After Andrew asked about an updated Bush approval polling chart, I went back to Pollkatz, and sure enough, they have an updated chart available (pictured at right, link here). Looking at this chart answered some concerns that I’d had.

Until just last week, I had been worried by the fact that Bush seemed to be unmovable at around 50%, despite all the crises, not to mention the fact that his numbers have always followed a steady downwards trend. So what was with the long hovering at 50%?

The Pollkatz chart, an amalgam of 14 different polls, shows something that I’d been missing: the telescoping of time, and the disorientation of seeing different polls at unpredictable times. The Pollkatz chart demonstrates that Bush’s “hover” was less a hover and more of an early drop and steadiness, and that the three or so months Bush hovered do not really break the trends so clearly demonstrated on the chart. Save a major event between now and November, Bush’s trend should take him below 40%–though he might get a fair bump at convention time; question is, how much, and will it do him any good?

The next question is, as Bush and his people are no doubt painfully aware of these numbers and Bush’s usual trend, what will they try to do in order to get Bush’s numbers up? There are a number of October surprise scenarios, but they seem to be off to an early start with a tried and true strategy: scare the sh*t out of the American people.

Ashcroft–excuse me, “federal officials” have leaked news that al Qaeda is planning some kind of major attack on U.S. soil between now and September. What kind of attack? We don’t know, apparently. But there’s “chatter” out there again.

Why is this most likely a political move rather than one of national security? First, Ashcroft is not raising the alert level. Why not? This is one of the strongest warnings of terrorist action in the past few years, and we’ve gone to “Orange” or “Burnt Umber,” or whatever it is, over less than this in the past. The lack of alert level change seems to belie the seriousness of the warning.

Second, the time span–between now and the election. Bush’s people know full well that Bush’s highest numbers are in his dealings with terrorism–though even they are falling. But playing to this strength would be an obvious move for them to make. Which ties into point number three: how they’re phrasing this. “They saw that an attack of that nature can have economic and political consequences and have some impact on the electoral process,” said a Bush administration official.

The translation: if there is an al Qaeda attack, it is because, like in Spain, they will be trying to make Bush lose. If this impression is successfully implanted into the American psyche, then Bush would automatically benefit from such an attack rather than be blamed for it–after all, if the terrorists are trying to affect the elections to make Bush lose, that would be great publicity for Bush–he could run against al Qaeda rather than John Kerry.

The claim is bogus, of course; if al Qaeda attacks, history seems to show that Bush would be the obvious beneficiary–he has always gotten a boost in popularity in times of crisis (see the above graph for the obvious proof), and the Spain election did not go to the Socialists because the people were shaken by the attack–quite the contrary, they were brought together by it and emboldened–the election was lost by the ruling party because they screwed around with the bombing investigation, lying by saying it was Basque separatists instead of al Qaeda, and they were caught red-handed. They lost the election because the people were ticked off by that improper manipulation of the attack for political purposes.

But by making this terror warning, Bush & Co. are covering their bets: if there is no attack, they benefit by people being afraid and believing that Bush is better at fighting terror; if al Qaeda does strike, then they can say that they tried to warn everyone and did the best they did, and then they can campaign as if the choices are Bush vs. al Qaeda.

Doubt the claim that Bush events are carefully screened so that only fervent Bush backers get in, and no one else is allowed to see the president? Check out this article, with a number of eyewitness accounts of organizers tossing out people who want to see the president speak if they even look like they might not support him–even if they have valid tickets to the event.

Do not doubt for a moment why the president is always greeted by cheering, adoring crowds: no one but the most fervent true believers are allowed within miles of the president, even when driving by in a motorcade.

Update: for those of you looking for electoral vote maps showing recent polling information, two reasonable ones (as far as such things can be reasonable) can be found at electoral-vote.com and RealClearPolitics.com. USElectionAtlas.org has some good electoral vote map stuff as well.

Other new poll information coming in now, this one from Zogby, published in the Wall Street Journal in a very nicely done Flash page.

The poll covers 16 battleground states and includes Nader in the poll. Even so, Kerry stands out markedly well. Of the states listed, Bush leads in only four: Iowa, Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia. In two of the four states–Tennessee and West Virginia–Bush’s lead is only within the margin of error.

In contrast, Kerry leads in the other 13 battleground states (Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin), with only three of those (Florida, Missouri and Nevada) being within the margin of error. In all other states, Kerry has leads of up to 9.6%.

