Multi Medium

My Pipple!

They make me so proud:

Among the most high-profile Jews in Congress, Lieberman is viewed far more unfavorably than the presumptive Democratic nominee, according to a new poll. Only 37 percent of Jews view the Connecticut Independent in a favorable light compared to 48 percent who have a negative perception. As for Obama, 60 percent of Jews view him favorably while 34 percent view him unfavorably.

The findings were released as part of a recent survey of American Jews by the new progressive pro-Israel group J Street. They seem to upturn some of this year’s conventional political wisdom.

Obama, who is set to travel to Israel this week, is often described in the press as facing significant obstacles to winning Jewish support, in part because of false claims that he is a Muslim. Lieberman, meanwhile, is regularly quoted disparaging Obama’s credentials on topics considered dear to the Jewish voter’s heart: toughness on Iran and support for the Jewish state. Asked recently whether he should be questioning Obama’s commitment to Israel, the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee responded, “why wouldn’t I do that?”

Lieberman does score better among the 900 Jewish voters polled than other major political and religious figures. President Bush is viewed unfavorably by 74 percent of Jews, compared to 22 percent who see him in a positive light. McCain, meanwhile, is viewed favorably by just 34 percent of Jews, while 57 said they had a negative perception….

(…)

…As Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent noted in a review of the J Street poll, Jews are “liberal as hell.”

“Seventy-four percent of us view Bush unfavorably and 83 percent of us disapprove of his job performance,” Ackerman wrote. “While 76 percent of the country as a whole says the U.S. is on the wrong track, an astonishing 90 percent of American Jews say the same. Only 21 percent of us approve of the Iraq war and only 29 percent think Bush is good for Israel, and those are clearly the shmucks that kissed ass in Hebrew school and snitched when the rest of us used the synagogue phone booth and cloakroom to make out.”

Now I’m all verklempt. Talk amongst yourselves. Here’s a topic: Joe Lieberman is neither moderate nor a Democrat. Discuss.

Joe Lieberman does not speak for me.

Add comment July 22nd, 2008 at 11:33am Posted by Eli

Not Entirely Sure What The Chait Is Going For…

He seems to be saying that yeah, McCain may be just as evil as Dubya, but at least he wouldn’t be an outright criminal if he were president:

The best aspect of a McCain presidency is that, while it would probably follow the policies of George W. Bush, it would put an end to the politics of Karl Rove. I went back and reread Michael Lewis’s 1997 New York Times Magazine profile of McCain, which gushed (persuasively) over McCain long before McCain- gushing had become a media cliché. You can see in it that, even before his first presidential campaign made him persona non grata in the GOP, McCain really was a highly bipartisan figure. The article cites McCain working unusually closely with Democrats, and quotes Democrats lavishing praise on him. He impugns his own party’s leadership as corrupt. He jokingly refers to his younger political self as a “freshman right-wing Nazi.” Conservative ideologues, as a rule, do not liken conservatism to national socialism.

Liberals tend to view the press’s love affair with McCain as a wildly unfair act of bias. They have a point. On the other hand, they should take some heart in the fact that McCain obviously cherishes the approval of the mainstream (and even liberal) media. His accessibility to the press and public is something small-d democrats should cheer. McCain has conducted interviews with very liberal publications like Grist. He’s promised to undertake an American version of “Prime Minister’s Questions,” whereby members of Congress could spar with him.

Does McCain spin and dissemble? Of course. But the current administration’s practices go far beyond mere spin. In Bush’s Washington, critics are enemies to be dismissed rather than engaged. A McCain presidency would promise to dismantle the whole Rovian method that has torn open such a deep wound in the national psyche.

Beneath his wildly fluctuating ideological positions, McCain is an establishmentarian Republican. Unlike Bush, he cares about elite opinion. He is comfortable sharing power in the traditional postwar style rather than monopolizing it. He might not be another Teddy Roosevelt, but right now another Gerald Ford doesn’t look so bad.

Sure, another Gerald Ford might not be so bad.  BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT.

What we really need is another FDR, but that ain’t happening.

Add comment July 21st, 2008 at 07:54pm Posted by Eli

Real American Heroes

Admittedly, they’re not the sexiest kind of heroes, but their courage and service is undeniable.  CREW has compiled a list of 30 government whistleblower all-stars.  Some names, like Joe Wilson, Richard Clarke, and Sibel Edmonds, are very familiar; others, not so much.  The sad truth is that there have been so many outrages perpetrated by the Bush administration, that it’s almost impossible to keep track of them all.

Here’s the full PDF, and here’s a very brief rundown on each whistleblower:

Colonel Stephen Abraham, Army Reserve: Spoke out against kangaroo court Gitmo detainee status hearings.

Marty Bahamonde, FEMA: Frantically (and unsuccessfully) tried to get FEMA management to take Katrina disaster conditions seriously.

Charalambe Bobby Boutris, FAA: Testified to Congress about FAA’s lax inspection procedures and too-cozy relationship with airlines.

Richard Clarke, NSC: Published book about Bush administration’s total failure to take terrorism or al-Qaeda seriously prior to 9/11.

James Comey, DOJ: Former Deputy Attorney General who rushed to Ashcroft’s hospital bed to block Card and Gonzales’ attempt to get the AG’s approval for illegal surveillance.

Pasquale D’Amuro, FBI: Told FBI agents to stay away from GItmo interrogations for both moral and practical reasons (i.e., tainted prosecutions, al Qaeda propaganda).

Joseph Darby, Army Reserve: Blew the whistle on Abu Ghraib.

Col. Morris D. Davis, USAF: Blew the whistle on politically rigged military commission system for prosecuting alleged terrorists.

Earl Devaney, Interior: Inspector General who exposed failures to collect on oil and gas leases, and general lawlessness at Interior.

Sibel Edmonds, FBI: Blew the whistle on incompetence and espionage in translation division.

Glenn Fine, DOJ: Inspector General, exposed extensive malfeasance and incompetence at FBI and DOJ senior management.

Gloria Freeman, HUD: Objected to excessive, inappropriate contracts to tiny Republican company.

Jack Goldsmith, DOJ: Opposed “torture memos,” accompanied Comey to Ashcroft’s hospital room.

Dr. David Graham, FDA: Blew the whistle on Vioxx and general uselessness of drug approval process.

Bunnatine Greenhouse, Army Corps Of Engineers: Opposed and testified against massive long-term no-bid contracts to KBR.

James Hansen, NASA: Resisted Bush administration attempts to stop him from speaking out on climate change.

John P. Higgins, Jr., Department Of Education: Inspector General, exposed NCLB corruption including dodgy purchases of Neil Bush’s Ignite! products.

Captain Kevin Jarvis, Coast Guard: Exposed contract irregularities in Deepwater modernization program.

David Kuo, Office Of Faith-Based Initiatives: Wrote book about BushCo’s exploitation of his department to win religious votes.

J. William Leonard, Information Security Oversight Office: Challenged OVP’s refusal to report on its classified data holdings.

Brian Miller, GSA: Inspector General, exposed Lurita Doan’s conflicts of interest and violations of the Hatch Act.

Dr. Robert Misbin, FDA (Clinton administration): Pushed for withdrawal of deadly but profitable diabetes drug Rezulin.

Rick Piltz, Climate Change Science Program: Resigned in protest against BushCo. tampering with climate assessment reports.

Coleen Rowley, FBI: Blew the whistle on FBI headquarters’ refusal to seek search warrant to allow her field office to investigate Zacarias Moussaoui, possibly preventing 9/11.

Charles M. Smith, Army: Attempted to deny payment of $1 billion of inadequately documented KBR expenses.

Bruce C. Swartz, DOJ: Opposed torture of detainees, for reasons similar to Pasquale D’Amuro’s.

Major General Antonio Taguba, Army: Investigated and reported extensively on Abu Ghraib abuses and those responsible.

