I saw this posted over at FreeRepublic.com, an Examiner editorial written by Amos Wright.  of what McCain should do in the upcoming days and during Tuesday’s debate. It’s well worth the read and I hope John McCain and his staff are taking notes.

If McCain doesn’t start pointing out to the America public who Barack Obama is, and what he actually represents then we might be in serious trouble.

First, knock it off with the "corporations are evil" bit.

Stop it. Just stop it. That stuff is for Progressives and Populists like Bill O’Reilly.

I don’t know if you really believe it, or if you think it plays up to the middle, but it’s not helping the situation. Wall Street could not – would not – have done what it did if Congress had not first pursued bad policies and ideas that made the problem possible, then made it promising.

Knock it off with the bipartisan foolishness. Congress is the prime mover here. It created this mess.

The Media has been lying to you all these years. They don’t care about you, and they only care about bipartisanship when it gives Progressives cover for stupid policies. Nobody cares. You care, maybe. But absolutely nobody else. Moreover, your base – which you desperately need – is not amenable to hearing you trash Capitalism. Not at all.

If I wanted to hear a bunch of Mini-Me Communists rant about the evils of corporations, I’d go back to being a Progressive and I’d sign up for one of Bill Ayer’s classes. Too many of us left that swamp too long ago for us to want to wade through an acre of the decaying filth of discredited ideas to come vote for you on the other side.

So quit it.

++

Now, I just read this article from U.S. News. If this is the case, and you’re doing it because it’s what your strategy team advises, keep them on board, hire new people and listen to the new ones. Because your old ones are wrong.

If this is your idea and it’s why James Pethokoukis says it is, get a coach to fix it. Because you are going to lose.

The article states that

1. this is too complicated a problem to inform people
2. there are racial components to the issue (or appear to be)
3. the campaign believes the time is better spent talking about taxes, energy and healthcare.

Every single one of these ideas is a mistake, and wrong to boot.

Let’s start from the top. The people will be informed one way or the other. They can be lied to – which is the intention of your opponent and his Mainstream Media arm – or they can be told the truth. But you’re going to have to do it. The truth does not win out unless you make it win out. So, here it is; internalize it:

THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM IN 5 EASY STEPS

1. For various reasons, including buying votes from groups like ACORN, Congress wanted to wildly expand home ownership to the poor. So it passed laws that distorted the market, causing problems to build up over time. Bad regulation was piled on top of bad regulation in a Dr. Seussian junk tower of half-baked legislative ideas.
2. People including Bill Clinton, Congressional Republicans and Yourself warned about this growing problem as early as a decade ago and all the way up until the crisis.
3. Lenders and borrowers thought they were protected, so they overleveraged. Homebuyers seeing a brand new market thought prices would always go up, so they borrowed more than they should have.
4. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, empowered and protected by Democrats who were on the take, including one of the worst offenders of all – Barack Obama – pushed the problem out of control.
5. The whole house of cards came down because it was unsustainable, and now we all have to pay.

That’s it. That’s the whole story in a nutshell. I wrote that in 3 minutes off the top of my head. You can memorize it in 15. It’s the structural framework of everything. Everything else is just a detail. Try it. Find a detail and you can almost always find a place in that structure to hang it on. And you can tell the American public to go online and look it up for themselves. They don’t know. They don’t even know to look because the Media is concealing it as best it can, and your opponent is flat-out, bald-faced lying about it.

And I don’t use the word "lie" lightly.

Lesson: the problem wasn’t deregulation, it was the wrong kind of regulation. The Democrats in their role of Philosopher Kings – built this golem. They nurtured it and coddled it and now that it’s gone loose all over the countryside, they want to blame it on the rest of us. No. Do not let them do this or you will lose. And you will deserve to lose.

THERE IS A RACIAL COMPONENT TO THIS ISSUE

Who cares? There’s a racial component to this entire election. And you are not going to fix it, change it or alter it. It’s there and you can do nothing about it. Nothing. You lost that hill the moment the Democrats went from Hillary to Hopey-Changiness. Go right around it. Americans are already being called racists for not supporting a man who chose race for himself, so there is no tangible evidence you will lose anything by telling the truth. The people who were already preferring race over substance and the facts already cast their vote months ago. You are not ever going to get them back. Ever.