According to the count made by Daily Kos (who keep good track of polling info), if the election were held today, Kerry would win the electoral college by 102 electoral votes, 320-218. Even this conservative guy has Kerry winning by an even larger margin, though he points out in his blog that Dukakis was leading by more at this time (though he ignores the fact that Bush Sr. was not an incumbent then and was not post-war).

While Kerry holds only a few percentage points’ lead in national polls, it has always been the case that the electoral situation has favored Kerry, as Bush’s lead is much bolstered by a very large (and useless) concentration of support in “red” states, whereas Kerry’s support is more broad.

Bush is now at a record low of 41%, according to a CBS News poll. This follows a recent trend–other polls put him at 46%, 44%, 46%, 44%, 42%, 42% and 41%, in time order starting from the first week of the month. But two other polls just out (Washington Post/ABC and CNN/Gallup/USA Today) put him at 47%, so it is hard to say.

And so Bush goes on TV tonight to try to sell us on how rosy things are. This is a campaign speech coming up, folks, centering on what will be a key issue in the elections. Watch for Bush to try to make it sound like (a) he’s pulling our forces out of Iraq as we hand over power, and (b) U.N. forces will be coming in to share the burden. The irony is that this is Kerry’s strategy, and of course Bush will do no such thing. He’ll talk about the handover of power (he might even have decided to whom the power will be given) and make it sound like our troops will be leaving, but he’s planned for them to stay there for a decade at least, and with things going so badly–and with troops being taken from other posts around the world and sent to Iraq–don’t count on July to be a time when we reduce the number of troops by any real number.

And as far as U.N. involvement goes, don’t count on that too much, either. Even “coalition” countries are pulling out troops or threatening to do so; and with Bush unwilling to be humble, to allow any substantial foreign influence or command, or to give up any of the control over oil or juicy contracts for rebuilding, don’t buy into the fiction that U.N. troops will be pouring in anytime soon.

Expect smoke-and-mirrors, folks. Expect nice-sounding words. But count your change, and believe nothing until it actually materializes. Remember that Africa is still waiting for Bush’s AIDS assistance, and your kids are still waiting for funding for the No Child Left Behind scam.

If you want to have your own domain on the Internet (such as www.yourname.com), you need two things: the domain name, and a web host. The domain name is easy: just go to a registration service and buy one, the price usually ranging from $9 to $35 per year. Of course, you have to find one which hasn’t been taken yet, and most of the good ones already have (I still can’t believe I snagged blogd.com and xpat.org). You can choose the root domain name (in my case, “blogd”) and the three- or four-letter suffix (.com, .net, and .org being the most common).

Register.com is a classic registrar service, but they charge top dollar. If I use them, it’s just for the search feature to see if a particular name is still available; but since they charge the highest price possible, I never get a domain from them. I use RegisterFly.com, which sells domains for $10 per year, and many use GoDaddy.com, which charges $9. Bulk registrations of say, over 1000 domains, will usually get you rock-bottom prices–but mostly businesses and cybersquatters do that (like the scumballs who got my surname-plus-.com–some Korean outfit which wants me to cough up $3,500 for it!).

The domain registrar does more than just sell you the name; they then give you a control panel, and you use that to (a) point the domain at the web host, and (b) do other stuff, like pay them every year or two for renewals.

The web host is the real meat-and-bones; they provide the computer which hosts your actual web site. They run servers which are connected to the Internet 24/7, do maintenance, install and keep running the software required to make your place on their hard drives a functioning web site, and take care of problems when they arise.

When you choose and pay for a web host, they essentially give you a folder on one of the hard disks on their computers. The folder you get has everything set up–a matrix of directories with programs and documents all set up which house your web page area, email, logs and statistics and more. They also give you something called DNS (Domain Name Server) information, which you then take to your domain host (like RegisterFly) and input; within 48 hours after that, your domain name will be associated with the folder on your web host which contains your web site, and you’re on line.

Good web hosts are tricky to get, though. It is such a finicky business, both technically and in terms of trust–not to mention features. Maintaining web sites requires a good and reliable bunch of people in a business which often has very little profit margin, which means skimping is not uncommon. If you cannot get 99.9% uptime (meaning your site is down 0.1% of the time), that could be trouble. 99.9% sounds like a lot, but that means your site will not function for 10 minutes each week on average. Uptime of only 99% means you’re off for one hour and forty minutes each week, and that can be frustrating. And if anything goes wrong, how long will it take tech support to get back to you? 24 hours used to be standard (I’ve had situations where email or the whole site is down for days, and it can be highly aggravating), but today, 8 hours or less of considered more reliable.

