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Political cartoonist Ward Sutton illustrates the new way forward in Iraq and a handy White House guide to Troop Morale. Among the things that hurt morale:

American lawmakers debating the Iraq War. Or talking about it. Or even thinking about it…

The Dixie Chicks opting not to shut up and still winning five Grammy Awards.

Among the things that strengthen troop morale:

Not babying them with things like body armor….

The record profits of oil companies.

Totally cool new styles of prosthetic limbs.

And finally, Sutton on Bush, Iraq, and something about a corner.

King Midas turned everything he touched into gold. It wasn’t as much of a blessing as you might think.

I don’t want to tell you what King George turns everything he touches into.

Dick Cheney on the reduction of British forces in Iraq:

I look at it, and what I see is an affirmation of the fact that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well.

Sure, only the parts of Iraq controlled by Bush, Cheney and Co. are a total disaster.

It’s like their super-power.

I took an economics class many years ago. I didn’t learn much.

One thing I do remember is the concept of opportunity costs. The cost of any economic decision can be measured not only in dollars and cents, but in the things you must forego to pay for that choice: buying the giant-screen plasma TV means you can’t remodel the bathroom — and vice versa. Every choice is a trade-off.

Via Daily Kos, Matt Taibbi takes note of some Bush administration trade-offs (Warning: strong profanity in the linked article):

On the same day that Britney was shaving her head, a guy I know who works in the office of Senator Bernie Sanders sent me an email. He was trying very hard to get news organizations interested in some research his office had done about George Bush’s proposed 2008 budget, which was unveiled two weeks ago and received relatively little press, mainly because of the controversy over the Iraq war resolution. All the same, the Bush budget is an amazing document. It would be hard to imagine a document that more clearly articulates the priorities of our current political elite.

Not only does it make many of Bush’s tax cuts permanent, but it envisions a complete repeal of the Estate Tax, which mainly affects only those who are in the top two-tenths of the top one percent of the richest people in this country. The proposed savings from the cuts over the next decade are about $442 billion, or just slightly less than the amount of the annual defense budget (minus Iraq war expenses). But what’s interesting about these cuts are how Bush plans to pay for them.

Sanders’s office came up with some interesting numbers here. If the Estate Tax were to be repealed completely, the estimated savings to just one family — the Walton family, the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune — would be about $32.7 billion dollars over the next ten years.

The proposed reductions to Medicaid over the same time frame? $28 billion.

Oh, we definitely need a better Decider.

Via Corpus Callosum, how we do it in America:

It’s different in England:

[Prince] Harry, third in line to the throne behind father Prince Charles and older brother Prince William, graduated from the prestigious Sandhurst military academy last year and is expected to accompany his troops to Iraq in April or May, an unidentified military source told CNN….

Prince Harry, known as Troop Leader Wales, has trained to command 11 soldiers and four Scimitar tanks. The Daily Mail claimed Harry threatened to quit the army if he was prevented from joining his men on operations. …

Harry’s military service continues a royal family tradition….

His father, Prince Charles, was a pilot with the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy. Harry’s grandfather, Prince Philip, had a distinguished career in the Royal Navy. Harry’s uncle, Prince Andrew, was a Royal Navy pilot and served in the Falklands War against Argentina 25 years ago.

Let’s be fair here. If American leaders sent their own kids into battle, how many of these delightful wars of choice do you suppose we’d have? Why, we’d probably only go to war when we had to, and macho politicians can’t survive in an environment like that.

The Questionable Authority quotes M*A*S*H:

Frank: Well, everybody knows war is hell.

BJ: Remember, you heard it here last.

Hawkeye: War isn’t hell. War is war and hell is hell, and of the two war is a lot worse.

Father Mulcahy: How do you figure that, Hawkeye?

Hawkeye: Simple, father. Tell me, who goes to hell?

Mulcahy: Sinners, I believe.

Hawkeye: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in hell. But war is chock full of them. Little kids, cripples, old ladies, in fact, except for a few of the brass almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.

M*A*S*H was a situation comedy about a mobile hospital unit during the Korean War.

Via Boing Boing, Colin Purrington offers some stickers for your textbooks.

Wording for the first disclaimer (top left) is taken verbatim from the sticker designed by the Cobb County School District (“A community with a passion for learning”) in Georgia, which actually plagiarized Alabama’s evolution disclaimer… Really, I’m not making any of this up. The other 14 are mildly educational variants that demonstrate the real meaning of a scientific “theory” as well as the true motivations of the School Board members and their creationist supporters.

