AMERICA FINALLY TURNS ON BUSH-- WELCOME ABOARD (NOT YOU, ADELMAN AND PERLE)

I don't think Ney's belated resignation from the House-- even before being hauled off for his prison term-- is going to do much to help the party of war, bribery, hatred, bigotry and organized crime. Not even in Ohio. His and Boehner's handpicked candidate, Petunia Pig, is so far down in the polls, she'd lose if every crooked Republican in the state resigned. Besides, Ney's resignation, just 72 hours before voting time, will just work to remind voters, especially his own betrayed constituents, how corrupt the GOP, and especially the far right of the GOP, has become.

Nor will American voters take heart in the fact that most citizens of countries allied with the U.S. see Osama bin-Laden as more dangerous than Bush. (Most also see Bush as more dangerous to world peace than Kim Jong-il.) Brits, Israelis, Mexicans, even Canadians all recognize what more and more Americans are starting to recognize: George Bush os neither trustworthy nor competent.

Neither Rove nor ast minute hub bub in the corporate media will change the minds of the millions of people who have firmly made up their minds that they've had enough. This morning I read a review of our "Have You Had Enough?" ad that the Associated Press ran with. The ad is playing on scores of radio stations and on the web but we didn't make any for TV. According to A.P. "Attack ads never felt so good. This spot delivers a negative message but with enough energy and humor that people will not only tolerate it, they might even e-mail it to their friends. The visuals are too busy (the lyrics at the bottom clash with the on-screen copy), but the music more than makes up for it. A bit too flippant for TV, this ad is tailor-made for the Web."

Every pundit-- from the brilliant Arianna Huffington to absolute cretins on the far right-- have concluded that it's all about Iraq. I only know one person who differs: me. Iraq is certainly key but it's the gestalt that Iraq is such a big part of that has finally turned America against Bush and the Republicans. I heard him on the radio from Missouri just now, bellowing about the best unemployment figures since he slithered into office. The anemic job growth figures and a slowing economy portend not a strong recovery but choppy seas ahead-- very choppy seas.

Everywhere in the country, you will hear housewives talking about a husband or son who lost a high paying job and is now working-- in a minimum wage dead end. Americans know that that is the Bush economy for most of us. But more than Iraq, more than a bad job market, more than skyrocketing health care and energy costs, more than any issues and more even than all issues, Americans just don't trust or like Bush and the Republicans any longer.

Even Republicans have lost faith in him and his supporters-- and not just frightened and "enlightened" Republicans. Today Vanity Fair came out with Neo Culpa an attempt from the most guilty architects of Bush's most egregious policies to wash their bloody hands of it all and blame everything on his and his regime's incompetence. It boggles the mind. David Rose writes "As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war's neoconservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence. In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target No. 1: the president himself."

Yes, rats from a sinking ship, of course. But this is how low Bush has fallen. Future defendents in war crimes tribunals like Perle and Adelman are calling the Bush Regime "dysfunctional"-- and the policies that they crafted and boosted, "disaster."


Way at the bottom of the garbage heap of the neo con movement one would find convicted criminal Kenneth Adelman. He tells Vanity Fair that when he deceived the American public about how "liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk," he "just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."

Perle is more personal towards Bush who, he says, "did not make decisions, in part because the machinery of government that he nominally ran was actually running him." No, this election isn't about Foley or any of the closeted gay hypocrits running the GOP while they warn the suckers in their base that children won't be safe from gays unless they vote for... Republicans. And it's not about the billions of dollars stolen by the Neys and the Noes and the Jerry Lewises and Tom DeLays and Conrad Burnses and John Doolittles. And it's not about tax breaks for the rich and economic stagnation for the working and middle class. And it's not even about Iraq. It's about facing up to the reality of the tremendous mistake we made as a nation in allowing this crew to take power in 2000 and again in 2004. And they may well try it again on Tuesday. If they do they'll find a far more surly America.


UPDATE: PERLE WAS TRICKED! HE DIDN'T REALIZE HIS REVELATIONS ABOUT THE BUSH REGIME'S INCOMPETENCE WOULD COME OUT BEFORE THE ELECTIONS

My heart would not break for Richard Perle were he to be indicted as a war criminal, nor would it break for him if he were handed a blindfold and a last cigarette. So it certainly isn't breaking as he bellows "foul" that Vanity Fair published his devastating revelations about Bush before Tuesday. "I had been promised that my remarks would not be published before the election." Was he also promised he would never have to face Justice? Is there a suite for him at Bush's new hacienda in Paraguay?


UPDATE: WAR CRIMES TRIALS AREN'T JUST FOR BUSH, CHENEY AND RUMSFELD

As William Rivers Pitt points out today, there are lots and lots of neo-Con criminals who need to face Justice. "Mr. Bush is not running the show... We saw this on 9/11, when he sat there like a pithed frog as the citizens he was supposed to protect and defend died in fire and dust in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. We saw this when Dick Cheney chaperoned him during the 9/11 Commission's interview of him. Neither man was under oath, but Dick was there anyway, because George can't be trusted to manage anything on his own. We saw this after Katrina, and we have seen it every day for three years of this Iraq war. It has become, by now, axiomatic: water is wet, sky is up there, and George W. Bush might as well be animate furniture for all the actual governing he does. Water him twice a week, turn him towards the light, and he'll be fine... but for the love of God, don't expect leadership or vision from the man. We're dealing with a sock puppet in a three-thousand dollar suit, no more, no less.

"The actual culprits are, of course, well known. Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld are the real ideological muscle behind this administration, with Paul Wolfowitz playing the role of Rasputin. Rice has some input, and Rove calls the shots. Water is wet, sky is up there, and that's the deal.

"But what of the others, the smart boys in the back room whose white papers and dreams of empire fueled the mayhem and slaughter that has marked our passage through these years? These are the ones most people never hear about, the speechwriters and think tankers, the ones who grind the grist and make the arguments, the ones who truly craft policy. There are lots of them, and they are as much a part of the story as Dick and Don and Condi and Karl... Ken Adelman, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney and Richard Perle have spent many years waiting for the opportunity to road-test their wild ideas about how to deal with the world, and with the installation of the Bush administration, they finally got their big chance. Now that the wheels are coming off, however, they are trying to pretend that none of this has anything to do with them.