Interesting news today. On the Democratic side, five congressmen were arrested for protesting outside the Sudanese embassy over the genocide in Darfur. On the Republican side, as many as a half a dozen congressmen may be implicated in a prostitution ring tied to one of the many GOP bribery scandals. That pretty much sums it up. Your choice is between the party of human rights or the party of whores.
You’ve gotte give the President credit for one thing. He’s mastered the fine art of insincere hand-wringing :
President Bush on Friday rejected calls by some lawmakers for a tax on oil company windfall profits, saying the industry should reinvest its recent gains into finding and producing more energy.“The temptation in Washington is to tax everything,” Bush said in an exchange with reporters in the White House Rose Garden. “The answer is for there to be strong reinvestment to make this country more secure from an energy perspective.”
Okay, fine, and how exactly are you going to try to ensure that reinvestment actually happens?? Don’t just sit there with your thumb in your ass pretending that you’re powerless, George.
I’m tired of all of the disingenuity from conservatives when it comes to regulating businesses. If you truly believe that oil companies should be should be reinvesting their profits to help make this country more energy independent, then back up your words by working with Congress to pass legislation that ensures the outcome you’re pretending to favor. Rolling back oil industry tax cuts and replacing them with tax credits for money spent on infrastructure improvements or whatever, but don’t just sit there and act like there’s nothing you can do.
You’re a two-faced liar, Mr.President. You public face is that of a concerned public servant who hopes that the business community will put the best interests of the American people over their own profit margins, but behind the scenes you haven’t done a goddamn thing to ensure that the rhetoric matches the reality. If you wanted to make sure rich people reinvested their tax cuts back into the American economy or that deregulation actually cut the amount of poison dumped into our environment or that corporations actually created jobs with their government handouts, you could make token efforts to write those promises into the legislation that you favor, but the big government conservatives never do.
The Republicans have been in charge for far too long to make any more promises.
You can listen to Neil Young’s new album “Living With War” here. To be honest, I’ve never really been a fan of Neil Young or overtly political music, but there are some real gems on this record. Definitely worth checking out.
Two stories worth bringing to your attention which compliment each other. First up is the news that Sen. Pat Roberts is once again trying to push the Phase 2 Iraqi intelligence investigation past the elections :
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said he wants to divide his panel’s inquiry into the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq-related intelligence into two parts, a move that would push off its most politically controversial elements to a later time.The inquiry has dragged on for more than two years, a slow pace that prompted Democrats to force the Senate into an extraordinary closed-door session in November. Republicans then promised to speed up the probe.
If there was nothing to hide, why all the delay tactics? Hmmm…but before I get off on a tangent, keep this unfortunately typical example of Republican subservience to the Executive branch in mind when you read this :
Hurricane Katrina turned FEMA into a “symbol of a bumbling bureaucracy” so far beyond repair that it should be scrapped, senators said Thursday. They called for creation of a new disaster relief agency as the next storm season looms on the horizon.The push to replace the beleaguered agency was the top recommendation of a hefty Senate inquiry that concluded that top officials from New Orleans to Washington failed to adequately prepare for and respond to the deadly storm, despite weather forecasts predicting its path through the Gulf Coast.
“The first obligation of government is to protect our people,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs investigation. “In Katrina, we failed at all levels of government to meet that fundamental obligation.”
Think about that for a moment. A GOP-led Senate so timid that they’ve all but ignored some of the biggest political scandals to come along in our lifetimes has come to the conclusion that the Bush Administration has screwed up FEMA so badly that the best thing to do is to completely abolish the agency and start over from scratch. Damn.
Of course, I wouldn’t be surprised there were ulterior motives at play here. There’s the GOP trend of distancing themselves from our lame duck President, but I think another motivation would be the prospect of getting to redesign FEMA. Considering how well they’ve done rebuilding New Orleans, I think Democrats should start invoking the reverse-Pottery Barn rule : You broke it, but you don’t get to “fix” it.
The Republicans have finally come up with a winning strategy for November. Bribery. (via Political Animal)
Most American taxpayers would get $100 rebate checks to offset the pain of higher pump prices for gasoline, under an amendment Senate Republicans hope to bring to a vote Thursday.
. . .
“Our plan would give taxpayers a hundred dollar gas tax holiday rebate check to help ease the pain that they’re feeling at the pump,” Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist announced Thursday. “It also includes strong federal anti-price gouging protection to protect consumers against anti-competitive behavior by oil companies or other suppliers of gasoline. Our free market system works, but it works best when there’s full accountability and full transparency.”
