IS AMERICA IN A COMA?
            [By Mickey Walker, TPJ Columnist] 

We must have been ‘out to lunch’ when the Bush vaudeville act came to town and scared us into believing Iraq had WMD.  Without a Declaration of War, we watched Bush launch the United States into the longest and most senseless war in our history.  It's almost as if America slipped into a deep coma and is sleeping still.  Bush’s doublespeak words and phrases lulled us all into a dreamlike state.  Just think of the subtle twisting of words Bushites employed to splice together Iraq and al Qaeda so that we would remain at endless war.  His hybridization of terms, like “weapons of mass terror” helped to plunge the United States into an endless occupation in Iraq, a country torn apart with civil war.  Watch the snake oil Bush rubs upon the American psyche, and the shell game he and Cheney inflict upon us to hide the real reasons we are still in Iraq and being killed over there:  Oil.  Weapons of Mass Destruction and the images Bush painted in our collective minds, like mushroom clouds appearing in American cities worked pretty well at one time.  But as we rub the sleep from our eyes, it now seems obvious that all that hype was pure White House spin.  And the ongoing pabulum Bush feeds us, like ‘The surge is working’ is further now from the truth than ever before.  And our tattered, recycled, re-employed troops must wonder about our sanity as a nation who lets a loose cannon like Bush act out as the “Commander Guy.” 

From the beginning, the Valerie Plame leak case was fraught with White House red herrings, smoke, and mirrors.  Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald set out to investigate and uncover the real White House traitors who exposed the secret identity of Valerie Plame, undercover agent for the CIA, right?  The investigation seemed to go on forever.  Foremost in our thoughts was, “When would Fitzgerald indict Rove, Bush, and Cheney?”  When would Fitzgerald roll up his sleeves and smoke out the scuzz?  But between all the vacillating, audience highs, lows, oos, and ahhs, the American people grew weary.  And I suppose we yearned for closure.  We waited for the other shoe to drop, but no.  We wore ourselves out thinking about it and decided, I suppose, that we best settle for Scooter Libby doing some prison time.  But wait, revealing the identity of a secret undercover agent working for the CIA was high treason, right?  Yet the jury did not convict Scooter Libby of anything near as serious as that.  Obstruction of justice and perjury was it.  But what happened to the real crime?  Where is the real conviction that all the news services reported that Fitzgerald was supposedly capable of delivering?  Ironically, Libby wasn't even charged with betraying the identity of one of our own undercover agents.  And Bush, Cheney, and Rove got to walk without even being called to the witness stand. 

Let’s review.  They (whoever the hand in the puppet sleeve might be) strung it all out so that we the people would tire and settle for Scooter Libby being thrown to the wolves.  We settled.  After all, Rove came close to getting indicted several times, and by the time it was all over, I suppose the American people were adequately satiated with a Libby conviction from a special prosecutor supposedly who was free from corruption and squeaky-clean-honest as they come.  Say what?  Says whom?  As weeks went by, the investigation and trial dragged on and grated upon the American peoples’ low attention span.  So, perhaps, the real culprits who betrayed Valerie Plame and America could walk and Bush could get out of impeachment’s way so he could send more troops to Iraq over the protests of the majority of the American people?  It all seems curiously fishy.  The whole Fitzgerald investigation, indictments (and lack of indictments), and trial seemed an arduous study in how to exhaust the American people and bore us into settling for the little fish.  I feel used. 

1.  Rove and Cheney and Bush all got to walk without being indicted or questioned on the witness stand about the ruthless Plame leak that had ‘White House’ written all over it. 

2.  Some of the federal jurors who convicted Libby said that from the evidence they had heard, they were surprised that no additional indictments for Bush, Cheney, and Rove had been forthcoming.  And why not?  Hey Fitz, what more do you need?  Didn’t you have enough slam-dunk evidence and smoking guns so hot they would have burned your hands?  Why ignore the jurors who asked why Rove, Bush, and Cheney got to walk away from questioning under oath?  

3.  Why would we the people settle for a Scooter Libby conviction on a puny charge of obstruction of justice?  It’s obvious that Valerie Plame and our secret agents got trashed for revenge.  It’s been reported by many news agencies that her husband, Joe Wilson, lacerated Bush for saying that British intelligence indicated that Saddam Hussein had attempted to buy Yellow Cake Uranium from Niger. And we all know that Rove and Cheney are famous for exacting revenge on those who cross them on policy, right?  Joe Wilson’s debunking Bush’s charges that Iraq really had WMD was a blow to Bush’s being able to sell the Iraq War to the American people.  So where are the weapons, George Bush?  And why do we allow obvious crimes of treason to guide our ship of state with no indictments of White House officials other than the errand boys like Scooter Libby?  Do we truly believe that Scooter acted on his own?  Is it okay with the American people that we no longer go after the real treason suspects and deal them some hard justice?  Are we okay with Kenneth Star spending millions on convicting Bill Clinton for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinski?  Do we not feel that Rove, Cheney, and Bush should testify after obviously someone in the White House exposed the identity of one of our secret agents?  Doesn’t the Clinton Blue Dress affair wane a bit pale when compared to the investigation and prosecution of high treason in the White House?  Shouldn’t we Americans care even a sliver about seeing Rove and Cheney and Bush questioned under oath?  The whole Fitzgerald investigation petered out.  Why? And does anyone doubt that the real culprits escaped? Clean as a whistle, dudes.   

