The Blogging Treadmill

Well, we're back from EnZed, so I'm sure our readers are expecting a return to constant news updates. We're still pretty busy with real life things, however: awkward conversations with family about "the whole New Zealand thing" (generally unpleasant); backbreaking toil in three different garden plots preparing for a bonanza of vegetable planting come May (generally pleasant), chasing after two-year-old, etc. Blogging about current events is not relaxing.

So here's my only comment for the day: All the libs are citing recent polls that show that a majority of Americans think the government overstepped on the Terri Schiavo case, and that the Dems need to rein in the Administration and keep them from such excesses. It's a watershed moment, everyone says. The tide is turning against these guys.

It could be that the tide is turning. I certainly hope so. But we've all learned recently that when all the water at the beach suddenly recedes very quickly, it's probably not a good sign at all.

Three months ago the Senate confirmed a man for Attorney General who promulgated a policy of torture. Two months ago a male prostitute was found to be working as a journalist in the white house, pitching softball questions during the president's press conferences. Last month it was revealed that the CIA quite un-extraordinarily renders people it thinks might be terrorists to countries that will torture them, a policy Porter Goss supports because "The U.S. does not support torture" and the countries in question just promise not to do it. Also, the Administration was found to be regularly producing propaganda videos to be played, without revealing their source, on local TV news, a practice which it refuses to renounce, even though it did renounce actually paying journalists to shill for them. This month,while flying back from the pope's funeral, President Bush had the following exchange with a reporter:

Q Italy is going to pull out 3,000 troops, I think, by the fall. Will you be able to absorb that?

THE PRESIDENT: I don't know why you say that. I'm not sure why you said what you just said.

Q I thought that was the number of troops Italy had in Iraq, and I --

THE PRESIDENT: They've got 3,300 now, and you said they're going to pull 3,000 out by the fall?

Q Well, I guess -- I don't --

THE PRESIDENT: Okay. What I did hear was is that the Prime Minister wants to work to make sure we complete the mission. But I'm not sure where that came from.

Q Do you think he'll leave troops in if, in fact, enough haven't been trained?

THE PRESIDENT: I think we'll work to complete the training mission of the Iraqis.

So I am not especially comforted by the idea that Americans are a teeny bit annoyed at the president for butting in to the Schiavo thing. I still think it might be a good idea to go to higher ground and climb a tree.