Author: catnip

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!.

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I’d like to welcome the latest lefty blog to the blogosphere: Political Cortex – Brain Food for the Body Politic. You’ll see that it’s been set up by some very familiar names from Daily Kos and Booman Tribune. I wish them great success. Go and visit (but make sure you come back here eventually). 🙂

Happy Halloween!

The leader of the Kitties for Frog-Marching Movement is all dressed up for tonite’s trick-or-treating:

Just in on CNN: 2 people to replace Scooter Libby…David Addington as VP’s Chief of Staff…John Hannah as new VP National Security Advisor…Scary!

Update [2005-10-31 13:43:37 by catnip]: Via Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday appointed his counsel, David Addington, as chief of staff to replace Lewis Libby, who was indicted in the CIA leak investigation, the vice president’s office said.

Cheney also appointed John Hannah, who had served on his national security staff since March 2001, as assistant to the vice president for national security affairs. Libby had held both positions.

Addington has served as counsel to the vice president since January 20, 2001.

See Murray Waas and Paul Singer’s most recent article about Addington here.

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A new article by NEWSWEEK’s Michael Hirsh, “Truth About Torture”, is bound to make your blood boil. It confirms what we have all long suspected: that the use of torture by the military in Afghanistan and Iraq has been more widespread than those in charge have let on, that soldiers are still in the dark about what the policy of the DoD really is and that Donald Rumsfeld has been lying about it all.

NEWSWEEK has obtained corroboration for Fishback’s central point in the Army’s own files. According to papers released by the Defense Department in September in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, supporting documents for an inspector-general probe in July 2004 show that abuses were much more widespread than the Army acknowledged. In one IG document, an Army sergeant testifies that putting detainees in stressful positions and pouring water on them “seemed to be something all interrogators” in the Fourth Infantry Division were doing.

Fishback, headlined by NEWSWEEK as a “courageous soldier” and “plainly a very brave man. Crazy brave, even” sounded the alarm on the systemic torture he witnessed and participated in by contacting Senator John McCain and Human Rights Watch after several attempts to contact the Pentagon failed to garner a response.

McCain, of course, is one of the authors of an amendment attached to the latest defense appropriations bill to prohibit the use of torture – an amendment that had caused Bush to threaten to veto the bill with Cheney and CIA head Porter Goss backing his opposition by proposing a waiver: “…with respect to clandestine counterterrorism operations conducted abroad, with respect to terrorists who are not citizens of the United States, that are carried out by an element of the United States government other than the Department of Defense. . . if the president determines that such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack.”

That’s a helluva lot of power to give to a miserable failure of a war president.

McCain is defiant and he’s not alone:

“We aren’t going to allow any weakening of language,” McCain told NEWSWEEK. If the present bill is vetoed or watered down, he adds, “we will certainly put it on another piece of legislation. I think we could get 90 votes tomorrow.” Even at senior levels of the Pentagon, some officials are uneasy about the administration’s opposition to the McCain amendment. “The uniformed military is appalled by Cheney’s stand,” says a Pentagon official who would talk only if he were not identified.

It’s up to the Republicans in congress now to prove whether they are purveyors of torture or not and whether they will allow their leaders in the WH to define them and the US as such in the eyes of the world.

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Subtitle: Indictments? What Indictments?

In case you missed it, Senator Barbara Boxer played therapist to her patient Rep. David Dreier on Friday nite. I think he’ll be needing a lot more sessions before he’s able to make a breakthrough though.

Transcript of Friday’s CNN Larry King Live Show, “Libby Indicted, Resigns”:

KING: We’ll start with the elected officials first. Senator Boxer, surprised?

SEN. BARBARA BOXER (D), CALIFORNIA, FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE: Oh, on some levels but it is very disturbing, not only the fact that we are facing this terribly difficult time for our country with such a high level individual being indicted on five counts of lying and all the rest and we’re talking about lying to FBI agents, lying to the grand jury. We’re talking about obstruction of justice, which means there could be a lot more to this case than meets the eye.

But the bigger picture, which is why did all this happen? It’s because this administration we think, and we don’t know how deep it goes, wanted to punish a man’s family. That’s what happened.

Joe Wilson, he told the truth. He said there was no truth to the fact that Saddam Hussein was trying to restart his nuclear weapons program by getting uranium from Niger.

And so, to punish him, they in fact outed this CIA agent and ruined her career and hurt our national security and who knows who they put in jeopardy and that is kind of like the enemy’s list that I remember from the Nixon years and it’s very chilling to me.

KING: Congressman Dreier, as chairman of the Rules Committee, how much trouble is your White House in?