“Our free market system works”, says the Senator who wants to give $100 handouts as an election gimick. What a douche. Didn’t he learn anything from dating? Desperation isn’t attractive, it’s just pathetic…
Granted, the hiring of Tony Snow to be the White House Press Secretary makes sense when you realize that George Bush also referred to Harriet Miers as “a superb choice”, but this part of the President’s announcement has me scratching my head :
He’s not afraid to express his own opinions. For those of you who have read his columns and listened to his radio show, he sometimes has disagreed with me. I asked him about those comments, and he said, “You should have heard what I said about the other guy.” I like his perspective, I like the perspective he brings to this job, and I think you’re going to like it, too.
Doesn’t this seem like the kind of qualities that you should try to avoid when hiring a press secretary? That job isn’t about expressing opinions, but communicating the positions of the White House. Yeah, I should probably throw in a cheap Fox News joke here, but I won’t. Then again, I guess I just did.
But anyways, the truly fascinating thing about all of this (other than Snow being a journalist who completely sold out by joining the other side) is Snow’s flirtations with Bush criticism. Looking through the list of quotes posted by Think Progress, I can’t help but think that you could make a similar list from the works of just about any conservative columnist. Proclamations of the sort that Snow is credited with are pretty common among conservative pundits who want to prove their conservative bona fides in the face of the big government, free spending ways of their chosen leaders. The fact that Snow once wrote “George Bush has become something of an embarrassment” says less about the President than Snow himself. That Snow would go out of his way to distance himself from Bush yet would still support the guy (as evidenced by today’s announcement) says to me that Snow’s Dubya bashing was motivated less by his devotion to conservative principles than his inability or unwillingness to defend the President in the face of enormous unpopularity. Since defending the Bush is his job now, it’ll be interesting to see how well Snow does.
As a follow-up to my previous gas prices post, let’s do some arithmetic with our visual aids. This chart :
Calling the oil issue a matter of national security, President Bush outlined a plan Tuesday to cut gasoline costs and temporarily stopped deposits to the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
. . .
The plan calls for making sure consumers and taxpayers are treated fairly, promoting greater fuel efficiency, boosting the U.S. gasoline supply and investing aggressively in gasoline alternatives.Bush also has ordered a federal investigation into possible cheating, price gouging or illegal manipulation in the gasoline markets.
Bush said consumers must first be treated fairly at the gas pump.
“Americans understand by and large that the price of crude oil is going up and that [gas] prices are going up, but what they don’t want and will not accept is manipulation of the market,” Bush said. “And neither will I.”
The President has so little credibility on this issue that this is just laughable. Expecting oil-millionaire Bush to protect consumers is about as believable of O.J. Simpson’s promise to catch the “real killers”. The President is so untrustworthy on this issue that this whole gambit just makes him look foolish.
What makes Bush look even more foolish is the fact that his “bold” plan was announced at the convention for an ethanol lobbying group :
The way I like to put it would be — it’s a good thing when a president can sit there and say, “Gosh, we’ve got a lot of corn. And that means we’re less dependent on foreign sources of oil.”
Gosh, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that agribusinesses giant Archer-Daniels Midland (whose Senior Vice President for Ethanol Sales & Marketing sits on the RFA’s board of directors) has given over $3 million dollars in political “donations” since 2000. I support biological alternatives to fossil fuels, but the idea that the President woke up one day and suddenly cared about energy independence is ludicrous. You’re thirty years late to this party, George, so it pretty clear that the only reason you’re showing up now is because somebody paid you to attend.
Since this is being linked to approvingly from two of my favorite non-political blogs, let me just say this whole “bring your own laptop to work” idea is stupid :
Meme floating around the IT-analyst-o-sphere: “bring your own laptop.” Basically treat the employee’s laptop as you would treat the employees’s pants: require it, pay the employee enough to buy it, and provide the infrastructure that works with it, but that’s all. Give the employee the price of one laptop per two years, plus, say, the price of one major troubleshooting session per six months.
First of all, a big, smart company can get 3-4 years out of a laptop by recycling the hardware down the techie chain from the engineers (who need top of the line stuff) down to the administrative staff (who probably only need MS Office), but I’m sure the 2-year figure is pulled out of thin air, so I’m not gonna dwell on it.
The real reason shifting the laptop burden from employer to employee is such a bad idea is that it cedes a level of control that the company probably needs more than it realizes. There’s a lot of dumb shit people feel free to do on “their” computers that they wouldn’t on a work computer. Everything from surfing shady warez websites to installing spyware and virus laden games could have an adverse affect on the employee’s ability to perform their job. And if you think controlling virus outbreaks is hard for businesses now, just wait and see what happens when they start encouraging their employees to plug their computer from home into the network. It’s a virus-writers dream to infect some noob’s computer at home and have the same machine plugged into a large, physically-secure network.
