Matthew's Mattress Rant

On Monday, MSNBC’s Hardball Host Chris Matthews went on a diatribe about the name of the federal holiday. Here’s a sampling:

“Let‘s talk about George Washington‘s birthday which really is today. They call it Presidents‘ Day. That‘s for the mattress sales. The real name, the legal name is George Washington‘s Birthday which I will honor here…Because one reason people have no memory of our past presidents is they are not honored in this country. They are forgotten. People think Clinton was a better president than FDR…excuse me! That doesn‘t make sense… In fact, at home here, my morale goes down when our mind is so warped about this stuff about Britney Spears that people think that Bill Clinton was a better than FDR. They can‘t remember any of our presidents because we have holidays called “Presidents‘ Day” so we can sell mattresses because they don‘t want to offend anyone by mentioning the fact that George Washington was our first president…There is sort of a dementalization of this country sometimes I think.”

“Why don‘t we have Washington‘s Birthday? That is the name of it. Nobody will call it that… But [we] should not be encouraging infantilism at home. Infantilism. This is where we‘re headed, isn‘t it? Did you read that last poll on who our greatest presidents were? It is like people have Alzheimer‘s. They can‘t go back more than five presidents. They can‘t remember any of our presidents because we never teach history in this country. All we do is put nonsense on…Washington‘s birthday, once to honor George Washington, now rendered meaningless by this term, ‘Presidents Day.’”

“But here it is Washington‘s birthday, which legally it is… I will go right to the heart of today, Presidents Day is mattress sale day. Why we don‘t call it what it really is, George Washington‘s birthday, is part of this sort of, I don‘t know, retreat from history, retreat from knowledge. Let‘s have another Anna Nicole Smith Day… but I cannot believe that we call this day Presidents Day. What a stupid, meaningless term. Do you want to pay tribute to most of our presidents? I don‘t want to. I would love to pay tribute to Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln. But not presidents…why do we have a celebration of nothingness? Why don‘t we have Congress Day? A Supreme Court Day? You know, I don‘t know what else? Army Corps of Engineers Day. I mean, let‘s go all the way with it…having Friday off, not Monday off, because when you get Friday off it‘s a big weekend. When you get a Monday off, it is just another day to think about the week that is coming and it doesn‘t make you any happier. Give me a Friday off...It’s just my rant today. It‘s a federal holiday.”

Guest Craig Crawford was finally given a chance to speak: “I guess you don‘t need a new mattress is what it comes down to?”

The Word

Pew Research conducted a poll this month asking respondents to name one word that best describes George W. Bush. In the past words like "leader" and "good" and "Christian" were among the top words. This survey included in the top ten: "ignorant", "stupid", "idiot", and "arrogant". The top word offered by Americans to describe their current Commander-in-Chief?

"Incompetent."

Conservatives With Conscience

The Senate needed to have 60 Senators in agreement today in order to proceed with the vote that would send a message of disapproval to the White House for the current escalation of war.

While the number 60 was not reached (and therefore no vote on the resolution) the message of disapproval was plenty loud. All the Democrats and several Republicans wanted the Senate vote to go forward.

It is telling that some of the most highly regarded Republican Senators, especially in the areas of Armed Forces and Foreign Affairs, dared to join the Democrats in standing up to the war escalation.

The message is clear: Bush has had enough time to conduct his war and he’s done so badly. Those with any conscience can no longer stand by quietly and patiently while Bush continues his bungling at great costs in American lives while the war profiteers (most with strong ties to this administration) make obscene amounts of money from U.S. taxpayers.

Among the Republicans finally willing to stand up to Bush: Sen.Hagel from Nebraska, Sen. Warner from Virginia, and both Senators from Maine (Snowe and Collins).

AWOL

The 2008 presidential hopefuls who have seats in the U.S. Senate are scrambling to change their weekend campaigning schedules in order to register a vote- for or against- the increase of troops being sent to or forced to stay in Iraq.

Suspiciously absent will be John McCain, a leading proponent of the Bush "troop surge."

Perhaps he has calculated that neither attending the vote nor missing a single day on the campaign trail would be all that good for his presidential aspirations. He has continued to drop in the polls in the weeks since he tightly hitched his wagon to the miserably unpopular Bush team.

The Wrong Signal

"The war on terrorism is not lost, but may be if we stay the Cheney course. I said it here quite a while ago, and that is that it would be the ultimate tragedy if we got rope-a-doped in Iraq, only to be all punched out by the time Iran steps into the ring. If they ever do.

Bush's sycophants say pulling out will send the wrong signal. Every day Bush is president and his policies go unchecked, we send the wrong signal. We tell the world we would rather make our point, a meaningless and destructive point, than be true world leaders."

-actor Alec Baldwin writing on his blog

The Rove/Cheney/Rice/Bush team have continued to perpetuate the myth that Iraq is central to the war on terrorism. Bush has taken to refering to all the factions in Iraq as "terrorists", disregarding the complexity of what is going on there.

Bush and his allies want to express the Iraq War in simple, black-and-white terms, which is often necessary for leaders to get the public to sign on to their plan (though the public no longer seems to be buying this one). All leaders do this: provide simple explanations of complex situations.

The problem this time around as I can see it is that Bush actually thinks it is as simple as the rhetoric he uses.

Horse Race

Strictly for amusement, you may want to check out the 2008 Presidential Derby at www.2008horserace.com . It posts and updates the odds for all the possible candidates and also allows visitors to vote.

The current top ten among voters (only 18,000 so far) might surprise you—or the at least the order will: Wesley Clark and Al Gore (both currently undeclared) make the top 6.

The odds are a little more predictable, with Hillary Clinton leading with odds of 5-2, and McCain at 5-1. Guiliani and Obama follow with odds of 6-1.

