When TV talking heads are grinning, be very afraid

So I returned to my hotel room in Latham, NY this evening from a delicious and ridiculously inexpensive dinner of vegetable soup, chicken tikka masala, and chapati at a local Indian restaurant. I turned on the TV, and there was Wolf Blitzer, along with Candy Crowley and John Roberts. Roberts was grinning from ear to ear and the screen caption read "BUSH BOOST."

Certainly George W. Bush's life is going to be made easier without an indictment of Karl Rove (even if it turns out that Rove is singing like a canary about bigger fish....cough....Cheney...cough). However, I think that for Republicans to be singing Happy Days are Here Again is just a tad premature.

This is not to say that I have any faith in the Democrats to not be even MORE cowed now as a result (though how they can curl up into any more of a fetal position than they already are is incomprehensible). But if we take a look around at consensus reality (as opposed to Television News Reality, which is that place where George W. Bush is a brilliant leader, a military hero, and the second coming of Christ), the picture is no prettier than it was yesterday.

Things in Iraq are so bad that Bush had to fly in to meet with the country's Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki under cover of secrecy and Al Qaeda in Iraq has a brand, spanking new leader. While Bush was in the Green Zone, a roadside bomb killed 10 civilians. Mission accomplished indeed. Oh yeah...and he also invoked his "September 11" mantra while there, just to reinforce the misconception that Iraq had ANYTHING to do with the 9/11 attacks. 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 -- that's all he's got. Ann Coulter talks about widows enjoying their husband's deaths? Why isn't anyone talking about how George W. Bush has enjoyed the deaths of not just the 2700+ who died that day, but also the 2500+ American soldiers and the tens of thousands of Iraqi women and children he has killed since starting this misbegotten war?

Meanwhile, back at home, a relatively minor tropical storm had everyone in a tizzy, because they know that if the worst happens, the Federal government is ill-equipped and not inclined to help them.

And on Wall Street, the Dow lost ANOTHER 86 points today, erasing ALL the gains for 2006. If you were invested in the Dow, you have now experienced ZERO growth in your money for the year. And don't forget....with the gradual elimination of employer-paid defined benefit pension plans, as markets go, so goes your retirement. Meanwhile, we have a Fed chairman who doesn't seem to understand that the price of petroleum affects EVERYTHING, and that the inflation we see is the cost of petroleum filtering through the supply chain, rather than being one of workers being treated too well by the executives who are making 500 times what they are.

And of course let's not forget Homeland Security, where it turns out that the names and Social Security numbers of 1500 people working for the Energy Department's nuclear weapons agency were stolen last September -- but no one was told until two days ago. Heck of a job, Chertoff.

So perhaps someone can tell me why on earth this president, or ANYONE in his administration, should see a boost in poll numbers?