Bush Job Approval Tanks

[PatrickHenry]

Two out of five national polls this week have ol' Dubya below forty percent! And the other three are right down there, too. http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm
He was over 90% just four years ago today! Then again, who are the clueless forty? Is it just Republican Junkies who can't shake the habit of a lifetime?

[SteveA]

I believe I remember a poll after 9/11 that showed something like a 94% approval rating for Bush ... back when it seemed our goal was to seek justice for the perpetrators. Goals and approval ratings change.

I voted for him in 2000, but not 2004.

[Jack]

When your approval rating is lower than Nixon's ever was, it's time to wipe the silly little smirk off your face and take your job seriously...or is it too late for that now?

[bishop]

ditto steve.. but i cast my protest vote for kerry in 2004.. didn't like any of them, and badnarik reeked of fool to me.

i wonder if this poor approval rating will stick. something tells me that it will. katrina's aftermath will be talked about for a long time - and iraq is still a quagmire. gas prices, etc.. there's all sorts of problems in our country right now. it'd be bad enough if we had someone who was competent in charge. karl rove's magic will, and imo has, run out of juice at some point.

this all bodes well for the opposition in the mid-term elections.. not to say that they deserve power, but it'd be nice to break the nazi's grip over government.

[Starboy]

You just wait! Bush will be riding high again. Any day now expect to hear about the new war. The war on hurricanes.

Starboy

[PatrickHenry]

Quote by: Starboy the new war. The war on hurricanes.

Heh! Gold star, Starboy!

[mr.perfecto]

Of course it won't stick. President Bush is the real comeback kid!

[Clarence]

He could still pull it off! you ever see Bad News Bears? he is the president for a while longer. What if he had long dream like scrooge and woke up and fired that asshole... and started doing things right and apologizing, admitting guilt, oh jeez! I've lost it.

[SteveA]

Quote by: bishop ditto steve.. but i cast my protest vote for kerry in 2004.. didn't like any of them, and badnarik reeked of fool to me.

Yes, Kerry wanted even more troops in Iraq plus he wanted to get the U.N. more involved etc.

Of course Badnarik wasn't likely to win anything.

But how do you hold politicians accountable if there's no real way to see things change? I don't even believe the 2004 voting results were entirely legitimate. Sure, people can play games with paper, but they can do a lot more with software.

I don't know whether this part is good or bad - Bush seems to have lived up to most the negative traits people have claimed about the Republican party. I tend to see it as occuring more at a federal level and less at the grassroots level but maybe it's not so bad having a situation where people can go back and start thinking about what the whole purpose of our system is and realize that whether someone has a D or an R in front of their name doesn't really make any difference in itself, nor is there a single ideology that either party represents. If the Republicans suffer in the future from the backlash of this, maybe it will just strengthen the resolve to not back off the principles it was founded on.

I voted for Badnarik because he was a lot closer to what I want to see.

To me the choices seemed to be either don't vote at all, and challenge the legitmacy of the system itself, or vote for someone that really represented the direction I wanted things to head. I choose to make a statement in protest but I've been moving closer to questioning the validity of the entire process. Sometimes there are bogus laws, sometimes the level of bogitude (Yes, new word ) is on a different scale.

When you really sit back and think about it, a good majority of the laws that exist, at last at the federal are entirely unnecessary and can be left to individuals or their communitees to address if they feel the desire to. Everytime we decide 51% or even 70% popular support for an idea is enough to violate a prior liberty some people had, we find yet another minority of the populace feeling the system is unjust and the more centralized we get, the fewer alternatives people has as well. It's a social problem reflected in our government. I think if you expected people who supported a law to be the ones to carry guns around and enforce things themselves, you'd see a little more understanding creep in, but who knows. Might be we just need to overhaul the thing. In the end, people will find there are truths above the latest public opinion poll, and whether you want to consider them created by God, or a product of our natural environment or individual rights, there's a reason why people have to learn to live in peace together or peacefully apart, or not at all ... there's no other way to endure otherwise. A society in constant conflict either implodes or degrades to the point where they have no representation in the world. That's evolution in progress, from my POV, though religious folk might say it's god destroying the wicked, who knows.

this all bodes well for the opposition in the mid-term elections.. not to say that they deserve power, but it'd be nice to break the nazi's grip over government.

[SteveA]

Most people agree on the problems.

Communists might look at things and say it's because we have a system that unjustly empowers some people to take advantage of others.

Capitalists say we have a system that restricts people from benefitting from their own efforts and rewards people by failing.

Religious views might say they are denied a freedom to live their lives in a fashion that expresses their personal beliefs.

Socialists might say that corruption in government denies the true merit of their ideal from being expressed.

etc.

etc.

etc.

It's the same complaint. Everyone is saying they aren't free to live the life they desire. The pursuit of happiness has been sacrificed, for the poor compensation of having a unified set of laws to live by. Is it really worth the tradeoff? What's more important to most everyone? Having the freedom to live life with others in a communitee that expresses the local ideologies of people there or having a 0.000001% representation in how people live a few states away but finding much of your personal life is dictated by people who have no need to make most these decisions in the first place?

What I see as an ideal is a large reduction in centralized forms of government, even state level laws. They should only reflect the truly necessary functions of protecting different areas of the country from harming other areas (pollution, or internal military aggression etc.) but for a wide range of things, including property ownership, retirement, marriage, drugs, gambling, religion, etc. etc. etc. merely assure individuals are free to associate or disassociate freely with others in a private manner to pursue their desires. The big gripe comes from a few authoritarian types who just can't let the reigns of power go. I don't have much sympathy for those views. Whether they're good intentioned or not doesn't seem to matter much in the fact that they're messing with people they don't have any right to mess with. Our government was supposed to protect against this type of stuff ... and if it's not doing it's job, it's the responsibility of citizens to fix things. Noone else is coming to the rescue, not Bush, Kerry or Ashcroft etc. and if they tried, from the New Orleans incident, they'd likely just bring guys with M-16s anyway.

[RickSp]

I don't think Bush has any hope of recovering fron Katrina and Iraq. 34% of Americans approve of his handling of Iraq and things will only get worse over there. He may recover slightly from Katrina. There is more than enough blame to spread around, but overall his credibility is shot. Something like 25% think the country is on the "right track" and 65% or say say it is on the "wrong track." Even the American people get tired of being lied to after a while. I love the irony that his father's popularity tanked after FEMA bumbled the Hurrican Andrew response. The Bush boys just don't do hurricanes.

The only real chance I see for Bush is that the Democrats are a bunch of craven cowards and there are really no alternatives. The Libertarians have made themselves into a joke. Badnarik is a dangerous fool who makes stuff up as he goes along. Yetch. The only way I could let myself vote for him was to arrange a vote swap with a Kerry voter in Utah. He voted Badnarik in Utah and I voted Kerry in New Jersey, which for a time appeared to be a swing state.

If Bush recovers at all it will be because he has no opposition to speak of.