REP. DAVID DREIER (R), CALIFORNIA: Well let me say at the outset I disagree with most of what my friend Barbara has just said. Scooter Libby has not been charged with disclosing the identity of a covert agent. We know that he’s been charged with providing purportedly false statements to a grand jury. And, I will say this, everyone in this county…

BOXER: And obstruction of justice.

DREIER: Excuse me. Everyone in this country is presumed innocent until proved otherwise and I will tell you that I’ve worked with Scooter Libby for many years. He is a phenomenal individual and he’s someone who has worked long and hard dealing with our nation’s homeland security and I think that we still need to have respect for him.

Now the president, Larry, has accepted his resignation and we have to move ahead. We have to deal — so that is an issue that those of us who serve in the United States Congress have nothing to do with.

We need to continue to do everything we can to focus on the success that we’ve had with 78 percent of the Iraqi people voting in that referendum, rebuilding following Hurricane Katrina.

KING: Is the party in any trouble?

DREIER: Let me just tell you how I can make sure that the party is not in trouble and that’s for us to continue to do out work, cutting federal spending, making sure that the phenomenal news that we got today of 3.8 percent GDP growth, I mean incredible even in the wake of the hurricane we have incredible economic growth. And so I think that if we can focus on our work then to answer your question directly, Larry, the party and the country are not in trouble.

KING: OK.

BOXER: Larry, David is in denial.

KING: No, Barbara don’t interrupt. Let me get everybody in.

BOXER: He’s just in denial.

KING: OK. The headline in the paper, David, tomorrow is not going to be about the GDP.

DREIER: You’re right. That’s why I’m talking about it, Larry, because I know the headline tomorrow won’t be about the GDP and somebody needs to talk about that.

KING: David Gergen it says that Karl Rove is still under investigation. What does that mean?

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It’s going to take nothing short of magic – a very convincing illusion – for George W Bush to now steer the focus away from the corruption in his administration back to his big agenda issues for this term. Perhaps he should enlist David Copperfield to replace Karl Rove.

With the indictments of Scooter Libby and Tom DeLay, the investigation of Bill Frist, the withdrawal of the nomination of Harriet Miers after a massive implosion of the Republican Party’s base, an illegal war that is out of control, a pro-torture Vice President and the absolute inability to even utter one regret over any of it, this is more than just a “culture of corruption”. It’s a culture of lies. Corruption seems like far too gentle a word at this point for what the Bush administration has been perpetuating since it took over the White House.

While the Republicans will try furiously to refocus the American public’s attention back to Bush’s domestic agenda again this week, that same public is still reeling from what congress and the WH have wrought the past few months as a result of that agenda: a bankruptcy bill that will harm millions and protect the credit card companies, pandering to the gun companies by protecting them from lawsuits, cutting back on food stamps, proposing cutbacks to Medicaid and Medicare, the lack of a viable energy policy, the continual mismanagement of hurricane relief efforts, the flip-flop on the Davis-Bacon Act and the ongoing inability to manage the war in Iraq.

This is a failed presidency.

One only had to watch Bush’s statement to the press on Friday about the Libby indictments to see that he had lost that look of steely determination that has been his hallmark as the “war president”. He looked defeated – not defiant. That’s what happens to a man who refuses to allow anything but good news from the lips of his closest advisors to penetrate his daily reality. He has lost control of the message to an extent that we can be sure he never envisioned due to his stubborn insistence that he never makes mistakes.

The only way such a man can move ahead is to continue to deny reality by attempting once again to push his social security “reforms”, his war on terror campaign and his meme that “freedom is on the march” while carrying an approval rating hovering around 40%. It hasn’t worked before and it won’t work now.

Bush also faces the dilemma of again having to nominate a new candidate to the Supreme Court to replace the failed Miers candidacy. His only safe bet is to nominate a moderate who is clearly conservative. If he chooses to give his fundie base the red meat they’ve been salivating for, he risks another major battle with the end result being the use of the nuclear option in the Senate. He may believe he can afford that fight, and his base may believe it as well, but if he thinks things around him are ugly now – just wait until the Democrats bring down the hammer on that strategy.

It’s obviously going to take more than the power of a master illusionist like David Copperfield, who is quite capable of making real elephants disappear, to take away the stench that emanates from this White House. It’s going to take more than the business-as-usual right-wing smear machine to change things as well. What else does Bush have up his sleeve and, in the end, will he be able to pull off the trick without a hitch? He has a very cynical audience to convince and they will be watching his every move knowing what magic really is: just one big illusion.

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