You want a military analogy? Here: Island-hop. Don’t fight battles you can’t win. Go right around them and starve them for resources.

The simple fact: this is not about race, it’s about fooling the poor into over-extending themselves, then taking pay-offs in Congress in political support and actual currency to keep the whole putrid affair running. Congress let them down, and it doesn’t help anyone to pretend otherwise. If Obama wants to call this a race issue, call him on making it one – loudly and clearly, so that everyone else can hear it – and get back to the fact that it hurts poor people of every stripe: Caucasians, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Women… Everyone.

YOU THINK IT’S MORE IMPORTANT TO TALK ABOUT TAXES, ENERGY AND HEALTHCARE

No. It’s not. Because if the economy goes south, the rest of this doesn’t matter. If we let a Democrat control the White House and the Democrats control Congress, America will be on a spending Bacchanalia the likes of which it has never seen. The institutional problems at the heart of our economic unrest will not be fixed and this will happen again, likely as not when the bill for Social Security comes due, another foolish Progressive pyramid scheme nobody has the guts to face.

++

Now, if you think the economic crisis is hard to explain, then you haven’t looked at the tax code lately. Moreover, if Obama and you go back and forth on his, nobody will know the difference. Nobody knows all the differences. Taxing, tariffs and the economic effects of bad legislation are such byzantine issues you cannot inform anyone of anything. They think the only taxes are income and corporate taxes. They don’t realize that shifting interest rates and costs from one group of people to another or increasing inflation are also taxes. And you aren’t going to educate them.

Here are your talking points on taxes.

"As a rule, the Republican party has always been for reduced taxes and reduced spending. We lost our way under Bush. But the thing to remember is that this is the Democrat’s way. They love to take money out of people’s purses and spend it. It’s what they do.

Traditionally, they were tax-and-spend. Even if you can believe that net balance of all taxes under Obama will fall – not just income taxes as he is trying to lead you to believe, but the net balance of all your taxes – Democrats will only have changed to less-tax-and-more-spend. Their complaints about Bush are that we are in a deficit. They have no complaints about the taxing or spending other than that we’re not doing enough of it. That’s not the Change America has been Hoping for or needs."

That’s it. That’s all you need to say about taxes. If you want to provide details, send them to the website or give up a detail. Stick to the narrative and move on to more important problems.

++

Here are your talking points on energy.

"Let’s face it. Like all Progressives, Barack Obama has an ideological dislike for the Petroleum Industry. (Did you get that? Petroleum Industry. NOT oil.) He even said once that he has no problem with the kind of high gas prices that disproportionately hurt the poor and working Americans. He’d rather have China, Russia and other less-than-ideal partners supply us with oil than have America produce more. And that’s dangerous.

I, John McCain, am all for alternative energies, and my plan supports them. All of them. Oil, gas, coal, hydroelectric, solar, wind, tide, nuclear. But unlike my opponent, I want to make sure that we don’t crowd out new technologies. Government isn’t as smart as my opponent thinks he and it is. So we want to make sure that innovations we haven’t thought about have room to grow."

Learn it.

++

On healthcare. The simple fact is that you cannot out socialize Barack Obama. He’s to the left of Congress’ only Socialist. So if they zig, you’re going to need to zag. You need to differentiate in the public’s mind, and counter with a proposition that sells to both their worries and their values.

Here are your talking points on healthcare.

"The biggest cause of the economic meltdown wasn’t the market. It was the government. Now they want to take control of your health. The free market brought us tens of thousands of new drugs that save lives. It brought us the MRI. It brought so many innovations that the rest of the world – including Europe and Canada relies on us to do most of it’s R + D. Right now people from Canada and Europe flock to America for treatments.

Socializing healthcare – which is what the Democrats and Mr. Obama want – will ensure that the system stagnates. Again, the problems we have aren’t from deregulation. They’re from bad regulation. You all know that government rarely solves one problem without creating at least one new one.

Our problems are mostly financial. Our solutions should deal with finding smart market solutions to rising costs for Americans today, while keeping innovation alive in America so that our children don’t just have healthcare, they have better healthcare than we could have imagined at lower cost. That’s what America does. And that’s why the world depends on us to make healthcare and healthcare innovations available to it."

