Voters unhappy with Bush; Congress
 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Most U.S. voters think the country is on the wrong track and remain deeply unhappy with President George W. Bush and Congress, but still feel good about their finances and optimistic about the future, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

"Americans feel their government is not accomplishing the people's business," Zogby said. "They feel the system is seriously broken."

In the national survey of 1,012 likely voters, taken July 12 through July 14, about 66 percent said Bush had done only a fair or poor job as president, with 34 percent ranking his performance as excellent or good.

But the marks for Congress, mired in gridlock over a series of partisan political battles after Democrats took power in the 2006 elections, continued to drop.

While 83 percent said Congress was doing a fair or poor job, just 14 percent rated it excellent or good. Last October, in its final days, the Republican-led Congress earned ratings of excellent or good from 23 percent of voters.

"There is a growing sense that people voted for change in 2006 and they aren't getting it," Zogby said.

Several years of headlines about possible torture of U.S. detainees, treatment of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center and international anger over the Iraq war has not dented the pride of Americans.
About two-thirds of the likely voters surveyed said they were "very" proud of the United States, with 22 percent saying they were "fairly" proud and 8 percent saying they were not very proud of their country.

I heard about this same report in 1846. Weird.

Might as well say it here: the recent action of Senate Democrats gave aid and comfort to an enemy, and in a time of war. That is the Constitution's definition of treason, Article III, Section 3. No wonder I stay ticked at the Democratic senior leadership. No wonder I like the Republicans for not doing this.

UG, you are not only giving aid and comfort to the enemy, but ways and means for them to justify their slaughter of innocents and recruit more terrorists.

What's the Constitution's definition of war?

UT, it doesn't have one. It allocates to the Legislative Branch the power of declaring a state of war, and to the Executive the power of command in chief of the military forces prosecuting that war. It does not confine the power to actually make war to either party -- albeit no one would trust the Legislative Branch to prosecute a war effectively. This has produced, naturally enough, wrangling between Legislative and Executive in every Presidential term of office that included a conflict from the opening of the nineteenth century onward. This dance goes back a long time in our country's history.

What can be said is that nobody responsible has ever charged a President with a crime for his trying to win a fight. Certain irresponsible people would like to try it now, but I can only imagine why they are so toxically motivated to lose a war to a bunch of un-democrat religious bigots who would as cheerfully behead these aiders-and-abetters as they would the more resistant sorts like me.

I am not giving aid and comfort to the enemy, Bruce. I want to win; you don't. You may be able to lie to yourself, but I am immune to your kind of supine, let the shitbags win and maybe they'll like us, kind of (hee hee) thinking. Those who would oppress us cease it immediately the 7.62mm slug transects their brains.

Let the shitbags win? Since they haven't in 4 years, there's not much chance the shitbags can win before they vacate the White house.

War is peace?

I'm really starting to doubt Orwell...

You mean the Executive branch.

So if it hasn't done that, is it war?

No. The legislative branch. Article 1 Section 8.

says, in part...

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a navy;

Ah yes that's right, I was fast-fingerin'.

So if it hasn't done that, is it war?

It is quacking like a duck.

Griff got in ahead of me -- I went off to make the scene of the Deathly Hallows midnight-plus-one -- hey, as I type we just looked under the front doormat and there's our copy; UPS must not be ringing doorbells today to speed their operation, so there's :) :) in our house -- but yeah, Article I Section 8-11. Section 8 enumerates the Constitutional powers of Congress. It does NOT state that Congress has the sole power to call out the troops; indeed it doesn't seem to give it such power at all. Calling up the troops really seems much more directly related to the Commander In Chief anyway.

America has been in about a hundred and fifty shootin' conflicts, and if gunfire is quacks, well, they'll certainly do. Only five of these were Congressionally declared. Undeclared conflicts started almost immediately with an undeclared naval war with France -- the Quasi-War with France, 1797-1800, over treaty provisions that had come into what must have been regarded as very unfortunate conflict. After a couple of years, negotiation and claims adjustment, basically, settled things. Some of them -- a few claims continued unsettled into the twentieth century. I'm quite surprised to read here in the National Archives' Prologue Magazine that this ruckus led directly to the Louisiana Purchase as an integral part of trying to get matters settled.

Would that include the Korean War?