George Bush’s favorability rating has now been below 40 percent for 18 months, which beats the 15-month streak of Richard Nixon’s unpopularity, which ended in his resignation under threat of impeachment. And with 17 months left to go, Bush still has time to beat the all-time record of 30 months below 40 percent held by Harry Truman:

George W. Bush has sunk below Richard Nixon and could break Harry Truman’s record for persistent unpopularity among modern U.S. presidents.

The latest Gallup Poll found that Bush’s popularity had been below 40 percent for six consecutive quarters [18 months], the Dallas Morning News reports. Nixon ended his five-quarter [15-month] streak by resigning in 1974.

Truman’s approval ratings were below 40 percent for 10 [quarters], the longest ever in the history of the Gallup Poll. Bush, with six quarters [18 months] remaining in his second term, could surpass Truman.

This is a repost from March, 2006. Thanks for the reminder, BlogCritics!

Chalk up another failure for the Bush tax cuts. The head of UPS today is warning that America’s neglected infrastructure is hobbling us in the global marketplace.

Describing the nation’s roads, ports, railroads and airports as the backbone of global trade, UPS’s chief executive officer today warned that America was taking a chance with its future by neglecting its infrastructure.

“What’s shocking, quite frankly, is the inability of our transportation infrastructure to keep up with the normal day-to-day stresses imposed upon it,” said UPS CEO Mike Eskew. “Our highways, waterways, railroads and aviation networks are simply not keeping up with ordinary demands.

After Hurricane Katrina even emergency supplies languished in ports and parking lots. Eskew said you don’t have to wait for a storm or earthquake or terrorist attack to see the problems. You also don’t have to be a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, but they have issued a scathing analysis of our transport system.

“In 2005, here’s what our infrastructure report card looked like: our aviation system got a D+; navigable waterways a D-; roads a D, and rails a C-.”

“What does the overall report card on our national transportation infrastructure look like? Well, let’s put it this way: if your kids brought home report cards like this, someone would be grounded.”

Eskew was especially critical of railroads. As those of us who live near its Jacksonville headquarters are well aware, Bush Treasury Secretary John Snow was head of CSX before his crony status qualified him for a seat at the Bush cabinet table. CSX is a leader in the rail industry at avoiding liability and sticking it to the taxpayers every time its worn-out tracks cause an Amtrak derailment.

Eskew [added] one private business sector that particularly needs to step up is the rail sector. The nation’s railroads are “under-investing” in advanced technologies available today that could improve the capacity and safety of their networks, he asserted.

The problem is not insurmountable, he added, but it’s time “to sound the alarm.”

Pres. Bush recently hosted a Kool-Aid party with a gaggle of rightwing pundits at the White House. Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post put together a round-up of the pundits’ reviews of the president’s demeanor:

National Review’s Kate O’Beirne, who joined the presidential chat in the Roosevelt Room, told me that the most striking thing was the president’s incongruously sunny demeanor … Bush was “not at all weary or anguished” and in fact was “very energized,” wrote Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report. He was “as confident and upbeat as ever,” observed Rich Lowry of National Review. “Far from being beleaguered, Bush was assertive and good-humored,” according to David Brooks of the New York Times.

Why is Bush so happy? Because he knows he is doing God’s bidding:

One of the more unnerving reports out of the president’s seminar with the pundits came from Brooks, who quoted Bush as saying: “It’s more of a theological perspective. I do believe there is an Almighty, and I believe a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom. And I will tell you that is a principle that no one can convince me that doesn’t exist.”

I think I see where he’s going. God told him to invade Iraq to secure the Iraqis’ oil, I mean, freedom. So blame the failure of the war on God, not Bush.

Tnx CBC

I was enjoying the thought of Bush’s impending colonoscopy and the discomfort it might inflict upon the world’s biggest ass’s ass. Then I realized with horrifying clarity that Cheney will be president while Bush is under anesthesia.

