A "Feb. 9-11 poll puts Bush's job approval at 37%, but among people who identify themselves as Republican or leaning Republican, his approval rating is 76%.
"Thus, despite bad news from Baghdad and carefully crafted hand-wringing by high-profile GOP war critics in Congress such as Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, three of four Republicans in the country are hanging in there with the president.
"The poll also shows that rank-and-file Republicans have higher regard for the president than they do Republicans in Congress. They gave GOP lawmakers a 63% job-approval rating, 13 points below Bush's. And 72% of Republicans do not think Bush made a mistake sending U.S. troops to Iraq."
A March 2 New York Times story said:
"Over all, Mr. Bush's job approval remains at one of its lowest points, with 29 percent of all Americans saying they approve of the way he is doing his job, compared with 34 percent at the end of October. Sixty-one percent disapproved, compared with 58 percent in October, within the margin of sampling error."
In April, President Bush's approval rating in a new Harris survey had sunk to 28 percent. Newsweek magazine confirmed that 28% approval rating in its poll released in May and in June, Newsweek showed Bush's approval at 26%.
Columnist Helen Thomas reported in a mid-May column that, "The latest CBS-New York Times poll said the president has dropped to 24 percent in his approval ratings on his handling of the war." In June, Newsweek showed him with a 23% rating on the war. Those figures apply to handling of the war and not to his over-all job-approval rating.
Bush's approval within the Republican party remains relative high at well above 50% and accounts for nearly all his support, which still boggles the mind why anyone would continue to support the "worst" president in history.
After 9/11 Bush had some of the highest approval ratings in history. That also boggles the mind. He knew not what to do when told of the attacks, spending seven minutes continuing to read a children's story to kiddies. He was absent from the White House for three days while his handlers and puppet masters coached him on how to act and what to say when he emerged from hiding. At Ground Zero he made a speech prepared by much-brighter men which was well received and cast him as a strong and resolute leader when he, in fact, is neither.
Bush has managed to prove two things in his presidency. 1) White supremacy is a fallacy and 2) Ivy League degrees aren't worth a bucket of dirt (in the wrong hands). So why do not more people get off his bandwagon when his actions prove him to be an incompetent buffoon?
Some of Bush's supporters are captains of industry who are used to the gifts government throws their way while cutting their taxes, so they want to keep that gravy train running even if it runs off a cliff to destroy the US. They know that at the destruction of the USSR, nothing was gone except governing principles; party leaders who ran commerce entities were freed to confiscate business properties for themselves and became billionaires while ordinary Russians suffered. The people remained, the land remained, the military remained, the police remained, the prisons and jails remained as did the wardens and jailers, the schools and universities remained.
Our American "comrades" know that at the destruction of the United States, all will remain except public constraints on their lust, greed and voracious appetite for more. They may have it all now; but that isn't enough. That they don't care if our democratic republic follows the Soviet Union into oblivion is borne out by the fact that they have made millionaires of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and many others whose only reason to exist is to trash the principles of this nation and smear anyone who clings to those principles. Our "comrades" will always support a regime that gives them more, but they are a tiny sliver of Bush's support.
To understand why others, including ordinary working-class people, refuse to abandon a sinking ship we need to know history.
It has long defied logic why peasants continued to serve in king's armies which suppressed the peasantry from which they came. Why go to battle for the king and aristocracy and die for them? But the peasants, in their uneducated way, had been indoctrinated about the divine right of kings to rule, and that meant supporting the king and to die for the king no matter how cruel he is was also supporting God and dying for God.
Where did people get that stupid idea and hold it for hundreds or thousands of years? From the Bible of course, which says that God chose David to be the king of the Jews. That false reading of the David story was all that was needed to brainwash subjects into thinking that God chose their kings, no matter how despicable. God determined who would always rule by choosing who would be born into the ruling royal family and He'she-it put the preferred choice for inheriting the crown as the first born. Sound familiar? The Bible has stories of fearful kings ordering the murder of all first-born sons in order that none of them may claim for themselves the title of king. That is the story of Passover. Pharaoh did it. Herod did it.
