Waking Up and Smelling The Coffee But why did it take so long? President Bush’s overall approval rating has fallen to the lowest level of his presidency, 44 percent, in the latest CBS News poll, reflecting the weight of instability in Iraq on public opinion of Mr. Bush even as the economy shows signs of […]

Some Modestly Positive News Cisco is hiring: Cisco Systems’s announcement yesterday that it plans to hire 1,000 more workers is sure to bring throngs of out-of-work technology workers streaming into the city hoping that the company’s expansion, coupled with Google’s IPO, signals that the boom is officially on again. This is presumably an indication that […]

From the Huh? Department Via Mark Kleiman, Time is reporting that It’s not exactly every day that the Pentagon warns military personnel to stay away from Fox News. But that’s exactly what some hopeful soul at the Department of Defense instructed, in a memo intended to forbid Pentagon staff reading a copy of the Taguba […]

Bush’s Disapproval Ratings The bad news for Bush throughout late March and April – including the Clarke revelations about Bush’s lack of focus on terrorism, his reluctantly-given personal testimony in front of the 9/11 commission, and the sharp increase in violence in Iraq – all seemed to have no effect on how the US public […]

Looks Like Kash Was Right Earlier this morning, Kash wrote, “this Could be a Bad Day for Wall Street.” Now from CNN, we see that Stocks tumbled for a second straight session Monday on worries that interest rates will rise soon, pushing the Dow Jones industrial average below 10,000 for the first time since December. […]

The Triumph of The Hacks Dana Milbank and Jonathan Weisman covered little new ground, but they did pen a great overview of how and why policy-making — domestic and foreign — is so consistently wrong in this administration: … Bush has also discouraged the sort of free-wheeling policy debates that characterized previous administrations, and he […]

Who Wrote This? The one anti-war argument that, in retrospect, I did not take seriously enough was a simple one. It was that this war was noble and defensible but that this administration was simply too incompetent and arrogant to carry it out effectively. I dismissed this as facile Bush-bashing at the time. I was […]

This Could be a Bad Day… …for Wall Street. Sharply higher US interest rates have spooked many markets around the world: NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks were set to sink at the open on Monday as fears the Federal Reserve (news – web sites) will raise interest rates as early as June weighed on markets […]

That Sinking Feeling Apparently more and more of the US military’s leadership has it. From today’s Washington Post: U.S. May Be Winning Battles in Iraq But Losing the War, Some Officers Say Deep divisions are emerging at the top of the U.S. military over the course of the occupation of Iraq, with some senior officers […]

Baghdad Art Mirrors Baghdad Life Submittted with only one comment: it “was fashioned two months ago“: We are living in an American democracy AB