Thursday Roundup: George Bush Does Something Totally Expected

As promised, Bush vetoed health care for children yesterday. Then he told Congress he's willing to negotiate, which means he is now living in fear of the veto override.

Very, very few people in Congress are happy about the veto, and many Republicans have turned their backs on Bush's actions. I still don't understand what the calculus for this veto could be, other than some misguided adherence to an internal code he hasn't told anyone about. Rather than getting ready to deal, Democrats are going to go for the override. It is possible, and if it happens it will be yet another in a long line of serious blows to Bush's presidential power. In the meantime, Senator Ted Kennedy has a challenge for President Bush, and I think it is for him to be, fundamentally, not President Bush.

Some other Republicans are making news as the third quarter reports come around. Ron Paul went out and raised a totally decent amount of money again, and I'm sure that has to be some kind of huge surprise for plenty of people. According to McClatchy, Paul's $5 million is about what Richardson and McCain will report. Paul's going to have the money to pursue whatever agenda he wants throughout the campaign, and I have proof: the Politico has started calling him a 'spoiler'.

Oh hey, Fred Thompson is asking for applause on the stump because he isn't generating it on his own. I have been arguing that Thompson is a fraud and a loser since he started toying with the idea of getting into the race, and George has stuck by his belief that Thompson is dangerous. Matt Taibbi is one of my favorite political writers and a contributing editor to Rolling Stone. He's taking many long looks at Thompson, and he has determined that Thompson is dangerous precisely because he represents such a low standard:

Thompson may act like a blank slate — a homespun version of Being There hero Chauncey Gardiner running on a platform of "Whatever you say" and "I'll get back to you on that" — but he represents something else that no one, after seven years of George W. Bush, could possibly have expected: a new low. It was bad enough when the GOP field was led by a grinning Mormon corporatist and a fascist ex-mayor itching to take his prostate pain out on the world, but Thompson is the worst yet — a human snooze button, campaigning baldly for the head-in-the-sand vote by asking Americans not to think but to change the channel.

And that, after all, is what the campaign trail is all about. Give voters a chance to go lower than they've ever gone before, and you'll get numbers in a heartbeat. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the next Republican front-runner.

I can't recommend that article enough.

Hey, did you know that Rush Limbaugh has a big mouth and is also a bad person? Did you guess that Clear Channel brass would come to his defense after he called troops that speak out against the war "phony soldiers?" I wasn't surprised a bit. I once saw a bumper sticker that said "TALK RADIO TENDS TO FAVOR BAD PEOPLE." Take that for what you will.

On a related note, staff writer Patrick McLeod sent me this link the other day, a blog titled "Army of Dude." Don't let that fool you though: the link goes to a piece of writing of extraordinary clarity from one soldier that Limbaugh describes as phony, about other soldiers that Limbaugh describes as phony. It is piercing and hit me hard when I read it. It also probably carries more truth in 1,300 words than you'll find in years of Limbaugh's show.

On All Things Considered the other day, Audie Cornish asked a question that has surfaced in recent years and is now probably more relevant than ever — do polls' samples really reflect the population when they fail to reach young people without home phones, who primarily use cell phones? The problem isn't that that population is so big now as to skew data, the pollsters argue, but rather that the number of people without home phones is growing so fast. I just made this switch this year, so now I guess I'm an uncounted young person among the polls. By the 2010 midterms, this demographic will be large enough — it is 15% now — to require some new strategies.

Lastly today: the Justice Department, in the wayback days of 2004, asserted that torture is terrible and that no one should use it during interrogations, and Bush backed off of his quest to gain the power to authorize such tactics. After Alberto Gonzales showed up, a new Justice Department opinion was secreted away:

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

After Gonzales' approval of the measure, James Comey apparently declared "they would all be 'ashamed' when the world eventually learned of it." I've never worked at the Justice Department, and I'm ashamed. I wonder how they must feel.