<p>Disfavor for Bush Hits Rare Heights
In Modern Era, Only Nixon Scored Worse, And Only Truman Was Down for So Long</p>
<p>By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 25, 2007; A03</p>
<p>President Bush is a competitive guy. But this is one contest he would rather lose. With 18 months left in office, he is in the running for most unpopular president in the history of modern polling.</p>
<p>The latest Washington Post-ABC News survey shows that 65 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush’s job performance, matching his all-time low. In polls conducted by The Post or Gallup going back to 1938, only once has a president exceeded that level of public animosity – and that was Richard M. Nixon, who hit 66 percent four days before he resigned.</p>
<p>You should not mistake place in history with fleeting at-the-moment popularity. History will record Bush strong on terrorism, had backbone and helped thwart loonies in the supreme court.</p>
<p>Helped insert loonies into the Supreme Court you mean. And unethical ones at that. Those guys who promised to respect precedent when they wanted to be confirmed are now loose cannons overturning precedent left and right, without even providing any real justification.</p>
<p>How does putting thousands of American soldiers into an Arab country when Al Qaida’s main grievance against us was the continuing presence of American troops in Saudi help protect us?</p>
<p>Yes, I have, from every simpleton I can think of. Sorry, but I don’t believe that if we get out of Iraq our country’s defenses will suddenly crumble and terrorists will swarm in.</p>
Yes, it’s one of the most breathtakingly ignorant assertions passed off as wisdom by people who like to think that they’re thinking, people who can’t even accurately breakdown the multi-polar sources and motivations of violence in Iraq, let alone distinguish between AQ and Saddam Hussein. Their conception of radical Islamist terrorism versus the US resembles not reality so much as a badly conceived board game.</p>
<p>I think if you re-read post #11 in context, you’ll find it’s not about what we should have done (Monday morning QB-ing) in Vietnam at all!</p>
<p>It’s about the fact that there is historical precedent for politicians using the “fight them over here” meme, and what that precedent can teach us about today’s circumstances.</p>
<p>I think iy was obvious before our misadventure in Iraq that our actions would destabilize Iraq and potentially the entire region. I did say this before we entered Iraq and so did many others. I found the “weapons of mass destruction” argument silly to the extreme since Hussein could not have the delivery system to reach the US. If we keep contributing to the conditions that create terrorists perhaps we should expect increasing attacks. This is a situation in which education, jobs and hope for the future are better weapons than soldiers or bombs. Most terrorists are heartbreakingly young.</p>
<p>Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito are brilliant legal scholars. They will apply the law, not re-write it to accommodate their own personal policy preferences. Thank goodness the adults are coming back to the US Supreme Court.</p>
<p>Oh really? How about them legislating from the bench that a company could underpay a person for years on the basis of gender or race, so long as the person didn’t find out about it in the first six months?</p>
<p>I don’t know of any other instance in which it’s ruled that you can continue to break the law indefinitely if you don’t get caught the very first time you do it.</p>
<p>Not to mention the other precedents they overturned.</p>
<p>But if they’re such brilliant scholars who know so much more than previous Supreme Courts, why didn’t they say during their confirmation hearings that there were SCOTUS precedents they thought wrongly decided and were itching to overturn? Why hide their brilliance from Congress?</p>
You mean close down the medical and engineering schools where they are taught? It is a myth that terrorists are created out of poverty. Look at the number of doctors, engineers and millionaire heirs who have adopted the ways of the terror. Look at the middle class American kids who have joined their ranks.</p>
<p>There are middle class American kids who are terrorists? I guess the guys who wanted to blow up protestors at Jerry Falwell’s funeral count…Certainly the person or persons threatening the scientists at CU Boulder…Eric Rudolf and the other abortion clinic bombers…but except for the guys at Falwell’s funeral, most of those folks are a little long in the tooth to be called kids.</p>