Anne Whiteman, FAA: Exposed air traffic controllers covering up their own mistakes by reporting them as pilot errors.

Ambassador Joseph Wilson: Wrote NYT op-ed debunking Bush’s claim that Iraq was seeking yellowcake in Niger.

Bassem Youssef, FBI: Blew the whistle on Bureau’s illegal surveillance and lack of Arabic-speaking translators.

Thank you all for standing up for us.

1 comment July 16th, 2008 at 10:39pm Posted by Eli

$4.11 Changed Everything!

Well, it looks like the Republican “Lease Drill Everywhere!” plan is gaining some traction:

Now, polling is beginning to show that a rising share of the public is ready to drill, drill, drill — threatening to destroy precious and unique wildlife areas like the Arctic refuge and create more oil spills along the Gulf coasts. Worse, drilling is a distraction from real changes like massive investments in wind and solar power.

In February, Pew asked the public in a poll whether they favor drilling in the Arctic refuge. At that time 42 percent favored and 50 percent opposed. Now, in July, 50 percent favor drilling and only 43 percent oppose. That’s a 12-point change since the February survey and a 28-point swing since a March 2002 Gallup poll (where 35 percent favored and 56 percent opposed).

The shift is something to be concerned about — progressives are losing ground with the public on drilling. These are alarming gains in sympathy for the plans of Big Oil.

This change isn’t because the idea has gotten better — Arctic drilling might cut gas prices by a mere 4 cents a decade from now. It is because of a sophisticated communications campaign by the oil companies and the Republican Party that is mostly met with silence by the other side — by our side.

I think it’s not just the communications campaign - it’s the fear and desperation of the American public as gas prices cross the $4 threshold and keep climbing with no relief in sight.

This reminds me of nothing so much as the way Republicans have exploited (and fomented) fear and hysteria about terrorism to sell a series of terrible policies (warrantless wiretapping, invasion of Iraq, torture, suspension of habeas corpus, etc.) on the grounds that they would keep us safe from the Scary Terrorists.  Of course, none of these policies did any such thing, and most of them made the underlying problem even worse.  But they sure did make Bush and his cronies a lot more powerful and a lot more rich.

And now, here we are again, with an American people up in arms about gas prices and begging for someone to do something, anything.  And that’s exactly what the Republicans are offering: Bold, decisive action.  So what if it won’t provide any actual relief - it’s better than no action at all, right?  And conservation and alternative energy strategies are sooo boring and lame.  Real red-blooded Americans drill and exploit and take, just like real red-blooded Americans kill and torture and spy and… detain indefinitely without recourse to legal counsel.

I expect the “Drill Everywhere” strategy will work out about as well as the Iraqupation - maybe even worse, since it’s our own country we’ll be destroying.

2 comments July 14th, 2008 at 08:08pm Posted by Eli

Mission Accomplished!

Well, at least the Iraqupation is working out great for somebody:

In a 1998 interview, Osama bin Laden — the terrorist organizer of 9/11 who still roams free — listed as one of his many grievances against the U.S. that Americans “have stolen $36 trillion from Muslims” by purchasing oil from Persian Gulf countries at low prices. The real price of a barrel of oil should be $144, bin Laden demanded.

Ten years ago today, the price of a barrel of oil was just $11. Heading into this holiday weekend, the price of a barrel of oil rested at $144 — a thirteen-fold increase.

One month after 9/11, the New York Times wrote of possible “nightmare” scenarios that would deliver bin Laden’s goal. Neela Banerjee warned that among the “misguided decisions” that would put oil supplies at risk would be “that the United States attacks Iraq.” The Times included this quote in its story:

“If bin Laden takes over and becomes king of Saudi Arabia, he’d turn off the tap,” said Roger Diwan, a managing director of the Petroleum Finance Company, a consulting firm in Washington. “He said at one point that he wants oil to be $144 a barrel” — about six times what it sells for now.

If there were no George W. Bush, bin Laden would have to invent him.  And vice versa.

3 comments July 6th, 2008 at 12:28pm Posted by Eli

Promising, If True

I’m not a real big fan of Harry Reid’s, but I have to say I like the sound of this (subscription only):

Since then, Reid has regularly kept the Senate operating over recesses. Additionally, he has made plain that he no longer plans to confirm any partisan Bush nominee whose appointment would tip the balance of a particular board or association to the GOP, and whose term stretches beyond the president’s tenure.

That should have been his policy all along, really.  It’s at the end of a story about Reid making a deal to confirm a whole bunch of nominees (both Republican and Democrat) to the SEC, Federal Reserve Board Of Governors, FEMA, State, DOJ, and various ambassadorships.  But I’m glad to see that he’s finally putting some limits on how much damage the lame duck can inflict past January 2009.

Add comment June 27th, 2008 at 08:21pm Posted by Eli

Siegelman Is Just The Tip Of The Iceberg

Okay, read this (it’s too long to excerpt, but it’s incredible stuff) and then try to tell me that the Bush administration, and the GOP in general, aren’t completely, utterly, totally corrupt.

In addition to the baldness of the corruption, I was also struck by the sheer meanspiritedness of it.  It wasn’t enough to simply sideline their opponents; they had to punish and humiliate them, too.  Charming, lovely people, these Republicans.

Add comment June 24th, 2008 at 10:03pm Posted by Eli

Dubya Doesn’t Care About The Constitution Or Terrorism

In case y’all needed any more proof that Dubya’s assertions of unilateral authority have absolutely nothing to do with fighting terrorism:

Ten months after Congress passed a law establishing a White House coordinator for preventing nuclear terrorism, President Bush has no plans to create the high-level post any time soon, according to the National Security Council.

The provision - suggested by leading members of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - was contained in 2007 legislation designed to improve homeland defenses. Congress passed it by a wide margin, with bipartisan support.

Some congressional leaders said Bush’s failure to fill the job nearly a year later marks an outright evasion of the law, and called on the president to fill the position swiftly, even though his administration has only seven months left in office.

(…)

The White House opposed creating the position from the start. In a January 2007 letter to Congress - six months before the law was adopted - the Bush administration wrote that the appointment of a nuclear antiterrorism chief “is unnecessary given extensive coordination and synchronization mechanisms that now exist within the executive branch,” citing a 2006 strategy document that lays out the responsibilities of numerous government departments.

But in the past, Bush has tried to bypass provisions of laws he disagrees with by issuing “signing statements,” documents singling out those parts of statutes that White House lawyers advised would infringe on his constitutional powers as chief of the government’s executive branch. Bush has used this practice more than any prior president.

This time, however, the White House seems to be ignoring the nuclear terrorism coordinator requirement not for constitutional reasons but simply because the administration thinks it is a bad idea. It is a stance some legal scholars called an even more blatant disregard of the checks and balances on presidential power.

(…)

National security analysts have long advocated for a top presidential adviser focused solely on organizing the government to prevent terrorists from acquiring catastrophic weapons, such as a nuclear device, a radioactive “dirty bomb,” or biological agents. They contend that the current arrangement - in which that responsibility is spread across the Departments of Energy, Defense, State, and Homeland Security - is not fully integrated and has gaps in preparedness.

(…)

Advocates say the post is needed now more than ever, pointing to growing evidence - documented by international intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency - that terrorist groups are actively seeking nuclear or radiological weapons and the know-how to make them.

Meanwhile, a government-funded report released this month concluded that some of the current efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation and terrorism are not fully coordinated.

I’m amazed that President Strong Terrorist Fighter can’t even be bothered to appoint someone to guard against the very kind of attack that he spent his entire presidency scaremongering about.  Not only did he not appoint a Nukular Terror Czar of his own volition, he has ignored Congress’s legal directive to do so.

Does anyone still believe that he’s insisting on the need for carte blanche wiretapping to prevent terrorist attacks?  I wonder how many Arabic/Daro/Pashto translators he has working on all those wiretaps of supposed Muslim terrorists…

(h/t dakine)

Add comment June 22nd, 2008 at 02:35pm Posted by Eli

Don’t Hold Your Breath, Russ.

