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Tom Tomorrow predicts the future.

February, 2009: Facing investigations into dozens of scandals, former president George W. Bush turns state’s evidence. He enters the federal witness protection program and is assigned a new identity as manager of a big-box home improvement store…

… and with Dubya’s executive experience, it’s all downhill from there.

(In an older cartoon, Mr. Tomorrow looks at the real cost of the War in Iraq. It’s not very funny.)

Via Eschaton, here, in pictures, is one view of the Bush Legacy.

It should be noted that Bush is still in office. I’m sure there’s lots more legacy to come.

Josh Marshall says Obama doesn’t really have a problem with “hard-working people” — you know, white people. But he does have a problem in Appalachia:

There’s been a lot of talk in this campaign about Barack Obama’s problem with working class white voters or rural voters. But these claims are both inaccurate because they are incomplete. You can look at states like Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states and see the different numbers and they are all explained by one basic fact. Obama’s problem isn’t with white working class voters or rural voters. It’s Appalachia. That explains why Obama had a difficult time in Ohio and Pennsylvania and why he’s getting crushed in West Virginia and Kentucky.

If it were just a matter of rural voters or the white working class, the pattern would show up in other regions. But by and large it does not.

In so many words, Pennsylvania and Ohio have big chunks of Appalachia within their borders. But those regions are heavily offset by non-Appalachian sections that are cultural and demographically distinct. West Virginia is 100% Appalachian. If you look at southeastern Ohio or the middle chunk of Pennsylvania, Obama did about the same as he’s doing tonight in West Virginia.

Josh includes maps of Appalachia and of areas where Hillary Clinton has done especially well, and the fit is pretty impressive.

Each of these regions was fiercely anti-Slavery. And most ended up raising regiments that fought in the Union Army. But they were as anti-slave as they were anti-slavery, both of which they viewed as the lynchpins of the aristocratic and inegalitarian society they loathed. It was a society that was both more violent and more self-reliant.

This is history. But it shapes the region.

The region is overwhelmingly populated by the same demographic groups who have been Clinton’s strongest supporters, and Josh writes “it’s really no surprise that Barack Obama would have a very hard time running in this region.”

That may be true, but Appalachia would be a mighty big swath of voters to write off in November. How do we win them over?

Bad news for Republicans Tuesday night from away down south in Mississippi’s first Congressional district:

Democrats scored a remarkable upset victory on Tuesday in a special Congressional election in this conservative Southern district, sending a clear signal of national problems ahead for Republicans in the fall.

The Democrat, Travis Childers, a local courthouse official, pulled together a coalition of blacks, who turned out heavily, and old-line “yellow dog” Democrats, to beat his Republican opponent, Greg Davis, the mayor of Southaven, a Memphis suburb. With 99 percent of the precincts reporting, the vote was 54 percent for Mr. Childers to 46 percent for Mr. Davis.

The seat had been in Republican hands since 1995, and the district, largely rural and stretching across the northern top of Mississippi, had been considered one of the safest in the country for President Bush’s party, as he won here with 62 percent of the vote in 2004.

Having lost a similar Congressional race this month in Louisiana, Republicans had worked desperately to win this contest, sending Vice President Dick Cheney to campaign for Mr. Davis, along with Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas; President Bush and Senator John McCain recorded telephone messages that were sent to voters throughout the district.

Josh Marshall offers some perspective:

[T]he Republicans have lost three straight Republican districts to the Democrats in by-elections this year. Hastert’s district in Illinois, Louisiana 6th, and now Mississippi 1st. Each successively more Republican than the last. In Mississippi 1st, President Bush got 62% of the vote there in 2004.

Symbolic Number Update: On the symbolic level, this pulls the House GOP caucus down to 199 — below 200.

And here’s how the Republicans will spin it: the Democrats’ hopes for big gains in November are fading fast! That’s one more seat they can’t hope to gain in November!

Today, for the first time, I saw $4 gasoline here in Columbus, Ohio.

Apparently that’s nothin’:

As oil prices soared to record levels in recent years, basic economics suggested that consumption would fall and supplies would rise as producers drilled for more oil.

But as prices flirt with $120 a barrel, many energy experts are becoming worried that neither seems to be happening. Higher prices have done little to suppress global demand or attract new production, and the resulting mismatch has sent oil prices ever higher.

… Experts expect prices above $4 a gallon this summer, and one analyst recently predicted that gasoline could reach $7 in the next four years.

Marty Jerome at wired.com says:

This ain’t a bubble, folks. Better get used to it.

To most of us, this may seem like bad news. But I think the Republican Party may promote the silver lining.

