GOP slams Bush policies at retreat

Growing frustration over President Bush's immigration plan and lack of fiscal discipline came to a head behind closed doors at last weekend's Republican retreat in Philadelphia.

House lawmakers, stunned by the intensity of their constituents' displeasure at some of Mr. Bush's key domestic policies, gave his political strategist Karl Rove an earful behind closed doors. Emphasis Mine.

Here's a partial transcript of the retreat:

"But Karl, you don't understand, our constituents seem to be thinking! I am surprised as you are, but his isn't good, it isn't good at all."

- rob 1:10 PM - [PermaLink] -

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One Last Time

Good People Beget Good People: A Genealogy of the Frist Family

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6 people recommended Cat Owner's Home Veterinary Handbookin addition to Good People Beget Good People: A Genealogy of the Frist Family

9 people recommended American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bushinstead of Good People Beget Good People: A Genealogy of the Frist Family

- rob 1:07 PM - [PermaLink] -

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"My Bad"

"The Earth is flat I say, flat!"

So says Donald Rumsfeld to a congressional committee investigating intel failures with regard to Iraq's "imminent" threat. Does this sound in any way like Ken Lay's sterling plea of ignorance -- after all, how could the president and C.E.O. of a gigantic energy corporation possibly know what his own officers were doing, especially when multibillion-dollar transactions had to be personally signed off by him? Not his bad. Someone else's bad, clearly. Maybe Dick Cheney's bad? ... Nah. No one's bad. These things happen all by themselves; honor and integrity and accountability somehow looked the other way -- or maybe they just went to lunch, on your dime.

Today I sent this to the NYTimes:

To the Editor:

According to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld ("Rumsfeld and Tenet Defending Assessments of Iraqi Weapons", Feb. 5, 2004), "What we have learned thus far has not proven Saddam Hussein had what intelligence indicated and what we believed he had, but it also has not proven the opposite."

So the emperor does have clothes -- we just haven't seen them yet.

I hope they print it. Usually, though, the Times ignores sarcasm from the peanut gallery.

Cashews,

- Michael 4:34 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Succes has made a failure of our home (Iraq Edition)

Wolfowitz: Iraq Attacks Show U.S. Efforts Succeeding

KIRKUK, Iraq (Reuters) - Attacks in Iraq like the Arbil suicide bombings show efforts to build a new Iraq are succeeding and that extremists are using violence to stop the process, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said on Monday.

Rationality is 20th century thinking. Under the leadership of Dubya we now understand that leadership is coming up with a concept and sticking to it despite the facts. In fact each new fact supports your original concept no matter how much strain that must place on your rational mind.

Fighting decreases in Iraq - we are succeeding! they have no will to fight us anymore!
Fighting increases in Iraq - we are succeeding! they are so desparate and discouraged by our success they have to resort to violence

We have a surplus - Cut taxes and give most money back to the rich. it's their money.
We have a recession - Cut taxes and give most money back to the rich. it'll stimulate the economy.
we still have a recession - cut taxes and give most money back to the rich. we need to stimulate the economy more.
we seem to be out of a recession, but there are 2 million less jobs, and now we have a huge huge deficit - cut taxes and give most money back to the rich - this will stimulate the economy so much that someone might actually get a job and then that person will pay taxes and solve the deficit!

rinse and repeat

- rob 12:51 PM - [PermaLink] -

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More reviews: Good People Beget Good People: A Genealogy of the Frist Family

Each time the word 'beget' is used, god kills a kitten, February 2, 2004
Reviewer: A reader from Houston

Let's see,
If good people beget 'good' people, then it follows that 'bad people' beget 'bad' people. Thus we must weed out the 'bad' people, since they must, by their very nature be 'bad'. And if they are bad they cannot be good, so why bother with, say social programs. Good people are not poor or live in slums. If they were good, well they would not be poor, and therefore would be living in nice communities and thus would be good people begeting good people... scare you?

The book ends up being a wasted use of paper as the ultimately intimate account of a family's scrubbed-clean history misses much of the social ramifications salient to the geneologies development.

and....

I am a snob, February 2, 2004
Reviewer: A reader from Carnation WA

This book would be great...if it was satire.

It may very well be true that "good people beget good people", but I think the argument would carry more weight if an actual "good person" had written this book.

