Bush’s Final Presser: Redefining Success, One Rooftop Rescue at a Time

Still-President George W. Bush, looking on Monday morning like most of America now feels, stood before the White House press corps one last time to express his undying gratitude for their piss-poor performance during his eight-years in office. From groggy start to rambling finish, it was a jaw-dropping performance.

In keeping with a long-standing pattern, Bush repeatedly “admitted” that his “rhetoric” might not have been right (“Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake.”). All the deeds were fine; he just didn’t sell them well. For the Boy King, this has always been the PR presidency; he is now just more loose-lipped about it. Like with so many crappy, Peter-Principled CEO types, he has made the strategy the tactic.

In that vain vein, the most startling moment to my ear and eye was Bush’s perception of his failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina with anything resembling appropriate gravity:

Don't tell me the federal response was slow when there was 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed.

You know, I remember going to see those helicopter drivers, Coast Guard drivers, to thank them. . .

Wait, hang on—I just have to interrupt for minute: “Helicopter drivers?” “Coast Guard Drivers?”

I think we call them “pilots.”

OK, carry on. . . .

You know, I remember going to see those helicopter drivers, Coast Guard drivers, to thank them for their courageous efforts to rescue people off roofs -- 30,000 people were pulled off roofs right after the storm moved through. That's a pretty quick response.

Could things have been done better? Absolutely. Absolutely.

But when I hear people say the federal response was slow, then what are they going to say to those chopper drivers or the 30,000 that got pulled off the roofs?

Amazing, right? It doesn’t even occur to Bush that having to pull people off of roofs is wholly emblematic of the slow response. Last time I checked, the standard advice when faced with a big hurricane is not “First, get on your roof.”

As for the levees breaking, the floods, well, “no one could have anticipated. . .” except, well, um:

In the 48 hours before Hurricane Katrina hit, the White House received detailed warnings about the storm's likely impact, including eerily prescient predictions of breached levees, massive flooding, and major losses of life and property, documents show.

A 41-page assessment by the Department of Homeland Security's National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC), was delivered by e-mail to the White House's "situation room," the nerve center where crises are handled, at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, the day the storm hit, according to an e-mail cover sheet accompanying the document.

The NISAC paper warned that a storm of Katrina's size would "likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching" and specifically noted the potential for levee failures along Lake Pontchartrain. . . .

In a second document. . . a computer slide presentation by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, prepared for a 9 a.m. meeting on Aug. 27, two days before Katrina made landfall, compared Katrina's likely impact to that of "Hurricane Pam," a fictional Category 3 storm used in a series of FEMA disaster-preparedness exercises simulating the effects of a major hurricane striking New Orleans. But Katrina, the report warned, could be worse.

The hurricane's Category 4 storm surge "could greatly overtop levees and protective systems" and destroy nearly 90 percent of city structures, the FEMA report said. It further predicted "incredible search and rescue needs (60,000-plus)" and the displacement of more than a million residents.

So, that’s four days notice—or six days before those helicopter drivers got to work—but the “Hurricane Pam” simulation, that was done a full year before Katrina.

But why stop there? Bush was actually warned about the problem with the New Orleans levees over four years before Katrina; his response:

Funding for flood prevention was slashed by 80 per cent, work on strengthening levees to protect the city was stopped for the first time in 37 years, and planning for housing stranded citizens and evacuating refugees from the Superdome were crippled. Yet the administration had been warned repeatedly of the dangers by its own officials.

In early 2001, at the start of Mr Bush's presidency, his Government's Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) warned that a hurricane hitting New Orleans would be the deadliest of the three most likely catastrophes facing America; the others were a massive San Francisco earthquake and, prophetically, a terrorist attack on New York.

So, I guess, in a manner of speaking, his “response” wasn’t slow at all—Bush laid the groundwork for those wonderful rooftop photo-ops four years in advance.

This sort of truth-squading could be done with just about every response Bush gave in his presser. And it should be done, not just today, but for every instance of Bush legacy burnishing we will be forced to endure, push back on, fight, and re-fight for many years to come. Though it might be rare to see the burnishing this unvarnished, it has been made apparent from these instant re-writes on current events, through the neocons’ Vietnam revisionism, to the recent attempts to trash-talk the New Deal that nothing is safe or sacred.

