Day: April 11, 2006

Spengler: Bush Will Bomb Iran in October to Flip Election to GOP

Jon Ponder

“Spengler” is an anonymous writer for Asia Times who appears to have been weirdly prescient about Bush’s actions so far:

Americans rally around a wartime commander-in-chief, and Bush will have bombed Iranian nuclear installations by October.

One hears not an encouraging word about US President George W Bush these days, even from Republican loyalists. Yet I believe that Bush will stage the strongest political comeback of any US politician since Abraham Lincoln won re-election in 1864 in the midst of the American Civil War.

Two years ago I wrote that Bush would win a second term as president but live to regret it. Iraq’s internal collapse and the president’s poll numbers bear my forecast out. But Bush’s Republicans will triumph in next November’s congressional elections for the same reason that Bush beat Democratic challenger John Kerry in 2004. Americans rally around a wartime commander-in-chief, and Bush will have bombed Iranian nuclear installations by October.

One factoid encapsulates Bush’s opportunity: in a February 14 CNN/Gallup poll, 80 percent of respondents said they believed that Iran, if it had nuclear weapons, would hand them over to terrorists; 59 percent said Iran might use nuclear weapons against the United States. A slight majority of those polled, to be sure, did not wish to use military action against Iran, but that should be interpreted as “not yet”, for two-thirds said they worried that the US would not do enough to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Americans are a misunderstood people. Only one in five owns a passport, and a tiny fraction of non-immigrant Americans learns a foreign language. US apathy regarding what might plague the rest of the world is matched only by US bloodlust when attacked. President Bush earned overwhelming support by toppling Saddam Hussein, a caricature villain who appeared to threaten Americans, but earned opprobrium by committing American lives to the political rehabilitation of Iraq, about which Americans care little.

The Party’s Over Lieberman But He Won’t Go Home

Trish

Independents everywhere might want to give more thought to signing on with one of the two major parties. CBS is reporting that Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman is considering running for re-election as an Independent.

Lieberman isn’t going down alone but plans to take the whole party with him.

“I have not foreclosed the option,” Lieberman said at a news conference at the Capitol. “If I wanted to run as an independent, I would. I’m running as a Democrat. I’ve been a Democrat all my life.”

Well, maybe not quite all his life.

I always wondered what Al Gore was thinking in 2000. It was bad enough to be stuck running against Bush. But to be running with Lieberman? Why?

“I feel very strongly the world is safer without Saddam Hussein in power. We have to complete the job in Iraq,” Lieberman said.

Are they sure Lieberman said that? I know I’ve heard every member of the Bush White House say it too.

Lieberman isn,t going down alone but plans to take the whole party with him. In a year when Democrats finally have a chance at gaining ground in both the Senate and the House, Joe is thinking of himself first, and staying in the race even if “his” party backs someone else.

Ned Lamont, a Democratic activist and anti-war candidate, is challenging Lieberman for the party’s nomination this year. He has been garnering support from some Connecticut Democrats dissatisfied with Lieberman’s stance on Iraq and his perceived closeness with President Bush’s administration…

Paul Streitz, who is seeking the Republican nomination, said he would gain if Lieberman is upended by Lamont and runs as an independent.

“A Republican would win, obviously,” he said. “It would split the Democratic vote.”

I bet Zell Miller is proud. Or jealous.

Poll: Most Disappprove of Bush’s Authorization of Leak in Plame Case

Jon Ponder
Bush’s approval rate is unchanged at 37 percent in the new Gallup poll.

This first look at public reaction to the news that President Bush authorized a leak of government intelligence in order to discredit a critic shows that the White House spin that the president did nothing illegal did not get much traction with an increasingly skeptical public:

Overall, 63 percent of Americans believe Bush did something either illegal (21 percent) or unethical (42 percent), while 28 percent say he did nothing wrong. While many more Democrats are critical, 3 in 10 Republicans also find that Bush did something illegal or unethical.

The more closely people are following the issue, the more likely they are to say he did something illegal rather than merely unethical…

Despite the latest turns in the CIA leak case, and news from Iraq, the president’s overall approval rating did not fall still further, hanging on at 37 percent, which is in line with most other polls.

Pensito Review: Headline Style, Change We Won’t

Buck Banks

Heads up: The Yoda-like grammar of the headline of this post is an extreme example of the kind of undumb headlines you, gentle reader, can continue to expect from the crack editorial staff of Pensito Review. Why do we feel compelled to issue a reassuring statement like that to the smart people who visit our humble “politics & media” site?

Because of Google. And Yahoo. And RSS feeds. And newsbots.

See, there was this article in the New York Times on Sunday about how news organizations were experimenting with “dumbing down” their headlines so they would make more sense in a list of headlines supplied in an RSS feed.

‘The heck with that!’
– Ed Canale

So news organizations large and small have begun experimenting with tweaking their Web sites for better search engine results. But software bots are not your ordinary readers: They are blazingly fast yet numbingly literal-minded. There are no algorithms for wit, irony, humor or stylish writing. The software is a logical, sequential, left-brain reader, while humans are often right brain.

