Obligatory Reading of the Day

Bush Is Not Incompetent by George Lakoff:

Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush's plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush's "failures" and label him and his administration as incompetent. Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush's disasters -- Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit -- are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy. It is conservatism itself, carried out according to plan, that is at fault.

The article is long and elaborate, but the core idea is exactly what I wrote back in September 2005: Stop Beating on Bush!

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Oooh, that's the ticket, look beyond the superficial to the bigger picture. Our current situation is the result of a prolonged and concerted effort, employing empirical sciences such as demographic modeling and state-of-the-art computer modeling, in conjnction with some serious sociological and psychological applied advertising science, to manipulate the political climate. The people behind this 'movement' (neo-conservatism... look up Leo Strauss...) are certainly not retarded by a long shot. Our figurehead, Mr. Bush is the obvious red herring presented for our amusement, and to distract us, while the real plotters work for the most part in anonymity, safe from exposure and public scrutiny.