And then there’s the trustworthiness. The web hosting business can be very fly-by-night. It can be hard to find a host who will not rob you or shut down and disappear overnight. Look here to read about my dealings with one spectacularly awful host.

One example is happening as I type this: just as I was trying to figure out the address for the above page, I noticed my site was not loading. Then I checked the email, and it had stopped for that domain. Which is not unusual, it happens–but talk about bad timing, just as I was going to tell you about their smooth service! But even with the best host, occasional outages are the status quo.

One way to find out more about a potential host is to see what other people say about them. A good watering hole to get that kind of info is WebHostingTalk.com, where you’ll find a lot of people with experience with hosting outfits, plus a lot of people who represent those outfits. Before you start asking any questions–general or specific–do a search of the forums first. people there are willing to help you out, but do not have too much patience for people who ask questions that can be answered with a search first.

You have to watch out there, however. First, a lot of “people” who post their opinions are nothing more than accounts created by the sales reps for less scrupulous web hosts, talking about how great their service is while pretending to be an impartial customer. One way to check is to look at how many posts they’ve made at the forums (listed under their name at left). If they’re relatively new, they may be sales people. Better than seeing how many good things have been said about a potential web host, instead see how many bad things are being said. That tends to be more honest. Also you have to be aware that not all of the bad reviews are due to the web host–sometimes go-betweens (like PayPal) and even the customer have screwed things up. Look for comments by the veteran posters to see how they react.

Finally, you have to look for good terms–but it is getting late, I have classes tomorrow, and that’s a whole other ball of wax. there are a lot of things you have to look for. I’ll get to that in the next post.

Maybe Bush is getting desperate and is trying to take on attributes of the fictional president Josiah Bartlet. In the pilot episode of “The West Wing,” Bartlet crashes his bike into a tree. Today, Bush fell off his bike, injuring his chin, upper lip, nose, right hand and both knees. Of course, it wasn’t because he was so mad because fundamentalists sent a doll with a knife through its throat to his daughter, as happened in the fictional version. But it does involve his daughter, as he is attending a party tonight for her graduation.

But probably it’s just because he’s a klutz. In 2002, he suffered from the dreaded Pretzel Attack, and in 2003, he dropped his dog and then managed to fall off his Segway (images and background on the Barney Conspiracy here).

His staff tried to make the accident seem as macho as possible. A White House spokesman reported that Bush “likes to go all out. Suffice it to say he wasn’t whistling show tunes.”

Update: the same spokesman claimed that Bush fell off his bike because “It’s been raining a lot and the topsoil is loose.” However, Kos took the trouble of looking up precipitation for Crawford and discovered that it had not rained there for an entire week. Oops.

This comes, by the way, after the Bushes declined to attend their daughter Jenna’s graduation, a move most presume is due to their not wanting to appear at a function where the audience is not hand-picked from Republican loyalty lists, Bush’s audience of choice. Heaven forbid someone who disagrees with him should be allowed with a mile’s distance. (He did, however, give a commencement address at Concordia University, a Lutheran school in Wisconsin, where he managed to stick in a sound bite against reproductive rights.) Later, it was revealed that even Jenna did not attend the ceremony in Texas.

Another fun fact about Bush: he has spent about a quarter of his term in office so far on vacation, mostly in Crawford, Texas, having visited the ranch at least 34 times now. Before September 11, Bush spent fully 42% of his time in office on vacation. And even at that, he still has not beaten out his father, who spent wholly 543 days on holiday, or 37% of his term. The two Bushes hold the #1 and #2 spot for most-vacationing presidents in U.S. history, with Reagan coming in close after them.

This just in, and a bit of a shocker: Moore’s film has won the Palme d’Or best film award at Cannes, the first documentary to win the award in nearly half a century. While Farenheit 9/11 was popularly received, it was not so much expected to win.

Moore noted, I think rather correctly, that “you will ensure that the American people will see this movie…You have put a huge light on this.” With the predominantly glowing reviews and the top honor at Cannes, the film is practically certain to find a distributor and see the light of projectors in the U.S. before election day.

Naturally, some will use the French film prize to smear the film and its maker as pro-French and anti-American. But the truth of the matter is, the film is not anti-American, it is anti-Bush–there is a huge difference–and it’s not just the French who hate Bush, it is pretty much the entire world. Don’t mistake that–they like us. Just not him.

It is astounding sometimes what the right wing punditry spews out. You may recall Ann Coulter, on the day after 9/11, saying that:

We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now.

