Month: October 2005

“Rush Limbaugh on decaf” is how Congressman Mike Pence describes HIMSELF!  Does that mean he only takes “a little” oxycontin? Does that mean he only takes vicodin?  Does that mean he’s only half as bigoted and half as hateful?  Or does it mean that he’s just as hateful, but just not as good at it?  Actually the only sane question is “What sort of human would make such a statement?”  Here’s the full story from the October 26th Chicago Tribune.

Though a third-term congressman from central Indiana who is a relative newcomer to the political power centers in Washington, Pence, 46, already is a favored guest on television news talk shows, such as Fox News’ “O’Reilly Factor” and “Hannity & Colmes,” and CNN’s now-canceled “Crossfire.” That national exposure, in turn, enhances his influence inside the Capitol….

…He begins every day by reading the Bible. He works with a bronze bust of Ronald Reagan watching over him from across his office….

His manner may be easy, but his views are unambiguous. He is a dedicated social conservative who publicly criticized the Senate’s top Republican, Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), when the former heart surgeon came out this summer in favor of relaxing the federal ban on stem-cell research. And he is a determined budget-cutter who has repeatedly clashed with his own Republican party leaders over federal spending levels

His “budget cuts” were part of the RSC’s “Operation Offset” which not only cut but eliminated funding for all alternative fuel programs and research (Pence is an oilman, BTW).

More from the Chicago Tribune:

“The party faithful and the conservative grass roots have been searching for the next Ronald Reagan. And Mike Pence has been mentioned as someone who could fill the Gipper’s shoes, even though he’s still young and a relative political newcomer,” said Stephen Moore, founder of the Free Enterprise Fund.

I urge you all to learn about Mike Pence, and if you find that you don’t like what you see, please help Barry Welsh, in defeating him in Nov 06.

My daughter gave out candy to kids all afternoon at the downtown storefront for the company she works for. She took photos of several of the children, including this toddler in a fancy spaceship costume:

BELOW: See what happened next … and this IS an OPEN THREAD!

My daughter says the child couldn’t get up for about two minutes.

Here’s what at stake with the Alito nomination:  The Congress and the President will gain power. Ordinary Americans will lose power.
 

We would have fewer rights, as the Constitution becomes a weaker document – imposing fewer restrictions on the government.  Our rights to privacy, our rights to free and fair elections, our rights to freedom from discrimination, and our personal freedoms will be reduced.  In exchange, Presidential war powers, police powers, special interest powers and the power of the Religous Right to impose their values on others will increase.

The police will have more power to arrest people at political protests.  The President will have more powers to arrest people in secret, without charges, access to lawyers and access to the Court.  Corporations will have more power to pollute.  Radical Right churches will have more power to get government into people’s bedrooms and to impose a narrow moral order on the lives of Americans.  There will be more searches witout warrants.  The private medical lives of Americans will become politicized.  More government money will go to more churches.  States will be allowed to promote disrimination against gays and lesbians, persons of color, women and other minorities.

Cross posted: Political Porn

To the women I know online and offline:

Important gains of the last 40+ years are now under attack.  In all probability, they will be eroded over the next 20+ years.  This is largely due to the instillation of a right-wing majority on the Supreme Court and the better state-level legislative organization of the religious right.  Abortion and contraceptive freedom will no longer be a given.  While I do not think this will go so far as to affect individual property rights, I will put nothing past these people.  

Assuming this to be true, it is time to seriously consider underground organization for these dark times ahead.  I have no idea how this should or could be done.  But the time to begin planning is before the storm hits, not after.  
The days when women may have to cross state lines to obtain an abortion are more than possible.  This will require funding, transportation and safe places to stay while in transit.  For contraception, I would strongly suggest day after pill stockpiles in case of rape or incest along with a way to effectively and quietly communicate the whereabouts of such medicine.  Pharmacists in several states are already denying this medication to customers on moral grounds.  It is only a matter of time before this becomes more widespread and state sanctioned.  

This may seem extreme.  I think not.  Bush has publicly demonstrated he is the pawn of the extreme rightwing.  They are the only constituency who still support him.  Politically, he must maintain their approval or fall even lower in the public’s perception. These people will stop at nothing to legislate their morality on the rest of us.  And regrettably, the social advances women have made over the last few decades are the obvious, immediate targets.  

Thanks to everyone for their comments! This is, again, a reprint of the blog at http://blog06.bruderly.com. Please take a look at the blog and, of course, mosey on over to http://www.bruderly06.com, to find out more about Dave and his campaign to take back this House seat from Millionaire Stearns and return it to the Real People of North Central Florida!