There’s more — visit the site.

CNN Political Analyst Bill Schneider says Bush’s job approval rating is 32 percent, and I can’t help wondering — is it really possible that almost a third of Americans approve of this walking disaster? Are that many people crazy?

CNN runs lots of little online polls called QuickVotes. After recent Nascar cheating scandals, they asked “Is it ever OK to cheat?” “Yes” got 26 percent of the vote.

So here’s my theory: Bush’s honest approval rating is about six percent.

Now, that I can believe.

Via Atrios, USA Today founder Al Neuharth considers the worst president ever:

I remember every president since Herbert Hoover, when I was a grade school kid. He was one of the worst. I’ve personally met every president since Dwight Eisenhower. He was one of the best.

A year ago I criticized Hillary Clinton for saying “this (Bush) administration will go down in history as one of the worst.”

“She’s wrong,” I wrote. Then I rated these five presidents, in this order, as the worst: Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Ulysses Grant, Hoover and Richard Nixon. “It’s very unlikely Bush can crack that list,” I added.

Andrew Jackson? Really? Sure you didn’t mean Andrew Johnson?

I was wrong. This is my mea culpa. Not only has Bush cracked that list, but he is planted firmly at the top.

Hey, Bush still has almost two years to totally turn his administration around. He might turn out to be only the second or third worst president ever.

John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth on February 20, 1962. He rode in a Mercury capsule dubbed Friendship 7, launched atop an Atlas rocket at 9:47 AM EST.

Next Tuesday is the 45th anniversary of Glenn’s flight, and at 9:47 AM Glenn himself will talk about the flight at the Center of Science and Industry (COSI), 333 West Broad Street, here in Columbus, Ohio.

The event is called “Friendship 2007: A Conversation with John Glenn.” Tickets are required, but they’re free. They must be picked up at the John Glenn School of Public Affairs, room 350 Page Hall, 1810 College Road, on the Ohio State University campus. The phone number is (614) 292-4545.

Via The Frontal Cortex: Randy Newman defends America. (Warning: Randy is not worried much about being politically correct.)

Now, the leaders we have
While they’re the worst that we’ve had
Are hardly the worst this poor world has seen

…

The end of an empire
Is messy at best
And this empire’s ending
Like all the rest

I don’t think Abraham Lincoln would recognize today’s Republican Party. Today’s “Party of Lincoln” would reject Abe as a bleeding-heart. That doesn’t mean they don’t have use for him. Take Washington Times columnist Frank Gaffney:

Frank Gaffney, Jr. opened his latest column with this: “Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.” — President Abraham Lincoln.

He continues: “It is, of course, unimaginable that the penalties proposed by one of our most admired presidents for the crime of dividing America in the face of the enemy would be contemplated — let alone applied — today. Still, as the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate engage in interminable debate about resolutions whose effects can only be to ‘damage morale and undermine the military’ while emboldening our enemies, it is time to reflect on what constitutes inappropriate behavior in time of war.”

One problem: Lincoln never said it.

Gaffney didn’t make it up. No, that was the work of another conservative writer, J. Michael Waller, writing in Insight magazine — a sister publication of the Washington Times.

Once the truth gets its boots on, it’s nice to know that so many of the pants that need a swift kick are gathered together in just a few convenient places.

Updates from Editor & Publisher: As of Thursday night, The Washington Times had neither removed the quote from the Gaffney column nor run a correction.

On Thursday, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) cited the quote on the floor of the House during the debate on the Iraq war “surge.”

A small New Mexico radio station opts for higher standards of journalistic integrity than the big boys:

After the latest widely-publicized stories in national newspapers about weapons from Iran allegedly killing Americans in Iraq — based completely on unnamed sources — at least one smaller news outlet has had enough of it.

The news director of the public radio station in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has directed his staff to “ignore national stories quoting unnamed sources.” He also called on other news outlets to join this policy.

From Bill Dupuy’s memo:

Effectively immediately and until further notice, it is the policy of KSFR’s news department to ignore and not repeat any wire service or nationally published story about Iran, China, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia or any other foreign power that quotes an “unnamed” U.S. official.

…

This is a small news department with a small reach. We cannot research these stories ourselves. But we can take steps not to compromise our integrity. We should not dutifully parrot whatever comes out of Washington, on the wire or by whatever means, no matter how intriguing and urgent it sounds, when the source is unnamed.