I love Russ Feingold.  He’s one of the few congresscritters out there that I have any faith in to consistently do the right thing, and he’s not afraid to call out politicians of either party when they thumb their noses at the Constitution.  Alas, I don’t think he’s going to get much satisfaction here:

Many Americans rightly expect that the new president will abide by the law. But we can’t take that for granted. Americans deserve a guarantee from the next president that the abuses we’ve witnessed over the past eight years won’t happen again. The 44th president of the United States, whoever he is, must renounce the Bush administration’s abuses of executive power and make clear that his administration will uphold the rule of law.

It’s possible that they might say it, but there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that either McCain or Obama will mean it.  McCain has consistently supported the Bush administration’s stance on both carte blanche wiretapping and the abolition of habeas corpus, while Obama just came out in favor of the latest FISA “compromise” which gives the telecoms retroactive immunity if they can jump over a matchbox, offering only a vague assurance that he will “work” to remove it from the Senate version.

It appears that President Bush has pulled off the unthinkable: By portraying the Constitution as the terrorist’s best friend, he has turned it into just as much of an enemy as al Qaeda - for both parties.  I guess the Constitution hates us for our freedoms.

Add comment June 22nd, 2008 at 12:32pm Posted by Eli

Where’s Waldobama?

I’ll just link to Glennzilla’s post, since all the relevant info is there.  Basically, the Democratic “compromise” FISA bill is every bit as bad as we thought it would be, and probably even worse.  The “judicial review” over telecom complicity basically amounts to, “Did the Bush administration tell you it was legal?”  No determination of whether it actually was.

This is like those slasher movies (think Halloween and Friday The 13th) where every time it looks like the baddie is dead, he keeps coming back to life again and again again.  Only in this horror movie, the monster keeps coming back to life because the people who are supposed to be the good guys keep giving him CPR.

Glenn has the best argument yet that the “compromise” is, as Russ Feingold calls it, actually a capitulation:

And isn’t it so odd how this “compromise” — just like the Military Commissions Act, the Protect America Act and all the other great “compromises” from the Bush era which precede this one — is producing extreme indignation only from those who believe in civil liberties and the rule of law, while GOP Bush followers seem perfectly content and happy with it? I wonder if that suggests that what the Democratic leadership is supporting isn’t really a “compromise” at all.

Yes, funny how whenever the Democrats enter into a bipartisan “compromise,” that conservatives are pleased and progressives are pissed.  Perhaps conservatives just have a milder, more accommodating temperament than we do, and aren’t as accustomed to always getting their way…

But here is the $500 million question: Where’s Obama?  Isn’t he the standard-bearer and de facto leader of the Democratic party now?  Shouldn’t he have something to say about the FISA compromise?  Does he really expect anyone to buy his lame excuse that he hasn’t had a chance to read the whole thing yet?

The fact that the Democratic leadership is trying to push this abomination through with only 24 hours for review is a disgrace in itself, but it didn’t take individual liberal bloggers very much reading time to spot the problems with the bill… but I digress.

My fear is that this may be the dark side of the strong-on-national-security pitch that Wes Clark was making on Obama’s behalf - that this is Obama’s way of showing that he’s not afraid to… give telecoms immunity and let Dubya spy on people whenever he feels like it in order to fight terrorism effectively.

Either that, or he’s another corporate sellout, hiding behind a mask of changiness while doing the telecoms’ bidding.

If Obama has a good reason for playing Moody Prince Hamlet and being unable to make up his mind or lead on this, I would sure love to hear it.

Also, oh-by-the-way, Nancy Pelosi continues to be completely worthless.

4 comments June 19th, 2008 at 09:29pm Posted by Eli

Lizzie Bumiller Can’t Quite Bring Herself To Admit That McCain Is Just Like Bush

She gets a lot closer than I ever would have thought possible, though.  She even notes some of his flip-flops, especially on tax cuts, where McCain is actually now worse than Dubya.

The differences, according to Bumiller, are McCain’s opposition to global warming (which is pretty much a cosmetic sham), his opposition to torture (ditto), and the fact that he’s now moved to the right of Bush on immigration.

She also throws in this little gem:

Yet while it would be hard to categorize him as a doctrinaire Republican or conservative, Mr. McCain appears to have ceded some of his carefully cultivated reputation as a maverick.

Actually, it’s very easy to categorize McCain as a doctrinaire Republican or conservative, Lizzie.  Maybe it wasn’t eight years ago, but it sure as hell is now.

And a little bit more:

In a CBS News poll two weeks ago, 43 percent of registered voters said they believed he would continue Mr. Bush’s policies, and 21 percent said he would be more conservative in his policies than Mr. Bush. Twenty-eight percent said he would be less conservative than Mr. Bush.

For those of you keeping score, that’s 64% of registered voters who believe McCain would be either the same as Bush, or farther to the right. Excellent.

Presidencies are about more than policies, of course, and Mr. McCain would bring a different style, background and world view to the White House should he be elected in November.

Style and background, I’ll grant.  But world view?  It’s exactly the same.  Taxes bad, corporations good, we need a strong daddy government that will stop at nothing to protect us from the evildoers.  Fortunately, it looks like the voters are starting to figure that out.

Add comment June 17th, 2008 at 11:39am Posted by Eli

A Whole Bushel Of Bad Apples

This is a lot like that report out of the Senate Intelligence Committee - you know, the one saying that BushCo. knowingly lied about the intelligence they had against Iraq before the invasion:

A Senate investigation has concluded that top Pentagon officials began assembling lists of harsh interrogation techniques in the summer of 2002 for use on detainees at Guantanamo Bay and that those officials later cited memos from field commanders to suggest that the proposals originated far down the chain of command, according to congressional sources briefed on the findings.

The sources said that memos and other evidence obtained during the inquiry show that officials in the office of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld started to research the use of waterboarding, stress positions, sensory deprivation and other practices in July 2002, months before memos from commanders at the detention facility in Cuba requested permission to use those measures on suspected terrorists.

The reported evidence — some of which is expected to be made public at a Senate hearing today — also shows that military lawyers raised strong concerns about the legality of the practices as early as November 2002, a month before Rumsfeld approved them. The findings contradict previous accounts by top Bush administration appointees, setting the stage for new clashes between the White House and Congress over the origins of interrogation methods that many lawmakers regard as torture and possibly illegal.

“Some have suggested that detainee abuses committed by U.S. personnel at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and at Guantanamo were the result of a ‘few bad apples’ acting on their own. It would be a lot easier to accept if that were true,” Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote in a statement for delivery at a committee hearing this morning. “Senior officials in the United States government sought out information on aggressive techniques, twisted the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”

(…)

[M]emos and e-mails obtained by investigators reveal that in July 2002, Haynes and other Pentagon officials were soliciting ideas for harsh interrogations from military experts in survival training, according to two congressional officials familiar with the committee’s investigation. By late July, a list was compiled that included many of the techniques that would later be formally approved for use at Guantanamo Bay, including stress positions, sleep deprivation and the hooding of detainees during questioning. The techniques were later used at the Abu Ghraib detention facility in Iraq.

(…)

The Guantanamo Bay visit and the effort to compile interrogation tactics appear to show that Pentagon officials were moving toward a formal policy on interrogation before military commanders at the detention camp requested special measures, the officials said. However, top military officers objected to the proposals in a series of memos in November 2002, much earlier than previously reported, congressional investigators said. In early 2003, Rumsfeld formally authorized the techniques for use at Guantanamo Bay.

(…)

“It is increasingly clear that the decision to abandon the rule of law and order torture and abuse was made at the very top,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington legislative office. “We look forward to the full investigative report from the Armed Services Committee and call on Congress to hold accountable any and all public officials involved in ordering illegal torture.”

