Another “FINALLY!” bill makes it through. The Democratic Senate seems to be fighting with the House for who’s passing the cooler bill, countering the Reps’ minimum wage hike with a bill that strips pensions from convicted lawmakers.

The Senate on Friday voted 87-0 to strip away the pensions of members of Congress convicted of white-collar crimes such as bribery, perjury and fraud. That could result in benefit losses of more than $100,000 a year.

“With this vote, we are preventing members of Congress who steal or cheat from receiving a lifelong pension that is paid for by the taxpayers,” said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., sponsor of the measure with Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo.

Yet again, a bill passes with OVERWHELMING support from both sides, further supporting my theory that the majority of the country and its leaders really are liberal, but browbeating and bullying from the far-right neocons managed to suppress it until now.

Yes, another post solely focusing on Bush. But once again I’d like to point out that while single articles give you an indication, multiple articles start to paint a clear picture. So I’ll use another pair today, both from moonbat blogs, but still reporting nothing but reality.

Case #1: Bush for some reason thinks that America’s concern and the actual problem is just how grateful the Iraqis are.

BUSH: Not at all. I am proud of the efforts we did. We liberated that country from a tyrant. I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude, and I believe most Iraqis express that. I mean, the people understand that we’ve endured great sacrifice to help them. That’s the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that’s significant enough in Iraq.

PELLEY: Americans wonder whether . . .

BUSH: Yeah, they wonder whether or not the Iraqis are willing to do hard work.

B… zhgng…

Okay, I will not claim to know to any deep level what the American people are thinking at any given time, but one thing I am willing to bet is that the abysmally low numbers concerning pretty much everything connected to both Bush and the Iraq Fiasco do not indicate a problem with the Iraqis themselves.

Of course, as I’ve said before, how grateful do we expect them to be? We removed Saddam in a manner akin to removing a rotten tooth with a sledgehammer. Sure the tooth’s gone, but now your whole mouth is broken. And then you scoff at the person for being ungrateful, while you start staple-gunning his wounds shut.

Moving on, in another interview that apparently wasn’t transcribed.

On how he doesn’t know what the country thinks:

Pelley: “I had mentioned that a lot of people were angry. And you seemed a little bit surprised by that, as if you weren’t quite sure that was true.”

Bush: “I think anger is a very strong word. And it was in context about my decision. And my reaction was, first of all I don’t expect everybody to agree to it, but I do expect people to take a deep breath and to find out why I made the decision I made. As I told you, I don’t know how to characterize people’s reactions. I suspect a lot of people are saying ‘Show me that it’ll work.’”

…

Bush forgets the 2000 popular election results:

Bush: “You can’t get elected unless at least 50% of the people who vote say ‘We want you to be in office.’”

This is why a number of us in the liberal radical-o-sphere tend to label Bush as an idiot, moron, nincompoop, imbecile, boob, dimwit, simpleton, dunce, or general dumbass.

I’d also like to add something, namely that he not only forgot the 2000 popular election results, he forgot how our country works in general. As a matter of fact, a number of presidents have been elected with under 50% of the vote, such as:

• Bill Clinton
• Richard Nixon
• John Kennedy
• Harry Truman
• Woodrow Wilson
• Grover Cleveland
• Benjamin Harrison (hey, he got less votes than Cleveland but still won! Strange…)
• James Garfield
• Rutherford B Hayes (also less popular votes but still won!)
• Abraham Lincoln
• James Buchanan
• Zachary Taylor
• James Polk
• Andrew Jackson

And if you want to get really technical about it…

the person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed;

…referring to electoral votes, here, not popular votes. If you want to get really strict with the math, it’s entirely possible for someone to win the presidency with around 30% of the popular vote while his opponent has around 70%. All that has to happen is for him to narrowly win just enough states to get the electoral majority and lose in a landslide in all of the rest.

So to recap. The President doesn’t understand how our electoral process works, what the American people think, or what the concern in Iraq is. Just another normal day in the ol’ USA.

Once again, ol’ Cheney comes out and wows me with his bullheadedness and, well, complete lack of sense. Speaking on the Iraq Fiasco, the Veep spun his usual yarn, ridiculing democrats and telling us all why the President’s plan is perfect. And, as usual, he did so without anything resembling a desire for bipartisan cooperation.

A defiant Cheney said Sunday that majority Democrats have offered no credible alternative to Bush’s revised war strategy. Cheney said withdrawing from Iraq would mean giving in to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and other U.S. enemies.

The two-prong assault. On one hand, say they don’t offer alternatives, which nicely paints them as the “party of obstruction”, but that hinges on immediately discounting the alternative they DO offer as quitting, accepting defeat, cutting and running, etc.

It’s a fun way of blockheadedly refusing to accept any advice about anything. Try this the next time someone is giving you pointers on whatever you’re doing that day. As soon as you paint the alternative as crazy or otherwise unusable, that leaves you free to insult the offerer or said alternative because they don’t have any ideas.

Bush employed this strategy well a few days ago, actually.

“Members of Congress have a right to express their views, and express them forcefully,” Bush said. “But those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success.”

See? Discount the alternative and then insult the opposition for not having any MORE alternatives. Back to Dick.

“You cannot run a war by committee,’’ the vice president said.

Debatable. But what you CERTAINLY can’t do is run a war by politics, which for some reason our president seems hell-bent on doing. Bush has done everything he can to use minimum force and cut taxes while the war is going on, bending over backwards to make the war “palatable”.

When his generals said several hundred thousand soldiers, he sent 250,000. When they said the war would cost a few hundred billions, they insisted it would be somewhere between “free” and “less than those fancy organic eggs”. When the violence gets bad and, if a troop is necessary at all it’ll have to be a giant one, he puts in enough troops to bring levels up to where they were the last time nothing improved.

In a few months, after nothing has gotten better, we’ll see a new plan. One that likely involves more troops. Mark my words.