Virgil’s Fear

Virginia Congressman Virgil Goode stated in his speech to Congress that any critics of Bush’s War in Iraq “aid and assist the Islamic jihadists who want the crescent and star to wave over the Capitol of the United States and over the White House of this country."

He went on: "I fear that radical Muslims who want to control the Middle East and ultimately the world would love to see ‘In God We Trust’ stricken from our money and replaced with ‘In Muhammad We Trust.’”

For effect, Goode gave his speech using a rare Virginian accent not heard since the days of Jefferson Davis.

Ginny-Git-‘Er-Done

Representative Ginny Brown-Waite from Florida got her chance to express her views this week in the debate in the House of Representatives. Evidently the arguments in favor of continuing the war in Iraq have come to this:

“In the South, we have a wonderful saying and it goes like this: Get ‘er done. Our soldiers want to get it done and come home, and our President wants the same thing, and this Congress should demand the exact same thing. Let’s get out there and get ‘er done.”

Commander-in-Chief’s View

“It's hard for me, living in this beautiful White House, to give you an assessment, firsthand assessment. I haven't been there; you have, I haven't.

–George W. Bush, telling the White House press corps that he honestly doesn’t really know what’s going on in Iraq

A Vet's View

Paul Rieckhoff, Iraq War veteran and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, responds to assertions made by many political leaders that somehow the men and women serving in Iraq want an escalation of the war rather than to be finished with it:

“Everybody I talked to inside Iraq, and most of the people coming home, who have come home in recent months, don‘t support the surge because they don‘t think it will work. An increase in troop numbers, especially this small level, is not going to be the silver bullet solution to all our problems in Iraq.

And the administration hasn‘t listened to any of the generals throughout this war, so what makes anyone think that now they are going to start going down to the sergeants and lieutenants, who are at the tip of the spear and kicking in doors every day? They are not talking to the troops on the ground, because they don‘t support this…”

Rewind

A Look Back At Looking Ahead

Late in 2005, John Hughes, former editor of the Christian Science Monitor, offered “some thoughts about possibilities, and a few probabilities, on the national and international stages that will capture the headlines in 2006”:

“On the home front, President Bush will have a narrow window before the midterm elections. He probably will fail to push through Social Security, but he may get tax reforms…

The mid-term elections are unlikely to wrest either the House of Representatives or the Senate from Republican hands…

After the elections it will be pretty much downhill for a lame-duck Bush administration. Congress will be distracted by posturing and maneuvering for the 2008 election...

Candidates who claim they have not given a thought to running for president will suddenly emerge. Hillary Clinton will be one of them on the Democratic side, John McCain on the Republican side…

On the foreign front, Iraq will still be central in 2006. By the end of the year, Saddam Hussein will have been found guilty of enormous crimes against humanity and given the death sentence. US troop reduction will have begun…

North Korea or Iran - and more likely Iran - will have acquired a nuclear weapon or weapons...

Fidel Castro may have vanished from the scene in Cuba, and Cubans spearheaded by the military will be resisting a rush of Cuban exiles from Miami who want to return to Cuba to reclaim properties of which they were dispossessed...

Tony Blair, who has stood so strongly with the US on Iraq, will have come to the end of his prime ministership in Britain and will be on a lecture assignment at some think tank or university of distinction in the US...

India's economic strength will continue to grow fast. As US companies farm out more and more high-tech work to India, salaries there will escalate, and US companies will start looking for alternative lower-salaried workers in other countries...

China's economy will start cooling off, but China must still be reckoned with as a coming superpower…

Modern technology in communications and transportation will continue to develop at a rate almost beyond our comprehension. Much of the good new stuff under the Christmas tree in 2005 will be overtaken by amazing new stuff by Christmas 2006.”

Cheney's True Genius

"Well, it certainly has confirmed, I think, that the suspicion, as well as some of the facts that I was able to pick up years ago, as back as far as the 2000-2001 transition, when people told me of the strong hand that Cheney had in building and forming the White House. So I think it really is evidence of that. And again, it‘s evidence of Cheney‘s true genius, where he lets George Bush wake up every morning and actually believe he is president."

-John Dean, interviewed by Keith Olbermann, on the current administration

Word of Warning

“When you get a lot of attention like you’ve been getting, people start gunnin’ for ya.”

-George W. Bush, offering a bit of his wisdom to Barack Obama, as quoted by Obama in his latest book

Virgin Earth

Bloomberg news service reports this:

"Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and British billionaire Richard Branson announced a $25 million prize for scientists who can devise a way to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and help combat global warming.

Branson, founder of Virgin Group Ltd., will award the Virgin Earth Challenge prize money to anyone who develops technology capable of removing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases at the rate of one billion tons a year. Gore will be a member of a panel of judges that makes the award. The two made the announcement at a press conference in London."

Worst Since Buchanan

Kennedy speechwriter, Ted Sorensen had this to say about Bush in a recent New York Magazine article:

"I feel sorry for him. I think he must know that he’s going to go down in history as the most incompetent president since Buchanan. He came to the White House knowing nothing about national and international policy and consequently relied on Washington veterans -- who proved to be incompetent ideologues who got him, and the country, into very deep trouble."

Draft Al

Fans of Al Gore (and as the Bush era spirals downward there are more and more everyday) will be glad to hear that there is a movement underway to draft the former V.P. and 2000 contender, for another run for the White House in '08.

For those Gore enthusiasts that love the Al Gore of the climate change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, it is worth checking out the interview attached to the DVD release of the film. The old Al (with the dreary monotone speaking style and smartest-guy-in-the-room condescension) is alive and well.

He may do better to stick to well-edited films than head back out on the stump.
For the record, he promises he won’t.

Rove's Angle

"I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas."

-Karl Rove quoted in National Review explaining the administration's immigration policy