Like many of you, I witnessed the Press Briefing by Bush earlier in the week.
Unlike many of you, I didn't see an alcoholic or a drug abuser. I saw a tired, jaded man who has lost all confidence. A man who senses that his place in history will be marked by his recklessness in sending the sons and daughters of his country to die in an unjust foreign war whilst the poor and the needy at home were neglected and ignored.
He is man whose time in office will be remembered only for lies and corruption and the giving to the rich whilst squandering the wealth that has mortgaged the future prosperity of forthcoming generations and has turned a proud nation into one disdained by all others.
He is a man who can no longer call on the illusion of a belief in his own destiny and who can no longer hear whatever source of inspiration, whether perceived as Divine or otherwise, that wrongly led him to embark on his miserable journey to inevitable political and personal collapse. It was all there in the hunched figure gripping the podium, a mental weariness showing on his face and a slurred fatigue displayed in his voice.
He is a man beginning to perceive that the next three years will be a period of increasing isolation and contempt by others whilst he remains trapped in serving out his term.
Around him, the acolytes and toadies and compromisers and opportunists are beginning to depart in their droves, abandoning this shambles of a once arrogant figure. Desperately, he hangs on to those few close to him who, promoted beyond their humble reach, squint in the growing darkness and clutch on to his dissolving presence as the only person to whom they can turn.
Yet, like badly injured animals, they can lash out dangerously and blindly. The potential for damage to the structure of United States society is a real and present threat
Yesterday, I was glued to C-Span watching the Senate debate the $440 billion military spending bill. I watched a terrified Republican Party being reminded by Democratic speaker after Democratic speaker forewarning about the hidden costs of the two wars in which the US is engaged, of the funding that was not there for its disabled and injured veterans returning from war.
I saw Senator McCain read out a dramatic letter from Colin Powell supporting the call for the United States to try and re-assert a moral basis for how it conducts war, despite the feeble attempts of the White House to block what it perceives as a limitation on the ability of the President to act.
The report is flagged up by AP News today:
Senate Bill Would Impose Restrictions on Treatment of Prisoners
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By Liz Sidoti Associated Press Writer
Published: Oct 6, 2005
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate faces a confrontation with the House over a $440 billion military spending bill that, despite White House opposition, would impose restrictions on the treatment of terrorism suspects.
Delivering a rare wartime slap at Pentagon authority and President Bush, the GOP-controlled Senate voted 90-9 on Wednesday to back an amendment that would prohibit the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" against anyone in U.S. government custody, regardless of where they are held.
Sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the proposal also would require all service members to follow procedures in the Army Field Manual when they detain and interrogate terrorism suspects.
"This amendment strives to establish uniform standards for the interrogation of prisoners and detainees as a means for helping ensure our service men and women are well trained, well briefed, knowledgeable of their legal, professional and moral duties and obligations," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.
The Senate was expected to vote on the overall spending bill by week's end. The House-approved version of it does not include the detainee provision. It is unclear how much support the measure has in the GOP-run House.
However, Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense, who supports the measure, could prove a powerful ally when House and Senate negotiators meet to reconcile differences in their bills.
And the House could face immense pressure after such a mandate by the Senate. All but nine Republicans voted in favor of the legislation.
The same source reveals that even big business is beginning to jump ship as it recognises the excesses of the Bush Administration:
Major Business Groups Split With Bush Administration Over Patriot Act
By Michael J. Sniffen Associated Press Writer
Published: Oct 6, 2005
WASHINGTON (AP) - Some of the nation's most powerful business groups are splitting with the Bush administration over whether to restrict the anti-terror USA Patriot Act.
The business groups complained to Congress on Wednesday that the Patriot Act makes it too easy for the government to get confidential business records. That put them at odds with one of President Bush's top priorities - the unfettered extension of the law passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In the first organized criticism of the act from the business sector, these groups endorsed amendments that would require investigators to say how the information they seek is linked to individual suspected terrorists or spies, and would allow businesses to challenge the requests in courts and to speak publicly about those requests.
Their views could make a difference as Congress heads toward a vote on whether to extend some controversial provisions of the act that expire at the end of the year.
