EXCERPT: Douglas Adams has said, "Anything that happens, happens. Anything that in happening causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. Anything that in happening happens again, happens again. Though not necessarily in that order."
-- Mostly Harmless
BAA Boy says, “Do you still claim revenues are down?”
Not so fast, BAA. Please reread the 50 plus comments on your Rock’n’Roll article, Ewe won’t find anyone arguing that tax receipts...

EXCERPT: Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported President Bush’s newest domestic accomplishment -- he’s broken through the psychologically significant threshold of 30 percent approval rating!
According to the WSJ/Harris Poll, Bush’s approval rating has plunged from 43% in January, through 35% in April to 29% -- just 29% think Bush is doing an “excellent or pretty good” job!
The rest, a whopping 71%, say Bush is doing a “fair or poor” job.
Earlier in...

EXCERPT: Last week was a gem for advocates of the Free Lunch and Sunspot Theory of Tax Policy. I’ve borrowed liberally from the writings of Sabastian Mallaby for what follows.
BAA Boy published his economic blather complete with a chart showing skyrocketing tax revenues; Senator Rick Santorum extolled the extension of Bush’s tax cuts by saying, "We've put these tax provisions in place and they've raised money."
They were following the lead of their fearless...

EXCERPT: President Bush’s “base” is estimated to be only 24% of the nation’s voters and the USAT/Gallup poll places the his slumping approval rating within 7% of that!
USAT includes a priceless Republican quote in the announcement:
"It is a challenging political environment," acknowledges Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, "but we are confident that ultimately voters in November will recognize that a Democrat Congress...

EXCERPT: “And maybe Marlon Brando
Will be there by the fire
We'll sit and talk of Hollywood
And the good things there for hire
And the Astrodome
and the first tepee
Marlon Brando, Pocahontas and me
Marlon Brando, Pocahontas and me
Pocahontas”
Bad News
If these lyrics don’t ring a distant chime, you have a lot of catchup to do, try link #1.
Good News
As the big summer of our discontent begins, Neil Young has recovered from his brain aneurysm and it hasn’t affected...

EXCERPT: Seymour Hersch, in two fine New Yorker articles, thoroughly examines nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and Bush's plan to do something about it.  In the most recent one, Hersch, warns us that we may be boarding the midterm election military-go-round with a new battlecry: "Bring Up The President's Poll Ratings By Nuking Iran".
Here are excerpts from that article:
"There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in...

EXCERPT: With the 1040 deadline just around the corner, here's a timely story on the results of the Bush tax cuts which you may As somewhat from what was promised. 
There have been three major Bush tax cuts for individuals. Bush twice reduced the top income tax rate, which is now 35 percent -- down from 39.6 percent.
Even more dramatically, Bush in 2003 reduced the top rate for most investment income to 15 percent -- down from 39.6 percent for dividends and 20 percent for profits...

EXCERPT: Remember when President Bush said, "Ya gotta repeat and repeat, over and over and over… you know, catapult the propaganda"? Well, the catapulting moment has begun all over again with Bush's War on Confusion!! Earlier today, I posted a comment to one of ALTRUISM's articles:
"I understand how some Americans have had their confidence shaken," President Bush said yesterday in Cleveland. "Others look at the violence they see each night on their...

EXCERPT: The President has said he doesn't govern by poll but what can he say when the opinion poll sample indicates two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the job he's doing? Of course Bush ignores the polls.  
Bushbackers point to his resolve and his consistency. After all, Bush is his own man! Bush criticized Bill Clinton as governing by the polls, right?
It goes deeper than that.   Why should Bush care what the electorate thinks?
Bush is not, has never been, a...

EXCERPT: I don't pretend to be a student of WWII but I believe I have a thorough enough understanding of the political and military events surrounding the invasion and occupation of Iraq to be able to create a sequence of events from 9/11 to the present and I think I could assign a timeline that's reasonably accurate.
Thus, so long as an armchair historian and I see eye-to-eye on the "War On Terrorism", I'm willing to allow whatever analogies said historian wants to...