Public in foul mood

The country is involved in an illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq and an equally unacceptable and useless war in Afghanistan. Death tolls for civilians have been immense. The US is losing trillions in wealth as the real estate market and banks collapse. Jobs have bled to third world countries, where workers are being exploited and worse. Centuries old civil rights protections are shredded. The Constitution is treated as an inconvenience. What are the 16 percent who think we are headed in right direction basing this thought on? We are in a mess of historical proportions. We have squandered our heritage. We have spoiled our good names. We should be ashamed of ourselves, of our government--all three branches, or our political parties, of our false sense of comfort, of our smugness, of our complacency, of our indecency, of our collective lack of courage and will. No, our direction is straight down.

Keep it quiet,Let;s not balance the news let;s slant It.

A new low of 18 percent said they were happy with Congress, down 5 percentage points from last month.

Random thoughts...

Oil prices are down $6/barrel for less than a day and the AP announces they "plummet". Yeah, to yesterday's high. WTF! A plummet in oil prices would be lovely, but let's call $50 a plummet, not 6 bucks!

How many companies are we bailing out now? Where is all this money coming from? Hmm... who could be supplying all this capital to these companies?

Does anyone really still think this is about supply and demand?

I thought the guiding principle in a free-market (even a market) economy, was that the losers be allowed to be replaced by new winners. What are we doing, ensuring the survival of the weakest? Survival of the richest, the oldest, what?!

Still, some people around this site continue to argue that the economy is just fine, and Bush is doing a bang up job! There's no recession, everything is great! All I have is once question, where can I get me one of them' thar' bail outs like the big boys get? What kind of bail out do you think the oil boys will get when it really does plummet?

Who's going to bail my ass out?

Jel - exactly what do you expect Congress to do? The Democrats have a ONE vote majority in the senate. They can't pull up their pants without an ok from Bush. They can't override vetoes, they can't pass any laws, heck, they can't even bring forward an issue for discussion without an ok from the Right. Do you not get that Congress is completely impotent without a decisive majority? Add to that the fact that their one vote swing comes from a guy (Lieberman) who is basically a conservative on all the most pressing issues (like the wars).

Hey Disgusted - Your cynicism is worse than apathy. I'm not optimistic either, but you're over the top. First of all, how can you call Afghanistan "unacceptable and useless" when the former regime there harbored and fostered terrorism? If anything, the mess in Iraq has diverted too many resources away from our crucial fight in Afghanistan.

Also, jobs have not "bled to third world countries," it's been happening intentionally, indeed systemically, for thirty years. I agree that we are in a "mess of historic proportions" but people still care about this country, and America is so important in terms of World History, I don't see how we've abandoned our heritage. And who cares about our good name as long as Americans our confident in our government? It's the crisis in confidence (Schlesinger, Jr.) that matters, not our good name.

wow. a distinction between conservatives and republicans. if only the rest of the media were capable of the same. interchangeable use of distinct words like Democrat/liberal/left-wing, etc. is what makes so much political writing completely meaningless.

jeff jacoby, i welcome your comments.

I feel a big reason for the dissatisfaction with Congress is the failure of the Democratic majority to work effectively against the wishes of Bush and Cheney.

I'm amazed that his approval rating is so high - who on earth are these 16 percent, and what rock have they been living under for the last 8 years?

I thunk about this for a whle and it us unamerican to not support the president. he is the commander in chief of all americans and we need to support the troops by supporting our president. If we don't do this then the liberals will let the terorists win and we don't want to go back to clinton's days. they were awful.

I have to wonder who those 28% are that are happy with Bush. Must live in a vacuum.

I hear they have a show about George W. Bush on the Discovery Channel's series "Natural Disasters".

Washington has failed the American people on a grand scale these last 4 to 5 years. President Bush handed out key posts in his Administration to "incompetent friends" as opposed to truly qualified individuals. This observation is especially so as regards FEMA and even now New Orleans is still trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina. All in all between the Democrats longing to turn the country into some kind of "Green Utopia" and the White House putting us into unnecessary military adventures in Iraq that have cost us billions of dollars we as Americans have NOT been well served by our Government. Senator Obama has as his mantra the word CHANGE. The real change we apparently need in November is to not only change the resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue but numerous incumbent residents on Capitol Hill!

The only puzzle is why it has taken the public so long to see what an unbelievable mess we are in. Who ever is the next president is going to have a very difficult time keeping things from getting even worse. Heaven knows why they want the job.

Disgusted you got a point there. I bet many people are nodding along.

So now what are you going to do about it?

But what can we do? If we take to the streets, we will be jailed. Seems we are living in a pure dictatorship and Congress is too scared to do anything. They must know so much more than we do.