- rob 12:21 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Top Ten Things Never Before Said by a Presidential Candidate

As read by John Edwards

10. "Vote for me or I'll slash your tires"

9. "Forget universal health care -- I'm buying every American an XBox"

8. "In a crisis I ask myself, 'What would Tony Danza do?'?

7. "I'd give you my plan for economic recovery if I wasn't rip stinkin' drunk"

6. "If your last name begins with 'M' through 'Z,' sorry -- your taxes are doubling"

5. "We're gonna cut the deficit by selling North Dakota to Canada"

4. "I have tons of experience from being president of the Burt Reynolds fan club"

3. "Lady, that is one ugly baby"

2. "When I'm president, I'm putting Regis on Mt. Rushmore"

1. "Read my lips: no new wardrobe malfunctions"

Hey, he's got my vote over Bush right there. Asking what would Tony Danza do has got to be more productive than reading about a goat.

- rob 9:23 AM - [PermaLink] -

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Ooooh maybe I'll get to see a free movie

Some Christians See "Passion" as Evangelism Tool

Now those leaders are buying blocks of tickets, encouraging church members to invite their "unsaved" friends and co-workers and producing television commercials that start with scenes from the movie and finish with a pitch for their churches.

Remember when in Sunday school when they told you to read the bible, and you said "I'll wait for the movie?"

- rob 9:11 AM - [PermaLink] -

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Bush defenders now say the CIA misled the Bush administration about the true nature of Saddam's WMDs.

For those who are losing track of the arguements defending Bush's war with Iraq (and who wouldn't be), a site called slacktivist has nicely condensened the "it is never Bush's fault" arguement as it pertains to Iraq into a simple to read timeline:

Sept. 2002: The CIA is underrepresenting the threat posed by Iraq.

Oct. 2002: The CIA needs to stop claiming that the White House is overstating the threat posed by Iraq.

Early 2003: In the battle between the White House and the CIA, the White House is right and the CIA is wrong: Iraq poses a far more serious threat than the CIA will admit.

Late 2003: Everyone agreed all along about the nature of the threat posed by Iraq. There never was a battle over the intelligence between the CIA and the White House.

Early 2004: The CIA overrepresented the threat posed by Iraq, overwhelming the White House in the battle over the intelligence.

The Justice Department wants to know our library records because they want to find out who checks out Orwell's 1984 the most. Those that do are considered prime potential political aides for Bush.

- rob 1:26 PM - [PermaLink] -

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George Bush's Texas (prototype for Dubya's America)

Texas Pharmacist Refuses Pill for Rape Victim

DALLAS (Reuters) - A Texas pharmacist was disciplined for refusing to fill the prescription of a rape victim seeking a morning-after pregnancy-prevention pill, the pharmacy chain that employed the man said on Tuesday.

Eckerd Corp. said the pharmacist considered it a violation of morals to give a rape victim, with a valid prescription, a pill that would prevent her from getting pregnant due to the sexual assault.

- rob 1:08 PM - [PermaLink] -

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White House Defends Bush's Guard Service During War

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House swung into campaign mode on Tuesday to defend President Bush's record in the Texas Air National Guard far from the battlefields of Vietnam after Democrats accused him of going "AWOL."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan denied Democratic charges that Bush shirked his military duties in the early 1970s unlike Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran.

McClellan called the accusations "shameful" and the "worst of election-year politics." Bush "fulfilled his duties" in the National Guard and was honorably discharged. "The president was proud of his service," McClellan added.
...

Democrats have long challenged Bush's record of attendance in the guard in 1972 when he transferred temporarily to an Alabama unit to work on a political campaign.

According to a copy of the National Guard document granting him an "honorable" discharge on Oct. 1, 1973, Bush completed five years and four months of service -- less than the obligatory six years -- before entering Harvard Business School.
...

Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot attacked Kerry directly. "To suggest, as Sen. Kerry has, that the military should 'answer questions' about President Bush's honorable discharge is an outrage," he said.

i.e. the defense seems to be that the accusation is "outrageous" and "bad politics," but that they aren't going to actually bring any proof to the table that Bush bothered showing up in Alabama.