"Confidential files - records about our customers or our employees, as well as our trade secrets and other proprietary information - can too easily be obtained and disseminated under investigative powers expanded by the Patriot Act," six business groups wrote in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa. "These new powers lack sufficient checks and balances."
Some of the most powerful lobbying groups in town signed the letter. It endorsed amendments to restrict the record-gathering powers of federal agents, including some changes already in the Senate's - but not the House's - version of the Patriot Act extension bill and one change that is in neither bill.
In their way, these two news item show the disintegration more powerfully than the Plame Affair, or the Meirs nomination row or the Delay indictment.
Meanwhile, as the budget deficit grows and the economic indicators weaken, overseas support also begins to disintegrate according to this AP report:
Dollar Falls in Asian Trading Ahead of Likely Dismal U.S. Jobs Data
Published: Oct 6, 2005
TOKYO (AP) - The dollar fell in Asian trading Thursday ahead of U.S. employment figures that are expected to show big job losses after recent Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
The dollar bought 113.85 yen in Tokyo midafternoon, inching up 0.07 yen from late Wednesday but below the 113.95 yen in bought later that day in New York.
The euro rose to $1.2047 from $1.1954 late Wednesday amid speculation that European Central Bank policy-makers meeting later in the day may intensify warnings about inflation, traders said.
The ECB is expected to keep interest rates on hold at 2 percent, but hawkish remarks from its members could raise speculation it may start tightening credit earlier than market expectations, they said.
The dollar fluctuated against the yen in Asian trading. The dollar's drop was largely due to pessimism about the U.S. jobs data to be released Friday and cautious trading ahead of the upcoming three-day weekend both in the United States and Japan.
"It's too early to say that the dollar's bullish trend has already turned around," said Kenji Kobayashi, senior foreign exchange manager at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi in Tokyo. "The euro did go up but the move was exaggerated by thin market conditions."
U.S. nonfarm payrolls data are forecast to show a loss of 175,000 jobs in September after the economy added 169,000 jobs in August, according to economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires.
As policy after policy of this Administration destroys the support that voted it into office, it is wildly seeking desperate measures to try and recover the situation. It is this which makes it dangerous. Driven by a need to try and display fiscal responsibility, more and more proposals will threaten vital government programmes - especially for the poor who will be hit this winter as never before by increases in such basic human necessities as the need to keep warm.
Congress Seeks to Slash Food Aid for Poor, Conservation
By Libby Quaid Associated Press Writer
Published: Oct 6, 2005
WASHINGTON (AP) - Democrats are fighting attempts to make cuts in food stamps and conservation programs at a time when people are coping with hurricanes and drought.
"Right now the difference between life and death for many Americans is the food stamp program," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. "We should not, we cannot, cut the very nutritional programs that are literally saving lives."
A Republican plan to cut agriculture spending by $3 billion was scheduled for a vote Thursday in the Senate Agriculture Committee. But a spokesman for the panel's chairman, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., said late Wednesday that the vote was being put off indefinitely. He didn't offer a reason.
The bill by Chambliss would cut food programs for the poor by $574 million and conservation programs and farm payments by more than $1 billion each.
Payments to farmers would fall by $1.145 billion over five years. Still, it is much less severe than what President Bush had proposed. He sought a 5 percent reduction in payments, plus a far-reaching plan for capping payments that would cut billions more dollars from subsidies collected by large farm operations.
Chambliss intended to propose aid for farmers battered by hurricanes and drought in the coming weeks, after damage is fully assessed, spokesman Keith Williams said Wednesday.
The budget-cutting plan faces opposition from Democrats and others.
"This proposal is an unconscionable slap in the face at America's poor," said Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, the senior Democrat on the committee.
For the Democratic Party what is happening may provide exhilirating justification of their forewarning to the American people. One may see less and less of the compromises that have so angered the progressive left of its party.
Yet the time might come when stern opposition needs to give way to some form of concensus to enable the last years of this blighted administration to be seen out. A concensus not borne out of political maneuvering but out of a desperate need to restore a national unity against the failures and the worst ravages of the policies of Bush and the Republicans. No political party will want to inherit a nation on its knees