 Caption? Mine might be: I just nominated my Mommy. I’m scared of my Mommy. I’m scared of Harriet Mommy too. I wasn’t kiddin’ about the pit bull part. My hind end still hurts! Me lookin’ awful gray lately. Me awful tired. Me want pillow. |
“Stone cold” … “ate nails for breakfast” … mixed up with Ben Barnes, a former lobbyist to the state lottery, and who we remember from the “60 Minutes”-Dubya-Nat’l Guard scandal. (Philly Daily News, last week, discovered that Miers “managed” the Nat’l Guard scandal during “Bush’s Texas gubenatorial campaign in 1998 (when he was starting to eye the White House) [and] paid Miers $19,000 to run an internal pre-emptive probe of the potential scandal.”)
“Miers had stormy tenure at Texas Lottery,” from the A.P., 45 minutes ago, via the SJ Mercury News (sub. free).
Ben Barnes to break silence on “60 Minutes”: The Republican campaign gets ready for shock waves, as the former Texas official who says he pulled strings to get George W. Bush into the Air National Guard finally goes public. (Salon, Sept. 1, 2004)AUSTIN, Texas – Harriet Miers proved to be a tough, no-nonsense administrator during her five years heading the Texas Lottery Commission, firing two executive directors to stamp out scandal but leaving unexpectedly … One of those firings stirred up questions about whether political influence helped George W. Bush avoid active duty in Vietnam.
[Her nomination to the high court prompts] closer scrutiny of Miers’ years in Texas as a private attorney, a member of the Dallas City Council and chairwoman of the three-member commission that oversees the state’s lottery operations.
“Although she’s a small-framed woman, we all believed she came through the Marines and maybe ate nails for breakfast because she’s one tough cookie,” said Horace Taylor, a former lottery employee who worked for Miers.
Then-Gov. George W. Bush appointed Miers to a six-year-term on the commission shortly after he was elected governor in 1994. After she’d been on the job 18 months, news surfaced that the lottery director’s boyfriend had been employed as a consultant for GTECH, the lottery’s main contractor.
The Miers-led commission fired the director, Nora Linares, in January 1997, … Linares filed suit against the commission but later dropped that lawsuit and instead sued GTECH. An agreement ending the dispute with the commission exonerated Linares…
It was [also] a lawsuit… [that] helped to ignite questions about whether Bush used political influence to avoid active duty during the Vietnam War. ….
[It was] suggested that former Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes … a lobbyist for GTECH until January 1997, helped the company keep its state contract to run the lottery in exchange for keeping silent about how he had helped Bush get into the National Guard in the late 1960s. […]
Miers resigned as lottery commission chairman in 2000, a year early …
More from Greg Palast below:
From Greg Palast’s “George Wins the Lottery,” on July 9, 2003:
Follow the money. It’s 1997. Top-gun George Jr. is governor and GTech is in deep doo-doo with Texas lottery regulators. Texas is the nation’s biggest, most lucrative lottery and GTech was about to lose its contract, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The state’s lottery director was sacked following revelations that GTech had put the director’s boyfriend on the company payroll while he was under indictment for bribery. A new clean-hands director, Lawrence Littwin, ordered an audit, terminated GTech’s contract and put it out for rebid. Littwin also launched an investigation into GTech’s political donations.
Then a funny thing happened: The Texas Lottery Commission fired Littwin.
Almost immediately thereafter, the Bush-appointed commissioners canceled the bidding for a new operator, though the low bidder had already been announced to replace GTech. The commissioners also halted the financial audit, ended the political payola investigation and gave the contract back to GTech.
Why did the Texas government work so hard at saving GTech’s license? A letter to the U.S. Justice Department – I have obtained a copy – provides some fascinating details. The writer points to one Ben Barnes, a lobbyist to whom GTech paid fees of $23 million. Way back in 1968, according to the whistleblower, an aide to Barnes – then lieutenant governor of the Lone Star State – quietly suggested to Air Guard chief Brig. Gen. James Rose that he find a safe spot in the Guard for Congressman George Bush’s son.
Whether the Bushes used their influence to get young George out of serving in Vietnam was a big issue during George Jr.’s neck-and-neck race for governor against Ann Richards in 1994. Bush’s opponents, however, did not know of Barnes’s office’s contact with General Rose, so the story died.