Let me understand this.  We don't really give a rat's behind about seeing justice applied to the Axis of Evil in the Oval.  Is that correct?  We're okay with the White House getting even with Joe Wilson by offing his CIA undercover agent wife without knowing who gave the order? Is that right?  Forgive me, but is it okay for the White House to reveal Valerie Plame’s covert identity to the enemy?  And couldn't Fitzgerald have worked the Plame Leak Case evidence as hard as Star worked the Clinton Blue Dress evidence? Should we Americans rethink our priorities?  Don’t we place more importance on lies, false wars, loss of lives and trillions added to our already staggering National debt? The Valerie Plame Case provided a door to America’s resurrection as a healthy nation.  It gave us a door to the truth, if only we would open it.  And with the impotent Scooter Libby conviction on lesser charges, not treason, our very door of truth was nailed shut.  So how long do we the people think this Republic will survive if we (yawn) continue to let truth and justice get flushed down the White House toilet?  How can we continue to catnap when Bush’s political agendas that do not serve Americans, nail the doors of truth shut in total secrecy? 

Incidentally, why Joe Wilson’s wife?  What a total lack of class, to attempt to hurt and discredit someone’s wife for her husband’s offenses, real or imagined.  Snakey. 

 Why do we settle for so little?  Do we care so little that this nation's system of justice gets shredded without even a whimper?  Do we have such a low esteem of our country and ourselves, to let something like this happen?  Where are the White House indictments of the big fish who directed Scooter Libby to take the fall?  Why investigate the Plame Leak in the first place if so little is achieved?  If we set out to go elephant hunting and bag a skunk instead, what have we gained?  The whole thing seems to be a psychological charade to tire out the hounds (the American people) so that the real villains could escape.  It appears that the White House charlatans have become masters of mass psychology.  They know us well.  If we bowed up and ever confronted them, they would go all slack jaw with disbelief.  That would catch them totally off guard.  There has been not as much as one demonstration on the blatant betrayal of one of our own CIA agents, actively working against terrorists.  Imagine that.  George Bush pledged his all to pursue and to rout out terrorists.  So how could the White House dare to expose Valerie Plame who worked toward helping America quell the actions of terrorists?  Doesn’t make much sense, does it?  That Bush would let politics preempt protecting America’s security is despicable.  Does anyone doubt that the leak came from the White House?  Does any American think Scooter Libby, not Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, or George Bush was the only person involved in the crime?  Read my lips, ya’ll:  No treason conviction.  Even when it was evident to some jurors that more trails led to the White House and did not dead end with Scooter Libby.  But Rove, Bush, and Cheney weren't even indicted.  In the end, they wore us out with all the staged highs and lows and the long pauses when Rove’s being indicted seemed like a real possibility.  We shrugged it off and let them go.  Just like they knew we would.  America must have been asleep.  Where's the fire that lived in Harry Truman?   

America must be in a coma.  It’s time to wake up.  Now. 

                        THE STRAW? 

Rasmussen has just released a poll touting that Bush has fallen to the lowest marks they have recorded.  The results:  Bush approval; 34%, disapproval 64% and unsure 2%.  This is Rasmussen’s lead to their analysis:

Is Bush trending down again?  There is scant supporting evidence to support Rasmussen’s central conclusion.   

First, Rasmussen polls almost daily.  The “new low” results are from three days of polling ending on May 19.  Taking any one period of “rolling results” can be misleading.  Consider the balance of Rasmussen’s polling for the month of May: 

Averaging Rasmussen’s all daily polls; Bush’s approval ratings are at 37% approval, 60% disapproval and 2% unsure.  Now, compare that Rasmussen’s previous monthly averages for 2007:

Viewed from this perspective, Bush’s average results for all of May is 1% to 2% less than April on “approval,” and 1% to 2% higher on “disapproval.”  These narrow margins of movement do not suggest a trend that is as strong as their analysis states.

Second, Rasmussen freely admits that the form of the questions they pose to test “approval” and “disapproval” produces an “approval” rating that is 3% to 4% higher than most other polling firms that use different question formulations. 

If we subtract 3% or 4% from the Rasmussen’s May average, approval and disapproval are almost identical to TPJ’s averages below from polling firms other than Rasmussen. (TPJ does not use Rasmussen’s polling results in calculating our monthly averages as a matter of practice.)  TPJ has been recording Bush’s approval ratings at between 33% and 35% for the last six months, the slight variations from month to month most likely representing normal statistical “noise.”