BUSHCO'S LIES AND DECEIT ARE TAKING THEIR TOLL-- EVEN AMONG REPUBLICANS

My old pal Isaac is an award-winning journalist from Wyoming living in Minnesota. Right now he's in the middle of a one year fellowship at the Hubert Humphrey Institute that began in September. Yesterday he sent me a letter about how things are going. "There are about 30 of us," he wrote, "some very conservative, and some more liberal than I am. There are some real rabid Republicans in the group--one is a freshman state Representative, one is the deputy chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party, and at least one is a political appointee of our Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty, and a few others.

We've had monthly sessions with national policy makers, and so far it has skewed heavily right (Republican former US Representative Vin Weber is one of the directors and apparently has been hitting up his old buddies to come to the group.) (We've started to get some that aren't from the right--last month, we were special guests for talks by Walter Mondale
and Bill Clinton, and last week, Madeleine Albright.)

Now I told you all of that to tell you this: Invariably, the right wingers and centrists we've had come in have not been able to give us one bit of good, positive news from this administration. Not one single bit. They are uniformly PISSED and pessimistic.

Norm Orenstein of the American Enterprise Institute was one of the first we had a session with. He presented us with an approximately 45 minute (not including the Q & A)litany of the failures of this administration, from the deficit, to foreign policy, civil liberties, etc.

He expressed bitter disappointment and even anger over every move these pantloads have made. I couldn't have been more critical of these guys than he was.

The conservatives seemed pretty uneasy. One asked what is the magic bullet for the GOP to turn things around. Norm said, "There is no magic bullet." The Repubs have squandered every last bit of political they had to work with, and besides, they have run things so far into the ground that there may be no turning back. He also said that if the administration had any hope of recovering at all, it would take another disaster on the scale of 9/11 or worse that Bush got out in front of and
led the country through.

We've had some non-partisans in. One day we had people from the Concord Coalition and Brookings Institutions (both of which I believe to be non-partisan--I will cheerfully be corrected if I'm wrong). They are no happier than Norm Orenstein.

We had David Walker, the Comptroller General of the GAO. Dave is so pissed at these guys you'd think Cheney had run his mother down in the street. He explained how this administration has run this economy so far into the ground by borrowing from foreign companies and banks that it is now a national security issue. If China and/or our other creditors either call in our debt, or decide to invest in Euros, we are screwed, blued, and tattooed. Anything that causes our creditors to get nervous
about the strength of our currency and/or economy is the match that will light the fuse. We all know that pursuing the tax cuts as we have been doing is idiocy at its finest, and Dave went nuclear over the extent of it.

When questions come up like, "What about the good news about the war in Iraq? What isn't the media telling people about what's really going on over there?", the answer has invariably been that there is no good news, and the media is actually downplaying how bad things are. Yesterday, Madeleine Albright went as far as to say that the war is one of the
worst mistakes the US has ever made. Those kinds of questions aren't being asked any more, to my enormous approval.

(Co-director Vin Weber has been assisting the administration behind the scenes lately, with the difficulties they've been having, what with Rove, etc. under fire).

That's the gist of what I'm seeing. We are getting told by real, Goldwater-style conservatives who haven't drank the Bush KoolAid that these "conservatives" are conservative in name only and that they are the ruin of the US as we know it. There has not been a single one that has come in and even attempted to float or support the lies of these jokers. They are painting a picture of widespread disappointment, anger, and disillusionment, as well as profound concern about where we are and
where we're headed."

Frustration with the Bush Regime is rampant in the country-- and growing-- regardless of political persuasion, unless, of course, one adheres to the tried and true American tradition of a party known in the mid-nineteenth century as The Know Nothings. Approximately 30% of today's voters follow the Know Nothing philosophy (although they think they're Republicans). And the primary source of the frustration is the growing appearance that we have a government that mixes up propaganda and governing and doesn't realize that the two are not the same thing. They seem to lie about every single thing all the time. And people finally see it, even the right-wingers who are lecturing in Isaac's classes.

This weekend Salon's Mark Benjamin did a disturbing, even shocking, piece called "Incalculable Pain," raising the question of under-reporting of American casualties in Iraq. ""We are concerned that that the figures that were released to the public by your administration do not accurately represent the true toll that this war has taken on the American people," writes 7 congressmen to Bush. The letter is available right here. At the same time the NY TIMES printed an exhaustive look into the vast propaganda operations the Bush Regime is perpetrating on the Iraq "democracy." And Frank Rich's POTEMPKIN VILLAGE piece is destined to go down in the history of the tragic Bush Regime as another powerful cry of the utter nudity of the deranged emperor.

I've long despaired of ever hearing anything true from these people. But it goes beyond the crude propaganda exercises (like "We don't torture" and "Mission Accomplished") to something much worse. Like a sociopath or an ignorant 3rd grader, Bush reacts to any stimulus by promising the world-- and never delivering. Promising the money to heal post 9/11 New York City was a nice photo-op and sound byte-- quickly and cruelly forgotten. Ditto for most of the aid promised to every single international emergency. And, perhaps worst of all, to the people who suffered the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. If you haven't read the NY TIMES editorial on the the death of an American city, please take a moment to read this chilling piece and contemplate what we have saddled ourselves with. And in all likelihood, what we're saddled with for another 3 years.