Bubble Boy

The surge isn't working, it never had a chance, it wasn't ever expected to work, it's simply the latest version of "stay the course." It's a perverse restatement of "we'll only lose if we leave." It promotes the ideology of "we have a real opportunity here to crush the terrorists once and for all" or "we have a once in a lifetime opportunity to build a democratic, client state for the benefit of all those in the middle east" or most realistically, "What's their oil doing under our sand?"

Glenn Greenwald -

"The "Surge" is nothing more than a crass marketing gimmick, concocted by war propagandists who have been lying to the country for the last four years about Iraq, to justify to an anti-war populace why we must continue our occupation. And while Fred Hiatt and his Extremely Serious and Sober Beltway War Supporting Comrades are too awash in desperate self-interest to see it, Americans themselves are not fooled by that tactic in the slightest."

It's the bubble speaking! When insiders start to venture outside the beltway they are assaulted by the outside world. It's just not as safe as hunkering down in the safe confines... President Bush is at least courageous enough to bring the bubble with him as he travels. Carefully selected audiences who are so carefully screened that the administration brings charges against anyone so radical as to try and protest anything the President says. (Happening in Colorado as we speak.)

Dan Froomkin -

"As it was last time, (with the failed public relations campaign to reform Social Security) Bush's Bubble may be the central problem. Bush seems to think that through sheer force of will -- and repetition -- he will convince people that his cause is just -- in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. And why does he think that? Quite possibly, because virtually everyone he talks to -- and virtually everyone he sees -- is already in his camp."

The world outside the United States views the Bubble as a dangerous threat when they aren't just raising their hands in despair at how the crazy Bubble foreign policy is making a "Mess 'O Potamia."

Tania Branigan (Guardian)-

"It is the vast majority of the people in the world - of all nationalities and faiths - against a small number of loose, shifting and disparate groups who have relatively little in common apart from their identification with others who share their distorted view of the world and their idea of being part of something bigger. What these groups want is to force their individual and narrow values on others without dialogue, without debate, through violence. And by letting them feel part of something bigger, we give them strength."

Alberto Gonzales, in his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, pretty much admits that the decisions were made "in the bubble" by "consensus judgement of the senior leadership." In Slate magazine today Dahlia Lithwick writes about the effect of these Bubble Decisions.

"Every time he's asked who made the ultimate decision here, Gonzales trots back to the fuzzy gray oracle of "senior leadership." That fits almost perfectly with Kyle Sampson's repeated claim last month that he never made a decision; he was merely the "aggregator" of everyone else's recommendations and say-sos. How gloriously mechanical: The "consensus judgments of the senior leadership" are fed to the "aggregator," who in turn passes them along to the AG who, as he claims, made a final decision without reviewing any criteria for the firing or any written document. It seems that at no point in this "process" or "project" did any human brain fire an actual neuron that triggered the message to terminate an actual U.S. attorney."

No wonder President Bush stays in his bubble! When anyone on the inside ventures out into the world and tries to interact, they are received with stunned disbelief. Folks wonder who's in charge, who's running the show, what they are doing and why. The glimpses we get into the inner workings tell us that there is much, much more going on than we'll ever find out about. The small window that has recently opened is showing the ugliness of a political ideology run amok. Refusing to testify, hiding behind executive privilege, "losing" documents, simply "forgetting," and even admitting incompetence are all techniques used to insulate the bubble. The Bubble must be maintained at all cost. The Party must be protected against impurity. Harold Meyerson said it best in yesterday's Washington Post.

""You gotta give those Republicans credit: Forced to choose between ideological purity and workable solutions to real-world problems, they know which side they're on."