Cartoonist Ruben Bolling brings us Nate, a typical neo-conservative. (Click the link or the cartoon to see the whole thing.)

You really don’t want one of these guys moving into your neighborhood.

Here’s another Nate cartoon, showing how Nate became a high-powered newspaper columnist. Nate’s never, ever right. But that must mean he’s due, right?

Update: And here’s another Nate cartoon. And another.

Via A Blog Around the Clock, the Anchorage Daily News reports on a polar bear study proposed by the Alaska legislature:

The state Legislature is looking to hire a few good polar bear scientists. The conclusions have already been agreed upon — researchers just have to fill in the science part.

Start at the end, keep going until you reach the beginning, then stop.

You know, you could save money and frustration if you dropped the “good scientists” part.

A $2 million program funded with little debate by the Legislature last month calls for using state money to fund an “academic based” conference that highlights contrarian scientific research on global warming. Legislators hope to undermine the public perception of a widespread consensus among polar bear researchers that warming global temperatures and melting Arctic ice threaten the polar bears’ survival.

Republican legislative leaders say a federal decision to declare the polar bears “threatened” by climate change would have troubling effects on Arctic oil development and the state’s economic future.

…

The $2 million is also to be used for a national public relations campaign to promote the findings of the conference.

And you could save money by just skipping over the “conference” part. A good PR firm can print up some nice brochures for a lot less than $2 million.

But the point is not to seek some non-biased measure of scientific truth. The point, said [House Speaker John] Harris, is to provide a forum for scientists whose views back Alaska’s interests.

“You know as well as I do that scientists are like lawyers,” Harris said.

Methinks Mr. Harris got through his science classes in school by getting a copy of the Teacher’s Edition of the textbook and looking up the answers in the back. He seems to believe that’s the scientific method.

Mark Vonnegut wrote the introduction to Armageddon in Retrospect, a posthumous collection of short pieces by his father, Kurt Vonnegut. One of the things Mark says is this:

Reading and writing are in themselves subversive acts. What they subvert is the notion that things have to be the way they are, that you are alone, that no one has ever felt the way you have. What occurs to people when they read Kurt is that things are much more up for grabs than they thought they were. The world is a slightly different place just because they read a damn book. Imagine that.

The introduction is all I’ve read so far, so excuse me — gonna engage in some subversion. Gonna change the world a little bit.

Atrios is introspective:

It’s important to remember that none of us are above the fray, that we all have hackish tendencies to suppress information which doesn’t fit our worldview and privilege information that does. We’re more likely to excuse behavior from people we like and exaggerate the ills of people we don’t like. I try to fight hackish tendencies especially during this intra-Dem battle, but I don’t claim to have superhuman Nonhack powers.

In a later post, he adds:

One reason for my Obama leaning ways is that it’s time to get some new blood into the Washington permanent floating ruling class system. I was never bothered by the personal element of the Clinton “dynasty.” That is, I wasn’t bothered by having another Clinton in office. But I was concerned with the ossification of the elite class structure in Washington. I was bothered not by the return to power of the Clintons, but by the return to power of Clintonites. I’m tired of seeing the same damn people on the teevee.

It’s not the same old people who bother me, it’s the same old ideas.

Politicians and pundits all seem to have a collection of tape loops. Ask about the economy, they all play a pre-recorded “economy” sound bite. Ask about health care, get the canned “health care” message.

Many of the tape loops have been unchanged for decades. When terrorists flew hijacked planes into American buildings, Bush Administration officials just pushed harder for the same irrelevant anti-missile systems and tax policies they had wanted before. Don Rumsfeld didn’t want to fight al Qaeda because there weren’t any good targets in Afghanistan, but there were lots of good targets in Iraq.

Tape loop minds don’t respond well to the unexpected.

How I would love to see people in government who are actively thinking about issues. How I long to see people on the teevee who have a light behind their eyes.

Obama’s got that.

Via Daily Kos, The Week looks at the Iraq money pit:

How much has the war cost so far?

About $600 billion since 2003, and the total is rising fast. Because of soaring fuel costs and the high price of repairing or replacing damaged equipment, the U.S. is spending about $12 billion a month this year, up from $4 billion a month in 2003. … The $600 billion figure does not include such costly consequences as higher oil prices, the interest on the billions borrowed to pay for the war (see below), and the burden of long-term care and benefits for Iraq war veterans.

So what’s a more realistic figure?

Anywhere from $1 trillion to $5 trillion. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently said that the war’s cost would amount to $1.2 trillion to $1.7 trillion by 2017. Harvard researcher Linda Bilmes and Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, in their book The $3 Trillion War, say that the war’s long-term cost will range from $2 trillion to $5 trillion. Iraq is already the second most expensive war in U.S. history. Only World War II cost more, about $5 trillion, adjusted for inflation. …

Has the money been well spent?