Attack. Attack, attack, attack. But do us all a favor. Point the gun at them, not us. We’re tired of friendly fire, Mr. McCain. We’re sick of having our own party shoot us in the foot.

Well looks like there is nothing the American People can do about the bailout bill now. It just crossed the wires that President Bush has officially signed the bill after both houses of Congress passed it.

The Bailout bill gives the Treasury Department $700,000,000,000 of monopoly money to use in hopes of buying up bad credit loans and freeing up the financial markets of all this bad credit. Our financial system just lost it’s ability to fail. In my opinion not having the option of failing will mean more bad decisions in the future. Five , ten, or twenty years from now we will look back at this day and realize that it was a HUGE MISTAKE.

HOTAIR: Breaking: Bailout vote underway; Update: 218; Update: 263-171

Update: Sugary Senate pork made the medicine go down: 263-171 as the gavel comes down, with some 90 Republicans voting yes. The Dow has suddenly dropped by 80 points or so, but I think I know why – it’s pessimists like me unloading their portfolios to capitalize on the post-bailout spike ahead of what they expect will be another downturn next week. (I didn’t unload, but thought about it.)

The Dow is bouncing. It has gone negative, now it’s back in the positive.

You can read the entire text of the H.R. 1424, which is U.S. Senate’s version of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, the Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008, and Tax Extenders and Alternative Minimum Tax Relief Act of 2008. The 451-page bill is a part of a proposed bailout of United States financial system

Update: Now that economic bailout plan has been finally passed in both houses, and sign into law what kind of impact will this have on the Presidential election and the many congressional contests around the country. One of the reasons congressmen voted No on a similar bill on Monday was because they feared that they would lose the support of their constituents. Is one month long enough time for the voters to forget about this debacle of a bill?

Gov. Sarah Palin will be a Grandma!

Earlier today Alaskian Governor and Republican Vice Presidential Candidate, Sarah Palin announced that her 17-year-old Daughter Bristol Palin is 5 months pregnant. The news of the pregnancy comes after several smear attempts by leftist bloggers who tried to prove that Sarah Palin’s youngest son was actually her grand-son. The leftist bloggers used outdated photos and unconfirmed accounts that seemed to show Sarah Palin not pregnant in the months before Trig was born.

With the news that Bristol Palin is indeed pregnant it puts to rest this ridiculous smear.

ST. PAUL (Reuters) – The 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said on Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.

Bristol Palin, one of Alaska Gov. Palin’s five children with her husband, Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, the Palins said in a statement released by the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said.

“We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us,” the Palins’ statement said.

“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support,” the Palins said.

The Palins asked the news media to respect the young couple’s privacy.

“Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family. We ask the media, respect our daughter and Levi’s privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates,” the statement concluded.

MCCAIN KNEW

Senior McCain campaign officials said McCain knew of the daughter’s pregnancy when he selected Palin last week as his vice presidential running mate, deciding that it did not disqualify the 44-year-old governor in any way.

She was for the “Bridge to nowhere”

In Sarah Palin’s introduction speech she said that she told congress “Thanks, but not thanks for that ‘Bridge to nowhere.” USAToday has uncovered quotes from 2006 when Sarah Palin was still Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

“We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge, and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative,” Palin said in August 2006, according to the Ketchikan Daily News.

The Anchorage Daily News quoted her in October 2006 as saying she would continue state funding for the bridge. “The window is now, while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist,” she said.

Asked why she supported the bridge, Palin’s communications director Bill McAlister said, “It was never at the top of her priority list, and in fact the project isn’t necessarily dead … there’s still the potential for improved ferry service or even a bridge of a less costly design.”

She changed her mind, he said, when “she saw that Alaska was being perceived as taking from the country and not giving, and that impression bothered her and she wants to change it. … I think that Sarah Palin is someone who has the courage to reevaluate situations as they developed.”

Wasilla, which in 2007 had 9,780 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, hired a lobbyist in 2000, public records show, paying him about $36,000 per year. In 2001, Palin was quoted in a local newspaper crediting Silver with helping secure federal funding for Wasilla.