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.

That followed by the suggestion that we go in to Middle East countries and kill civilians. Not only did she say that, but she still has it up on her web site.

Not to be outdone, Michael Savage is now saying:

…Christianity has been one of the great salvations on planet Earth. It’s what’s necessary in the Middle East. Others have written about it, I think these people need to be forcibly converted to Christianity but I’ll get here a little later, I’ll move up to that. It’s the only thing that can probably turn them into human beings. …

Smallpox in a blanket, which the U.S. Army gave to the Cherokee Indians on their long march to the West, was nothing compared to what I’d like to see done to these people, just so you understand that I’m not going to be too intellectual about my analysis here in terms of what I would recommend, what Doc Savage recommends as an antidote to this kind of poison coming out of the Middle East from these non-humans.

Rush Limbaugh has also garnered attention by saying about the prisoner abuse scandal:

This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we’re going to ruin people’s lives over it and we’re going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I’m talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off? …

Even this latest picture of a dog and a nude Iraqi — you seen that one? A couple of Americans are holding — it looks like German Shepherd, some kind of vicious big dogs, the dogs are barking, bow wow arf arf arf, this big dog — you know and the Iraqi prisoner is cowering there in fear, he’s all nude. And the picture caption “Dog attacks Iraqi.” No, the dog isn’t attacking anyone, the dog’s on a leash. The dog is scaring an Iraqi prisoner. [gasp] “No! We’re scaring them, too? Is that allowed in the Geneva Convention?! We’re scaring then with dogs?” Yes, my friends we are. The dog didn’t attack anybody. The dog’s not attacking anybody. The dog’s on a leash. Both of them are. I’ve seen the pictures. … (35 minutes later, Limbaugh had to correct himself, as the article which Limbaugh referred to also showed the dog having bitten the prisoner.) …

All right, so we’re at war with these people. And they’re in a prison where they’re being softened up for interrogation. And we hear that the most humiliating thing you can do is make one Arab male disrobe in front of another. Sounds to me like it’s pretty thoughtful. Sounds to me in the context of war this is pretty good intimidation — and especially if you put a woman in front of them and then spread those pictures around the Arab world. And we’re sitting here, ‘Oh my God, they’re gonna hate us! Oh no! What are they gonna think of us?’ I think maybe the other perspective needs to be at least considered. Maybe they’re gonna think we are serious. Maybe they’re gonna think we mean it this time. Maybe they’re gonna think we’re not gonna kowtow to them. Maybe the people who ordered this are pretty smart. Maybe the people who executed this pulled off a brilliant maneuver.

Media Matters offers this look at 77 recent comments made by Rush that are offensive and/or outrageous. In fact, they launched a media campaign to highlight some of these comments, but have had some problems–like in Washington D.C. where WMAL refused to air the ads. The president and general manager explained, “Rush Limbaugh is the top-rated show on my station… I’m not going to run something that screws him.” WBAP-AM in Dallas also refused to accept the commercials.

Not to be left out of this high-minded discourse, Coulter is on the air calling Clinton a “scumbag” and “rapist,” Ted Kennedy and Michael Moore “treasonous,” and Nancy Pelosi “stupid.”

Right-wing news rag News Max says that George Soros “hates America,” is delusional, a cult-like self-fashioned messiah, an anti-semite Jew, anti-Christian, out to destroy God, plotting to undermine the U.S. economy, and to spread the evils of “abortion, atheism, drug legalization, sex education, gay marriage, globalization and other radical causes.” And let’s not forget his secret “Project on Death” program.

There is so much more, this is just the start, the result of just a half hour of searching. The sad point is that millions read and hear this and are not disgusted by it, but rather seem to think it is right-minded dialog. That is positively horrifying.

The Bush administration is still looking for ways to send people to Iraq. As the living hell people have gone through there, and the administration’s massive mistreatment of soldiers and vets has led to falling recruitment and retention numbers. The administration needs warm bodies, and badly; recently a decision was made to pull 4,000 troops out of Korea and send them to Iraq–that’s more than 10% of all U.S. troops in South Korea, which has angered South Korea, whose leaders claim this will leave them vulnerable. Other ways they’re trying to scrape up recruits is–as part of the unfunded “No Child Left Behind” sham–by requiring schools to give military recruiters students’ names, addresses and phone numbers. But even with all of this, the Bush administration is having trouble finding the soldiers they need to fuel the war they’ve started.

How to solve the problem? Lie to reservists and trick them into re-enlisting.