A group of 56 Congressional Democrats last week asked the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate whether any Bush administration officials may have broken laws in approving the use of harsh interrogation techniques for suspected terrorists.

As with the Senate Intelligence report, this pretty much just confirms and documents what we already knew, and what the Bush administration has been consistently lying about.  In this case, it’s the fact that torture is official BushCo. policy, and they’ve been lying about it all along.

Can’t wait to hear John “I Hate Torture But Voted For It Anyway” McCain’s reaction to this.

Add comment June 17th, 2008 at 06:59am Posted by Eli

The Value Of Regulation

Krugman has a great post today slamming the Republicans’ hostility to all forms of regulation - and not just on our terms (i.e., allowing poisonous food and predatory business practices is bad), but on their own as well:

[W]hen Grover Norquist, the anti-tax advocate, was asked about his ultimate goal, he replied that he wanted a restoration of the way America was “up until Teddy Roosevelt, when the socialists took over. The income tax, the death tax, regulation, all that.”

The late Milton Friedman agreed, calling for the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration. It was unnecessary, he argued: private companies would avoid taking risks with public health to safeguard their reputations and to avoid damaging class-action lawsuits. (Friedman, unlike almost every other conservative I can think of, viewed lawyers as the guardians of free-market capitalism.)

Such hard-core opponents of regulation were once part of the political fringe, but with the rise of modern movement conservatism they moved into the corridors of power. They never had enough votes to abolish the F.D.A. or eliminate meat inspections, but they could and did set about making the agencies charged with ensuring food safety ineffective.

(…)

One amazing decision came in 2004, when a Kansas producer asked for permission to test its own cows, so that it could resume exports to Japan. You might have expected the Bush administration to applaud this example of self-regulation. But permission was denied, because other beef producers feared consumer demands that they follow suit.

When push comes to shove, it seems, the imperatives of crony capitalism trump professed faith in free markets.

(…)

The ironic thing is that the Agriculture Department’s deference to the beef industry actually ended up backfiring: because potential foreign buyers didn’t trust our safety measures, beef producers spent years excluded from their most important overseas markets.

But then, the same thing can be said of other cases in which the administration stood in the way of effective regulation. Most notably, the administration’s refusal to countenance any restraints on predatory lending helped prepare the ground for the subprime crisis, which has cost the financial industry far more than it ever made on overpriced loans.

The moral of this story is that failure to regulate effectively isn’t just bad for consumers, it’s bad for business.

It’s amazing that even after so many clear-cut examples where “the market” did not prevent negligence or outright criminality, and even worked against business interests as well as consumer interests, that Republicans still will not admit that deregulation is actually not such a great idea.

Did I say “amazing”?  I meant “completely unsurprising and depressing.”

3 comments June 13th, 2008 at 06:55am Posted by Eli

Foreign Policy Wisdom

No-one could have possibly anticipated…

Jim Dobbins - A man who has just a bit of history of dealing with some pretty bad guys and doing it effectively - then chimed in arguing that the whole idea that blatant military threats had to be a part of effective negotiations was simply ahistorical.  He argued that we never used military threats when negotiating with the Russians or Chinese during the Cold War.  We just made clear what our redlines were and that worked pretty well, but we never in negotiations actually threatened them.  He then said that in his forty year career he had negotiated with Soviet Apparatchiks, Afghan warlords, Somali warlords, Serbs and Bosnians.  He found that when explicit military threats were part of the negotiations the negotiations would fail. So we should just stick the military threat back in the drawer.  The Iranians know it’s there.  We don’t need to waive it in their face.

Gee, who ever would have thought that threatening people would make them less receptive.  Crazy, innit.

Add comment June 12th, 2008 at 07:24pm Posted by Eli

In Soviet America, Media Censors YOU!

(If the conservatives can call us fascists, then surely we can call them communists)

Here’s a paragraph from an NYT editorial on media censorship in Russia. Does it sound a little… familiar?

Equally insidious as government censorship is the growing self-censorship among Russian journalists. The fear, mostly of losing their jobs, is especially true at national television networks, where most Russians get their information. News about Chechnya or Georgia or Iran now follows the government line. Mr. Putin’s opponents or Mr. Medvedev’s critics are viewed as un-newsworthy, and public affairs shows on Russian television are growing more like those in the Soviet days when “news” meant reading a handout from the Kremlin.

It’s downright uncanny.

Add comment June 9th, 2008 at 09:45pm Posted by Eli

Supporting The Troops… Dubya-Style

Yeah, Dubya loves the troops so much that he’s using them as hostages…

President Bush is threatening the lives of American troops if Congress doesn’t give him the money he wants for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan….  The Commander-in-Chief  has also pledged to stop paying troops in combat if America’s wallet isn’t handed over straightaway.

From The Hill:

Bush said that if Congress does not act promptly, “critical accounts at the Department of Defense will soon run dry.” He added that civilian employees may face “temporary layoffs,” and the Pentagon would be forced to “close down a vital program that is getting potential insurgents off the streets and into jobs.” If the supplemental spending bill is not enacted after July, Bush said, the department would “no longer be able to pay our troops,” including ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I just want to be clear about two points:

1. Insurgents kill Americans.  So when the President says that the Pentagon would be forced to “close down” a program that gets “potential insurgents off the streets,” he’s really saying that he’ll deliberately allow the threat to American troops in Iraq increase if he doesn’t get his money.  He’s playing chicken with Congress at the expense of American lives in Iraq.  Make no mistake about it: More insurgents on the streets would lead to more American deaths.

(…)

2. Bush is also threatening to stop paying troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.  This is funny, because I don’t hear him threatening to cut the contracts of Halliburton, Blackwater, SAIC, and DynCorp–and thus cutting their employees’ inflated salaries.

This is a clear indication that the Bush administration is more loyal to contractors than to soldiers. When forced to cut spending, Bush would rather starve members of the Armed Forces than cut the exorbitant pay checks given to those who work for privatized military companies.

Impeachment is too late at this point, but there’s no reason that this appalling behavior shouldn’t be hung around John McCain’s neck–thus ensuring that the betrayal of the American military doesn’t extend past January 2009.

At the very least, Obama needs to put McCain on the spot and force him to either repudiate Bush on this and pledge that he would never make these kinds of threats if he became president.  Either McCain helps pressure Dubya to abandon this stance, or he clings to him and destroys what’s left of his own pro-troop, independent-from-Dubya reputation even further (opposing the new GI Bill really didn’t help).

True, it’d be giving McCain an opportunity to score some points at Dubya’s expense, but I don’t think he’d take it.

2 comments June 8th, 2008 at 01:13pm Posted by Eli

Today Must Be Chutzpah Day

The All-Seeing Eye Of Froomkin sets the tone:

Yesterday’s long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report further solidifies the argument that the Bush administration’s most blatant appeals to fear in its campaign to sell the Iraq war were flatly unsupported.

Some of what President Bush and others said about Iraq was corroborated by what later turned out to be inaccurate intelligence. But their most compelling and gut-wrenching allegations — for instance, that Saddam Hussein was ready to supply his friends in al-Qaeda with nuclear weapons — were simply made up.

(…)

The White House response? That officials in Congress and elsewhere were saying the same things about Iraq. Or in other words, that other people bought the administration line. It takes a lot of chutzpah to defend yourself against charges that you’ve engaged in a propaganda campaign by noting that it worked.

Can’t really add anything to that…

But wait, there’s more!  Remember John McCain’s crazy anti-Muslim spiritual guide, Rod Parsley?

Shortly after Sen. John McCain publicly rejected the endorsements of John Hagee and Rod Parsley, Parsley released his own statement rescinding his endorsement and then sort of disappeared from sight.  Sometime since then, Parsley apparently decided that he had a bit more to get off his chest and so he released a video on his Center for Moral Clarity website in which he reiterated many of the points he made in his initial statement but added some attacks on what he claimed were the “politically vicious and misguided” hit-squads who exposed his radical views, claiming that his views on Islam are “very much in the mainstream” and insisting that he made a “clear distinction between Muslim terrorists and the vast majority of peaceful Muslims.”