The letter ties Barnes’s knowledge of Governor Bush’s draft-dodging to GTech’s exclusive deal with the state: …
READ ALL: George Wins the Lottery
that brings Georgie’s Nat’l Guard record into the discussion also brings a smile to my face.
I pray this story has “legs.”
has been swiftboated. Will he rise again?
Now, here is the payoff for her loyalty.
Think Bush’s court will do for him, DeLay, Cheney, Rove and Scooter what Nixon’s court refused to do for Tricky Dick? That is, leave Bush and his shenanigans alone?
Hell, no. I think that tha fix is in.
Darlin, I think you are absolutely right on that one!!!!!!!!!!!!
Man. The hits just keep on coming. This all sounds so Abramoff. So Delay. No offense to any Texans, but what the fuck is going on in that state. They are so lucky that the independent counsel law died. Clinton couldn’t have survived ten minutes with George’s fucking past.
Please, God. Though I doubt your existence, I pray, that there will be a Democratic congress that can investigate this corrupt bastard, and bring him to justice in ’06.
As the old saying goes, she and Bushie are “thick as thieves.”
The Wisdom of those old sayings. I love them.
I will personally be interested in the ramifications of thsi whole thing!!!!!!! Do you think it will bring up the TANG thingee again? Do you think it will bring up the cronnism thingeee again? Do you really think the right wing will have a coranary over this nomination and then, to you think she will follow thru with the consersitivism of the party?
something is really weird with the whole bit. She is a very capable woman but she worked her entire life as some sort of gopher girl and I’m not sure who she did it for. Something ain’t right though! There is more underlying all this stuff!
A first year law student who says they didn’t have at least one fantasy involving an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, and I’ll show you a liar.
I mean. If you play guitar, you might want to play with the Stones. But if you are a lawyer, a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land is the top.
She played the game well. And it paid off. Wish some of my old law school friends would start knocking off big time positions. I knew I should have joined the Federalist Society. Doh!
Tracy, I am with you on this one, for sure!!!!!!!!! This is going to be fun to see what developes after we get all the facts out in the open.
Something is very odd with this woman! Never married and involved in church……fine, perhaps gay and I had a gay friend who “dated” the same guy for a long time for appearances. She does things though alien to my species and I don’t pretend to understand gay women. If she is straight though her entire life as I understand it right this minute from what I have read has been in service to someone other than herself careerwise. Has she been a longtime love of someone who was married and insisted on staying that way. She is very passionate about her work, but she doesn’t really seem to have any “work” that is hers. That is very very strange for a passionately at work well educated woman. I’m not seeing something here that is here!
That mascara is too thick on her. She gives me the creeps just on GP.
As far as her oddball behavior, look at Condi. I mean, look at Condi. Never married, converted Republican, into church in some way, and yet she may consider Bush ‘her husband.’
I’ve never married; but it doesn’t mean that I don’t like guys or that I don’t keep hoping. These ladies…ummm…well… I just don’t know. I’m not married to my job or my boss like these girls.
.
a single people ministry of the congregation in service of her god.
Harriet hinted who her perfect image is …
▼ ▼ ▼
So, Bush would have much to thank Miers for, hence the nomination. (or at least part to the reason behind it)
I think that both Bush’s appointees are better than the inept Clarence [Toady] Thomas. My hope is that once these two, Roberts & Miers, are in the Supreme Court, they will be concerned with posterity, that is, how history will view their decisions. Once they are in the Supreme Court, they will be thinking more about their personal reputations than the favors they owe the party. But then, I know I am being idealistic here.
It is idealistic, yet it has happened before. I join you in hoping.
.
For this comment :: from BooMan Tribune – 6 hours ago –
Has this ever been seen before, an advisor to the President and Texas Governor for eleven years, nominated to the Supreme Court. Expect a 5-4 decision in SC, Harriet vote determines presidency in favor of Jeb in Election 2008?
▼ ▼ ▼
Here’s an interesting posting from packing.org (it’s a pro-gun blog):
“Note that Miers served as chair of the Texas Lottery Commission for five years. The TLC is one of the most corrupt agencies in Texas government. That she chaired it for five years is, by itself, a wake-up call to the nature of Miers’ character. I recently had a long conversation with a man who served for several years as a high-ranking LEO at the TLC during her tenure there (yes, they have their own law enforcement agency), and although he is a strong conservative, who served under a Republican administration, he had nothing good to say about the way that commission was and is run.