In newspapers and magazines, for example, section titles and headlines are distilled nuggets of human brainwork, tapping context and culture. “Part of the craft of journalism for more than a century has been to think up clever titles and headlines, and Google comes along and says, ‘The heck with that,’ ” observed Ed Canale, vice president for strategy and new media at The Sacramento Bee.

Well, we here at Pensito Review join Mr. Canale in a hearty “The heck with that � squared!”

Lest you worry that we will now begin to mine the arcane or bust our frontal lobes coming up with cool headlines, we would like to take a moment to explore Pensito Review’s history of headline hepness. Here are a few examples from the archives:

  • “Doctor My Ears,” heads a post by Trish kvetching about how reporters always use the title “Dr.” before Condoleeza Rice’s name.
  • “The White House Hopes You Won’t Read This,” is a self-referential head from Jon about how the WH released news of its social program cuts Friday evening � after the press corps had gone home.
  • “Woodward Wants to Be Sweetheart of Cellblock C,” was my take on Bob Woodward’s sweet offer to do some of press paragon Judith Miller’s prison time.
  • A truly great head that didn’t overtax the typesetters was Trish’s “MSM MIA,” about how the mainstream media missed a critical story.
  • Jon’s “The Lying Liar�s Dumb Lie” headline demonstrates a classic rhetorical conceit involving repetition that has a Greek name that I’ve forgotten.
  • And my “Bush: Et Tu, Silvio?” just shows we can do classical literary references in other languages.

So fear not, noble, and hopefully regular, reader. We ain’t dumbing down our headlines for Google, though we do promise to lay off the obnoxious Yoda grammatical constructions.

More Whispering about Cheney’s Resignation

Jon Ponder

From Andy’s lips to God’s ears:

The rumormill is once again aflutter with talk that Vice President Dick Cheney will soon be sacrificed as the Busheviks bow to their plummeting poll numbers, and the ReTHUGlican-controlled Congress, with just a 35% approval rating, fights for its political survival. As the chief architect of the Iraq fiasco, and the poster-boy for divisiveness in Washington, Cheney, as I first predicted here February 15, will be forced to resign….

By June, it’s likely that Rudy Giuliani, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour or perennial hopeful John McCain will be United States vice-president. Ladies and Gentlemen, place your bets.

If it’s that mushmouthed Goober Haley Barbour, I will have an embolism. I have long predicted it would be McCain — not by Bush’s choice, of course. McCain would be the choice of the GOP money men in New York because he is theoretically electable (while Guiliani will never survive the South Carolina primary).

There is also the eery way that Cheney’s resignation would track along the profile of the end of the Nixon presidency, when Nixon’s first veep, Spiro Agnew resigned because of corruption charges from his term as governor of Maryland.

I still believe that no senator can be elected president in 2008, but as vice president, McCain would be in a much better position — especially if Bush, like Nixon, were to resign, leaving the presidency to McCain.

(One interesting twist: the governor of Arizona is a Democrat and, unless Arizona law prevents it, she might well replace McCain with a Dem.)

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

The political doctrine which has represented the loftiest endeavor toward common life is liberal democracy…. Liberalism — it is well to recall this today — is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities, and hence is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet.

— José Ortega y Gasset, (1883-1955), Spanish philosopher

PA-O7: Wacky Weldon Trashes Cancer Child, Supports Coronation of Moonie Cult Leader As ‘Messiah’ — and Gets an Earful from His District

Jon Ponder

Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pennsylvania is one of a handful of florid, sputtering, endomorphic GOP House members — like Duncan Hunter, R-California, James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin, and Howard Coble, R-N.C. — who look like they could explode at any minute.

Weldon’s pet topic is the purported Able-Danger warnings about 9/11 that, if true, would conveniently pin the blame for the attacks precisely where the GOP has always wanted it: on Bill Clinton. Get Weldon talking about Able-Danger and soon there’s more spittle flying than in one of Chris Matthew’s rants about Hillary Clinton.

After 20 years in the House, Weldon is facing serious competition for his PA-07 seat, and the challenge has already brought out his true colors. When a Democratic opponent, retired Adm. Joe Sestak, was dealing with his four-year-old daughter’s diagnosis of a malignant brain tumor, Rep. Weldon couldn’t resist piling on:

Weldon also suggested Sestak should have sent his daughter to a hospital in Philadelphia or Delaware, rather than the Washington hospital.

I guess this is how Rove Republicans say, “Best wishes to your little girl. Hope she gets well soon.”

And then there was Weldon’s attendance at a Republican-oriented event in U.S. government-owned building in which cult-leader Rev. Sun Yung Moon, publisher of the GOP’s Washington Times newspaper, crowned himself God:

An example of the wacko side: Weldon’s presence at a Washington ceremony at which the Rev. Sun Myung Moon was crowned as “humanity’s Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent.”

Those aren’t my words. Those are the words of the Unification Church, which sponsored the 2004 event at the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Weldon, at first, denied he was present. Later, when a videotape was produced showing him there, he said he had left before the Rev. Moon was, well, deified.

My name is Rev. Moon, but you can call me God.

My colleage Buck might say, “Lord, it is time to call Curt home.” But our friend Charlie, a student at Swarthmore College, which is in Weldon’s district, speaks for everyone who would like Weldon to endure some of what he’s dished out before Jesus calls him home:

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