After listening to Instapundit, Malkin, and “Joe” the “Plumber,” John Cole wonders aloud how this bipartisanship thing can possibly work.

I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years.

Key instigators of his despair were “Joe” the “Plumber” bemoaning the lack of spending and program cuts in the stimulus bill and Instapundit citing Bush’s MBA as evidence of his awesome managerial skills.

It’s the old Prisoner’s Dilemma. If both parties are nice, everybody wins a little. If you’re nice, and the other guy is an ass, he wins big and you lose big. If you’re both asses, you both lose a little, but the same amount. The rational approach is to extend your hand initially, and if the other guy does the same, you both win. If, after that first act of good will, the other guy bonks you on the head, the rational approach is to beat the hell out of him until he extends his hand, and then you do the same.

Bush has some impressively low poll numbers these days:

Just 15 percent of Americans approve of the way President Bush is handling the economy, while 78 percent of Americans disapprove. Even a majority of Republicans disapprove of the President’s handling of this issue.

Overall, the president’s approval rating has dropped five points from last week and is now the lowest of his presidency. Only 22 percent of Americans approve of the job he’s doing, while 70 percent of Americans disapprove – a new high.

President Bush’s job approval rating has dropped 68 points from its all time high of 90 percent back in October, 2001. It now matches Harry Truman’s previous all-time low, recorded by Gallup in February 1952. The 70 percent disapproval rating is higher than any measured since Gallup began asking about presidential job approval in 1938.

A sixty-eight point reversal. I am proud to be a member of that 10% that never approved of the job he was doing. To the fifty-eight percent of the population who have come to see the light (all too many, regrettably, after November 2004), welcome aboard.

Kagro X has a post up at Daily Kos entitled “This will make Watergate look like child’s play.” It’s about Don Siegelman, the former Democratic governor of Alabama who was allegedly the target of a political prosecution by the Republicans. The facts are still being developed and I’m citing to a Daily Kos page, so I don’t expect anyone to take this as gospel. But, if true, the implications are astounding.

Siegelman was prosecuted for allegedly trading government favors for campaign donations when he was governor from 1999 to 2003 and lieutenant governor from 1995 to 1999, and HealthSouth CEO, Richard Scrushy was accused of arranging $500,000 in donations to Siegelman’s campaign for a state lottery in exchange for a seat on a state hospital regulatory board.

There are allegations that Karl Rove planned on neutralizing Siegelman politically through federal prosecutions. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Siegelman released from prison pending his appeal, finding that he had raised substantial questions of law and fact demonstrating the potential that the trial court had committed clear error.

In isolation, this wouldn’t be that big of a deal. However, you see something similar in the case of Georgia Thompson who was released from prison after the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals determined, upon review, that the prosecution’s evidence had been “beyond thin” in the words of one of the judges.

Then, you have the Attorney General purges under the leadership of professional amnesiac Alberto Gonzales who resigned under the pressure of an investigation into whether United States Attorneys were fired for not pursuing politically motivated and timed corruption prosecutions.

Perverting the justice system, imprisoning people, and ruining lives for political gain makes G. Gordon Liddy’s break into Democratic headquarters look like an April Fool’s joke by comparison. Again, file under, “interesting, if true.”

Hillary Clinton won big in a more or less meaningless primary race in West Virginia — points in garbage time to cover the spread, I suppose.

Of greater interest tonight is the fact that a Democrat won in a special election in Mississippi. Travis Childers beat Roger Wicker in Mississippi’s first district. That seat opened up when Roger Wicker vacated the seat for an appointment to the Senate. (I believe the Senate seat opened up when Trent Lott stepped down.)

Bush took 63% of the vote over John Kerry in 2004 in that district. This follows on the heels of special election losses by Republicans in two other normally safe seats — Hastert’s old seat in Illinois and Richard Baker’s old seat in Louisiana. One would think things will tighten up by November when all the campaigning makes the electorate say “to hell with all of them;” but at the rate things are going, Dan Burton can probably still feel safe, but the rest of the Indiana GOP delegation has to be getting a little skittish. If a Democrat can get elected in a 63% Bush district, it can plausibly happen just about anywhere.

Indiana isn’t the only state that gets goofy with the license plates. Florida is considering one with the phrase “I believe” and pictures of a cross and a stained-glass window. The plate’s proponent says he would oppose a similar plate for atheists stating, “I don’t believe.”

Personally, I’ve had enough of the specialty plates generally, and the constant drum beat of a certain vocal minority of Christians trying to mark their territory by seeking government endorsement of their religion is quite annoying.

Sylvia Smith, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has a story on the Alternative Minimum Tax. The AMT is a secondary calculation on tax obligations, originally designed so that rich people paid at least some tax if they were too successful using exemptions and the like for tax avoidance. Unfortunately, the AMT was not indexed to inflation and now threatens middle class tax payers. In years past, Congress has passed band-aid fixes that temporarily exempt taxpayers of more modest means.

This year, Republicans are blocking Democratic efforts to save middle class taxpayers from the AMT because the Democrats’ proposals involve taxing wealthy taxpayers more heavily to avoid increasing deficit spending.

According to the Tax Policy Center, a joint program of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, nearly half of all taxpayers with incomes less than $100,000 will have to pay the millionaires’ tax next year unless Congress changes the law. This year, fewer than 1 percent of those taxpayers were subject to the alternative minimum tax.

The idea behind the alternative minimum tax, enacted nearly 40 years ago to prevent 155 very rich families from sheltering most of their income, was to make sure everyone paid a minimum amount.
. . .
The House bill includes higher taxes for some well-off people to offset the cost of the patch because Democrats have insisted any new spending or tax cuts be paid for.

Bush says he will veto the House bill. Mark Souder is opposed to the bill because he would prefer to add to the deficit than tax the wealthy. Mark Souder: Champion of Red-ink Republicanism.

It’s a legitimate debate as to who should pay taxes:
Current status – Middle class taxpayers.
Democratic preference – Rich taxpayers.
Republican preference – Our kids (with interest).

Sylvia Smith, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has an article on the stalled farm bill. Apparently there are currently two competing farm bills, both of which have problems. Senator Lugar wants to amend the current version to end the crop subsidy program and replace it with a crop insurance program.

Reminds me of the old jokes about farmers’ clothes.
“Why do farmers have bills on their caps?”
“To shade their eyes enough to see the government check in the mailbox.”

“Why do farmers have a loop on the back of their boots?”
“So they can pull it out of your ass if you give them crap about their government checks.”

Something like that. I may have butchered the jokes.

Still, there are a lot of free market champions in Washington who get a bit of economic amnesia when the farm bill rolls around every so often.

Paul Krugman explains how the sainted Ronald Reagan didn’t really have a Southern Strategy at all. It was all just a series of Innocent mistakes.