The past few days have been particularly busy here in the nascent stages of our little campaign. I have been editing the campaign web site to make quite a few changes (our edit list several dozen changes to make). Some are small, like capitalizing a letter, others are larger. For instance, we have some issues on the “Issues” page that don’t have any text. That will soon change. It’s things like this that get prepared over a year before the election. Not exciting by any stretch of the mind, but stuff that has to get done to build the base of the pyramid. We want the website to be the best campaign site on the web, come 2006!

Meanwhile, the lifeblood of the campaign continues to be pumped. We sent out a letter last night talking about the culture of corruption present in Washington, and letting people know that we need their help to fight it. If you want to give us a hand, feel free to click here, we welcome your support!

Some blogs have caught wind of the campaign, particularly a local one. The GOP apologists, ever the open-minded sort, have begun smearing Dave and lying about the campaign. That’s fine, in the words of Will Rogers, “I don’t care what you say about me, as long as you spell my name right.” There is one way to avoid having charges of being a liar stick: always tell the truth. I think we’re going to go ahead and do that.

Hopefully the controversy will bring a couple readers to the web site, so they can see Dave is more than just a “one issue” candidate, and that he’s not a member of the “loony left.” He is a candidate I am proud to support. He is running to be a voice in Congress, not just a Congressman, just as the Constitution intended. He will represent every person in the District, not Republicans, not Democrats, not Greens, not Communists, everyone.

Here in the days of finding out whether someone is a “strict Constitutionalist”, I can assure you that, on the matter of representing his District and his Country, Dave is. When he is elected, North Central Florida will once again have a voice, ending their 18-year case of laryngitis.

Tomorrow, I’m going to write about Paul Hackett in Ohio’s 2d Distrct. For those in this area that don’t know about the incredible fight he led just a few months ago, you should check it out. It’s quite the story.

With the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court today, Bush’s conservative and anti-abortion fundie supporters are now claiming victory as they hail their president as a strong leader once again.

What they fail to see is how the religious right, acting like a 2 year old having a tantrum and holding its collective breath until its face turned blue so daddy would give in, has once again hijacked the White House agenda. George obviously did not take his parenting lessons from his old buddy James Dobson or he simply would have spanked the kid and told him to obey his father or else.

What Bush chose to do instead, despite the fact that he is at the weakest point in his presidency and is currently embroiled in the culture of corruption scandals from hell, was to grab the kid’s hand and buy them the really big, expensive red firetruck they were whining about just to shut them up. And we all know what happens to a dad’s power when he does that: he becomes weakened.

He’s now called for a huge public brawl over this nomination which will further damage his credibility among mainstream Americans. He’s always said he doesn’t govern according to the polls but when the Miers reaction tanked his numbers, we all know he was damn sure paying attention. If he had the fortitude required to believe in and back up his decisions, he would not have accepted Miers’ resignation and would have pushed ahead. He’s worried and it shows.

Watching Bushistas like Bay Buchanan on Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room practically have an on screen orgasm because she was so happy with Bush’s pick today proves that this nominee must be fought at all costs. Listening to conservative mouthpieces asking Democrats to be “fair” and to look at Alito’s judicial record before they judge him makes one wonder if their memories were all wiped clean by some strange virus this morning.

They seem to have conveniently forgotten that it was their side that pushed so hard against Harriet Miers that she wasn’t even allowed to make it to the confirmation hearings. When you point a finger at someone, you have three pointing right back at you, as they say.

You would have thought that Bush and the Republicans had learned a lesson about pandering to their extreme supporters after the Terry Schiavo fiasco in which an emergency session of congress was called for to deal with the poor woman’s plight – totally embarassing the congress and the administration.

Obviously not.

If I was a garden-variety Republican, I’d certainly be concerned again that Bush has fallen off the rails by throwing out red meat to his fundie vultures. This will only strengthen their power. Ordinary Republicans need to step back and absorb this manipulation before they too join Bay Buchanan in public displays of quasi-masturbatory pleasure.

Update [2005-10-31 21:43:53 by catnip]: Crooks and Liars has the video. Thanks, John!.

[Invisible News Open Thread]

Things that shouldn’t get lost department:  Meet our new nominee for the position of assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration:

Mrs. Sauerbrey, 68, was a big wheel in the Maryland General Assembly who lost consecutive races for governor in 1994 and 1998, then went on to become a television host. She was Maryland state chair for Mr. Bush’s 2000 campaign; her reward was to be named U.S. representative to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, where she was mainly interested in pressing an antiabortion agenda.

How any of that qualifies her to take charge of a key government agency that often finds itself in the thick of dire international calamities is a mystery. [WaPo, 31 Oct ’05].