Now, there are about 118,000 IRR (“Individual Ready Reserves”), people who finished their 4-year service but who could be called upon to serve during another 4-year period.

Army recruiters started calling reservists and telling them that if they did not voluntarily re-enlist and choose an assignment in the Army Reserve or the National Guard, they might well be called up involuntarily and be placed in a unit they did not want or were not familiar with. More than 1000 reservists signed up for service under this threat.

The problem? It was a lie. No involuntary assignments are forthcoming.

Now there is a movement to allow those who felt they were Shanghaied into re-enlistment to appeal and, hopefully, be allowed to retract their decision–but there are no guarantees as of yet.

This article in the Oregonian does an excellent job of summing up the situation.

Every semester, I have at least one section of an Introduction to Computers class. For the past year or so, I have added blogging to the curriculum as a way of giving students a real-world connection to Internet use as well as, I hope, an integrative motivation tool. This semester we are using Blogger (instead of Movable Type on our private site) as the tool of choice–I figure that’ll be the tool of choice if they decide to blog personally, in any case.

One question I usually ask, to demonstrate to the classes how any person’s blog can reach a wide number of people, is how many visitors per day they think my blog draws in. The first student I asked said “three.” Okay. So I asked a second student what she thought. She looked up in thought, then counted on her fingers a bit, and finally replied, “ten thousand.”

Needless to say, the actual number is somewhere in between….

This post was first generated in-class–originally much shorter due to time constraints–to demonstrate what a fully-equipped blog could do (complete with a demo of Ecto). Below is the photo of this semester’s class (a small one, Spring is always light) taken so I could show everyone how to take an image from digital camera to blog site.

A few new stories out there: ABC News reports on a Military Intelligence source who claims that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were far more extensive than reported, and that the Army has been covering up. He said that MPs were taking orders from interrogators, and details some of the torture involved.

Meanwhile, Newsweek reports on how a factory closure which would eliminate 1,300 high-paying jobs could be a critical blow to Bush–because it’s in Ohio, a key battleground state. Hard to sell an economic recovery based upon a growth in McJobs when people are losing the truly important core jobs in the heartland.

And in a case which echoes the recent travesty of “Free-Speech zones,” here is a story of a man who was arrested… for holding up a sign. What did the sign say? “FUGW.” Apparently, someone in the crowd figured it represented an obscenity, so the Secret Service asked him not to show the sign (even though such an obscenity has been judged to be constitutionally protected). He then wrote in on the sign to change it to read, (F)ree (U)s GW. They still told him not to show it. And when he did, as Bush’s motorcade passed by, they arrested him for disorderly conduct. For showing a sign? “It seemed to annoy and disturb others,” says Lieutenant Schmid, “and when you have conduct that tends to annoy or disturb others, that’s disorderly conduct.” Oh. Well then, that’s OK, right? It would appear that, when we weren’t looking, making any protest within sight or earshot of the president or VP has become officially illegal.

Here are reviews by Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, David Germain of the Associated Press, and a less enthusiatic, more politicized review by Kirk Honeycutt of Reuters.

Update: New reviews available from Desson Thomson of the Washington Post, Geoff Pevere at the Toronto Star, Mary Corliss at TIME Magazine, a review with strange factual errors by Meenakshi Shedde at IndiaTimes, another from Liam Lacey at the Globe and Mail, and a collection of one-graf excerpts from various reviews on the BBC site.

So far Moore’s new film is getting outstanding reviews, after receiving a 20-minute standing ovation at Cannes–the longest a film has ever received there, according to some. All the comments I have found of people who saw the film are positive, even from critics of Moore.

TIME Magazine’s positive though not ecstatic review says: “…Moore is such a clever assembler of huge accusations and minor peccadillos (as with a shot of Wolfowitz sticking his pocket comb in his mouth and sucking on it to slick down his hair before a TV interview) that the film should engage audiences of all political persuasions,” and concludes, “In sum, it’s an appalling, enthralling primer of what Moore sees as the Bush Administration’s crimes and misdemeanors.”

From the short but enthusiastic review from A. O. Scott from The New York Times:

Its bill of particulars against Mr. Bush can be found in a number of recently published books, and it is unapologetically polemical. It is also the best film Mr. Moore has made so far, a powerful and passionate expression of outraged patriotism, leavened with humor and freighted with sorrow. Yes, I said patriotism, though there will inevitably be those, pointing to the film’s enthusiastic reception in France, who will insist that it is the opposite. They should (unlike Disney’s board of directors) see it first. …

“Fahrenheit 9/11,” his most disciplined and powerful movie to date, suggests that he is also, arguably, a great filmmaker. Using interviews and archival video clips (including a tape made by the staff at the Florida elementary school Mr. Bush was visiting on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001), he has assembled a moving and invigorating documentary. Is it partisan? Of course. But there are not many important films that haven’t been.