The idea that providing a few bucks for support will actually offset the problems that would occur with the implied shrinking of a company’s IT staff is laughable. If an employee’s productivity goes down because their computer is mysteriously “slow”, the employers will have much less leverage to compel the employee to have a computer that they don’t own serviced. Even if you gave a stipend to the employee for hardware support, that money would go into their bank accounts first, meaning they would still be a lot less likely to pay somebody to look at the computer than they would now (when support means a quick call to the company’s IT guy). Do you think a random guy from GeekSquad would have the slightest idea what the employee would need to be doing with their machine? IT departments don’t just support hardware and operating systems, but the company’s suite of tools as well. This knowledge goes beyond just being able to install the required software, but knowing how to address problems such as “Why can’t I submit bugs?” or “My calendar is showing old stuff.” Getting a third-party company to deal with these issues is hard enough, but if you throw obscure or proprietary software into the mix, then you’re completely screwed).
Additionally, when the employer stops being the consumer in terms of laptop buying, there are additional worries. For one, it’s unrealistic to expect every employee to make an informed decision about what kind of hardware they’ll need to buy. Knowing the amount of RAM and diskspace, speed of the CPU, and power of the graphics card necessary for each job is a skill that in the long run saves the employer a lot of money. Granted, there are ways to work around a problem like that, but putting the individual employees in charge of buying their laptops has one more substantial downside.
An employee buying one laptop will never get the sorts of savings that a large company will get when buying their computers in bulk. Sure, Dell.com looks like they have pretty good deals, but when you’re a business buying hundreds of laptops at a time, you get much better deals that the general public doesn’t know about. If the employers think they’ll save money by shrinking their IT departments and reimbursing their employees for the prices of their laptops, they’re going to get hit with sticker-shock once they crunch a few numbers.
How can you even argue with someone whose response to the overwhelming evidence that George W. Bush’s presidency is a colossal failure is to insist that Bush might just be one of the best presidents ever? (via tristero)
The President “lied” us into war. Much of the pre-war intelligence was wrong. The civilian defense chief was detested as “brusque, domineering and unbearably unpleasant to work with.” Civil liberties were abridged. And many embittered Democrats, claiming the war had been an utter failure, demanded that the administration bring the troops home.George Bush? Well, yes – but also a President who looms far larger in American history, Abraham Lincoln.
So is that the new game on the right? Take the most vaguely worded and least likable aspects of a great leader and use them to draw some sort of parallel? We could have some fun with this :
He was controversial leader during a political era noted for its sharp partisan divisions. His religious views helped shape his policy, much to the chagrin of his critics. An outspoken defender of states rights, until he was put in charge of the federal government. And he was seemingly indifferent during an extraordinary crisis leading his detractors to charge that he doesn’t care about black people.George Bush? Well, of course, but also…get ready for this…Thomas Jefferson.
Did I just blow your mind?
Or how about this?
He was a two-term President who was also a member of a secret society. He sent thousands of men to die in a war that had mixed support from the American people. He was a rich white male who led a country that saw him as the American equivalent of a king. He loved whiskey and didn’t get along with France.George Bush? Duh. But George Washington too. Seriously.
Besides, none of the parallels between Bush and the great presidents are as striking as the ones between Bush and some of the truly awful presidents, as the cover story in the newest Rolling Stone makes clear :
How does any president’s reputation sink so low? The reasons are best understood as the reverse of those that produce presidential greatness. In almost every survey of historians dating back to the 1940s, three presidents have emerged as supreme successes: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. These were the men who guided the nation through what historians consider its greatest crises: the founding era after the ratification of the Constitution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression and Second World War. Presented with arduous, at times seemingly impossible circumstances, they rallied the nation, governed brilliantly and left the republic more secure than when they entered office.Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties — Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush — have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off. In each case, different factors contributed to the failure: disastrous domestic policies, foreign-policy blunders and military setbacks, executive misconduct, crises of credibility and public trust. Bush, however, is one of the rarities in presidential history: He has not only stumbled badly in every one of these key areas, he has also displayed a weakness common among the greatest presidential failures — an unswerving adherence to a simplistic ideology that abjures deviation from dogma as heresy, thus preventing any pragmatic adjustment to changing realities. Repeatedly, Bush has undone himself, a failing revealed in each major area of presidential performance.
C’mon Bush supporters, do you really want to look this stupid and out-of-touch?? You’ve got shy of three years left in the Bush era to try to turn things around, but any sane course of action would have to start by admitting you’re going to wrong way.
Gas Prices :
Fox News is doing a heckuva job countering the impression that they’re just a mouthpiece for the Republican party (via TPM) :
On another front, Republicans said that Tony Snow, a commentator for Fox News and a former speechwriter for Mr. Bush’s father, was in negotiations for the job of White House press secretary. Mr. Snow would replace Scott McClellan, who announced Wednesday that he was resigning.