- rob 1:04 PM - [PermaLink] -

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When people read about good people begetting good people

More on Senator Frist's stupid book: The fun reviews at Amazon

I begot what I was going to say..., February 3, 2004
Reviewer: A reader from Philadelphia, PA USA
Oh yeah...

If good people beget good people, do bad people beget bad people?

How can we tell bad people from good people?

These are some of the topics covered in this brilliant book by U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist, M.D..

The answer, Dr. Frist informs us, is that good people make lots and lots of money, while bad people work just as hard but make very little. We must stop these bad people from begetting before they beget more bad people.

That's where forced sterilization comes in. Pioneering experimentation done on adopted kittens led Dr. Frist to his conclusion that the cheapest, most cost-effective means of forced sterilization is execution. Frist executed dozens of cats, both good and bad, and these cats did not beget any more.

Now if we just execute bad people (we can identify them by their low incomes) they will not beget either!

Dr. Frist opens a door to a bright new American future!

and...

I changed my name to Frist, February 2, 2004
Reviewer: A reader from Fort Leavenworth
This book was so good, I changed my name to Frist so I could say it was about me. I read the whole thing while waiting is the reception area for subpar medical service.

and...

A bit egotistical, eh?, February 2, 2004
Reviewer: Cheryl, Rich & Jesse from Den of Iniquity
Do good people write books proclaiming that they themselves are "good people"? I guess, when you have such un-self-critical confidence in your own superiority, then you are free to invade "bad" countries on false pretenses, slash social programs for all the unfortunate "bad" people, and legislate to all the unwashed "bad" masses how they must conduct themselves in the privacy of their own homes. Self-righteous ideologues make very dangerous public-policy makers.

and on and on and on.

- rob 11:03 AM - [PermaLink] -

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Call to action:

MoveOn.org: Censure Bush

President Bush told our nation that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Now that the chief weapons inspector has revealed that that simply is not true, President Bush seeks to avoid responsibility by creating an investigation that will focus on the CIA. That's why we believe:

"Congress must censure President Bush
for misleading the country
about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."

You can join the call by sending an email with this message to your representatives in Congress. Please enter your name, email address, zip code, and personal comment below. We'll deliver these messages by to your member of Congress and other political leaders.

- rob 4:08 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Forgot this yesterday. It's time again for: The Top Ten Conservative Idiots

7. Billy Tauzin
Would you like to earn $1 million dollars a year? Sound tempting? Well that's what Billy Tauzin will be making if he accepts a job offered to him recently by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturing Association, one of Washington's most powerful lobbying organizations. The PhRMA wants Tauzin as their new boss, and they clearly have impeccable timing. See, Tauzin is currently chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee which oversees the Food and Drug Administration and the pharmaceutical industry. And funnily enough, he just had a major hand in the very recent Medicare bill which only just scraped through Congress after Democrats complained that it would seriously damage Medicare and provide massive handouts to pharmaceutical companies. And now the bill has passed, the biggest pharmaceutical lobbyists in Washington want to give him a million dollars a year to be their new boss. Kinda makes you wonder when they started hashing out the details of this job offer, doesn't it?

8. Halliburton
You've probably all seen it by now - the gag-inducing Halliburton commercial in which a soldier on the telephone bravely fights back tears before jumping up and announcing "It's a girl!" (And just think - if he weren't stuck in Iraq guarding Halliburton's newly-acquired oilfields the poor bastard might have been at home when his baby was born.) Halliburton's new push to promote themselves as the loving, caring benefactors of our troops in the field somewhat flies in the face of previous reports that Halliburton subsidiary KB&R provided "blood all over the floor" of kitchens, "dirty pans," "dirty grills," "dirty salad bars" and "rotting meats ... and vegetables" in some military messes they operated. But it doesn't matter because Halliburton may soon be out of this world - you'll be absolutely astonished to discover that George W. Bush's plan to put a man on Mars will benefit Dick Cheney's former company enormously. Here's what "veteran Halliburton scientific adviser" Steve Streich had to say in Oil & Gas Journal back in 2000 - "[Mars exploration is] an unprecedented opportunity for both investigating the possibility of life on Mars and for improving our abilities to support oil and gas demands on Earth." Yup, it's yet another taxpayer-funded multi-billion-dollar handout for the vice president's favorite former company. Oh, and by the way, according to the Washington Post, "Administration officials scoffed at the idea that Halliburton had anything to do with the development of the space policy." Got that? Scoffed.

