Yet another bogus business attitude has emerged from the corporate ex-Execs who are now running the country: their contempt for--and fear of--whistle-blowers.

A bill to protect Federal employees who blow the whistle on ineptitude or corruption in the govt emerged from the hidey-hole of Senate bill-hell when Republican Olympia Snowe decided to support it. The corporate puppets in the White House promptly attacked the bill, saying--and you'll love this--that Junior needs the authority to to get rid of these people because he can't manage the govt without it.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 - Over strenuous objections from the Bush administration, Congress is moving to increase protections for federal employees who expose fraud, waste and wrongdoing inside the government.

Lawmakers of both parties say the measures are needed to prevent retaliation against such whistleblowers, who reveal threats to public health, safety and security.

But the administration says the bill unconstitutionally interferes with the president's ability to control and manage the government.
(emphasis added)

Ain't it perfect? Emperor George is openly claiming that people who expose wrong-doing in his Administration are a threat to his ability to manage it. Oops.

All-in-all, this has been quite a week for the Shrub. First he endorses the move by Publican wackos in the House to outsource terror. Next he gets blown off the stage in the debate that was supposed to be his showpiece, leading to speculation that the next two debates will be called off for fear he will embarrass himself so badly even Laura won't vote for him. And then he follows up that stellar performance with insisting that whistle-blowers endanger his ability to control his own govt.

An interesting result of all this is that the Mighty Wurlitzer is slowly transitioning into a different orchestration. Junior's already lost George Will on Iraq, Andy Sullivan with the anti-gay thing, Glenn Reynolds has problems with the DEFICIT (it's big enough to deserve caps, I think), the Korner Kids have had an extraordinarily hard time trying to defend his non-military record, and even Rupert Murdoch's Official WH Propaganda Organs, Fox and the NY Post, admitted Georgie had lost the debate Big Time--it was so obvious they didn't even bother to try to spin it.

I doubt that a concern for workers like Mark Hall and Robert Lindeman (two Border Patrol agents who were disciplined after they disclosed weaknesses in security along the Canadian border) or Teresa Chambers (who 'was dismissed from her job as chief of the United States Park Police after she said the agency did not have enough money or personnel to protect parks and monuments in the Washington area') is going to animate Rocco's Gang much but it's another straw loading this weak camel's back. Junior is out on the campaign trail trying to convince the country that John Kerry is a Madman. It's a good thing he only speaks to tame audiences of mouth-breathing Bush-worshippers because after Thursday nobody else is buying it.

Everything that Junior is and always has been was on display. A simple thing like a split-screen was all that was necessary to out Georgie's petulant insecurity, short temper, and contemptuous snarl to a waiting world, small portions of which were surprised by them. The only thing that surprised me about his appearance was his utter lack of preparation.

One of the drawbacks to surrounding yourself wih yes-men and ridiculing any idea or viewpoint that doesn't mirror your own is that you begin to think everybody dismisses that viewpoint as easily as you do, and you stop thinking you have to work to unseat it. Bush seems genuinely to have thought that a wave of his Imperial hand would rend Kerry's arguments into the dust from which they came; it didn't. Some of them he responded to as if he really had never heard them before--an astounding reaction considering they've been bandied about in the rest of the world for three years. It makes one wonder just how cut off this moron really is. I knew it was bad but to sputter and shake and scowl in shock just because Kerry said a few of the things about Allawi that the rest of us have been saying since June? In print and in public?

That was no performance. He was actually taken aback to discover that Allawi isn't universally loved and applauded by all. He had no response ready--no handy cliche, no devastating pre-digested sound-bite, nothing. He just couldn't believe his ears.

Even Poppy, famous for his disconnection, was never as hopelessly out-to-lunch as that. But then, Poppy actually read newspapers instead of having them spoon-fed to him in one-graf summaries from which all the controversy and unpleasant disagreements had been thoughtfully removed; Poppy didn't have Fox and CNN reporting whatever Roger Ailes told them to report on behalf of Rupert and twisting all the 'news' his way; Poppy didn't go out campaigning with an organization that never let anyone with an opposing opinion within five miles of him.

Given all that it's not hard to understand how Junior could support torture outsourcing and smothering whistle-blowers. He doesn't get it. He doesn't get what those stances say about him and his Admin, and, judging by the debate, he doesn't give a damn, either. His ideology is so firmly in charge now that even political considerations are taking a back seat--waaaaaay back. He's out on the stump wowing the already-convinced acolytes who would vote for him if he came onstage and told them he was the Devil Incarnate and he was going to rape all their women and send the rest of them to The Hell of Being Cut-to-Pieces While Hanging Upside Down By Their Testicles ('What a guy!' the Faithful would say admiringly. 'Now that's a Real Man.') while everyone else is so appalled by his decisions they're gagging.

It's an odd strategy--if that's what it is--this business of officially approving torture and punishing the people who want to make your supposed initiatives work better. Hard to imagine he'll make many converts with a record that includes them. It's a little like Dole expecting support from the center after he came out in favor of poison gas because the corporate contributor who makes it told him to.

Me, I love the way Junior is handling his campaign. Go for it, I say. He's making all the right moves--for Kerry.