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Thomas Bonsell is a former newspaper editor (in Oregon, New York and Colorado) United States Air Force cryptanalyst and National Security Agency intelligence agent. He became one of American journalism's leading constitutional experts through years of study at Georgetown University Graduate School of Government in Washington, D.C., and tries (without much success) to be patient with people who argue endlessly on subjects they have never studied. He is the author of "The Un-Americans: Trashing of the United States Constitution in the American Press", a critique of the mainstream media for ignorance of, or disdain for, our constitutional principles of self-government. He left newspaper work years ago, disgusted at the direction the Fourth Estate ~ under the mismanagement of ineffectual, out-of-touch, can't-do executives ~ was taking away from honest responsible journalism and the observation that there was no place in the mainstream media for a progressive, or liberal, constitutional "expert". Bonsell is an honors graduate of Woodbury College (Los Angeles, California) with a bachelor of business administration degree. He is profiled in Marquis Who's Who in America. (Self-portrait, above, was handled to make author/artist appear prettier than he actually is.)
Personal motto: Have brain; will use.
You cited a half-dozen or so reasons why I've always been an agnatheist. Even as a kid it didn't seem logical the some mystical being up there somewhere could be calling the shots. It was good enough for me to try to be the best person I could whenever I could.
I can't prove there isn't a god any more than they can prove there is one. But to have your entire life controlled by a mythical set of beliefs and play follow the leader to someone whose beliefs have led us to the edge of the cliff and are still ready to follow him when he finally steps of the edge is just plain nuts.
Or, they were born without a brain and can't think for themselves.
Nuts or braindead, you explained a lot about why Bush still has some faithful followers.
by
Sandy Sand (143 articles, 0 quicklinks, 195 diaries, 1376 comments)
on Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 3:22:24 PM
Not too long ago I told a young religious fundamentalist friend who was arguing that without god there is no morality, that if god had told me as the biblical god told Joshua, to go into a peaceful pagan land and put to the sword everyone there, man, woman and child, I would have told god that I would not do that because my moral judgement was better than his.
They leave moral judgement up to god. And because of it they commit horrible atrocities with a clear conscience and brains deadened by blind obedience. They do so with beatific smiles and certainty of divine purpose. Karl Rove knew the power into which he tapped.
by
Sheila Jackson (16 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 133 comments)
on Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 10:14:02 PM
I think one of the underlying reasons that the situation has gotten so out of hand in the US media is something you alluded to but did not discuss in detail. US corporations including media giants are operating under a tax structure that they could have only dreamed about a few decades ago. In addition, the new lenient attitude towards mergers and acquisitions, which would have raised antitrust concerns in the past, is permitting them to occur with great frequency. This is putting a very small number of very rich people who love the new lenient business environment in charge of most of the media in our nation. It is these people who are keeping the Bush supporters propped up with constant propaganda. We can only hope that as more and more people turn away from those media outlets that their profits will begin to dry up, and they will need to look elsewhere for readers and viewers.
But I'm not going to hold my breath waiting. When I think back to how stations like CNN used to be during the first Iraq war and then turn on the TV and watch them now I am dumbfounded by the stark differences. All of the old reporters are gone, and a bunch of mindless clones have replaced them. Their idea of a good interviewee nowadays is Anne Coulter. That's what America has become.
by
John R Moffett (80 articles, 14 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 610 comments)
on Sunday, July 1, 2007 at 6:47:50 AM
and that is exaclty what drives people to him. Nuttiness has a big power. All of us are partly nuts so when we see the wholly nutty person successful a part off us rejoices. It is very difficult to resist the nuttiness in yourself. And it is also mixed with deep racism. I wrote once that if it was not Iraq but Iceland, the whole thing would have collapsed long ago. But we are racict nuts.