Yes, Sarah Palin was for the Bridge before she was against it. However, in the end she made the correct decision. I think it’s very important for community and government leaders to constantly re-evaluate their positions. Sarah Palin was able to step back from her personal beliefs and see the country-wide impact of the legislation that would have built that bridge. She sided with the position that pork barrel projects should be handled by the states – not the federal government.

She’s Dan Quayle!

This attack has to be the most idiotic. Mort Kondrake, executive editor of “Roll Call” likens Sarah Palin’s “inexperience” to that of Vice Presidential Dan Quayle.

Look, I think that this selection was a testament on John McCain’s part to his belief and his own longevity. You know, he plans to fill out his term.

This woman is utterly unqualified to be president of the United States. She is the Dan Quayle of—she’s worse than Dan Quayle. Dan Quayle at least had served as a senator and was, you know, and was conversant with national issues.

Barack Obama has been running for president for years and years now, and has been thinking about national issues. He has an agenda and all of that.

Look, she has positives, political positives. She seems like a very nice woman, a very strong woman. And, you know, she is a reformer, and she is doing great work in Alaska for two years.

But, you know, she is going to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. John McCain is a 72-year-old man who has had two bouts with melanoma. Her chances of being president are fairly significant. You don’t appoint somebody with so little experience to that kind of job. It’s irresponsible, it seems to me.

Sure, he may have had troubles spelling. In the age of spell check I’m sure everyone spelling abilities have dwindled. Even after serving four years as Vice President of the United States, the democrats still harped on Quayle’s inexperience. At the time of being electing VP in 1988 Dan Quayle had the same amount of experience in Washington as Obama has today.

Even so, I thought the whole point of the Obama campaign was to “change” the “hope” of Washington by electing an “outsider.” Why all the sudden did Obama become of Washington? Sarah Palin is the only person for both parties who has had an ounce of executive experience. In the time span of 16 years she has gone from city council member, to mayor, to governor. She knows the people.

Palin was vetted!

Another one of the major points of argument against the selection of Sarah Palin as Vice President has been the assumption that the McCain team didn’t properly vet the governor. It has since come out that this assumption is not true. McCain’s team did vet her.

ST. PAUL, MINN. (AP) – Sarah Palin’s path to the Republican ticket started with her name on a list _ and a team of some 25 people poring through public records searching for trouble spots without her knowledge. Then came the 70-question survey and a nearly three-hour interview.

The review officially ended Thursday, when John McCain asked the Alaska governor to be his running mate.

In the days since, Republicans and Democrats have privately questioned whether the Arizona senator chose the first-term governor without fully looking into her background. McCain’s campaign has vehemently defended the review.

Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr., the lawyer who conducted the review, told The Associated Press in an interview Monday that Palin underwent a “full and complete” examination before McCain chose her. Asked whether everything that came up as a possible red flag during the review already has been made public, Culvahouse said: “I think so. Yeah, I think so. Correct.”

Yesterday John McCain announced Alaskian Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. I’ve been spending the past 24 hours consuming as much information that I can find about her and I have been impressed. The news media keep saying that Palin is a “Game Changer” in this year’s presidential campaign – and I do agree. Before she was added to the Republican ticket I wasn’t sure if I could vote for McCain, now I’m 98% certain that I will be voting for McCain/Palin come November.

Here is the text from Palin’s speech:

Governor Sarah Palin: “And I thank you, Senator McCain and Mrs. McCain, for the confidence that you have placed in me. Senator, I am honored to be chosen as your running mate. I will be honored to serve next to the next president of the United States.

“I know that when Senator McCain gave me this opportunity, he had a short list of highly qualified men and women, and to have made that list at all — it was a privilege. And to have been chosen brings a great challenge. I know that it will demand the best that I have to give, and I promise nothing less.

“First, there are a few people whom I would like you to meet. I want to start with my husband, Todd. And Todd and I are actually celebrating our 20th anniversary today, and I promised him a little surprise for the anniversary present, and hopefully he knows that I did deliver.

“And then we have as — after my husband, who is a lifelong commercial fisherman, lifetime Alaskan — he’s a production operator. Todd is a production operator in the oil fields up on Alaska’s North Slope, and he’s a proud member of the United Steelworkers Union, and he’s a world champion snow machine racer. Todd and I met way back in high school, and I can tell you that he is still the man that I admire most in this world.

