Bush Job Rating Falls to All-time Low: Poll

President George W. Bush's job rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, amid strong opposition to the Dubai Ports World deal and increasing pessimism over the war in Iraq, according to a CBS News poll released on Monday.

Bush's overall job approval fell eight points from 42 percent last month. Fifty-nine percent of respondents said they disapproved of Bush's performance on the job, the poll found.

Bush's previous low job approval rating of 35 percent came last October, a month after Hurricane Katrina laid waste to the Gulf Coast and shortly after the U.S. death toll in Iraq reached the 2,000 mark, CBS said.

Long among his strongest suits, ratings for Bush's handling of Iraq fell to a new low of 30 percent, down from 37 percent in January, the poll found.

In addition, 62 percent of Americans said they think U.S. efforts to bring stability and order to Iraq were going badly compared with 36 percent who said things were going well.

In recent days, the Bush administration has faced increasing sectarian violence and fears of civil war in Iraq as well as strong bipartisan congressional opposition to a deal allowing an Arab state-owned company to operate six key U.S. ports.

According to the poll, 70 percent believe the Dubai Ports World transaction should not be allowed to go through while only 21 percent did not see the ports deal as a problem.

One surprising bright spot for the administration in the polls was that Americans appeared ready to move on after Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident. Seventy-six percent said it was understandable that the accident could happen.

However media coverage of the accident may have made the public's generally negative view of Cheney a bit more so, CBS said. The poll found that 46 percent hold a negative view of Cheney and 18 percent hold a favorable view, down from a 23 percent favorable rating in January.

The telephone poll of 1,018 adults was conducted February 22-26 and had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

From Robert Ariail

Is Bush a Lame Duck President?

President Bush has been buffeted by one calamity after another. Try what he may, he just can't seem to find traction for his second-term agenda.

With midterm congressional elections approaching, it won't get any easier.

The bad news has been coming in waves, from furors over Hurricane Katrina and warrantless wiretapping to the error-plagued rollout of the new Medicare prescription drug program, Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident, growing civil strife in Iraq, and now the Republican revolt over the administration's Dubai port decision.

The controversies have rocked the White House and caused alarm among Republican strategists. Their party's electoral hopes in November may depend on whether Bush is able to right his troubled presidency.

Some of Bush's recent difficulties were aggravated by the White House failure to consult earlier and more frequently on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are easily offended by perceived presidential slights.

This failure to communicate was most pronounced in the current dispute over who should manage America's seaports, but earlier surfaced in Bush's decision to direct the National Security Agency to engage in warrantless domestic electronic spying as part of the war on terror.

Republicans, who showed near unequivocal support during Bush's first term, have been backing away as they weigh their own political situations.

Since his State of the Union address Jan. 30, the president has traveled several days a week to promote his agenda, especially proposals on health care, U.S. competitiveness and energy self-reliance. His 2005 proposals to revamp Social Security and the tax code remain, but on a back burner.

Yet most of this time, his message has been eclipsed by the controversies raging in Washington.
White House officials were stunned by the most recent developments — the Cheney shooting accident and then the seaport deal. Aides ruefully wondered out loud, What's next?

In a week that began with a veto threat, Bush lost the support of his top two congressional lieutenants. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened to freeze the agreement to hand over management of six U.S. ports to a state-owned company based in the United Arab Emirates.

By week's end, some of the fury had ebbed as DP World voluntarily agreed to briefly postpone its American operations. The White House supported the delay for a security review — and acknowledged it could have done a better job in briefing Congress.

But the controversy threatened to jeopardize what has been the president's strongest suit in the polls — fighting terrorism. A chorus of Democratic and Republican lawmakers suggested the deal would give a company with ties to a government with a mixed anti-terrorism record a distressing level of access to U.S. ports.

Bush's approval was at 40 percent in an AP-Ipsos poll conducted in early February, and most recent polling has shown it at about the same level.

Last week, it was hard to find any U.S. political figure outside the administration, other than former President Carter, ready to defend the port deal.

Presidents often see their ratings improve when abroad. Even if he doesn't get a bump from this week's trip to India and Pakistan, Bush may welcome the diversion from the unrelenting bad news at home.

Most of the disputes will still be around when he returns.

From Robert Ariail

Dubai Ports Deal: Is Bush Lying or Out of Touch?

Bush faces a potential rebellion over the sale from leaders of his own party, as well as a fight from Democrats. It puts Dubai Ports in charge of major terminal operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.

The Deal Has Been in the Works for Three Months...
In Lebanon, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that the agreement was thoroughly vetted in a review process that took approximately three months. "This is supposed to be a process that raises security concerns, if they are there, but does not presume that a country in the Middle East should not be capable of doing a deal like this." She described the United Arab Emirates as "a very good ally" and said "if more details need to be made available then I'm sure they will be."

...But Bush Just Found Out About It.
The White House said President Bush did not know about the agreement until recently. The AP first reported U.S. approval of the sale to Dubai Ports on Feb. 11, and many members of Congress have said they learned about it from the AP.

So which is it? Is the Secretary of State doing rogue deals or is Bush lying?

Bush Trusts the UEA the Same As the British.
Bush said he was struck by the fact that people were not concerned about port security when a British company was running the port operation, but they felt differently about an Arab company at the helm.

Is he nuts???

Brushing aside Bush's assurances that security concerns have been addressed by his administration, Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan, the panel's ranking Democrat, said the UAE backed the Taliban and allowed financial support for al-Qaida.
Levin also charged that the UAE has an "uneven history" as "one of only a handful of countries in the world to recognize the Taliban regime in Afghanistan." He added that millions of dollars in al-Qaida funds went through UAE financial institutions.

