I've had it with the quaking-in-the-boots, what's Karl going to do next, Diebold stole the election whining. Karl Rove is a sharp political operative of the Lee Atwater school, but he is not a God. He says things to influence his Republican base, and to get the media to notice. And he tries to spook the opposition into believing that their efforts will be in vain. Karl Rove has no "secret plan" to sentence Saddam to death on November 5, or capture Osama bin Laden, or hack the election machines, or send an army of mutant fundamentalists to double our GOTV efforts. He's just another sad, cynical operative whose supposed "genius" gave us Terri Schiavo, Social Security Privatization, keeping Don Rumsfeld, and pledging to stay the course when the country abandoned Bush on the war.
Iraqi election judges rejected fraud claims made by Sunni Arabs. The UIA, the Shi'ite list, won 59% of the vote in Baghdad according to early returns, and the Sunnis find that result to be preposterous. Sunnis, especially Adnan Al-Dulaimi of the National Concord Front, demanded a revote in Baghdad because of the fraud. But the Iraqi Electoral Commission rejected that request outright.
According to a new Quinnipiac Poll, the public is not buying into Bush's latest Iraq pushback strategy on either front. Support for immediate withdrawal from Iraq is as high as 40 percent now, with 4 percent asking for a withdrawal deadline of 6 months, and 10 percent supporting a withdrawal deadline of 1 year. Only 34 percent believe there should be "no deadline". In other words, Bush has convinced nobody that setting a withdrawal timetable is a bad thing.
On the honesty front, 49 percent believe the Bush Administration "intentional misled" the US public on pre-war intelligence, while 46 believe the Administration told what it believed to be the truth. Again, the honesty pushback scheme did nothing to sway the public.
Bush's approval rating is 40, with disapproval at 54. Cheney and Congress are much worse. All are historic lows for the Q-Poll.
It seems that public opinion has hardened on these questions. Quinnipiac hadn't polled these Iraq-related questions in a very long time. It's pretty clear that a PR effort on a "Plan for Victory" won't do much for Bush.
I've been an equal opportunity critic throughout this Katrina mess. I really do think there is plenty of blame to go around. The failure of the Feds to follow the National Response Plan was probably the most fatal mistake of all because it denied desperately needed resources for several critical days after the storm. And for that, Chertoff should be fired. But Blanco clearly made several mistakes in deploying the National Guard and streamlining aid to evacuees. With that in mind, it's great to see Blanco take full responsibility for errors made at the state level. If you want to see a genuine mea culpa - and not the weasely Bush version - see what she had to say: "At the state level, we must take a careful look at what went wrong and make sure it never happens again. The buck stops here, and as your governor, I take full responsibility."
One striking result of Bush's polls is the tendency of Republicans to support him in such high numbers. His support level has dropped in recent months from around 90 percent to about 79 percent. But Democrats and Independents support him at 19 and 33 percent, respectively, according to the latest Pew poll. So I was curious how unusual it was for the nation to be so divided on party lines and found this article on public opinion of Bill Clinton at the end of his Presidency. The party divide was there too. In 2001, at the end of Clinton's second term, 93 percent of Democrats approved of his job! And as many as 32 percent of Republicans approved. I don't know when the last time 32 percent of Democrats approved of George W. Bush, but I gather it was quite a long time ago. Anyway, I thought it was interesting how much less support gets from either party compared to Clinton. Bush is as polarizing as Clinton was - the difference between the two parties in approval is about 60 points in both cases - but both parties are more sour on Bush than Clinton. Bush's unpopularity is broad-based, not just among Dems.
Larry Johnson at TPM Cafe points out the DHS's National Response Plan in the event of a national emergency of this sort. National Response Plan
All of the dithering from Karl Rove and the Bush apologists about poor local and State response is meaningless because the NRP gave PROACTIVE authority to the DHS to handle this disaster. Simply put, "The NRP establishes policies, procedures, and mechanisms for proactive Federal response to catastrophic events." Blaming local officials for not signing off on transfer of authority - which they did anyway through the August 26 State of Emergency - does not hold water. The DHS failed to do its own job. Never let anybody forget that. The Feds should have taken charge IMMEDIATELY, not after Nagin and Blanco suffered for days.
Looks like the next great catastrophe from this hurricane has arrived. An oil tanker capable of holding 2 million barrels of oil is leaking in the Mississippi River.
I think it is perfectly appropriate to level criticism against the Bush Administration for:
Underfunding FEMA
Ignoring and defunding levee construction requests
Responding late to the crisis
Sending troops to Iraq who could be needed at home.
But we should also spread some of the blame around for our local Democratic officials as well. Governor Blanco seems lost, though she seems to have established a footing in the last day. Still, where is the coordination of LA. National Guard and State Police? Why didn't she send in heavily armed State Police 3 days ago, when reports of looting first arose? Do we have to learn the tragic failure of Baghdad all over - no security means no relief. And Mayor Nagin seems to have had absolutely no real plan for this exigency. There is no coordination between local police, state police and National guards, and Nagin should have had something like that ready. The Federal government failed in New Orleans and South Mississippi. But so did the local governments.