“Along the way, Todd and I have shared many blessings, and four out of five of them are here with us today. Our oldest son, Track, though, he’ll be following the presidential campaign from afar. On September 11th of last year, our son enlisted in the United States Army. Track now serves in an infantry brigade. And on September 11th, Track will deploy to Iraq in the service of his country. And Todd and I are so proud of him and of all the fine men and women serving the country in uniform.

“Next to Todd is our daughter Bristol; another daughter, Willow; our youngest daughter, Piper; and over in their arms is our son Trig, a beautiful baby boy. He was born just in April. His name is Trig Paxson Van Palin.

“Some of life’s greatest opportunities come unexpectedly, and this is certainly the case today. I never really set out to be involved in public affairs, much less to run for this office. My mom and dad both worked at the local elementary school. And my husband and I, we both grew up working with our hands.

“I was just your average ‘hockey mom’ in Alaska. We were busy raising our kids. I was serving as the team mom and coaching some basketball on the side. I got involved in the PTA and then was elected to the city council and then elected mayor of my hometown, where my agenda was to stop wasteful spending and cut property taxes and put the people first.

“I was then appointed ethics commissioner and chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, and when I found corruption there, I fought it hard and I held the offenders to account. Along with fellow reformers in the great state of Alaska, as governor, I’ve stood up to the old politics as usual, to the special interests, to the lobbyists, the Big Oil companies and the ‘good old boy’ network.

“When oil and gas prices went up so dramatically and the state revenues followed with that increase, I sent a large share of that revenue directly back to the people of Alaska — and we are now — we’re now embarking on a $40 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.

“I signed major ethics reforms, and I appointed both Democrats and independents to serve in my administration. And I’ve championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress thanks, but no thanks, on that “Bridge to Nowhere.” If our state wanted a bridge, I said, we’d build it ourselves.

“Well, it’s always, though, safer in politics to avoid risk, to just kind of go along with the status quo. But I didn’t get into government to do the safe and easy things. A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not why the ship is built. Politics isn’t just a game of competing interests and clashing parties. The people of America expect us to seek public office and to serve for the right reasons. And the right reason is to challenge the status quo and to serve the common good.

“Now, no one expects us to agree on everything, whether in Juneau or in Washington. But we are expected to govern with integrity and good will and clear convictions and a servant’s heart.

“Now, no leader in America has shown these qualities so clearly or presents so clear a threat to business as usual in Washington as Senator John S. McCain. This — this is a moment when principles and political independence matter a lot more than just the party line. And this is a man who has always been there to serve his country, not just his party.

“And this is a moment that requires resolve and toughness and strength of heart in the American president. And my running mate is a man who has shown those qualities in the darkest of places and in the service of his country. A colleague once said about Senator McCain: That man did things for this country that few people could go through; never forget that. And that speaker was former Senator John Glenn of Ohio. And John Glenn knows something about heroism.

“And I’m going to make sure nobody does forget that in his campaign. There is only one candidate who has truly fought for America, and that man is John McCain.

“This is a moment — this is a moment when great causes can be won and great threats overcome, depending on the judgment of our next president. In a dangerous world, it is John McCain who will lead America’s friends and allies in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

“It was John McCain who cautioned long ago about the harm that Russian aggression could do to Georgia and to other small Democratic neighbors and to the world oil markets.

“It was Senator McCain who refused to hedge his support for our troops in Iraq, regardless of the political costs. And you know what? As the mother of one of those troops and as the commander of Alaska’s National Guard, that’s the kind of man I want as our commander in chief.

“Profiles in courage, they can be hard to come by these days. You know, so often we just find them in books. But next week when we nominate John McCain for president, we’re putting one on the ballot!

“To serve as vice president beside such a man would be the privilege of a lifetime, and it’s fitting that this trust has been given to me 88 years almost to the day after the women of America first gained the right to vote.

“I think as well today of two other women who came before me in national elections. I can’t begin this great effort without honoring the achievements of Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, and, of course, Senator Hillary Clinton, who showed such determination and grace in her presidential campaign.

“It was rightly noted in Denver this week that Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America. But it turns out the women of America aren’t finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all.