In other words, his job will change from lying through the press to lying to the press. I’m not very familiar with Snow, but if he’s anything like the rest of the talking heads on Fox News, then we can expect the White House press office to get a heavy dose of belligerence and condescension. Those gaggles are going to be even more exciting than when Ari was around.
I’ve made an effort to avoid falling into the habit of patting the Democratic party on the back just to be disappointed a week later, but this one’s too good to resist :
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) today unveiled an advertising campaign that sets the record straight on where Democrats and Republicans stand on immigration reform. In a new Spanish language radio ad, Democrats hold Republicans accountable for trying to criminalize immigrants, doctors, and churches, and for blocking real progress on immigration reform. The ad campaign coincides with Congress’s return next week.
. . .Democrats support tough and smart immigration reform. We want to strengthen our borders; as well as U.S. workers and their wages. We want for immigrants who obey the law and pay taxes to be able to apply for U.S. citizenship.
That’s immigration reform that matches American values: tough and smart.
Now Republicans are lying to us.
They control Congress and the White House, and in five years have done nothing. They’ve failed.
If they wanted comprehensive immigration reform and to protect our borders, they would have done it already.
But what Republicans and President Bush supported was a plan that would criminalize immigrants, families, doctors, and even churches just for giving communion.
Call Republican Senator Bill Frist at 202-224-3135 and tell him to allow a vote on immigration reform.
That should be the theme of this election cycle. The Republicans have been in charge for five years and haven’t done a thing. If they really cared about ______, they would have done something by now.
This is one of the sickest, most repulsive things I’ve ever seen in my life. A flash-based “game” in which you try to murder as many immigrants as possible, including a pregnant woman and her children. I don’t know who made it and haven’t bothered investigating who’s hosting it (though it can be found here as well), but this is a pretty clear reminder of the truly evil mindset that we’re up against. I will never understand how someone could be so filled with blind rage that they’d sink to dehumanizing their fellow human beings to the point that they could make jokes of their violent fanatasies.
Gotta love how the press is spinning Karl Rove’s second change in job title as if it were a big deal.
White House political mastermind Karl Rove surrendered a key policy role Wednesday and press secretary Scott McClellan resigned in an escalation of a Bush administation shake-up driven by Republican anxieties.Rove gave up his responsibilities as chief policy coordinator, a position he assumed just over a year ago that strengthened his influence over matters ranging from homeland security and domestic policy to the economy and national security. The promotion had left him stretched too thin in the eyes of some officials, as the White House grappled with mounting problems.
With Wednesday’s change, Rove will be able to focus more on politics, fundraising and big-picture thinking with the approach of the November congressional elections, officials said.
He “surrendered” and “gave up” his policy role? Well, that’s one way to spin it. A more accurate way to spin it would be to say that the Bush White House has never really given a shit about policy and that Rove’s function is and has always been to bully people around and win elections. Of course, with Dubya’s poll numbers in the toilet and the pressure for Republican incumbents to distance themselves from the White House’s string of failures, Rove’s part-time job of threatening potential GOP traitors is quickly becoming full-time.
In the midst of a debate with Ezra Klein over how conservative John McCain is, Jonathan Chait offers this interesting dismissal (via Kevin Drum) :
Ezra cites McCain’s ACU ratings. But I think that, especially in recent years, those ratings do a lousy job of showing who’s liberal and who’s conservative. Don’t they show Hilary Clinton to be one of the most liberal Senators? There’s an article to be done debunking those ratings, but I’m guessing that the changing partisan dynamics of the current era has rendered the old system worthless.
Kevin goes on to suggest that the ultra-partisanship of the modern political climate results in so many party-line votes that it makes the American Conservative Union’s ratings essentially worthless, but c’mon this is John McCain we’re talking about, a maverick leader above petty partisanship and political posturing. Even if he did vote with the Republican party 80% of the time, it’s surely because Mr. Straight Talk agreed with the conservative position 80% of the time.
Chait’s right, however, on the larger point that the ACU ratings are skewed, but not in a way that helps his larger point that McCain is essentially a “moderate Democrat”. The missing context in Congressional scorecards isn’t just the fact that they ignore everything but some carefully chosen up/down votes, but the fact that Republicans control everything. Republicans lead every committee and have been playing hardball for the past few years, so absent any real “liberal” legislation of course Hillary Clinton is going to look left-wing. If bills for public financing of elections, single-payer healthcare, and gay marriage made it to the floor of the Senate, you might get a better idea where Sen. Clinton fits on the left/right scale. More importantly, considering that McCain get 80% when scored against a heavily conservative agenda, a more balanced and reliable ratings system of the sort that Chait seems to want would likely make McCain’s conservatism undeniable.
Besides, the real debate we should be having isn’t about whether McCain is conservative, but the extent to which he’s a complete phony.
