Bush's national poll numbers are bad enough for him, but if you want to get a sense of just how bad he's doing these days, check out Survey USA's state-by-state breakdown of the president's approval ratings. Right now, there are only six states where the president's approval rating is above 50%. (And it'll come as no surprise to hear that these six states are the awesome, incredibly progressive states of Utah, Idaho, Alabama, Wyoming, Nebraska and Oklahoma.)
What's really stunning is how low Bush's popularity has sunk in some of the states he won in the last election. He's already below the 40% approval mark in Colorado, Missouri, and Iowa. In the über-battleground state of Ohio, where the national GOP's problems are being reinforced by a state-level meltdown, he's down to a pathetic 37%. Ouch.
Notably, all of these polls were done February 10-12, before Dick Cheney shot a 78-year-old man in the face and, most importantly, before the president announced we'd be turning over port security to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates. If the administration keeps up this pace, the president's approval ratings could soon be down there with pedophiles and telemarketers in every single state of the Union.
Maybe he will unite the nation, after all.
15 comments:
Remember what Jesus said, Onanite -- let he with a free hand cast the first stone.
On a serious note, it is interesting watching the entire party break with Bush over the port security thing. If you thought conservatives were freaking out over border security with Mexico, this is going to cause seizures.
Pass the popcorn.
Hoo-ha!
I won't get into the polling details, but Survey USA has an excellent track record, and I'm inclined to believe they still know what they're doing here.
My opposition to the UAE handling of our port security has nothing to do with race. My opposition is based on the fact that this is a company that's owned by a foreign government, which raises all kinds of national security problems. More important, this is a foreign government with a troubling history of supporting terrorist states like the Taliban in Afghanistan, facilitating al-Qaeda's funding, and overseeing the transfer of nuclear components to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
I don't care what color the people of such a country are, but I don't want them in charge of the security at the ports here around NYC and I don't want them overseeing 40% of our military shipments, which come out of Philly.
And this isn't a knee-jerk partisan reaction, Joe. There's been an across-the-board condemnation of this from all corners. Even congressional Republicans have been vocal in condemning this, all the way up to longtime Bush loyalists like Hastert and Frist.
Lou Dobbs is about to have kittens over this, by the way.
From all I've read, it's owned (perhaps just partially) by the UAE government itself. That's a big difference from the privately-owned UK-based company that used to do it.
But personally, I don't think we should be letting any foreign company -- private or government-owned -- control our port security or border security. I don't care how "good" an ally they are -- England, Canada, Japan, Israel, whoever -- there are some things we should do ourselves.
I didn't realize how bad the UAE had been either, Joe. I mean, one of just three countries in the world who recognized the Taliban? WTF?
I'm with Otto Man on the illogic of foreign security for U.S. ports no matter who the country is. And I'll take it one step further...why is it privatized at all? (Humor me). Seriously, how exactly does introducing a profit motive possibly enhance security? Especially with the penchant for strict regulation and oversight of private industry these motherfuckers in power have.
How long til the CEO of a private company in charge of our security is doing a perp walk Ken Lay-style? Or overcharging ala Halliburton?
What's next rent-a-cops at border crossings? Blackwater SOFs instead of Capitol Police?
This story is an outrage from front to back, and the news that it was handled by a British company wasn't exaclty a highlight for me.
Good point, Furious.
The TSA employees that screen people at the airports are paid minimum wage. Basically, it's staffed with people whose only other option was working at McDonald's.
I sleep the sleep of angels knowing that....
well - except for the fact that gov't oversight/administration would all but guarantee that the policies and duties would be bogged down by red tape and donut eating bullshit - I do agree, however, that allowing a foreign entity handle security is asinine, save for Israel, who have proven themselves to be right honorable bastards who get off of making life miserable for everyone and demanding each person traversing customs/border security undergo an anal cavity search -- so I say, award the contract to the Israelis and let the fun begin!
Seriously, how exactly does introducing a profit motive possibly enhance security?
What he said. Seriously, I struggle to think of a better real-world example of a "public good" which is, wait for it, best provided by the public, i.e. the Government.
As far as TSA goes, a couple years ago, at the nadir of a job search, I took the tests to become a screener. It was actually fairly rigorous. Personality tests, IQ tests, security screen, and a fairly challenging simulation of x-rayed baggage. And that was just the initial testing. Luckily another option besides McDonald's came through for me, and I never finished the process.
Oddly enough the pay was not that much worse than my current job (also public sector), I believe it was going to be around $17/hr.
I would have been a 36 year old college-graduate TSA agent, and I like to think Iw ould have done a good job as long as I was there. My aunt was a flight attendant for thirty years and got laid off a few years ago, she is a TSA agent in Syracuse, and I'm sure she knows her way around the airport/airline business...
I guess what I'm saying is that you never know who is going to be staffing these positions based solely on anecdotal evidence. I'm sure there are plenty of degenerates staring blankly at screens around the country, but having a private company handle the same task does nothing to improve the process or quality.
Furious, that's unfair. My weak third-hand anecdotes are no match for your actual experience with the TSA.
Thanks for setting me straight. Flying out of Newark all the time must've given me a skewed slant on this.
How about this article that explains how Rumsfield was on the board that okayed the deal, but was unaware that it was going down. Something is rotten in Denmark and it ain't the inflammatory religious illustrations.
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/02/21/rumsfeld-not-consulted/
What I really don't understand is why it is so fashionable to bash a federalized or state-run port security system. Obviously the Republicans would privatize everything if they could, and perhaps the Dems would want to over-Unionize everything on the other side. But to me, having the DHS run ports makes complete sense.
I've seen accounts that claim this contract is operational aspects of port operation only and the USCG runs the actual security. Coast Guard guys tooling around in the harbor is not security, and I hope that's not what they mean. The threat isn't al queda frogmen attaching bombs to the hulls of ships, its smuggling stuff into the country in containers. A Coast Guard cutter does jack shit about that. This isn't boarding a yacht and searching for drugs, these are huge ships that are essentally miles-long trains at sea.
The security issue here, to me, is inspections first and foremost. We need to inspect more than 5% of the containers. And it makes no sense to have a firm that could potentially be inspecting (or controlling) a container at both ends of its journey running our security.
Face facts. The worst case scenario is a nuclear device entering NY/NJ harbor on a boat. It will likely come from the Middle East. If a Dubai-based company is in charge of the ports at both ends, the potential for corruption and resultant disaster is overwhelming. I cannot accept anything as assurance on this. It's got nothing to do with racism, it's purely based on logic.
And the Bush decision, and defense thereof, seems clearly based on everything but.
Welcome aboard, Jeff. For what it's worth, all the bloggers here at LLatPoN are Southerners ourselves, either by the grace of God or the circumstances of current residence, so please take our snark in stride. (As you graciously seem to have done.)
The geographic spread of Bush's lingering support is telling, though. It's coming from the people who have the least likelihood of paying the price for his bungling in national security. The nuke that slips in through our pathetic port security is going to hit NYC or L.A., and not Boaz, Alabama, or Enid, Oklahoma.
Man am I clueless about how port security works! I definitely don't like allowing another country's government to be involved in our port security, though. However, I wouldn't necessarily trust an American company to be any better than a foreign one; for instance, the UK co. that had been doing security for us is way preferrable to, say, Halliburton or Bechtel.
I think having a private company do it would be okay, as long as they were regulated up the anchor hole by our gov't. No bull-plop sweetheart backroom deals worked out by the Abramoffs of the world.
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