When Miers was named to succeed Alberto Gonzales as counsel to George W. Bush, it was noted in several of the news accounts that she was a close, personal adviser of his. In fact, she has been one of the few female members of his staff who goes with him on his brush-clearing expeditions at the Crawford ranch. It is no crime to be able to form strong, personal relationships with your boss, but this example underscores a legacy of kissing-up that spans decades. Sorry, but we don’t need a kiss-up on the Supreme Court.
We know absolutely nothing about her views on jurisprudence, the U.S. Constitution, etc. In my opinion, we don’t need to know any of that; we know enough already to know she isn’t the right person to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court.”
The right continues to get louder about Harriet.
yeah, right…nudge nudge wink wink
and maybe slap, slap, hairbrush, hairbrush? She’s not old enough to be his mother but she could play one!
and I thought I was twisted. 🙂
We could compete for twistedness.
Seriously, I think it’s very Freudian. (See the new photo i put up with my twisted caption that I think is what a lot of it is about.)
Barbara was a cold, angry disciplinarian who neglected George a lot.
Harriet is a cold, angry disciplinarian who George called a “pitbull.”
Harriet also knows that George can’t see much beyond the end of his nose. Harriest knows that she can show him resumes and reports, but he can’t really read them and comprehend them … so what was key was to have several dinners with him, across a small table from him, letting him see her while he talked about the SCOTUS.
Harriet probably reminds him occasionally of how she, his mother, has rescued that BAD BOY from his old problems like the Nat’l Guard, and how he must owe fealty to her.
Can we tie Tom DeLay to this? Cuz that would be fun.
.
Harriet Miers, 60 (bio)
White House Counsel 2005
$ 10,500 Republican
$ 3,000 Democrat
$ 1,270 Special interest
$ 14,770 Total
▼ ▼ ▼
Newsmeat has the details.
DNC $1000 1988
Al Gore $1000 1988
Sen Lloyd Bentson $1000 1987
Not sure where to put this so here it goes, just listened to Andrea Mitchell on Hardball and she said that Miers was brought in by Bush to help with the National Guard mess, and that interestingly ties in with George Barns(sp), and now I am wondering what she had to do with the infamous letter in Rathergate. Far fetched?
Just listened to the White House communications officer, (the absurd Nicole Devenish,) spinning the most idiotic drivel in praise of Miers, Bush and the regime in general.
I think Devenish might be Ken Mehlman in drag; she’s that pathetic.
I saw her too .. she reminds me of one of those sunshine-y, protein-deprived Hari Krishna or Moonie cultists.
The entire rubric of the Bush regime is based on cultic dynamics through and through. The simpleminded rhetoric, the obvious cognitive disconnect with reality, the overwhelming denial and the subservience born of fear and intimidation, these are hallmarks of cultic command and control dynamics; PsyOps for the acolytes.
Supreme Court nominee Miers calls security after explaining to a disgruntled lottery for the 97th time that you have to match ALL the numbers, not just the yellow ball, to win the 56 million dollar prize.
Supreme Court nominee Miers calls security after explaining to a disgruntled lottery player for the 97th time that you have to match ALL the numbers, not just the yellow ball, to win the 56 million dollar prize.
Two things:
Mike Allen, formerly with the WaPo and now with Time magazine, was on with Terry Gross the other day and gave a very lucid rundown on the cronies in the Bush administration.
I forget the name of the guy — the one in charge of major purchasing — who had to quickly resign, just before he was arrested … but Allen said that the FBI vetted him. And that the guy TOLD BUSH about his problems that might lead to an arrest, and Bush brought him in anyway.
It was amazing. Go to freshair.npr.org — it’s in the last week or so.
David Safavian, the name of the crony in charge of purchasing..I think…
Thinking about this, it occurs to me to consider not just how many cronies are in place, but how many women cronies. Spelling, Hughes, Rice, now Miers.
Whatever their accomplishments may or may not be, women are generally considered less powerful and forceful in business and politics than men. And don’t yell at me–I’m speaking of general, largely unconscious perceptions, and as someone who spent far too long on the front lines of corporate equality.
Yes, Bush gets bragging rights about “equality,” but I wonder if at some level he’s surrounding himself with (less powerful) women because it lets him appear as a strong leader (at least in what passes for his mind). And none of these women is very good at what she’s doing, especially as they are all sycophants. Notice that all the real decisions in this administration are made by the same old same old guys.
OK, enough pop psych for the moment.