And there’s some good people in our country who believe we should cut and run

A Gallup poll shows that 39% of Americans interviewed believe that Muslims in the US should be required to carry a special i.d. I just wrote a comment on that before realizing I already wrote one 20 months ago after a similar study (which had it at 27%). I thought what I was writing seemed familiar (although this time I went with “ham sandwich” instead of “pork products”).

Speaking of racists, John McCain was out campaigning for George Allen, because if you’re trying to pretend that “Makaka” isn’t a racial epithet, the person you really want standing next to you is the guy who said (when running for president in 2000), “I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live.”

Salon investigates voter security/suppression efforts. A must-read. It could almost make you support Norm Ornstein’s proposal for mandatory voting, providing the fine for a vote not being cast is matched by one for a vote not being counted. This is one of those areas where the left (or even the Dems) have been afraid of sounding like conspiracy theorists, allowing the R’s to, well, conspire. I mean, do you check your supermarket receipts for errors? Your first thought is that the people who work there are idiots and errors happen, but 90% or more of those errors invariably favor the store. By the way, anyone who has to wait on line at the DMV four times like that woman in Indiana in order to register, should get four votes at the next election – it’s only fair.

After Bush toured the Harley plant (“I’m impressed by the fact that they're impressed by the product they make”), Bush gave a speech at a fundraiser for Lynn Swann. His reiterated phrases and stories are not getting less irritating with familiarity, like the things “I happen to believe/disagree.”

They want us to cut and run. And there’s some good people in our country who believe we should cut and run. They’re not bad people when they say that, they’re decent people. I just happen to believe they’re wrong.

Why is that phrasing so much more obnoxious than “I believe they’re wrong” or “They’re wrong”?

Here’s Bush making yet another claim he can’t prove, while pretending that he’s not making it:

I know it’s hard for Americans to believe this, but the enemy that attacked us before has got people that want to act like them, are maybe taking instruction from -- I can’t tell you whether this plot we disrupted was al Qaeda. I’m not going to say that unless I’m certain it was.

Oh, he almost let it slip, and then stopped himself in the nick of time! This is a technique he perfected when tattling on Jeb to his mother when he was 6.

And, if you can stand it, another iteration of his sophisticated understanding of the problems of the Middle East:

Isn’t it interesting today that the most violent parts of the world are where young democracies are trying to take root? Isn’t it interesting that Hezbollah would attack Israel, a democracy in the heart of the Middle East, try to destabilize the Middle East so that Lebanon doesn’t get to be a strong democracy and starts to try to turn the world against Israel? Isn’t it interesting that the young democracy of Iraq is the place where the enemy is trying to stop the progress? That should tell the American people the following things: One, we face an enemy that has an ideology that can’t stand freedom; and secondly, as freedom progresses, it changes the world for the better. Otherwise, the enemy wouldn’t be trying to stop it.

Hezbollah was attacking Israel because Israel is a democracy and it hates democracy. Is there anyone else in the world who believes that? Also, who is “the enemy” in Iraq who is trying to stop the progress? Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, Al Qaida, there are so many enemies I have no idea who he’s singling out.

I may get hysterical blindness if I have to read another Bush speech.