It is said, “A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.” Eventually, however, the truth gets its boots on, and the liars are due a sharp kick in the pants. For starters.

It’s official: Al Franken is running for U.S. Senate:

I grew up in a hard-working middle class family just like many of yours. And as a middle-class kid growing up in Minnesota back then, I felt like the luckiest kid in the world. And I was.

My wife, Franni, whom I met our freshman year of college, wasn’t quite as lucky. When she was seventeen months old, her dad — a decorated veteran of World War II — died in a car accident, leaving her mother, my mother-in-law, widowed with five kids.

My mother-in-law worked in the produce department of a grocery store, but that family made it because of Social Security survivor benefits. Sometimes there wasn’t enough food on the table, sometimes they turned off the heat in the winter — this was in Portland, Maine, almost as cold as Minnesota — but they made it.

Every single one of the four girls in Franni’s family went to college, thanks to Pell Grants and other scholarships. My brother-in-law, Neil, went into the Coast Guard, where he became an electrical engineer.

And my mother-in-law got herself a $300 GI loan to fix her roof, and used the money instead to go to the University of Maine. She became a grade school teacher, teaching Title One kids — poor kids — and so her loan was forgiven.

My mother-in-law and every single one of those five kids became a productive member of society. Conservatives like to say that people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps — and that’s a great idea. But first, you’ve got to have the boots. And the government gave my wife’s family the boots.

That’s what progressives like me believe the government is there for. To provide security for middle-class families like the one I grew up in, and opportunity for working poor families like the one Franni grew up in.

By the way, I stole that boots line from Tim Walz, our great new congressman from Southern Minnesota. Tim’s father died when he was a kid, and he and his brother and his mom made it because of Social Security.   

…

Your government should have your back. That should be our mission in Washington, the one FDR gave us during another challenging time: freedom from fear. 

Revvin’ up for the next war:

President Bush said today he is certain that elements of the Iranian government are supplying deadly roadside bombs that kill American troops in Iraq, even if the innermost circle of the government is not involved.

Hey, has he ever been wrong?

“Support the Troops” the Bush-Cheney way.

First, let the ghost of Rumsfeld equip them for the “surge”:

U.S. Army units in Iraq and Afghanistan lack more than 4,000 of the latest Humvee armor kit, known as FRAG Kit 5, according to U.S. officials. The Army has ramped up production of the armor, giving priority to troops in Baghdad, but the upgrade is not scheduled to be completed until this summer, Army officials said. That is well into the timeline for major operations launched last week to quell violence by Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias, which the U.S. military now views as the top security threat in Iraq.

…

The Army began the Iraq war with an estimated $56 billion equipment shortage and has struggled to keep up with demands for new armor to protect against increasingly deadly bombs. In the case of FRAG Kit 5, the Army quickly produced a bolt-on version in limited quantities, while the permanent version has taken longer than expected to develop, test, produce and install. Meanwhile, the unexpected deployment of five additional Army brigades into Baghdad has created an urgent need for 2,000 Humvees with the new armor.

“You go to war with the army you have.” I guess that’s how you escalate, too.

Next, use them to justify more of the same. More soldiers without protection means more casualties. You can rest assured that the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress will cite each of those sacrifices as one more reason why we must continue this disastrous war, so that, in Karl Rove’s words, “their sacrifices have not been in vain.”

Next, cut ’em loose as soon as possible:

The Bush administration’s budget assumes cuts to veterans’ health care two years from now — even as badly wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system.

…

Even though the cost of providing medical care to veterans has been growing rapidly — by more than 10 percent in many years — White House budget documents assume consecutive cutbacks in 2009 and 2010 and a freeze thereafter.

Sorry, troops, but there’s somebody Bush and Cheney support more:

According to Robert Greenstein, director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan Washington think tank, Mr. Bush will act by decisively widening the “yawning gap” between rich and poor. The president’s budget for fiscal 2008 “puts extremely large tax cuts for the most affluent Americans ahead of the needs of low- and middle-income families as well as future generations,” Mr. Greenstein says.

People with incomes of more than $1 million would get tax cuts averaging $162,000 a year (in 2012 dollars) in perpetuity. The top 1 percent of households will receive more than $1 trillion in tax benefits over the next decade, if the Bush tax cuts are made permanent.

Any billionaires among our brave troops can rest assured that Bush and Cheney are always there for you.