Over the past few years I’ve posted a number of times about educational issues on my weblog, and tonite I’m starting up a dedicated category on my weblog for it going forward. It’s something I’ve always cared a great deal about and plan on writing more about it going forward.

On with the show!

But watch as conservatives continue to claim the opposite!

Opposition among Americans to the war in Iraq has reached a new high, with only about a third of respondents saying they favor it, according to a poll released Monday.

Just 35 percent of 1,033 adults polled say they favor the war in Iraq; 61 percent say they oppose it — the highest opposition noted in any CNN poll since the conflict began more than three years ago. –

The lead from this article on CNN.com right now reads:

Bush: Leaving Iraq now would be a ‘disaster’

While the trascript isn’t up on the whitehouse.gov site yet to verify if that’s what he actually said, I wonder if those were his words or was a paraphrase of his speech.

Because if he think’s leaving Iraq now would put the country into a ‘disaster’, I wonder what he calls the last 3 years?

Personally, I think that’s been the real “disaster” and it’s compounding daily in lieu of an actual policy from this administration to deal with the problem.

Wow, talk about foot in mouth disease. The Republican candidate for Wisconsin’s 3rd congressional district not only comes off sounding like a racist, he has zero understanding of Muslim culture by assuming it’s a requirement to wear a turbin.

Sounds like just the kind of guy Wisconsin needs representing us in Washington D.C.

Paul R. Nelson suggests Muslim males ought to be singled out, by airport security. “Racial profiling is one way that we can cut down on security risks,” said Nelson. Asked how to tell what a Muslim male looks like, Nelson said “well, you know, if he comes in wearing a turban and his name is Mohammed, that’s a good start.”

Note to Paul Nelson: a turbin doesn’t make you a Muslim anymore than intelligence is required to run for office.

It’s a doozy:

“America is safer than it has been. But it’s not yet safe” President Bush, 08/15/2006

When my President talks with the fake “I pretend to talk like an “average Texan” even though I grew up in the NorthEast and attended an Ivy League school” dialect I feel more embarrased than I’ve ever been. But I’m not yet embarrased.

Realizing that the Iraqi “Stay the Course” (also known as “Stay and Pray”) policy has outlived it’s usefulness and that it’s increasingly unpopular with Americans, do Republicans have a new catch phrase to use in place of real policy?

RNC chairman Ken Mehlman said this on Meet the Press Yesterday:

But look, we’re not coming in and saying “Stay the course.” The choice in this election is not between “Stay the course” and “Cut and run,” it’s between “Win by adapting” and “Cut and run.”

Right….. All the sudden, Republicans have never said ‘stay the course’! It’s only been our imagination that the President and other GOP cronies sprinkle the phrase throughout their public speeches like an overzealous Olive Garden waiter with a new pepper grinder!

Another sign Republicans are scared senseless of the Fall election. They’re trying to back away from their failed Iraq policy (or lack thereof).

Life is rough for President Bush these days. So rough, that he is coming back from his August vacation to try to deal with the wide array of problems in the world right now.

This lead and accompanying picture from CNN caught my eye though:

Bush: ‘We live in troubled times’

Worrying about show dogs around and cutting a vacation short to get back to work. I think that’s what really troubles the President.

These are your Republican candidates for Attorney General Wisconsin, be proud.

J.B. Van Hollen, the former U.S. attorney for Wisconsin’s Western District, asked Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher to agree that the two should not interrupt one another and not attack each other’s preparedness for the attorney general’s job.

Sounds like basic politeness to me, so why the need for a big public agreement about something that first graders are taught the first week of school?

“I know I did not appreciate being repeatedly spoken over, interrupted, and called stupid,’ as I’m sure you did not appreciate my inappropriate use of the word suck,’” Van Hollen wrote in a letter to Bucher.

Sounds like an apology letter the teacher forced him to write and have signed by his parents! Just when I thought the race between these two couldn’t get anymore interesting, they resort to childish behavior. And to think, there’s another whole month of this!

This is what has Republicans shaking in their boots:

Most Americans believe the GOP-controlled Congress has been a failure and say they plan to vote for Democrats in November, according to a poll released Wednesday.

Fifty-three percent of registered voters polled by Opinion Research Corp. for CNN said they were supporting Democrats, while 40 percent said they were leaning Republican. The remaining 7 percent either planned to support another party or had no opinion. – CNN

I just can’t get over how much Republicans are absolutely crowing about how the Ned Lamont victory in Connecticut (once again) spells doom for the Democrats this election cycle.

According to the GOP talking points, when a record setting quarter-million people voted in the Democratic primary last Tuesday and picked Ned Lamont as their candidate for the US Senate, the terrorists will be emboldened (according to VP Cheney), the Democrats are ‘anti-security’ (another new one, anti-american and anti-war must have run the course), and the ‘angry liberal bloggers’ now control everything.

Even the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s own resident token conservative Patrick McIlheran has jumped into the fray with his own angry blogger posting today where he tries to make another unsuccessful point, this time that Democrats only have room for ‘hatred’ and he compares the democratic election that took place in Connecticut to a “jihad”.

He writes for a major American daily newspaper, and he’s comparing a religious jihad to a democratic election. It’s no wonder the Journal Sentinel is held in such high regard around the country.

What a joke.

Anyways, what this all comes down to is the fact that Republicans are very scared about the upcoming election. So much so, that they’re trying to claim that the “anti-war liberals” are out of touch with mainstream America at the same time that the latest polls show opposition to the war in Iraq approaching 2/3rd’s of the American public.

As I said on another weblog last night, the Republicans have used Iraq and “Terror” as a crutch for so long, that when they can’t lean on that crutch anymore, they have nothing to actually run on.

They’ve had five years in power now. When they can’t scare people into voting anti-Democrat anymore, they have nothing left to run on, except an out of control budget and deficit, sky high insurance and gasoline prices, corruption in every corner of the government, a completely failed foreign policy with Iran and North Korea even more powerful than they were five years ago, and most importantly, no plan for the future on how to fix any of those problems.

Some of those 2/3rds who don’t agree with the Democratic plan to leave Iraq in a year might not agree with it, but at least they know we have a plan beyond ‘Stay and Pray’.

So keep in mind, that the more you hear the talking heads on TV talk about how much the Democrats are in trouble this Fall, the more that it’s really the Republicans who realize they’re in trouble. Sadly, the only thing they’ve got left to run on is a campaign of fear.

And seriously, the Journal Sentinel needs to replace their token conservative with someone who can at least articulate a point once in a while instead of tossing verbal hand grenades like “jihad”. It’s that kind of writing that makes me wonder if McIlheran has been trapped in a McBride journalism ‘lecture’ for the past two years.

It’s not only embarrassing to them as an organization, but to residents of Milwaukee as well.