So, here we have a good sequence: arrogance, stupidity, racism and nuttiness.
'People are most afraid of the reason
They should be afraid of stupidity if only they knew what was really dreadful'
Goethe
by
Mark Sashine (50 articles, 19 quicklinks, 244 diaries, 3453 comments)
on Sunday, July 1, 2007 at 7:10:18 AM
Each country has a specific set of religious, social, political and cultural ideas that define it and distinguish it from the other nations.
Bush and GOP have been successful in distilling those concepts that a broad mass of Americans see as quintessentially American.
These are not universally shared ideas, even among Americans, but for the millions and millions of people who adhere to the GOP and support its candidates, those ideas define our nationhood.
Bush has an army of 30,000 lawyers, journalists, political scientists and other operatives that his grandfather, father, brother and he have built up in Washington, on Wall Street in New England. Florida, Texas and the rest of the country.
Very few of these people are dumb-bells, nuts or fanatics.
Even less so the rank and file Republicans and most GOP officials.
They are our fellow citizens who hold divergent opinions on our history, on our values and on our future.
The challenge for American governance is advocating for and asserting our views, while simultaneously honoring and accomodating theirs in a manner that is moral and that enhances our national well being.
This is not an impossible goal if we are willing to concede that we are not the source of all wisdom and that our interlocutors are acting in good faith according to their lights.
It requires negotiation, engagement, compassion and humor to interact effectively with the right and to maintain the integrity of our leftist vision.
But if we are to form a leftist governing majority and achieve lasting and humane change domestically and in the wide world it is a challenge we must bear.
by
Robert Chapman (28 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 556 comments)
on Sunday, July 1, 2007 at 2:03:49 PM
If "morality" is what makes these senseless brains tick, why does nobody question just what defines morality. It was not God who decided what is and is not moral. It has been man, with flaws, frailities and failings who has made that determination. The Bible was recorded, translated and altered by mere mortals. The fact that so many versions of the book even exist is an indication that the Bible is no more God's word than is it mine. If there is a God, and as things grow worse, my doubt grows greater, I doubt he would have been so vague. "Thou shalt not kill" has been interpreted to mean "killing in war and for criminal punishment is okay", but destroying a weeks old embryo is murder. "Thou shalt not commit adultery" and "Thou shalt not covet..." are totally ignored and do not so much as even qualify as misdemeanors. "Thou shalt no steal" has resulted in laws which punish the theft of sometimes insignificant things, but leave unpunished those who steal people's reputations and good names. Dancing and imbibing alcohol were suitable for Christ, but certain religions view those as immoral offenses. Christ's lesson to "love one another" has been interpreted to mean love only those for whom one holds no personal disdain. In other words, love only those who think like you, look like you and believe as you believe.
After a lifetime of studying religion, beginning with the spoon-fed pap of 12 years in parochial school, and continuing with my personal journey to debunk those fairy tales, the most important thing I have learned is that those who base their "knowledge" or their "truth" solely on religious beliefs are in possession of neither. For every fool who holds to the belief that God chose Bush as our president, I must ask some questions. In 2000, did God suddenly "wake up" and decide that He had nothing better to do than choose the leader of the United States, or has He been choosing them all along, but making "mistakes?" Has God forgotten that He created a universe and that the U.S. is merely a tiny part of it? Has he further forgotten that over 66% of the people He created are not Christians? Did God choose Amin, Hitler, Castro, Hussein, et al to lead their respective countries? If anyone in that tiny splinter group of Bush hanger-ons can answer any of my questions with even a modicum of common sense, I might consider their argument about Bush's divine assignation. Somehow, I suspect answers won't be forthcoming. It continues to be true that ignorance is bliss. Only the ignorant can believe Bush is godly or moral, and only the ignorant can continue to live in bliss while the rest of us see our country going to hell in a handbasket.
by
Lauria Hale (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 38 comments)
on Sunday, July 1, 2007 at 2:36:45 PM
7 comments
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