White House press secretary Tony Snow says Bush will have the procedure at Camp David in Maryland.

Snow says the president will hand over presidential powers to Vice President Cheney while he is under anesthesia.

Bush did this before in 2002, at that time becoming only the second president in history to invoke Section 3 of the 25th Amendment. The first was none other than Ronald Reagan — again for a colon procedure — making Poppy Bush the first “acting” president in history.

Why the overabundance of caution? As Bush likes to persuade us, we’re at war. Whether an occupation really qualifies as “war” I’m not sure, but in a 2002 press conference he said it did.

Q Should we read anything into the fact that you are going to transfer the power, the length of time of this?

THE PRESIDENT: No, not at all. It’s just that I made the decision. We looked at the precedent. I’m the first President to have done so under this type of procedure and/or physical examination. I did so because we’re at war and I just want to be super — you know, super cautious.

And I informed the Vice President of this and he’s fully prepared to — he’s standing by. He’ll realize he’s not going to be President that long. (Laughter.)

The more cynical among us might wonder if he’s doing it so there can be no question of Dick’s authority.

Anybody up for a coup?

I found this interesting bit of doggerel at the Hotline’s Blogometer last week. It was attributed to John Derbyshire who posts to a rightwing blog called “The Corner,” which you can look up via the Google.

To the tune of “Help Me Make It Through the Night”:

HELP ME GET BACK TO THE RIGHT
Take the W from my car.
Peel it off and let it fall.
Leave the bumper clean and bright
For this sticker from Ron Paul.
It’s not me that’s changin’ sides.
It’s more a case of seein’ the light.
I’ve supported Bush too long.
Help me get back to the Right.

This is ironic because just a few years ago, Derbyshire’s rightwing co-factionalists labeled anyone who dared to criticize their Dear Leader as a “Bush hater” — usually adding that criticizing Dear Leader was equivalent to hating America.

Of course, when the wingers do it, it’s okay. They can even make up songs about it, and no one questions their patriotism.

Ain’t America great!

The Washington Post gave William Kristol space in its Sunday editorial pages to send a sweet summer bouquet to his BFF in the White House:

“I suppose I’ll merely expose myself to harmless ridicule if I make the following assertion: George W. Bush’s presidency will probably be a successful one.”

Kristol offers three reasons for this magical thinking: 1) We haven’t been attacked since 9/11, 2) the economy is doing great and 3) the war in Iraq is going to turnaround any day now.

In reality, of course, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center came eight years after the February 1993 attack in which terrorists set off a bomb in the garage under Tower One. We’re not quite six years out from the 2001 attacks.

The economy may be doing well for the top income earners like Kristol and his buddies, but I don’t know anyone who thinks the economy is as “strong” as Kristol described it.

On the war, it’s hard to imagine how the United States, or any third party, could “win” an Iraqi-on-Iraqi civil war.

Maybe Kristol is privy to a new Bushite marketing campaign in the works for a September roll-out in which the president declares victory and gets out. Otherwise this is just more bad, delusional thinking from Kristol, whose track record is among the most abysmal of the Beltway pundits — a group that is beyond disgrace and would be tarred and feathered were it not for the fact that they are accountable to no one.

Kristol closes with this:

[What] happens when voters realize in November 2008 that, if they choose a Democrat for president, they’ll also get a Democratic Congress and therefore liberal Supreme Court justices? Many Americans will recoil from the prospect of being governed by an unchecked triumvirate of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. So the chances of a Republican winning the presidency in 2008 aren’t bad.

What it comes down to is this: If Petraeus succeeds in Iraq, and a Republican wins in 2008, Bush will be viewed as a successful president.

I like the odds.

A brief scour of Bill Kristol’s writing and TV punditry produces very few instances when his prognostications have been correct. On the other hand, in January, Glenn Greenwald at Unclaimed Territory composed a list of instances when Kristol has been flat-out wrong :

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