Of course, Parsley is on record having told his congregation and massive TV audience that “America was founded in part with the intention of seeing this false religion [Islam] destroyed” and “Islam is an anti-Christ religion that intends through violence to conquer the world,” as well as writing that so-called “Muslim extremists” are really “mainstream believers who are drawing from the well at the very heart of Islam.”

What a dillweed.

And then there’s the Log Cabin Republicans:

Log Cabin has had a long relationship with Sen. McCain, going back to our national office’s opening in the mid-90s.  He has had an open door to us at Log Cabin and has a record of inclusion.

We understand the general election starts today and Log Cabin will do its part to educate gay and lesbian voters about Sen. McCain in the weeks ahead.  Contrary to what many Democrats are saying, Sen. McCain is not George W. Bush.  Most gays and lesbians understand that fact.  Sen. McCain isn’t going to use gay people as a wedge issue.  He won the GOP nomination with no help (and with outright hostility) from many so-called “social conservatives.”  This is a significant achievement for all gay and lesbian Americans.

…McCain didn’t just vote (twice) against the marriage amendment.  He put himself on the line, bucked his own party leadership and President Bush, and took to the floor of the U.S. Senate to speak against the proposal.  In 2004, he gave one of the most impassioned speeches from the Senate floor on the issue.  That isn’t insignificant.

Is his record perfect?  No.  But it’s inclusive and shows positive signs.  We will hear more about his priorities and record in the months ahead.  Stay tuned…

If this sounds hard to believe, that’s because it is:

Uh, he didn’t look like he was putting anything on the line when he did this:

I believe that the institution of marriage should be reserved for the union of one man and one woman, said Sen. McCain. The Protect Marriage Arizona Amendment would allow the people of Arizona to decide on the definition of marriage in our state. I wholeheartedly support the Protect Marriage Arizona Amendment and I hope that the voters in Arizona choose to support it as well.

– John McCain in 2005.

* Or when he made this commercial for the failed 2006 Arizona Marriage Amendment, which would have effectively banned same-sex couples from legal recognition of any kind?

* What about this?:

Advisers to Sen. John McCain’s presidential bid say he will not try to “soften” the Republican party’s platform on abortion and same-sex marriage to appeal to more voters.

Sounds like the Log Cabin is more like a houseboat, floating down Denial River.  Good luck with that education program, guys.

Add comment June 6th, 2008 at 07:10pm Posted by Eli

Pat Roberts Accidentally Sabotages McCain

Hey, remember this?

The [Senate] Intelligence Committee began a comprehensive investigation nearly five years ago. Initially, the committee was prepared to release one authoritative document on the Iraq intelligence, what it said, and how it was handled. With the 2004 presidential election looming, then-Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) split the report in two — one on how wrong the intelligence community and agencies were (released before the ‘04 election) and another on how the White House used/misused/abused the available information (to be released after the ‘04 election).

Roberts played fast and loose for years. First he said publicly that he’d “try” to have Phase II available to the public before the 2004 election. He didn’t. Roberts then gave his word, in writing, that members of the Senate Intelligence Committee would have a draft report on controversial “public statements” from administration officials by April 2006. That didn’t happen, either. Then he indicated that he wanted to give up on the second part of the investigation altogether. (In January, we learned that the investigation was impeded by the Vice President.)

Well, it finally came out, and it pretty much confirmed what most reality-based people already believed:

[Y]ou’ll never guess what investigators found.

A long-awaited Senate Select Intelligence Committee report made public Thursday concludes that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made public statements to promote an invasion of Iraq that they knew at the time were not supported by available intelligence.

In a statement, Intelligence Committee Chairman John Rockefeller (D- W. Va.) said, “There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate.”

Key points from the report, by way of Rockefeller’s office:

* Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa’ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa’ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.

* Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.

* Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.

* Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community’s uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.

* The Secretary of Defense’s statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.

* The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.

To this day, Still-President Bush will talk about his obviously false pre-war claims in the context of mistaken intelligence, which “everybody” believed at the time. But this long-overdue report is a reminder of just how wrong the Bush defense is — he (and his team) weren’t fooled by errors, they fooled others with arguments they knew had no foundation in fact.

Now here’s the beauty part:

And then, of course, there’s John McCain, who’s running on his national security expertise and judgment on military matters, who bought every line Bush told him, then parroted it to the nation. Worse, McCain has assured voters that “every [intelligence] assessment” justified the 2003 invasion. Today reminds us how wrong this is.

Or as Joe at Americablog puts it:

Republican Senators fought very hard to prevent the release of this intel report back in 2004 to insure Bush’s re-election. And, they wouldn’t release this report back in 2006 to protect their own re-elections. All that delay has resulted in the release of this report in 2008 — leaving John McCain to defend the Bush Iraq war agenda. In some ways, it was worth the wait.

This report makes the illegitimacy of the Iraq invasion even more mainstream and “official” (as opposed to being something that can be dismissed as a dirty hippie conspiracy theory), and makes McCain’s claim that “every assessment” justified it even more untenable.  I wonder if he’ll keep saying that - I hope he does.

2 comments June 5th, 2008 at 06:38pm Posted by Eli

Revealing Right-Wing Word Choice Of The Day

From the latest crazy right-wing “_______watch” blog, Think Progress Watch:

Scott McClellan who is a snitch is also a pawn of the Left.

A snitch, eh?  Not a liar?  Interesting.

Shorter right-wing loons: “We liked Scottie better when he was lying.  Lies good, truth bad.”

(h/t Oliver Willis & Matt O)

Add comment June 2nd, 2008 at 07:02am Posted by Eli

MoDo Has One Of Her Good Days

Yes, more of this and less “Obambi,” please:

So now comes Scott McClellan, once the most loyal of the Texas Bushies, to reveal “What Happened,” as the title of his book promises, to turn W. from a genial, humble, bipartisan good ol’ boy to a delusional, disconnected, arrogant, ideological flop.

Although his analytical skills are extremely limited, the former White House press secretary — Secret Service code name Matrix — takes a stab at illuminating Junior’s bumpy and improbable boomerang journey from family black sheep and famous screw-up back to family black sheep and famous screw-up.

How did W. start out wanting to restore honor and dignity to the White House and end up scraping all the honor and dignity off the White House?

(…)

Every gut instinct he had was wildly off the mark and hideously damaging to all concerned.

It seems that if you trust your gut without ever feeding your gut any facts or news or contrary opinions, if you keep your gut on a steady diet of grandiosity, ignorance, sycophants, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, those snap decisions can be ruinous.

(…)

In Washington, it is rarely the geopolitical or human consequences that cause people to turn on leaders behaving immorally. The town is far more narcissistic and practical than that.

The people who should be sounding the alarm for democracy’s sake, and the sake of all the young Americans losing lives and limbs, get truly outraged only when they are played for fools and fall guys, when their own reputations are at stake.

(…)

McClellan did not realize the value of a favorite maxim — “The truth shall set you free” — until he was hung out to dry by his bosses in the Valerie Plame affair, repeating the lies Karl Rove and Scooter Libby brazenly told him about not being the leakers.

“Clearly,” McClellan says, sounding like the breast-heaving heroine of a Victorian romance, “I had allowed myself to be deceived.” He felt “something fall out of me into the abyss.”

And that was even before “the breaking point,” when he learned the worst about his idol — that the president who had denounced leaks about his warrantless surveillance program, who had promised to fire anyone leaking classified information about Plame, was himself the one who authorized Dick Cheney to let Scooter leak part of the top-secret National Intelligence Estimate.

“Yeah, I did,” Mr. Bush told his sap of a press secretary on Air Force One. His tone, the stunned McClellan said, was “as if discussing something no more important than a baseball score.”

