Imagine how addled you'd have to be

* bob harris has a look at Bush's notes from the other day:

"Imagine how addled you'd have to be to need to actually write down reminders to yourself to burp up meaningless phrases like "history not written." Which, in case you were wondering, yes, he actually used in the first two responses he gave
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Wow. History may not yet be written, but every damn thing Bush says apparently is. Man.

Pretty convenient, btw, that the first two reporters' questions just happened to lead directly to the empty responses Bush was already planning to use, right there on the top left of his cheat sheet. Gosh, that must have been terribly lucky."

* digby:

" Certainly, the Republicans, for whatever reason, seem to better understand heuristics and are willing to demagogue wherever necessary. These last few years have taught us nothing if they haven't taught us how far you can go even when you make no sense whatsoever.

But the fact remains that this is not good for the country. We simply cannot adequately govern ourselves if a large number of us are dumb as posts and vote for reasons that make no sense."

* arkin:

"News of an involuntary call-up of Marine Corps reservists and a Defense Department budget so out-of-control that even the Republican Senate Budget Committee chair speaks of Congress' failure of oversight, is music to my ears.

Not because I'm some fan of a draft or because I want to see America bankrupted. But an increasing failure of the military to attract young men and women to serve and an overwhelming public rejection of the Iraq war just might finally provoke Americans to demand some real change.

By real change I don't just mean a change of administrations -- as if any Democratic Party hopeful out there has a fundamentally different view of national security.

I mean a demand for results. Enough already with the pleadings for money, with government officials lamenting the complexity of the world and the slow pace of progress. Enough with the technological marvels, the contractor bonanza, the endless reorganizations and the greater authorities handed down to bureaucrats and "operators" who live in the fiscal rather than the physical world.

And God forbid the Bush administration's failures feed the horde of 9/11 nuts and Rove- and Cheney-haters who subsist on a fantasy of government purpose, brilliance and conspiracy when in fact we face the greatest crisis of government incompetence and apathy in our history.
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The way I see it, America must recognize that neither Republicans nor Democrats have a clue on national security.

They are happy to endlessly spend the people's money -- if it isn't Iraq, it's going to be the black hole of homeland security -- and happy never to ask whether the vast sums handed over to the professionals ever pay off, whether results can be shown."