues ahead of their time, including the need for computer encryption, stronger oversight of domestic intelligence and curbs on the surveillance powers of states.

David Smith of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay organization, said, “If these are his views today – and there is no indication they are not – it’s a hopeful sign that may provide some insight into his philosophy. This isn’t pop-the-champagne-cork time. His views need to be explored… [but] very few people were standing up for gay Americans 34 years ago.”