Fire burn and cauldron bubble?

I have always believed in my gut (according to Bush, the source of all knowledge) that the war on Iraq was cooked up as a supremely cynical Republican strategy to put Bush in a place where the entire country would do his bidding, and it pretty much turned out that way, didn’t it?

Now read Josh Marshall's piece in Talking Points Memo and accompanying post by Mark Schmitt at TPM Cafe, and referenced article in Time — and see if you get as worried as I am.

Josh wrote:

The White House is now telling us that engineering a confrontation with Iran is a key part of their plan to resuscitate the president's dismal approval ratings in time to survive election day.
. . .
To the president the Democrats should be saying, Double or Nothing is Not a Foreign Policy.

And here's Mike Allen, writing for Time:

Presidential advisers believe that by putting pressure on Iran, Bush may be able to rehabilitate himself on national security, a core strength that has been compromised by a discouraging outlook in Iraq. "In the face of the Iranian menace, the Democrats will lose," said a Republican frequently consulted by the White House.

Here's my question: Will it turn out to be George Bush or the Congress — or the American people — who just never seem to learn?

Bush's broken promises on gasoline prices

Back in mid-2000, one of the Bush pitches for electing him was that his swell relationship with the Saudis would put him in a singularly influential position to reduce gasoline prices.

"I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply," Mr. Bush, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, told reporters here today. "Use the capital that my administration will earn, with the Kuwaitis or the Saudis, and convince them to open up the spigot." Link

"It's a strong and important friendship." (White House Photo)

Yet, as reported by the Center for American Progress in June 2004,

[W]hen Saudi Arabia led the fight within OPEC last month to cut production and raise prices, the president "refused to lean on the oil cartel" [citing the Miami Herald] and refused to even "personally lobby OPEC leaders to change their minds."

And when Bush ran for re-election, it was truly "fool me twice, shame on me": In April of 2004, as Bloomberg News reported:

Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S. has promised President George W. Bush the Saudis will reduce oil prices before this November's election to help the U.S. economy, according to Bob Woodward, author of a new book about the Iraq war.

Oil prices are "high, and they could go down very quickly," Woodward said last night in an interview on CBS's "60 Minutes.''

"That's the Saudi pledge,'' said Woodward. "Certainly over the summer or as we get closer to the election they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly.''

And finally, for those who appreciate irony, consider this: In October of 2000, as reported on CNN's allpolitics.com, Al Gore "proposed that the U.S. control rising oil prices by tapping a small portion of the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve."

As soon as Gore came out for the oil release, Bush pounced on him for "playing politics." A Bush adviser calls Gore's position "manna from heaven" because it reinforces the claim that the Vice President will say and do anything to get elected. "The strategic reserve should not be used as an attempt to drive down oil prices right before an election," Bush said. "It should not be used for short-term political gain at the cost of long-term national security."

About those deck chairs . . . UPDATED

With the world falling down around him, his reputation in tatters, his war in hopeless stall, our president does what? Changes his message men!

Scott McClellan will be replaced as presidential press person, and Karl Rove will be reassigned to focus on politics and elections.

Wonderful.

E. J. Dionne understands:

Here's the real meaning of the White House shake-up and the redefinition of Karl Rove's role in the Bush presidency: The administration's one and only domestic priority in 2006 is hanging on to control of Congress.

And comes to the same unavoidable conclusion:

And given the unfavorable political terrain for the president, Rove's recipe this year, as in 2004, is likely to include a heavy dollop of attacks on the Democrats. Hold on for the new Swift Boaters, coming soon to your swing state.

Let's hope this time we are ready for them.

You need to know this . . .

. . . if you should find yourself in a conversation with one of Them.

First the Republicans blamed the Democrats — Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid in particular — for defeating the immigration reform bill. Not true. What happened was that the Democrats succeeded in blocking the strategy that Senate Republicans intended to use to chip away at the legislation, known as the McCain/Kennedy bill. The Democrats called it “filibuster by amendment.” I watched with my own eyes as Frist stood there asserting the need to hear at least some of the 400-plus (!) amendments and offering to make lots of time available.

Now, in the House, more shenanigans exposed by TalkingPointMemo’s Muckraker.com:

Just goes to show the difference between smart and clever, two words often used to suggest intelligence. The Republicans are cleverer by half than Democrats, but hardly smart: How else to explain that they are Republicans in the first place?

Worse than death

Moussaoui should be sentenced to life in a maximum security prison, rather than a comparatively less painful death, which would only serve to fulfill the martyr's goal but ever so less horribly than being blown up in an airplane crash.

Send him to prison and let Nature take its course.

Entitlements as a percentage of the budget

Grover Norquist and his Republican "gimme tax breaks" buddies are always carping about how Medicare and Social Security, being "entitlements," constitute an ever-increasing share of the national budget and should have their allocations slashed.

These are the folks who claim that Democrats who refuse to rescind budgeted increases, such as cost-of-living increases, want to "raise taxes."

Well, when you consider the rate at which they have cut spending on every program that is NOT protected, the only inevitable outcome is for the entitlement share to grow.

As in "Well, duh!"

Think about it.