BUSH: "STAY THE COURSE." EMERSON: "A FOOLISH CONSISTENCY IS THE HOBGOBLIN OF LITTLE MINDS"-- AND HE NEVER EVEN MET BUSH!

This morning when I woke up I thought I had the wrong channel on. I mean it was the insipid CNN talking heads but all they were talking about was cookie recipes or something like that. No, it was worse: the mending of the feud or non-feud-- that was the provocative question du jour-- between David Letterman and Oprah Winfrey. And then, as if that wasn't a big enough insult to the intelligence of anyone stupid enough (like myself) to be watching CNN, there was a segment about Paula Abdul! The bathroom beckoned.

But before I turned it off-- having had my 20 minutes of corporate "news" for December 2-- on came two marines to talk about how great everything is going in Iraq. The two corporals, at a studio in Cleveland, while not as incoherent as Bush, didn't make a good case despite carefully lobbed softballs from the mentally impaired CNN talking head. In fact, it was kind of pathetic and sad. CNN, of course, made no mention of how these two corporals came to be on their broadcast. Were they provided by the Pentagon? Or did they wander over of their own volition with their "strong" opinions (which is basically what CNN insinuated)? I don't think the second scenario has any credence but an unsophisticated CNN viewer certainly might think it was the case based on the way the channel conveniently presented it.

Meanwhile, all unbiased sources (ie- non-Bush Regime sources) are reporting that the insurgency is growing stronger and stronger and the chances of the kind of Bushian "total victory," even an ill-defined one, recede by the day. A just-released study by 2 veteran defense analysts working for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy reports that "although thousands of insurgents have been killed and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been detained ... incident and casualty data reinforce the impression that the insurgency is as robust and lethal as ever."

The one thing the Bush Regime has been relatively good at-- using paid propaganda to redefine reality-- seems to have worked better in places like Florida and Ohio than in Iraq. The exposure this week of the military's clumsy use of propaganda in the Iraqi media is so flagrant-- and ineffective-- that even the White House claims to be "concerned."

And with Bush's credibility almost as low inside America as it is outside America, his blatant lies this week when he made his poorly-written "Victory" speech, just made him look like a goofball floundering around hopelessly-- and way over his head. White House surrogates like Mean Jean Schmidt and Ann Coulter can try to "swift boat"John Murtha and disparage his service to our country all they want; all it does is turn sane Americans further and further against the Far Right and their disastrous occupation of Iraq.

BushCo's strategy of changing reality through propaganda works inside the Beltway and in places where religionist loons-- uncritical thinkers by nature-- flourish. But in the real world, it can only lead to catastrophe and ignominy. The best analysis I read of Bush's failed PR pitch to
get the American public back on his side was by former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who writes that Bush's ingenuous recipe for victory "presents a clear strategy for quagmire and eventual disaster."