Certainly not the truth.

. . . .

On a related point, nothing exemplifies just what a petty, egomaniacal, vindictive jerk this president was, is, and will always be than his treatment Helen Thomas. Bush had stopped calling on Thomas long ago, the White House press office even tried to take away her front row seat—a “punishment” for asking tough questions—but to not give her the honor of the first or last question at his final presser was, to my mind, classless.


cross-posted on Firedoglake

Bush at Walter Reed:Between Chicken and Egg, I’ll Go with Chicken

Yesterday’s headline news, in all its various establishment media permutations, was full of stories about Still-President George W. Bush paying a visit to wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center this morning. A couple added that this was the site of one of his administration’s most serious scandals.

Those reports were talking about the appalling conditions at Walter Reed given broad attention after Dana Priest and Anne Hull published a front-page exposé last year in the Washington Post—they were not talking about the scandal that is the cause of so many of those wounds. That would be the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

When I heard the story, I smirked and shook my head in disgust, figuring it was just another lame, lame duck attempt at legacy burnishing.

Well, it was that, but it was so much more. . . or less.

It turns out, as was later reported, that Bush had an MRI on Monday morning at Walter Reed for a chronic pain in his left shoulder. Yes, that’s right. Bush went to WRAMC because he wasn’t feeling well.

I suppose it’s a chicken and egg thing. . . kind of. It certainly would have looked bad if word had gotten out that Bush was at the medical center and didn’t stop in to look after the men and women who owe their disability checks to his vainglorious boondoggle. But would George W. have gone out there at all if he hadn’t had his own needs to look after?

My guess is a certain “no.”

Bush, even at his most “engaged” was never big on confronting his mistakes—especially ones made so (pardon this) flesh. The man was, is, and will forever be a reality chicken.

Now, as anyone looking at an unemployment check will confirm, the decider has decided he’s decided enough. He’s over it, done his bit, given what he can give. You don’t like him being president any more? Fine, he just won’t be.

So, while it’s just me s’posin’, I’m going to say that if Bush hadn’t felt the need, there’s no way he goes to Reed.

Which might have been just fine with the brave men and women confronting reality every day. . . whether they choose to or not.


(cross-posted on Firedoglake, The Seminal, and guy2k)

How cute. . .

Hank is going to let Bush pretend he’s still in charge. . . .

The Treasury Department, in its boldest move yet, is expected to announce a plan on Tuesday to invest up to $250 billion in banks, according to officials. The United States is also expected to guarantee new debt issued by banks for three years — a measure meant to encourage the banks to resume lending to one another and to customers, officials said.

And the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will offer an unlimited guarantee on bank deposits in accounts that do not bear interest — typically those of businesses — bringing the United States in line with several European countries, which have adopted such blanket guarantees.

. . . .

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. outlined the plan to nine of the nation’s leading bankers at an afternoon meeting, officials said. He essentially told the participants that they would have to accept government investment for the good of the American financial system.

Of the $250 billion, which will come from the $700 billion bailout approved by Congress, half is to be injected into nine big banks, including Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, officials said. The other half is to go to smaller banks and thrifts. The investments will be structured so that the government can benefit from a rebound in the banks’ fortunes.

President Bush plans to announce the measures on Tuesday morning. . . .

Henry Paulson, who himself had to be dragged kicking and screaming to this equity injection plan, worked out the details in private with the biggest players on Monday. . . and then kept it on the QT so that Still President Bush could come out on Tuesday morning and make it seem like he had some role to play in all this.

He didn’t.

Truth is, Mr. Hanky didn’t much either. Democrats in Congress inserted the language (over Paulson’s objections) in the TARP bill that gave Treasury the authority to do this; Paulson then did nothing for ten days, until markets tanked, credit got tighter, and UK PM Gordon Brown got most of the Europe on board with a similar plan. Hank Paulson is just desperately trying to keep up.

Meanwhile, Hank’s old pals at Goldman Sachs have cut a deal with New York state to headquarter their newly configured full-service bank in New York City. So, they get more from the federal government, and a state tax break, too.

How cute.


(cross-posted on The Seminal)

What’s the opposite of leadership?