- rob 1:36 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Dramatic Changes in Foreign Policy

Reeling from multiple diplomatic disasters the Bush administration knew it was time to act.

US bans timed-honoured typeface

In a sign that no matter is too small to affect international diplomacy, the US State Department has issued an edict banning its longtime standard typeface from all official correspondence and replacing it with a "more modern" font.

In an internal memorandum distributed on Wednesday, the department declared "Courier New 12" - the font and size decreed for US diplomatic documents for years - to be obsolete and unacceptable after February 1.

"In response to many requests and with a view to making our written work easier to read, we are moving to a new standard font: 'Times New Roman 14'," said the memorandum.

The new font "takes up almost exactly the same area on the page as Courier New 12, while offering a crisper, cleaner, more modern look," it said, adding that after February 1 "only Times New Roman 14 will be accepted."

"This applies to diplomatic notes," the memorandum said tersely.

There are only three exceptions to the draconian new typographical rules: telegrams, treaty materials prepared by the State Department's legal affairs office and documents drawn up for the president's signature, it said.

- rob 1:19 PM - [PermaLink] -

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CNN.com - Suspected ricin found in Senate mailroom - Feb. 3, 2004

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Following the discovery of suspected deadly toxin ricin in the mailroom of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, much of the Senate complex will be shut down Tuesday, the Senate's Web site said.

Frist's office said the Senate will convene as scheduled Tuesday morning. Nevertheless, all hearings have been canceled, Capitol Police said. "

I wonder if the ricin mailer and the anthrax killer are on speaking terms, or are we going to get some kind of competitive rivalry thing here, and Bush will have to put bombing the post office above Syria on his Who's Next list.

Luckily though everything is going to be fine, because Bill Frist is the author of: When Every Moment Counts: What You Need to Know About Bioterrorism from the Senate's Only Doctor. If you haven't read it yet, don't worry, it's only 86 cents.

- rob 12:56 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Today's GOP: The Culmination of Generations of Wise Breeding Choices



Yep, that's Bill Frist, Senate Majority leader's fine book.

It is chock full of helpful and interesting facts, such as:

1. His Grandfather used to torture cats too.
   
2. Bill Frist himself was conceived in an passionless session of intercourse in which his mother fullfilled her wifely duties and never achieved orgasm.
   
3. Bill Frist's mother always checked the teeth and gums of everyone he dated.
   
4. Bill Frist considers this a 'prequel' to his other book: When Every Moment Counts: What You Need to Know About Bioterrorism from the Senate's Only Doctor.
   
5. Bill Frist's sister once dated a boy, that [ahem] wasn't appropriate, but Bill and his friends took care of him.

- rob 12:42 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Report: Halliburton unit overcharged for meals in Iraq

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Halliburton may have overcharged more than $16 million for meals at a U.S. military base in Kuwait last year, according to a published report.

In the old days, war profiteering was bad bad bad. Now it just guarantees you'll get bigger jobs from the pentagon!

- rob 12:15 PM - [PermaLink] -

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It is an established fact: Elections are not accurate using Diebold machines

ELECTRONIC VOTING'S HIDDEN PERILS

Poll workers in Alameda County noticed something strange on election night in October. As a computer counted absentee ballots in the recall race, workers were stunned to see a big surge in support for a fringe candidate named John Burton.

Concerned that their new $12.7 million Diebold electronic voting system had developed a glitch, election officials turned to a company representative who happened to be on hand.

Lucky he was there. For an unknown reason, the computerized tally program had begun to award votes for Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante to Burton, a socialist from Southern California.
...

Alameda County officials still don't know why the computer program failed on election night. In fact, they only discovered the malfunction because they could compare the paper absentee ballots the software was counting to the computer's tally. The rest of the county's voters cast electronic ballots. Nor were election workers aware at the time that their touch-screen machines were running unauthorized Diebold software in violation of California law, as a state investigation later discovered.

``There was something in the software,'' said Elaine Ginnold, assistant registrar of voters for Alameda County. Alameda County officials refused to allow the Mercury News to review the software code used to test its electronic voting system, saying it was a Diebold trade secret.