He recalled the first time that he had begun to suspect that W. might be just another dissembling pol: when he overheard his boss, during his 2000 bid, ludicrously telling a supporter that he couldn’t remember, from his wild partying days, if he had tried cocaine.

“He isn’t the kind of person to flat-out lie,” McClellan said, but added, “I was witnessing Bush convincing himself to believe something that probably was not true.” He’d see a lot more of it over the next six years before Bush tearfully booted him out.

MoDo is exactly right.  None of these people (she also mentions Tenet and Powell’s conspicuously late revelations) are motivated by conscience; if they were, they would have resigned and spoken out when they realized that their boss was an amoral lying liar arrogantly leading the country down the path to ruin.

Instead, they waited until they were personally aggrieved and/or saw the potential for dollar signs, thus tainting the credibility of their almost-certainly-truthful revelations.  Instead of being a cry of conscience howled shortly after his “breaking point,” Scottie’s memoir looks more like an exercise in paying back and cashing in, allowing Dubya’s minions to attack his motivations instead of refuting his accusations (except for the sensational but largely irrelevant cocaine story).

3 comments June 1st, 2008 at 01:53pm Posted by Eli

How Not To Do Pushback

Okay, so I get that the Republicans are going to do all they can to smear Scott McClellan now that he’s accused the Bush Administration of being a bunch of lying liars - it’s what they do.  But a couple of specific lines of attack kinda mystify me.

First there was Jeff Gannon, Male Prostitute, insinuating that Scottie is Teh Gay Homosexual:

What I hear about the book does not sound like the Scott McClellan I knew for two years. I can say without fear of contradiction, that I knew Scott better than any other White House correspondent or Washington reporter.

Nudge nudge, wink wink.  Because nothing destroys your credibility more than being gay.  Unless you’re Jeff Gannon, of course, in which case you’re totally believable.

The thing about this line of attack is, if Gannon is going to Go There, then he had better be damn sure that he didn’t know anyone else of note in the White House “better than any other White House correspondent or Washington reporter,” or if he did, that Scottie didn’t know bout it.

He’d also better be damn sure that no-one else of note in the White House facilitated his entree into the White House press corps knowing that he was Scottie’s boy-toy (or vice-versa).  ‘Cuz I really don’t think the Bushies want to deal with stories along the lines of, “President Bush/Karl Rove allowed gay prostitute into White House press corps for homosexual affair with White House press secretary,” although I suppose I could be wrong.

The other pushback that seems a bit strange is the one about Dubya’s cocaine use:

A close former aide to President Bush has come forward to emphatically rebut Scott McClellan’s allegation that Bush had once said that he did not remember if he had ever used cocaine.

Logan Walters, who as Bush’s longtime personal aide would have been present for a supporter phone call like the one McClellan describes, told Politico that he never heard such a conversation and that the idea of it is completely implausible.

“I never heard him say, ‘I don’t remember whether or not I’ve used cocaine’ — never heard him say anything like that,” Walters said. “It would be so strikingly out of character and inconsistent with the way he typically responded to issues and questions, it would have stood out in my mind.”

(…)

McClellan writes: “As we arrived at the suite, the governor invited me to follow him into the back room. Logan stayed in the living room area, arranging for the governor to take a phone call from a supporter.

“Bush motioned for me to sit and relax in his room while he took the call. … ‘The media won’t let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors,’ I heard Bush say. ‘You know, the truth is I honestly don’t remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, but I just don’t remember.’ … I remember thinking to myself, how can that be?”

McClellan stood by his recollection and pointed out: “Logan was not in the room. He was in the living room area.”

Walters maintained that, at the time, he was in Bush’s presence all day, every day.

“I would have reacted the same way Scott claims he reacted in the book, which is I just wouldn’t have believed him,” Walters said. “I don’t believe it’s plausible to say, ‘I don’t remember whether I used cocaine.’

“The president always showed a lot of integrity around me. I was with him in numerous public and private situations, especially during the campaign when he was talking to Karen Hughes or Karl Rove or Dan Bartlett or other traveling campaign staff.

“I did not ever witness him trying to hide something. I didn’t ever witness him being dishonest about something — saying something publicly that he was inconsistent with privately. That’s not the guy I came to know.”

Well, first of all, that last quote proves that Walters is a ginormous liar - either about what he witnessed, or about being in Dubya’s vicinity for more than five minutes a day.  But even aside from that, is Dubya’s cocaine use really something you want to remind people of?  Or the lameness of Dubya’s denial, which suggests that he was in such a drug- or alcohol-induced fog that he couldn’t even remember if he’d tried cocaine?

Maybe the story’s true, maybe it isn’t (I’m inclined to believe it is, based on Dubya’s dishonesty and lack of character about, well, everything else), but is it really a great idea to remind people of it, or get them debating over whether Dubya was such a wreck of a party-boy that even coke didn’t make an impression on him?

(h/t Stoller)

Add comment May 31st, 2008 at 02:25pm Posted by Eli

I Wonder What It Was Like…

To be Landay & Strobel in the early days of BushCo’s drumbeating for the Iraq invasion.  I figure that at first they must have been racing to get their stories out, afraid that some other news organization would beat them to the explosive scoop: White House Lying About Case For War!

And then, gradually, realizing that they weren’t actually racing against anybody.  No-one was trying to beat them to the story, no-one else wanted anything to do with it.  I wonder if they doubted their own sanity a little bit, the way that you do when you’re the only person who sees something, or thinks a certain way.  Hell, I wonder if either one of them could have sustained it alone, without someone else to reassure him that they were seeing the same things, that he wasn’t deluding himself and chasing shadows.

How sad is that, really?  The biggest story of the decade, and nobody wanted to cover it.

Add comment May 30th, 2008 at 10:18pm Posted by Eli

Et Tu, Scotté?

I’m not the least bit surprised by the revelations/accusations, but I am pretty surprised by the source:

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week that President Bush “veered terribly off course,” was not “open and forthright on Iraq,” and took a “permanent campaign approach” to governing at the expense of candor and competence.

Among the most explosive revelations in the 341-page book, titled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” (Public Affairs, $27.95):

• McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war.

• He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

• He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.”

• The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them — and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts.

• McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff — “had at best misled” him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.

(…)

The eagerly awaited book, while recounting many fond memories of Bush and describing him as “authentic” and “sincere,” is harsher than reporters and White House officials had expected.

McClellan was one of the president’s earliest and most loyal political aides, and most of his friends had expected him to take a few swipes at his former colleague in order to sell books but also to paint a largely affectionate portrait.

Instead, McClellan’s tone is often harsh. He writes, for example, that after Hurricane Katrina, the White House “spent most of the first week in a state of denial,” and he blames Rove for suggesting the photo of the president comfortably observing the disaster during an Air Force One flyover. McClellan says he and counselor to the president Dan Bartlett had opposed the idea and thought it had been scrapped.

But he writes that he later was told that “Karl was convinced we needed to do it — and the president agreed.”

“One of the worst disasters in our nation’s history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush’s presidency. Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush’s second term,” he writes. “And the perception of this catastrophe was made worse by previous decisions President Bush had made, including, first and foremost, the failure to be open and forthright on Iraq and rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath.”

(…)

“I still like and admire President Bush,” McClellan writes. “But he and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war. … In this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security.”

(…)

McClellan repeatedly embraces the rhetoric of Bush’s liberal critics and even charges: “If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.

“The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. … In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”

Wow.  History’s judgment continues to trickle out, doesn’t it.  My only complaint is that Scottie is a little too willing to let Dubya personally off the hook and blame everything on his advisers.  Who hired the advisers?  Who made the decision to listen to them even when their advice was obviously flawed at best, insane and evil at worst?  Bush is either a monster or a chump, and history will not be kind either way.