The  Progressive Government Institute has news and background.  Here’s who they are, and what they do.  [Very handy place].  

And if you haven’t seen it yet,  check out the UN Dispatch:

UN Dispatch is a blog intended to promote thoughtful discussion about the UN, and to provide an outlet for important news and views on the UN. It is administered by Peter Daou, author of the Daou Report, and will feature frequent posts from knowledgeable guest contributors. UN Dispatch is sponsored by the United Nations Foundation, though the views expressed herein do not represent the official views of the United Nations Foundation, or the UN. Links from UN Dispatch to other blogs and websites should not be construed as an endorsement of the content on those sites.

Here’s the link for subscriptions to the UN Wire, daily news delivered to your inbox.

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If the rumours swirling round the blogosphere are correct, Karl Rove’s last minute submission of an email exchange with Adam Levine to Fitzgerald is designed to “prove” (I take it his 4 trips to the GJ didn’t suffice to convince them fully) that he did not lie about talking to Cooper about Plame, but instead is just a busy guy with a not so good memory for pesky little things like talking about a covert agent working on WMD’s, after her husband had smacked down the 16 words in the SOTU a few days before in the NY Times.

Believable? Perhaps. I once heard of a guy who found a four-leaf clover, so anything is possible I suppose.

Back to July 11th and the email exchange with Levine…
From Isikoff:

One small item was a July 11, 2003, e-mail Rove sent to former press aide Adam Levine saying Levine could come up to his office to discuss a personnel issue. The e-mail was at 11:17 a.m., minutes after Rove had gotten off the phone with Matt Cooper –the same conversation (in which White House critic Joe Wilson’s wife’s work for the CIA was discussed) that Rove originally failed to disclose to the grand jury. Levine, with whom Rove often discussed his talks with reporters, did immediately go up to see Rove. But as Levine told the FBI last week, Rove never said anything about Cooper. The Levine talk was arguably helpful to one of Luskin’s arguments: that, as a senior White House official, Rove dealt with a wide range of matters and might not remember every conversation he has had with journalists.

Where to start on this nice bit of spin from the Rove playbook, disseminated to the masses via your favorite insider and mine, Isikoff…

How about with this salient little fact… Rove wasn’t too busy or forgetful to send off an email to Stephen Hadley before he left early for a family vacation to let him know he spoke to Cooper…

“Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he’s got a welfare reform story coming,” Rove wrote Hadley, who has since risen to the top job of national security adviser.

“When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn’t this damaging? Hasn’t the president been hurt? I didn’t take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn’t get Time far out in front on this.”

Now Rove & company have tried to prove that this email to Hadley shows that Rove was not leaking, he was doing damage control on the upcoming Novak article and trying to minimize how many reporters were going to cover the issue. Poor Rove, he just wants to talk about welfare reform and the mean journalist starts bringing up Niger…

Well, that’s one way to look at it of course.

But you could also read it this way ~ Hey Hadley… Cooper called and started hammering me on our illegal case for war… I didn’t take the bait and stuck to our talking points about Wilson instead… have Scooter call him tomorrow to confirm that Wilson sucks. (Libby did indeed call Cooper the next day)

{Update} GMA , via firedoglake, is reporting that Matt Cooper confirmed this morning that Scooter told him on the 12th Plame was covert after first hearing about her from Rove (see below for why all this matters in the context of Rove)

This also makes sense considering what else happened on July 11, 2003 in relation to Niger… Tenet fell on his sword, probably because of the leaks coming out of the CIA which were putting the blame right back at Bush’s door… so much so that both Rice & Powell had to do damage control.

So yes, it is entirely possible that Rove had a lot on his mind when he talked to Levine. Unfortunately for his story, you don’t typically forget things that are in direct relation to the thing that’s keeping you up at night… you typically forget the unimportant stuff… like, you know, welfare reform.

Then of course, there’s this little problem for Karl… Matt Cooper didn’t quite remember things the same way…

He called Rove, not to talk about welfare reform (wow, Bush’s Brain must need some time off if he can’t remember what he talked about even minutes after a conversation… maybe he isn’t lying and just needs to resign for health reasons… can’t have someone that forgetful advising the President can we?), but to talk about the Niger admission by the White House and, yup, about Wilson:

…But at the same time, I was interested in an ancillary question about why government officials, publicly and privately, seemed to be disparaging Wilson. It struck me, as I told the grand jury, as odd and unnecessary, especially after their saying the President’s address should not have included the 16-word claim about Saddam and African uranium.