The Herald has just now come out with this review, titled “Unexpectedly bold and moving piece of work.

“Fahrenheit 9/11 is a baggy, eccentric, unashamedly partisan animal, which makes its many points with broad strokes and even broader humour.
However, it’s also an audacious, angry, and unexpectedly moving piece of work, the boldness and relevance of which few could deny.

Not that the movie didn’t have its detractors, albeit ones who have not seen and do not care to see the film at all. The vehemently right-wing news rag News Max more than once compared Moore with Adolf Hitler and said he “screeched” at the audience, then hinted in a variety of ways that this was a left-wing conspiracy, whose members are “aligned with America’s enemies”–while managing to sneak in references to Ann Coulter as “brilliant” and Bush as being strong and having “guts.” Now, there’s an objective review!

Well, Fahrenheit 911 opens today at Cannes, and Moore has let a bit of a cat out of the bag: the film is not completely about what he said it would be about. Yes, much of the film deals with Bush’s ties to the Saudis and the bin Laden family, as has long been reported. But at least half the film, Moore says, is about Iraq. With very unexpected footage: “we were able to get film crews embedded with American troops without them knowing that it was Michael Moore.”

This should be interesting, and the timing more than just a little bit spot-on, considering how Iraq is now dragging Bush down more than anything else in his three and a half years. “The film is only partly to do with the Bin Ladens and Bush,” Moore added. “I was able to send three different freelance film crews to Iraq. Soldiers had written to me to express their disillusionment with the war. It’s a case of our own troops not being in support of their commander-in-chief.” Moore has been printing letters from soldiers on his web site since last October.

One should also not miss the New York Times article on Moore and his film, which adds details about the films content, and does a very balanced job reporting on the issues involved and public views on the film.

One columnist points out that Moore is often seen as less than a patriotic American, a theme which is more often implied and hinted at than stated outright, but it does bring up a point that I think a great many people would agree with, but an ideal that is far from universally observed in the U.S. these days: one can be no more patriotic than to point out what is wrong with one’s own country.

Many people have a skewed perspective on patriotism. They think that “my country, right or wrong” means that whatever terrible things happen in their country, or is done by their country worldwide, the patriotic thing to do is to deny they happen, zealously attack anyone pointing out these faults, and wave the flag while singing the national anthem at the top of their lungs. They have mistaken patriotism for idiocy.

Patriotism means that one will do whatever is necessary–sacrifice your life, your fortune, your sacred honor if needed–to ensure that your country is safe, sound and secure. And ignoring, even denying its faults will not accomplish any of those. Protesting what we believe is wrong is not just simply a right, it is a vital mechanism required to keep this country from destroying itself from within.

Some times good countries come under the control of bad people, some times people with base and selfish motives subvert the mechanisms of government. And some times even well-meaning leaders and administrators do things that are wrong despite their good intentions. Were we never to criticize these things, the results would be disastrous. Bad policies would not be reversed. Wrongdoings would not be corrected, and wrongdoers would know that all they have to do is get elected and they could abuse and undermine the system as much as they wanted, without fear of challenge from the people.

No, it’s the ones who are mindlessly and blindly patriotic who are dangerous, those are the ones who the wrongdoers will prevail upon to hide and legitimize their misdeeds. Those are the people who attack the real patriots, who have the courage and will to stand up and criticize their own country, not because they hate it, but because they love it, because they know that however painful it might be, criticizing their own country is sometimes the only way to keep it whole and true.

If a family member became an alcoholic or other kind of drug user, went driving while under the influence and displayed other self-destructive behavior, would the measure of a loyal family member be to quiet their conscience and their criticism, and tell their kin nothing but positive things? Of course not–you would only be helping to destroy them if you did such a thing. A true parent, sibling or child would take that person aside and tell them what was wrong, and would do everything possible to help them make it right.

The same applies to one’s country. Right now, Bush and his people are driving this country into the ground. We do our country no favors if we simply stand by, put our fingers in our ears, and hum the national anthem real loud. Public criticism, at times like these, is the highest and truest form of patriotism.