Add comment May 28th, 2008 at 07:20am Posted by Eli

Happy Memorial Day From Bob Geiger

I think I may have actually found someone who hates Dubya more than I do - and with good reason.

Dead Troops Remembered By President Who Had Them Killed

Yes, that’s a harsh headline for this piece.

But I’ll ask you to forgive me because, as a Veteran, there isn’t a day on the calendar that causes my hatred — and I do indeed mean hatred — of George W. Bush to bubble over the top more than Memorial Day.

“On Memorial Day, we honor the heroes who have laid down their lives in the cause of freedom, resolve that they will forever be remembered by a grateful Nation, and pray that our country may always prove worthy of the sacrifices they have made,” reads Bush’s official Memorial Day proclamation, issued by the White House on Thursday.

The Chickenhawk-in Chief says a lot of things that make this Vet’s blood boil but stuff like saying that he prays “…that our country may always prove worthy of the sacrifices they have made” is almost vomit inducing.

This statement comes from the same man who himself began dishonoring the sacrifices of all Veterans in such huge ways in March of 2003, when he invaded Iraq behind a veil of lies and deceit and started spilling barrels of military and civilian blood to start a war with a country that posed no threat whatsoever to our national security. These stirring words of remembrance come from an administration that began with a stolen election in 2000, which goes entirely against what I was taught way back when I was in the U.S. Navy, which was that part of the “way of life” we were protecting was symbolized by the ability of all of our citizens to have their votes counted.

“These courageous and selfless warriors have stepped forward to protect the Nation they love, fight for America’s highest ideals, and show millions that a future of liberty is possible,” continues Bush’s proclamation. “Americans are grateful to all those who have put on our Nation’s uniform and to their families, and we will always remember their service and sacrifice for our freedoms.”

The words Bush puts forth are true — it’s him being the one to say them that I find so sickening and personally offensive.

It is positively nauseating to have George W. Bush ever talk to us about “America’s highest ideals” when his administration has started a bloody war for no reason, imprisoned those suspected of being “terrorists” without trial or benefit of legal counsel, tortured prisoners in America’s name and done everything but grab the original U.S. Constitution from the National Archives and run it through a paper shredder.

I also don’t believe for one minute that the majority of the planet now holds our country in such extreme contempt because we’re right and they don’t understand our “highest ideals.” This Veteran will go to his grave believing that the years 2000 through 2008 were a dark time in our history when much of what I believed when I served in uniform was made invalid and debased.

According to the Defense Department, we have now lost 4,082 men and women in Bush’s war of choice in Iraq and we should not allow the man who sent them needlessly to their deaths to lead our nation today in mourning their loss. Make no mistake about it, George W. Bush is as responsible for the deaths of those men and women as if he himself had fired the bullet or set the IED that ended their lives.

(…)

The least Bush can do is stay in the White House today, keep his lying mouth shut and understand deep in his craven soul that the next day the Congress should declare a national holiday is January 20, 2009, the day he leaves office and his days of dishonoring our war dead are forever done.

The thing is, Dubya - and Republicans in general - know that the troops are iconic, and held in the highest esteem by Americans in general, and conservative Americans in particular.  So he gushes about their courage and poses with them and bathes in their reflected glory every chance he gets… but he doesn’t actually give a damn about them, or about any other American making under $1,000,000 a year.

What’s amazing to me is that this isn’t obvious to everybody.

1 comment May 26th, 2008 at 01:36pm Posted by Eli

Take That, Propaganda!

Woohoo!  House passes amendment to investigate the DoD’s use of generals to spout administration talking points on teevee in the guise of “analysis”:

Tonight, the House passed an amendment introduced by Reps. Hodes, DeFazio, and DeLauro to the Defense Authorization Act for FY2009 requiring that “not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Inspector General of the Department of Defense and the Comptroller General of the United States shall each conduct a study of, and submit to the Congress a report on, the extent to which the Department of Defense has violated the prohibition on propaganda” and defines propaganda as “any form of communication in support of national objectives designed to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, or behavior of the people of the United States in order to benefit the sponsor, either directly or indirectly.”

On passage of the amendment, Speaker Pelosi said:

In his farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower stated that “only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” The Pentagon media influence program reported by the New York Times struck at the heart of this principle – not only denying citizens the knowledge they deserve but also using the media to manipulate public opinion, and as a consequence, damaging our democracy.

The President and members of his Administration led the country to war on the basis of unproven assertions, later confirmed to be false, and have continued to misrepresent the truth on the ground. The Hodes-DeFazio-DeLauro Amendment which prohibits the Department of Defense from using funds for propaganda purposes and initiates a GAO and IG investigative report into past use of propaganda, is a vital step toward restoring the public’s faith in information stemming from the Pentagon.

Rep. Hodes:

The American people were spun by Bush Administration “message multipliers.” They were fed Administration talking points, believing they were getting independent military analysis. Days after, the Pentagon suspended the program. The news outlets have been remarkably silent. The Department of Defense Inspector General has begun an internal review of the program but given the possibility as well as decision makers in this Congress were misled about the war in Iraq, I believe it is absolutely critical that a public investigation happen that is transparent to this body as well as to the American people. Congress cannot allow an Administration to manipulate the public on false propaganda on matters of war and national security.

Awesome. Be even better if the media were to report on it. I couldn’t find a story about this vote in either NYT or WaPo, so who knows if they’ll bother to write about the investigation’s results either.

2 comments May 23rd, 2008 at 07:30am Posted by Eli

Surrounded By Appeasers

This just gets better and better.  Dubya tells the Israeli Knesset that anyone who would negotiate with terrorists and rogue states (*coughcoughObamacoughcoughcough*) is an appeaser like Neville Chamberlain (which is a very creative definition of appeasement, by the way), then a few days later we hear that he was actually insulting his hosts.

Now here’s Dubya’s favorite surgin’ general, in a written statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee:

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, President Bush’s nominee to lead U.S. forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, supports continued U.S. engagement with international and regional partners to find the right mix of diplomatic, economic and military leverage to address the challenges posed by Iran.

In written answers to questions posed by the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he will testify today, Petraeus said the possibility of military action against Iran should be retained as a “last resort.” But he said the United States “should make every effort to engage by use of the whole of government, developing further leverage rather than simply targeting discrete threats.”

But wait, there’s more!

On the cover of a new book titled “The China Diary of George H. W. Bush: The Making of a Global President,” edited by Jeffrey A. Engel, our 41st president is quoted as saying, “I was a big believer then, and still am, that personal diplomacy can be very useful and productive.” That’s not a quote from the diary, which covers Bush’s time as the head of the United States Liaison Office in Beijing from 1974 to 1975. It’s from a preface Bush penned specifically for this book.

(…)

“I took some hits for not being tougher on the Chinese,” he writes, “but my long history with Deng and the other leaders made it possible for us to work through the crises without derailing Sino-American relations, which would have been a disaster. I was a big believer then, and still am, that personal diplomacy can be very useful and productive.” At no point in the preface does Bush object to establishing relations with a tyrannical regime.

Et tu, Poppy?

Add comment May 22nd, 2008 at 08:12pm Posted by Eli

Meltdown

Heh heh heh…

Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.) is and will remain the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, but House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) demonstrated this morning at a Conference meeting who’s really in charge by announcing a series of changes designed to shake up the campaign arm in the wake of three special election losses in the span of two months (and a financial scandal).

Democratic victories in Mississippi, Louisiana and Illinois special elections had prompted many in the GOP to call for Cole’s head or, short of that, for the leadership to make wholesale changes at the committee. After several “frank” meetings with Cole, Boehner announced this morning that:

(…)

* There will be an “audit” of the three special election losses conducted by two as-yet-unnamed Republican lawmakers, designed to figure out what went wrong and how to avoid repeating those mistakes in the future. This could be an embarrassing exercise for Cole and his top staff, but they agreed to it, likely because they didn’t have a choice.

Recommendation 1: Do not have a destructive idiot of the same party affiliation as president.