“So for my part, the mission is clear. The next 67 days I’m going to take our campaign to every part of our country and our message of reform to every voter of every background, in every political party, or no party at all. If you want change in Washington, if you hope for a better America, then we’re asking for your vote on the 4th of November.

“My fellow Americans, come join our cause. Join our cause and help our country to elect a great man the next president of the United States. And I thank you, and I — God bless you, I say, and God bless America. Thank you.”

Fox News, CNN, among other various news agencies are reporting that my previously endorsed Fred Thompson has dropped out of the race. Fred was the best conservative candidate besides Duncan Hunter running for President on the Republican side of things. now that Fred is out of the race I have to endorse someone else.

As if this really means anything. I endorse Mitt Romney. Sure he may have changed his stances on issues, but at least now he’s on the right side of those issues. I believe America’s “Hope” is now possible with only Mitt Romney as president.

The Last Fred Says?

Fred08.com:

“Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people.”

Can we be honest to each other? This is just between me, blog writer, and you blog reader. Does anyone else think that our President should stop making his political base upset with dumb decisions. There was that whole the Anti-Christ supreme court justice nominee in Harriett Miers that I certainly didn’t agree with. Perhaps you saw some qualities in her that made you feel comfortable, like the color of her hair? I saw nothing of interest in her. When someone is nominated to the bench they should have at least a record for every breakfast and dinner eaten in the last 15 years.

 And now we have this whole selling our ports to some "friendly" middle eastern country. Drudge has this posted right now,

He said he would veto any legislation to hold up deal and warned the United States was sending 'mixed signals' by going after a company from the Middle East when nothing was said when a British company was in charge... Lawmakers, he said, must 'step up and explain why a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard.' Bush was very forceful when he delivered the statement... 'I don't view it as a political fight,' Bush said

Whew, Mr. President you have made your point. Forgive me for I have sinned. I discriminated against a country, who by they way helped fund the attacks of September 11th. I mean there were only 3,000 lives lost in that event. When we were enemies against England we lost far more Americans. Well, they weren’t Americans yet, but you understand what I’m saying.  Thank you, Mr. President for setting me straight. Now can you please stop portraying the oil-guzzling, big spending, war mongering idiot that the liberals have up to this point wrongly painted? What are we doing allowing The United Arab Emirates to control our ports?

Weasels, I’m a few days late to comment on the whole situation, but I thought I should at least chime in.

Tags: President Bush, UAE, Ports, Common Sense

I spy approval ratings talk:

The White House has ratcheted up its war. Not the war in Iraq, but the war to defend the war – from its origins to President Bush’s determination to see the project through to conclusion.

After Tuesday’s rebuke from a bipartisan majority of senators, who proclaimed that 2006 should be a year of “significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty” and more public reports of progress, the White House has come back swinging – at its Democratic critics.

With the November 2006 congressional elections already looming large, the White House seems determined to frame the growing public unhappiness with the Iraq war as a partisan matter. On Wednesday, both Bush and Vice President Cheney slammed Democratic senators for questioning the use of prewar intelligence. Mr. Cheney accused Democratic critics of “making a play for political advantage in the middle of a war.”

But the polling data indicates that Bush’s problem is bigger than just Democrats: His job approval ratings are now solidly below 40 percent in major polls, a sign that he is nearly down to his core GOP support and has lost the independent voters. Increasingly, he appears headed for trouble with elected members of his own party, as they eye their own ’06 prospects.

Stung over Iraq, White House takes offensive

I spy pre-war lies talk:

Five senior officials from Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, said in interviews with the LOS ANGELES TIMES that they warned U.S. intelligence authorities that the source, an Iraqi defector codenamed Curveball, never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so.

According to the Germans, President Bush mischaracterized Curveball’s information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also misstated Curveball’s claims in his pre-war presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, the Germans said.

Curveball’s German handlers for the last six years said his information was often vague, mostly second-hand and impossible to confirm.

“This was not substantial evidence,” said a senior German intelligence official. “We made clear we could not verify the things he said.”

The German authorities, speaking about the case for the first time, also said that their informant suffered from emotional and mental problems. “He is not a stable, psychologically stable guy,” said a BND official who supervised the case. “He is not a completely normal person,” agreed a BND analyst.

DRUDGE REPORT FLASH 2005®