"I think somebody dropped the ball," said Rep. Vito Fossella (news, bio, voting record), R-N.Y. "Information should have flowed more freely and more quickly up into the White House. I think it has been mishandled in terms of coming forward with adequate information."

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., also was critical, calling the approval process "a failure of judgment" because officials "did not alert the president, the secretary of the treasury and the secretary of defense" that several of our critical ports would be turned over to a foreign country.

Now is the time for action!
Use the links to contact your Senators and Representative to let them know that you want this deal sunk.

Bush's "Scandalous" Budget Sparks Bipartisan Protest

President Bush has sent Congress a 2007 spending plan that is garnering howls of pain from farmers, teachers, doctors and a wide array of other groups with special interests.

Democrats, as expected, pronounced the Republican president's budget plan dead on arrival. But many Republicans were equally sharp in their reservations about the $2.77 trillion spending blueprint the administration unveiled on Monday.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., called Bush's proposed cuts in education and health "scandalous" while Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said she was "disappointed and even surprised" at the extent of the administration's proposed cuts in Medicaid and Medicare.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said Bush's budget was sending a clear message "that the most important thing to this administration are tax cuts being made permanent for the wealthiest of Americans."

The targeted programs included 42 in the area of education ranging from drug-free schools to federal support for the arts, technology and parent-resource centers.

ven previously favored agencies such as the National Institutes of Health were not immune from the budget knife with overall funding essentially frozen and many individual programs seeing budget cuts. That brought objections from groups ranging from the American Heart Association to the American Diabetes Association.

Robert A. Rizza, president for medicine and science of the American Diabetes Association, said Bush's proposed cuts in diabetes research and prevention "would weaken the federal resources needed to fight this national epidemic."

"The president's budget slashes resources for exactly the priorities we should be supporting — groundbreaking medical research, health care for our seniors, and education for our kids," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.

Bush Proposes to Make the Budget Disaster Worse

President George W. Bush on Monday proposed a $2.77 trillion budget that cuts programs from Medicare to education, prompting Democratic criticism that the elderly and working Americans were bearing the brunt of his fiscal mismanagement.

Bush proposed a record $439.3 billion defense budget aimed at fighting unconventional terrorism and major conflicts with other nations if necessary.

The president renewed his call for Republican-led Congress to make his tax cuts permanent even as his blueprint projected a surge in the federal deficit to $423 billion this year, up more than $100 billion from fiscal 2005.

Sen. Kent Conrad, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, said the budget was misleading because it did not fully account for costs of Iraq war or for other anticipated expenses such as shielding middle-class Americans from the costs of the alternative minimum tax.

"It represents the same reckless fiscal course the Bush administration has followed for the last five years," Conrad said.

Among those targeted by the budget knife are community policing and a program to combat violence against women. Education spending would be down 3.8 percent, partially through the elimination of programs like vocational education and college preparation for poor students.

Bush also hopes to squeeze $65 billion in savings over five years from mandatory programs, including Medicare, the nation's health insurance program for the elderly and disabled, farm supports and pension and other labor-related programs. Medicare is slated to take a $36 billion hit through such measures as slower growth in hospital payments.

Bush inherited surpluses from former Democratic President Bill Clinton but that quickly turned around and the deficit soared on his watch, reaching a record $413 billion in fiscal 2004.

Bottom line here is that we have a president who came into office with a record $413 billion dollar surplus and has turned it into a multi-trillion dollar deficit. How does he propose to cut it? He plans to do so by cutting back spending on law enforcement and education. All this while spending billions rebuilding a country that he invaded under false pretenses.

Folks... there IS a better way. Use the links to the right to contact your senator and representative. Tell them that you have had enough and to not tolerate Bush's mismanagement any longer and just say NO to his proposed budget. It's time to bring our troops home and start taking care of U.S.

From Bill Day

Not happy with the direction of America? You are not alone.

Last night's speech by Bush was well delivered, but that was good about it. He gave a very clear message that he plans to continue with his present agenda... tax cuts for the rich, eliminating benefits and entitlements for those who were promised them and rejecting cloning - a potentially life saving technology. He also plans to continue to fight a war that was begun on false pretenses, a false report that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, with no exit plan.

So what do Americans think?

Here are some numbers from the Washington Post...

Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bush is handling (ITEM)? - 1/26/06

Approve Disapprove No op.
a. The situation in Iraq: Approve 39/ Disapprove 60/ No op. 1
b. The US campaign against terrorism: Approve 52/ Disapprove 45/ No op. 2
c. The federal budget deficit: Approve 32/ Disapprove 64/ No op. 4
d. Ethics in government: Approve 42/ Disapprove 56/ No op. 2
e. Prescription drug benefits for the elderly: Approve 38/ Disapprove 51/ No op. 11
f. The economy: Approve 46/ Disapprove 52/ No op. 1
g. Immigration issues: Approve 34/ Disapprove 57/ No op. 9
h. Health care: Approve 37/ Disapprove 60/ No op. 3
i. Taxes: Approve 45/ Disapprove 52/ No op. 3

Bottom line... the majority of Americans do not approve of the way Bush is managing America. There is a better way. We need to reset our priorities. We need to take care of our seniors by providing them healthcare. We need to say no to private health insurance accounts and make sure that all who work have healthcare. We need to fix our borders. We need to balance and simplify the tax code. We need to pay off the U.S. deficit. This is the better way!

To the right you will find links that will allow you to contact your Senator and Representatives. Let them know you are not happy and that there is a better way to manage America.