Scripps News thinks that America is crawling with conspiracy theorists:

Nearly two-thirds of Americans think it is possible that some federal officials had specific warnings of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, but chose to ignore those warnings, according to a Scripps Howard News Service/Ohio University poll.

But wait, if it really did happen, it’s not a conspiracy theory, is it?

The Carpetbagger points out that this actually describes two different points of view: one, that Team Bush allowed 9/11 to happen because it fit conveniently into their nation-building agenda; and two, they allowed it to happen because… they were so clueless that they ignored warnings about it just as they ignored warnings on everything else. In scenario 1, they’re evil, and in scenario 2, they’re just incompetent.

So which is it? Surely they’re not so evil as to permit Americans to die so they can have their way. Oh, wait, they are. But no one knows if that’s what they were thinking, and the incompetence theory assumes less. So what it comes down to is: which is greater, Team Bush’s capacity for evil, or their capacity for incompetence?

Damn. Put it like that, and you could go back and forth all day.

John Howard lost his seat in Parliament.

Ha.

Mal Brough lost his seat in Parliament.

Heh heh heh.

Who else do I detest?

This has been a strange election. It’s been clear for weeks that Rudd would be the new Prime Minister, but I haven’t been able to figure out why. John Howard clearly has always been an odious man with ruinous policies, but which one of his faults undid him in the eyes of the Australian electorate? Was it:

• the nasty campaign?
• ceaseless toadying with George Bush?
• getting Australia into Iraq?
• cutting funding to Australian universities?
• throwing asylum-seekers in jail and claiming they’d thrown their children overboard?
• using the race card to attract One Nation voters and split the electorate?
• his refusal to sign Kyoto and his foot-dragging on climate change?
• his leanings toward nuclear power?
• the GST?
• undermining the redeveloping autonomy of indigenous Australians?
• and refusing to say ‘sorry’?

Not for the low-information Australian voters I walk among. Even the controversial IR laws weren’t enough to register on their radar. And Howard’s term has been marked by largely sane monetary policy. Why the revolution?

When I asked, people would say something like, ‘Well, it’s time for a change.’ ‘He’s been in for a long time, and it’s time for someone else.’ Simple voter fatigue.

And so Australia shrugged, and sent Howard packing.

West Australia, I know your results are tallied last, and even if you elect all Liberal Party candidates, it won’t make any difference. But I’ll be very disappointed.

Thanksgiving isn’t a holiday in Australia, but I do it anyway. It’s great because the stores are open, it’s warm outside, and there’s no football. Bit hot for cooking though.

I’m thankful that Labor is looking to win the election this weekend. Saturday night will find me glued to the TV, and perhaps dancing on the couch as we give the mean little man from Earlwood the boot.

Bush at 26% approval. He has now broken through the Crazification Barrier and polled lower than the number of absolutely crazy people that will always be present in any population.

Now here’s the question: if you or I or anyone else were to start acting like Bush, siding with Bush, agreeing with Bush on the vital issues of the day, what would happen to their popularity? Would it go up, do you think? Or would it plummet?

Well, Congress has given in to Bush on lots of issues lately, including war funding for Iraq and abstinence-only sex education (to name two off the top of my head). Let’s see what happens.

The percentage of Americans with a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress is at 14%, the lowest in Gallup’s history of this measure — and the lowest of any of the 16 institutions tested in this year’s Confidence in Institutions survey. It is also one of the lowest confidence ratings for any institution tested over the last three decades.

I know America’s a nation of Congress-haters, but this is something else. Americans sent Democrats to Congress to

a) be Democrats, and
b) counteract this insane president.

Instead, they’re refusing to stand up for Democratic values, and fulfilling every stereotype about ‘finger-in-the-wind’ wimpy politicians. It is intensely frustrating, even from where I’m sitting. And the polls are showing this frustration.

In one of his special comments, Keith Olbermann said

Our politics… is now about the answer to one briefly-worded question.
Mr. Bush has failed.
Mr. Warner has failed.
Mr. Reid has failed.
So.
Who among us will stop this war—this War of Lies?
To he or she, fall the figurative keys to the nation.
To all the others—presidents and majority leaders and candidates and rank-and-file Congressmen and Senators of either party—there is only blame… for this shameful, and bi-partisan, betrayal.

He was right.

Now what would it take to make it even lower and send Bush’s popularity to, say, four? Surprisingly, the answer is not ‘for Bush to screw up even more’. As if that were possible. No, for year after year we watched Monkey-Boy’s hijinks while his popularity remained improbably high.

But Bush’s popularity among the faithful was never about Bush himself, or his actions. It was more how they ‘felt’ about Bush the Symbol. As long as he remained the rallying point, as long as he represented their feelings of self-worth, as long as they invested themselves in him and his ideology, those numbers were always going to stay high. And since an authoritarian cult of personality abhors a vacuum, stay high the numbers would until a new Saviour could appear — a Republican the public could like. Yeah. Good luck. Who would that be? Cheney? Giuliani? Ha.

But just as soon as someone comes along in which the faithful can invest their sense of self, the Bush cult will utterly collapse, and we’ll see approval ratings in the low teens. The groundwork is already being laid; you’ll be hearing the ‘Bush is not a True Scotsman’ from now until November 2008. Well done, keyboard konservatives. Keep it up. He will come.