The 17th Street Canal levee was breached and massive flooding from Lake Pontchartrain is hitting Bucktown, Carrolton, Lake View, Gentilly and Mid-City. The water is still rising as of this morning and nobody knows when it will stop. At first, many thought New Orleans was spared the worst because the levees held during the actual storm. But the backflow of water into Lake Pontchartrain from the east broke through the levee a day after the storm passed. This might create the "worst case" scenario that many feared as the great "cereal bowl" of New Orleans gets filled up.
The most salient statistic in the recent ARG poll was the drop in support for Bush among Republicans. I've speculated that it must be immigration or gas prices, figuring that these folks would never waver on Iraq. Well, David Frum offered a strongly critical commentary over at NRO regarding Bush's VFW speech, saying that it was basically the same old crap about Iraq and terrorism. And now even Republicans, who want real answers about the future in Iraq, are getting frustrated about the vague, cliche-ridden, stilted speeches coming from Bush. Read the emails Frum got.
Most of them complain about Bush's inability to "communicate" the war to the public, though some feel that he hasn't been strong enough in fighting Syria or Iran (what a surprise?) Either way, the GOP base is getting very anxious about Bush's performance. And these are not isolationist paleo-cons. They are the modern GOP base. And they are losing faith.
As of late Sunday there is still no Iraqi constitution, and with the exception of US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, nobody is particularly optimistic that the negotiators will reach the deadline. If they fail to vote out a constitution by tomorrow then the Iraqi assembly must be dissolved. There is talk, however, that with a 3/4 vote in the Assembly, the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) can be amended in order to give extra time.
As a life-long Democrat who finds abortion to be morally abhorrent I find the Republican claim to be the party of life a bit vexing. Forget for a moment the Republican Party's stunning inconsistency on other life issues like the death penalty, the environment and war. When Republicans talk about "life" they mean abortion. But what is the Republican record on abortion? What is the Republican position? Officially the Republican Party believes that Roe v. Wade should be overturned by the Supreme Court and, barring that, a Constitutional Amendment should be passed declaring the beginning of life at conception. Where are the calls for such an Amendment in Congress? Changing the Supreme Court will take over a decade so why not push to change the Constitution, like they are with gay marriage?
The Supreme Court came down, somewhat expectedly, on the side of banning the practice of executing minors. The Court decided decades ago that those aged 15 and under were ineligible for the death penalty but the Court allowed executions for those 16 and 17 at the time of the crime. 19 states had laws allowing executions of minors. In a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court declared the execution of minors to be "unusually cruel". The only interesting piece of this ruling is the placement of Kennedy and O'Connor. Kennedy actually wrote the majority decision while O'Connor sided with the dissent. I thought it would be opposite. This is a great victory for those of us fighting capital punishment in America.
At least 27 dead according to AP. Al Jazeera says 36 dead. Of course nobody knows the exact death toll at this point. Hopefully this is all the violence we'll see this year and it doesn't end up like last year's Ashura where 171 people were killed and 600 more were wounded. The horror of mass death is bad enough. In the past the Shia acted with remarkable restraint, largely because Sistani and other Shi'ite leaders did not want to destablize a process that would lead to elections, and Shi'ite accession to power. But with the Shi'ites now confirmed in charge of the Assembly, the incentive to strike back may give the Sunni insurgents what they want: civil war.
So, what is really likely to happen on Sunday in Iraq? Will there be thousands of deaths as voters get blown to smithereens as they go to the polls? Will turnout stay extremely low, even in Shiite areas because of threats and general cynicism about the election? Will turnout be high in the Shiite and Kurdish areas but low in Baghdad and the Sunni areas? Or will turnout exceed expectation, even in the Sunni areas? Will insurgent attacks get thwarted one after another due to the maximum security? Are the threats of insurgent attacks against voters just a bunch of bluff and bluster anyway? Will the maximum security precautions - including total curfews, car bans, and travel restrictions - actually end up depressing turnout because access to the ballot box will be limited?
So, what do you think will happen on Sunday? Forget the question of which slate will win, what will actually happen with the election? Use this thread to voice your prognosis on what you think will go down in Iraq.
I think Ricks appropriately balances what has actually been achieved in Fallujah, and how little it will help the US. Key paragraph:
"The key will be if government forces can hold Fallujah, Mosul, et cetera, after they are taken or stabilized, and, more importantly, if the Iraqi government can convince the bulk of the Sunni population that their lot is better off with the new Iraq," said Michael Vickers, a former CIA officer who is a Pentagon consultant.
A conservative site offers a pretty convincing analysis of the Hispanic exit polls and shows that, well, they're bullshit. At least the NEP poll was. The NDN poll is probably more accurate but the NEP doesn't pass the laugh test. Bush did NOT get 44% of Hispanics. He probably got closer to 38%. A modest jump but not much over 35% in 2000.
Let's not get carried away with the gay marriage votes or the South. George W. Bush earned a higher percentage of the vote in every single state in 2004 than he did in 2000 with the exception of Vermont and South Dakota. Even Massachusetts, Bush got 36.95% of the vote. In 2000, he got 32.5%. Kerry didn't necessary lose vis-a-vis Gore only because of Nader. But Bush gained everywhere. In other words, in virtually every state more voters went to Bush than abandoned him. And, with the exception of Nader-to-Kerry, more abandoned the Dems than went to Kerry. Check every state here and you'll notice a similar advance for Bush in virtually every state.