``At no time were incorrect vote totals released,'' Diebold spokesman David Bear wrote in an e-mail. ``The system is safe, secure and accurate.'' He attributed the malfunction to a computer-server error and the large number of candidates on the recall ballot.

The security of our elections is a trade secret. And David Bear when shown prove that their systems are flawed says "see, the flaw was discovered (only because with the absentee ballots you can actually do an audit - which is something Diebold does not want people to by able to do), thus proving they are safe and secure."

The sucky 21st century: Where up meets down and sees his identical twin.

- rob 12:14 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Blind Into Baghdad

In practice, Feith said, this meant being ready for whatever proved to be the situation in postwar Iraq. "You will not find a single piece of paper ... If anybody ever went through all of our records—and someday some people will, presumably—nobody will find a single piece of paper that says, 'Mr. Secretary or Mr. President, let us tell you what postwar Iraq is going to look like, and here is what we need plans for.' If you tried that, you would get thrown out of Rumsfeld's office so fast—if you ever went in there and said, 'Let me tell you what something's going to look like in the future,' you wouldn't get to your next sentence!"

"This is an important point," he said, "because of this issue of What did we believe? ... The common line is, nobody planned for security because Ahmed Chalabi told us that everything was going to be swell." Chalabi, the exiled leader of the Iraqi National Congress, has often been blamed for making rosy predictions about the ease of governing postwar Iraq. "So we predicted that everything was going to be swell, and we didn't plan for things not being swell." Here Feith paused for a few seconds, raised his hands with both palms up, and put on a "Can you believe it?" expression. "I mean—one would really have to be a simpleton. And whatever people think of me, how can anybody think that Don Rumsfeld is that dumb? He's so evidently not that dumb, that how can people write things like that?" He sounded amazed rather than angry.

How could you think Rummy was dumb? Just because we purposefully had no plan for a post-Iraq war? That is part of his brilliance! Up meet Down.

No one contends that Donald Rumsfeld, or Paul Wolfowitz, or Douglas Feith, or the Administration as a whole is dumb. The wisdom of their preparations for the aftermath of military victory in Iraq is the question. Feith's argument was a less defensive-sounding version of the Administration's general response to criticisms of its postwar policy: Life is uncertain, especially when the lid comes off a long-tyrannized society. American planners did about as well as anyone could in preparing for the unforeseeable. Anyone who says otherwise is indulging in lazy, unfair second-guessing. "The notion that there was a memo that was once written, that if we had only listened to that memo, all would be well in Iraq, is so preposterous," Feith told me.

Putting aside there were "memos" or "plans" written before the invasion by the state department that made multiple suggestions that if followed may have indeed kept Iraq from slipping into chaos (such as ignoring Chalabi's obviously self-serving advice and keep the Iraqi army around and other methods of keeping the governmental infrastructure somewhat intact). Okay so that's just "lazy, unfair second-guessing." Wouldn't want to be unfair.

How about this? I have heard from defenders of the war that "who could foreseen this happening?" And that is the answer!

The only certainty in war is uncertainty. War is encouraged chaos. So many worse things could have happened in Iraq, that perhaps we should be "grateful" in only seems that Iraq is slipping into civil war. That is why nations should avoid war. War should always be the last resort, if for nothing else, because of this uncertainty. To stage a war on lies, for profits and revenge, and think it will be a simple matter, is criminal negligence.

- rob 12:08 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Inquiry Sought in House Vote on Drug Plan for Medicare

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — A leading House Democrat has called on Speaker J. Dennis Hastert to initiate an ethics investigation into accusations of bribery during last November's vote on the new Medicare drug plan, warning that Democrats will conduct their own inquiry if the House leader does not act.

In a Jan. 20 letter to the speaker, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic whip, said an investigation by the House ethics committee was needed to protect the reputation of the House after Representative Nick Smith, Republican of Michigan, said groups and lawmakers had offered support for his son's Congressional campaign if Mr. Smith backed the measure, which passed 220 to 215.

The Republicans are against the investigation, surprise, surprise. The republicans are already starting to feel buyers remorse as they see that this "welfare for big pharma" medicare bill is already 30% more expensive then originally planned (and its only been a few months). It reminds me of the idiots who buy the Hummer, and then complain about the terrible gas milage.

- rob 11:54 AM - [PermaLink] -

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