A breaking news story originates from an article in the New Yorker magazine by Seymour M. Hersh, in which CIA officials leak the fact that Rumsfeld created a policy that led to the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, and that Bush was informed of the creation of the program and was told of the investigation into Abu Ghraib in January, at least three months before Bush claims to have known anything at all about it. The Bush administration is falling over itself to deny the story, but someone at the CIA seems rather miffed with Bush and is spilling the beans:

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.

And the CIA is not taking kindly to it, apparently. The source Hersh quotes is a “senior official” at the CIA, who says that “Any suggestion that there is not a full, deep awareness of what has happened, and the damage it has done, I think, would be a misunderstanding.”

The story, apparently, began in Afghanistan when Rumsfeld was extremely angry over the fact that legal clearances and authorizations slowed down attack times and sometimes caused our forces to miss their targets. Rumsfeld is described as “kicking a lot of glass and breaking doors.” His reactions was to create a “highly secret program that was given blanket advance approval to kill or capture and, if possible, interrogate ‘high value’ targets in the Bush Administration’s war on terror.” This program, called an SAP, or “special access program,” allowed operatives to work without any authorization; in short, “Grab whom you must. Do what you want.”

Stephen Cambone, the new Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in March 2003, was a strong advocate for war in Iraq, and his assistant was none other than Lieutenant General William G. (Jerry) Boykin, the same religious nut who commonly speaks in fundamentalist religious terms, and who stated publicly that the U.S. is a “Christian nation” and in the war on terror, we are fighting “Satan.” So already we have a great cast of characters here.

When things started going badly in Iraq, with insurgents killing our troops and causing chaos in the streets, Rumsfeld oversaw an effort to “get tough” with captured guerillas. Major General Geoffrey Miller, who had been in charge of Gitmo (an early effort to declassify and displace captured prisoners so the Bush administration could evade any U.S. or international law concerning their treatment), came to Iraq to “Gitmoize” the prisons in Iraq.

He also briefed military commanders in Iraq on the interrogation methods used in Cuba—methods that could, with special approval, include sleep deprivation, exposure to extremes of cold and heat, and placing prisoners in “stress positions” for agonizing lengths of time. (The Bush Administration had unilaterally declared Al Qaeda and other captured members of international terrorist networks to be illegal combatants, and not eligible for the protection of the Geneva Conventions.)

Rumsfeld and Cambone went a step further, however: they expanded the scope of the SAP, bringing its unconventional methods to Abu Ghraib. The commandos were to operate in Iraq as they had in Afghanistan. The male prisoners could be treated roughly, and exposed to sexual humiliation.

Hersh’s intelligence source claims Cambone was “tired of working through the normal chain of command,” and so in Iraq, used the program initiated by Rumsfeld in Afghanistan. But more than that, he brought in military intelligence people to the prisons like Abu Ghraib and told them that “no rules apply.” But the CIA was none too enamored of the idea:

By fall, according to the former intelligence official, the senior leadership of the C.I.A. had had enough. “They said, ‘No way. We signed up for the core program in Afghanistan—pre-approved for operations against high-value terrorist targets—and now you want to use it for cabdrivers, brothers-in-law, and people pulled off the streets’”—the sort of prisoners who populate the Iraqi jails. “The C.I.A.’s legal people objected,” and the agency ended its sap involvement in Abu Ghraib, the former official said.

What’s more, a Pentagon consultant claimed that the responsibility went higher than Cambone: “The White House subcontracted this to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon subcontracted it to Cambone. This is Cambone’s deal, but Rumsfeld and Myers approved the program.”

Then the cat got let out of the bag on January 13th when an Abu Ghraib MP reported what was going on to the Army’s Criminal Investigations Division, giving them a CD filled with images. Rumsfeld and the Pentagon figured they could try to cover it up, and it would go away. But an important piece of information is that not only did Rumsfeld know everything here, he also informed Bush about it. This directly contradicts Bush’s own claim that he did not hear about the matter until April 28th.

Hersh’s article is very well written and is highly informative; I would suggest that you read it in full.

For some strange reason, BlogD.com just got a big surge in visitors. Standard numbers have been about 550 per day on average, and yesterday we get 1177. Usually when that kind of surge comes there is a clear indication of the source in my stats, and usually it is when a popular web site links to this one, and the link shows up in my stats, showing which site the traffic came from.

