approves of Bush. You have to remember that Idaho and Utah are heavily Mormon, and the Mormon church is essentially Republican. We also have one certified idiot senator, and the other one sold out to Texas a long time ago. In a state that votes Republican reliably, the only vote that counts is in the primaries. Any Republican that strays into anti-Bush territory will have a primary challenger, funded by Texas oil money, who will prove that the incumbent is at best a liberal and maybe a communist, and is certainly pro-choice and loves queers. The other result of being so Republican is that the Congressional delegation does not have to deliver much pork to the state. So the net reult is that being so Republican works against the interests of the average citizen. But it is a lovely place to live. Within an hour or so of our house we can be in wilderness where there is no one else for miles. And the more liberal denizens are the few, the proud, etc....

Well, a majority of those polled in the smallest state in the Union does not mean much. Consider who they elect for representation and it is understandable.

The last president who put so much faith in polls, well, put us in the mess we are in now.

Here's an odd coincidence between Bush's approval (according to the article) and gasoline prices. Take a look at the other three states - Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho:

http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx

Yeah, "Lies, damn lies, and statistics" and all that, but one can't help but wonder...

"The last president who put so much faith in polls, well, put us in the mess we are in now.

-- AC"

I'm not sure which president that was, but the one who's in office now is the one who cut counter-terror funding 60 percent his first year in office, shrugged off the August warnings of impending terror actions, and the took us to war with a country that not only had nothing to do with the terror attacks, but, because of the dictator his daddy had formerly favored, was actually a no-man's land for terrorists.

By contrast, Bill Clinton and Janet Reno, after the 1993 truck bombing of the garage at the World Trade Center, caught and imprisoned the perpetrators, and then broke up a reported plot to bomb bridges and tunnels into Manhattan, broke up a reported plot to bomb the Los Angeles airport, and broke up a reported plot to blow up the Seattlke Space Needle.

Between that and the $1.50/gallon gasoline, I'd love for us to be in THAT kind of a mess.

(Any mention of Janet Reno, I know, brings forth people frothing about the siege at Waco, even though the investigation that led to the tragic siege was started by the first Bush administration, in 1992)

but I guess it's still all Bill Clinton's fault.

Accepting responsiblity is just not an option for this president.

"Only 27 percent of those polled say they think 'things in this country are going in the right direction.'"

"Get America Back on Track" has been my suggested slogan for the Dems for half a year now. With one of the most widely-reported and regularly-asked (and thus universally recognized) of polling questions being the "right track / wrong track" one (it's more frequently reported w/that wording), it's well-fertilized ground, just waiting for the seeds to be planted -- a pre-positioned meme already working on our behalf, and begging to be further exploited.

And (IMHO of course) it beats the pants off of "Together we can do better" or whatever pablum it was came out of the big Dem confab last fall (as would, I think, just about anything this side of "Democrats -- we couldn't possibly be any WORSE, now, could we?" -- are there really NO salespeople at all among the Dems?).

But I've been dropping the suggestion onto various blogs for a while to no effect -- so either just one voice isn't enough, or nobody agrees with me & my suggestion bites (or possibly both of course). But if anyone does think this deserves promotion, feel free to send the suggestion along in any directions you think might help.

WE THE PEOPLE are the "deciders"!!

The poll numbers are fine and dandy, but even if they hold until November, what assurances do Americans have that Diebold voting machines run by Republican operatives won't steal the election, like thet did in '00 and '04?

When Bush used the word "decider" to describe himself, instead of the more common (but frankly more cumbersome) "decision-maker," I chuckled not because I thought "decider" wasn't a word (it is, and the President used it correctly), but because I only ever hear the term in standard English on the BBC when sports reporters use the word to mean a decisive match or cricket test. So to my ears, it was as if Bush was describing himself as a game to be played--in fact, DECIDED--by OTHERS: effectively the opposite of what he meant.