I told the grand jurors that I was curious about Wilson when I called Karl Rove on Friday, July 11. Rove was an obvious call for any White House correspondent, let alone someone trying to prove himself at a new beat. As I told the grand jury–which seemed very interested in my prior dealings with Rove–I don’t think we had spoken more than a handful of times before that. I recalled that when I got the White House job a couple of weeks earlier, I left a message for him trying to introduce myself and announce my new posting.

As I told the grand jury–and we went over this in microscopic, excruciating detail, which may someday prove relevant–I recall calling Rove from my office at TIME magazine through the White House switchboard and being transferred to his office. I believe a woman answered the phone and said words to the effect that Rove wasn’t there or was busy before going on vacation. But then, I recall, she said something like, “Hang on,” and I was transferred to him. I recall saying something like, “I’m writing about Wilson,” before he interjected. “Don’t get too far out on Wilson,” he told me. I started taking notes on my computer, and while an e-mail I sent moments after the call has been leaked, my notes have not been.

…. In fact, I told the grand jury, Rove told me the conversation was on “deep background.” I explained to the grand jury that I take the term to mean that I can use the material but not quote it, and that I must keep the identity of my source confidential.

Rove went on to say that Wilson had not been sent to Niger by the director of the CIA and, I believe from my subsequent e-mails–although it’s not in my notes–that Rove added that Dick Cheney didn’t send him either. Indeed, the next day the Vice President’s chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, told me Cheney had not been responsible for Wilson’s mission.

Much of my grand jury session revolved around my notes and my e-mails. (Those e-mails and notes were given to the special counsel when Time Inc., over my objections, complied with a court order.) …. The notes, and my subsequent e-mails, go on to indicate that Rove told me material was going to be declassified in the coming days that would cast doubt on Wilson’s mission and his findings.

As for Wilson’s wife, I told the grand jury I was certain that Rove never used her name and that, indeed, I did not learn her name until the following week, when I either saw it in Robert Novak’s column or Googled her, I can’t recall which. Rove did, however, clearly indicate that she worked at the “agency”…. Rove added that she worked on “WMD” (the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction) issues and that she was responsible for sending Wilson. This was the first time I had heard anything about Wilson’s wife.

Rove never once indicated to me that she had any kind of covert status. I told the grand jury something else about my conversation with Rove. Although it’s not reflected in my notes or subsequent e-mails, I have a distinct memory of Rove ending the call by saying, “I’ve already said too much.” This could have meant he was worried about being indiscreet, or it could have meant he was late for a meeting or something else. I don’t know, but that sign-off has been in my memory for two years.

….

A surprising line of questioning had to do with, of all things, welfare reform. The prosecutor asked if I had ever called Mr. Rove about the topic of welfare reform. Just the day before my grand jury testimony Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, had told journalists that when I telephoned Rove that July, it was about welfare reform and that I suddenly switched topics to the Wilson matter. After my grand jury appearance, I did go back and review my e-mails from that week, and it seems as if I was, at the beginning of the week, hoping to publish an article in TIME on lessons of the 1996 welfare-reform law, but the article got put aside, as often happens when news overtakes story plans. My welfare-reform story ran as a short item two months later, and I was asked about it extensively. To me this suggested that Rove may have testified that we had talked about welfare reform, and indeed earlier in the week, I may have left a message with his office asking if I could talk to him about welfare reform. But I can’t find any record of talking about it with him on July 11, and I don’t recall doing so.

So back to Adam Levine… is this really Rove’s excuse for perjury and obstruction? That he didn’t tell a press aide so therefore he just has a bad memory? I highly doubt that is what gave Fitzgerald “pause”. Something else is going on.

Wish I knew what it was… but what I do know, to paraphrase our friend Fitz, is that those talking points won’t fly Karl.

Oh, and one last thing about the leak of Plame’s name… and why it is not crucial that she was identified as “Valerie Plame” or “Valerie Wilson” vs. “Joe Wilson’s wife” for the purposes of disseminating classified info and putting a NOC at risk…

From Cooper’s recounting of his GJ testimony:

I did not learn her name until the following week, when I either saw it in Robert Novak’s column or Googled her, I can’t recall which.

The damage was done when “Wilson’s wife” & “CIA” were used in the same sentence to a reporter. People can Google, as Matt points out… It’s not as if she lives in an underground bunker with Cheney or anything. And if he can Google and find her, so can anybody who might have a more sinister reason for doing so… ummm, like, terrorists or something.

crossposted @ Jaded Reality

Here’s Sneak Preview of tomorrow’s strip.  It deals with Bush’s new pick for the Supreme Court.  This is going to get ugly.

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Political Animals – Featuring an All-Nude Cast!