But the stats show no one site as the contributor, although links in from Yahoo Search did jump by a certain amount. Sometimes my site does appear at the top of a specific search at a search engine, and that brings in more traffic until other sites crowd it out–but usually such jumps are not so sudden, and they almost always point to a specific entry, not the main page of the site. But the current stats show that most or all of the increase this time came to traffic directly to the main page of BlogD. Furthermore, the search engine stats for my site only show “Nick Berg” as being a commonly searched-for term, and a search on Yahoo for that does not show my page anywhere near the top.

So I am kind of at a loss this time–I always like to see people coming to visit, but this one’s a head-scratcher….

In one of our international phone calls this morning, my father pointed me to the fact that a new poll from Newsweek has Bush at a all-time low of 42%, his lowest number ever in any poll I have seen (Bush was momentarily at 43% in a Pew poll some time back, but that was a blip). Continuing evidence that Bush’s drop is still going.

Still, when the poll looks at Bush vs. Kerry, it has Bush down by only 1 percent–Kerry gets 46%, Bush 45%, and 9% are undecided. But as Zogby points out, most of the undecideds go to the challenger and against the incumbent. Further, Andrew Kohut has an editorial in the May 12 New York Times that gives a possible explanation as to why Kerry is not yet taking off:

The real reason that Mr. Kerry is making so little progress is that voters are now focused almost exclusively on the president. This is typical: as an election approaches, voters first decide whether the incumbent deserves re-election; only later do they think about whether it is worth taking a chance on the challenger. There is no reason to expect a one-to-one relationship between public disaffection with the incumbent and an immediate surge in public support for his challenger.

Which makes sense and is in line with the coverage in the press, which is all about Bush these days, with Kerry stories much fewer and far-between.

In addition to Bush’s dismal approval numbers recently reported by Gallup (46%) and CBS (44%), those numbers have been mirrored by a new CNN/Time poll which has Bush at 46%, and a Pew Poll that has him at 44%. That leaves no doubt that Bush’s popularity has taken a real hit, and leaves open the possibility that his numbers could continue to drop.

The New York Times has a good article on Bush’s recent drop. It quotes even conservatives as saying that Kerry’s new lines of attack are hitting home and worrying the Bush administration. “And it should,” the right-wing commentator added.

Kerry has become somewhat more vocal in his criticisms of Bush’s handling of Iraq, partly due to his viewing of the prisoner abuse photos in Congress. He notes how badly Bush has handled the war, and insists that a true international effort in Iraq is the only real hope for succeeding there. With Bush’s history of insulting our allies, both traditional and new, suddenly Kerry’s noted internationalism–until now scoffed at and ridiculed by Bush and the GOP–is looking better and better.

But Kerry is still not speaking too much about Iraq, not nearly as much as he could be; obviously, he does not want to appear like he is taking advantage of the war for political reasons. Instead, he is highlighting health care on a swing through the south, and has just picked up the endorsement of a police union that supported Bush in 2000, but now feels let down by Bush.

In the meantime, Bush is trying yet again to pretend that only a few malcontents are against him. “We’re being tested,” he said. “People are testing our mettle. And I will not yield to the whims of the few.”

How about yielding to the whims of 49% of the American people?

A small break from politics… a few shots I’ve taken recently.

and one taken shortly after I noticed the moon rising tonight

The dam seems to have finally burst. The veneer of the presidency, which in my opinion was the primary factor holding Bush’s numbers artificially high, has worn to less than paper-thin by the errors and misdeeds of him and his administration–and Abu Ghraib seems to have finally broken the floor in the president’s numbers. After

Perp Walk?

holding steady around 50% for months, Bush has, in a single week, free-fallen down to 44%, and it is highly unlikely that he has hit bottom yet.

According to the fresh CBS News poll, despite two months of fair (though not stellar) jobs reports, his numbers on the economy are as dismal as ever: 34% approval, 60% disapproval. Only 39% approve of his handling of the war in Iraq, and his approval rate for handling the campaign against terrorism has plummeted to 51% after being at 60% just two weeks ago.

Only 29% of Americans now believe that the war in Iraq was “worth it”; a growing number of Americans feel that we are no longer in control in Iraq (57%, up from 50% two weeks ago) and that we should get the hell out of Dodge (55%, up from 46%). The same dichotomy that Gallup found exists here as well: despite the above-mentioned lack of support for the war, still 49% feel that it was “the right thing”–actually 2% more than two weeks ago. But the numbers are close, 45% think we should have stayed out. Some of the same disenchantment we saw in Spain following the bombings has shown up here, with 43% of respondents saying the government tried to cover up the prisoner scandal, and 61% believe the military is upset only because the public found out.

More as it comes in.