Recommendation 2: If you absolutely must have a destructive idiot of the same party affiliation as president, do not give him everything he wants.

Recommendation 3: Try to convince everyone that the destructive idiot is absolutely nothing to do with you, and just some sort of rogue “bad apple.”  Try not to be seen in public or otherwise associated with him.

The GOP’s problem is not strategy and tactics, it’s the field of play itself.  No matter what they do, voters will remember who got us into this mess.  One of the best indicators was when Lincoln Chafee got voted out despite being an antiwar moderate and having a fairly high approval rating.  He lost simply because he was a Republican.  There’s going to be a lot of that this year, and I can’t wait.

(h/t dakine)

2 comments May 22nd, 2008 at 07:48am Posted by Eli

Surprise!

Coming soon to a theater of operations nowhere near you:

The Jerusalem Post reports that a senior Israeli official said that President Bush and Vice President Cheney are of the belief that military action against Iran is necessary and that such an attack could be coming soon:

US President George W. Bush intends to attack Iran in the upcoming months, before the end of his term, Army Radio quoted a senior official in Jerusalem as saying Tuesday.

The official claimed that a senior member of the president’s entourage, which concluded a trip to Israel last week, said during a closed meeting that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action was called for.

However, the official continued, “the hesitancy of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice” was preventing the administration from deciding to launch such an attack on the Islamic Republic, for the time being.

I’m not sure how credible (if at all) the Jerusalem Post is, and this is essentially a reporter saying that an unnamed Israeli official told him that an unnamed American official told him that Bush & Cheney want war, so take it all with a great big shaker of salt.

But it would be in character for Dick and Dubya - no doubt they miss that delicious new war smell, and they know that this might be their last chance to bomb Iran unless McCain is elected. Which, incidentally, they might also be trying to ensure with an attack on Iran, since everyone knows that Republicans are totally credible and serious when it comes to matters of national defense.

(f/t Attaturk)

Add comment May 20th, 2008 at 11:18am Posted by Eli

Welcome To The 2008 Campaign Metanarrative

I think the #1 story - and deciding factor - of the 2008 campaign is going to be the efforts of McCain and downticket Republican candidates to distance themselves from the unpopular awfulness of the Bush/Cheney administration and position themselves as Reasonable Pragmatic Moderates.

Dick Morris thinks it’s doable, at least for Straight-Talking Maverick McCain:

McCain needs to not run as a traditional Republican, which is easy, since he’s not one. After all, how did an anti-torture, anti-tobacco, pro-campaign finance reform, anti-pork, pro-alternative-energy Republican ever emerge from the primaries alive?

I wasn’t aware that one did.

…McCain can win by running to the center.

His base will be there for him; indeed, it will turn out in massive numbers. Wright has become the honorary chairman of McCain’s get-out-the-vote efforts. It would be nice to think that race isn’t a factor in American politics anymore, but it is. The growing fear of Obama, who remains something of an unknown, will drag every last white Republican male off the golf course to vote for McCain, and he will need no further laying-on of hands from either evangelical Christians or fiscal conservatives.

So McCain doesn’t have to spend a lot of time wooing his base. What he does need to do is reduce the size of the synapse over which independents and fearful Democrats need to pass in order to back his candidacy. If the synapse is wide, they will stay with Obama. But if they perceive McCain as an acceptable alternative, there is every chance that they will cross over to back him in November.

(…)

Earlier in the race, Iraq might have been a deal-breaker. But a kinder, gentler war has emerged. U.S. combat deaths are way down, and the de facto U.S. alliance with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province against al-Qaeda in Iraq seems to have dramatically improved the security situation. Still, most Americans don’t like the war, and McCain must deal with their opposition if he wants to win.

(…)

….Unlikely as it sounds, the soon-to-be former president needs to get out of the White House, reenter the political arena (much as it will pain him) and go around the country telling us two things: First, we are winning in Iraq; second, the economy is not as bad as most people think….

Right, because Dubya hasn’t been doing that at all for the past four years.

Bush can help McCain, but that doesn’t mean that McCain should support Bush. As Bush makes the case for himself, McCain must put distance between them. A lot of distance. Once, McCain ran against Bush. But since then, he has basked in the glow of Bush’s warm welcome back to the mainstream of the party. Now McCain needs to free himself of Bush’s spell, go out again into the cold and show the country the difference between his agenda and Bush’s.

Meanwhile, McCain should highlight his credentials as a reformer and a maverick to attract Democrats and independents who worry about Obama. Forget about the base. It will be there. Obama’s liberalism, his pro-tax agenda and his proposed weakening of the USA Patriot Act — as well as fears that he would appoint to office people such as Rev. Wright and William Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground — will all assure the full mobilization of the right. Immigration reform and McCain’s other acts of apostasy will be forgiven for the sake of beating Obama. So McCain needs to go after the swing voters:

[Laundry list of things that McCain will mostly never do, but might conceivably pretend to have intentions of doing]

(…)

Meanwhile, the right wing will carry the attack against Obama. McCain is not a mudslinging politician by nature, but he doesn’t need to be. The collected quotes of Rev. Wright will be a bestseller this summer. Obama once had to prove to us that he was not a Muslim; now he must convince us that he never really went to church much….

Wow, Dick really has put all his eggs into the racism/Reverend Wright basket, hasn’t he?  And he obviously wants us to believe that McCain really is as honorable and independent as he pretends to be.

Frank Rich doesn’t think it’ll work:

The G.O.P.’s best hope would be for both the president and Dick Cheney to lock themselves in a closet until the morning after Election Day.

Republicans finally recognized the gravity of their situation three days after Jenna Bush took her vows in Crawford. As Hillary Clinton romped in West Virginia, voters in Mississippi elected a Democrat [by eight points] in a Congressional district that went for Bush-Cheney by 25 percentage points just four years ago. It’s the third “safe” Republican House seat to fall in a special election since March.

(…)

The vice president’s visit was last Monday, the centerpiece of a get-out-the-vote rally in DeSoto County, a G.O.P. stronghold. “We’ll put our shoulders to the wheel for John McCain,” the vice president promised as he bestowed his benediction on Mr. Davis. Well, he got out the vote all right. In the election results the next day, the Childers total in DeSoto County increased 142 percent, while the Davis count went up only 47 percent.

(…)

The McCain campaign is hoping that… showy, if tardy, departures from Bush-Cheney doctrine will constitute a galaxy of Sister Souljah moments, each with headlines reading “McCain Breaks With Bush on…” and the usual knee-jerk press references to Mr. McCain as a “maverick.” Enough of these, you see, and those much-needed independent voters might be flimflammed into believing that the G.O.P. candidate bears no responsibility for the administration’s toxically unpopular policies.

(…)

But are independents suckers? They’d have to be to fall for the pitch that Mr. McCain is an apostate in his own party in 2008. He has been an outspoken Bush defender since helping him sell the Iraq war in 2002 and barnstorming for him in 2004. Despite Mr. McCain’s campaign claims to the contrary, he never publicly called for the firing of Donald Rumsfeld. He is still one of the president’s most stalwart supporters in Congress, even signing on to the president’s wildly unpopular veto of an expansion of children’s health insurance.

(…)

Hard as it is for Mr. McCain to run from the Bush policies he supports, it will be far harder to escape from Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney themselves. When Mr. McCain accepted Mr. Bush’s endorsement at the White House in March, he referred three times to the president’s “busy schedule,” as if wishing aloud that the lame-duck incumbent would have no time to appear at, say, get-out-the-vote rallies. Alas, Mr. Bush and company are not going gently into retirement.

Just look at Mr. Rove. Some Democrats are outraged that he is now employed as a pundit by Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal as well as Fox News. Instead of complaining, they should be thrilled that Mr. Rove keeps inviting Republican complacency by constantly locating silver linings in the party’s bad news. His ubiquitous TV presence as a thinly veiled McCain surr