In many cases, no. … Contractors hired to rebuild the country’s infrastructure or provide security have overcharged the U.S. for everything from soft drinks — $45 a can — to gasoline. Millions of dollars in no-bid reconstruction contracts were diverted to things such as Super Bowl tickets, prostitutes, watches, and jewelry. And much of the reconstruction work has been substandard.

…

The credit card war

The Iraq war, says economist Joseph Stiglitz, is “the first U.S. war financed entirely on credit.” When the war started, the Bush administration said it would cost no more than $60 billion. But the U.S. budget was already in deficit, so the administration had to borrow money to finance the invasion. About 40 percent of the money was borrowed from China and other international investors — the first time since the Revolutionary War that foreigners financed a U.S. war. At the same time, the administration and Congress lowered taxes instead of raising them, as is customary in wartime. … Today, say Stiglitz and other economists, the bills for the country’s spending spree are starting to come due, in the form of higher prices, a weakened dollar, and lower living standards. “There’s no such thing as a free war,” Stiglitz said. “The U.S. — and the world — will be paying the price for decades to come.”

Oh, give it another hundred years.

Daily Kos notes the anniversary of VE Day:

CHEERS to real “Mission Accomplished” moments.  Today is the 63rd anniversary of VE Day, commemorating the surrender of the Nazi terrorists during World War II.  If Bush and had been in charge, we’d probably still be fighting that war … in Mexico.

This blog has already explored that particular alternate history.

Kos also notes that today is Harry Truman’s 124th birthday, so go there and scroll down to the Bush-Truman debate:

Bush: Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

Truman: In the circumstances, alarm is justified. The man who isn’t alarmed simply doesn’t understand the situation — or he is crazy. But alarm is one thing, and hysteria is another. Hysteria impels people to destroy the very thing they are struggling to preserve.

History’s interesting, isn’t it?

Republicans can take heart: the Arizona Republic says McCain’s not such a maverick after all:

Over the years, Sen. John McCain has publicly condemned Republican Party leaders and occasionally voted against the GOP on selected issues.

But an Arizona Republic analysis of his Senate votes on the most divided issues in the past decade shows that McCain almost never thwarted his party’s objectives.

The presumptive Republican nominee arguably cast the decisive vote 14 times since 1999 to ensure Republicans got their way, and he had five other close cases where his vote may have made a difference, Senate records show. By comparison, McCain effectively handed Democrats a win on roll-call votes four times in the same period.

…

But the votes also suggest that when McCain broke from Republicans, others often joined him, keeping the votes from being so close.

…

“He is a conservative who votes conservative on most issues,” said Keith Poole, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego. “By no means is he a liberal or even a moderate.”

Poole, who compiles a widely respected analysis of all Senate votes, ranks McCain as slightly less conservative than most Republicans throughout his career and near the far edge of the right while running for president.

So, no maverick. No moderate. But John McCain is flexible, especially during election years. What more could a Republican want?

Ever wonder where cartoonists get their wildest, wackiest ideas? Ruben Bolling got this goofy bit from Justice Scalia himself, on 60 Minutes:

“If someone’s in custody, as in Abu Ghraib, and they are brutalized by a law enforcement person, if you listen to the expression ‘cruel and unusual punishment,’ doesn’t that apply?” Stahl asks.

“No, No,” Scalia replies.

“Cruel and unusual punishment?” Stahl asks.

“To the contrary,” Scalia says. “Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don’t think so.”

“Well, I think if you are in custody, and you have a policeman who’s taken you into custody…,” Stahl says.

“And you say he’s punishing you?” Scalia asks.

“Sure,” Stahl replies.

“What’s he punishing you for? You punish somebody…,” Scalia says.

“Well because he assumes you, one, either committed a crime … or that you know something that he wants to know,” Stahl says.

“It’s the latter. And when he’s hurting you in order to get information from you…you don’t say he’s punishing you. What’s he punishing you for? He’s trying to extract…,” Scalia says.

The man is a judge. Not just any old judge — he’s a Justice of the Supreme Court — the single U.S. court whose rulings can’t be appealed.

Wild? Yes. Wacky? Yes. Funny? No way.

And John McCain promises more judges like that.

Honestly, it boggles the mind.

The Daily Show brings us the presentation ceremony for the Pollies:

The best political ads have the ability to mislead us, demoralize us, and disenfranchise us from the political process. But on a night when we celebrate the attack ads that have touched so many, let us also remember those whose careers were so tragically lost.

Ladies and gentlemen, the next President of the United States:

Now, let’s win in November.