When last we spoke, the Dow was starting Friday in freefall while all eyes turned to a meeting of the G7 called by the chief executive of the United States, George W. Bush Henry Paulson. During the course of Friday, the Dow did a bit of a rollercoaster rebound, but I am not going to tell you it was because investors were expecting x or y from the G7 or the US Treasury Department, or because there was some bargain hunting, or because Mercury was in retrograde. (I utterly despise this kind of Stock Market analysis—it’s post-hoc hooey—so when you catch me doing it, and I assure you I will, take it with appropriate measures of sodium.)

What happened next? Well, the G7 released an abysmal document pledging future efforts, sunshine and lollipops, etc., but when it came to the details of actually doing something, one can sum it all up with, “splunge!” The next day, the IMF mostly followed the G7’s “lead.”

That was all very bad news.

As I wrote last week, economists out here in the real world had coalesced around a “stock injection” or “equity injection” plan, coupled with government guarantees on interbank loans—essentially a partial nationalization of banks willing to enter into the bargain—as the best way to quickly loosen up the credit market (and, ideally, provide time for more and better long-term changes to our global economic systems). It was an option that Hank Paulson rejected outright in late September. However, language permitting an equity injection was inserted into the $700 billion bailout signed into law ten days ago.

Still, Paulson did nothing last week to use that new authority. Never mind asking about the actual president of the United States. . . what was he up to? (You can’t see me, but I’m tipping my head back and pointing my right thumb toward my mouth while mimicking gulping sounds.) Well, there were those morning pep talks. . . zheesh!

Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the UK, however, did float the idea of equity injection and guarantees last Wednesday—and, late Sunday night, Brown made the float flesh, moving to pump 50 billion quid into British banks, and guarantee interbank lending, to boot. The European Union appears to be following suit.

Lo and behold, Hong Kong, European, and London markets are up sharply this morning. (You see, I told you I’d do it.) (Afternoon update: the Dow is also up sharply. The US and Japanese exchanges have Monday off.)

Which all raises an interesting question: If Brown came to Washington’s G7 confab with the equity plan in tow, and we now see that the EU was ready to go along with that framework, then why was the G7’s statement so unproductively obtuse? In other words, who prevented the G7 from simply issuing a statement saying, “What Gordon said”?

Hmmm. . . .

There is, clearly, only one possibility—Why, hi-de-ho, it’s Mr. Hanky!

And perhaps even more amazing, today, Monday, after the UK and EU have taken decisive action, the US Department of Treasury has let it be known that they will maybe, probably start injecting some of our bailout billions directly into banks in exchange for equity. . . but they have not issued any instructions or details of how, or who, or when, and they are offering this without the other part of the Brown plan, the guarantees!

What is Paulson’s rationale? What is the opposite of leadership? (Again, forget about “the leader of the free world”—and again, head tipped back, glug, glug, glug.)

Paulson fought against getting this authority, and now, once granted it, despite movement from economies much smaller than “his,” he still drags his feet. Contrast this with Hammerin’ Hank, say, September 17, hyperventilating and threatening the end of civilization as we know it if he didn’t get his 70 billion Benjamins to spend however he pleased. How can we explain the difference?

Well, as we seem to have to say too much these days, we can’t know what is in a man’s heart. . . but might the behavior gap have something to do with the ideological purity of this administration, and the company Paulson supposedly left behind to gallantly take over at Treasury?

Yeah, that was a rhetorical question.

First, the Bush Administration’s—hell, the whole Republican/Conservative movement’s—“private good, public bad,” “markets know best” philosophy not only helped usher in this nightmare, it lead to a stunning inability to entertain any viable solutions.

Second, from the beginning (or before the beginning) of this credit calcification and market tumble, it seems that Treasury has worked to protect, and even enrich, Goldman Sachs.

Just look at some of this: Lehman Brothers, a direct competitor of Goldman, was allowed to fail. Treasury said it had to draw a line. But a week later, the government steps in to save AIG by injecting capital (at first $80 billion; now well over $100 billion) in exchange for equity. It turns out that AIG owed Goldman something like $30 billion—in fact, a representative from Goldman Sachs was in the room when the AIG bailout was being negotiated.

With the big five investment banks reduced to the big two, many expected Goldman would be the next to go. Investors start shorting Goldman stock. The government’s response? Ban all short selling (not just naked short selling, as some had recommended).

That was quickly revealed to be a disastrous move for a variety of reasons, and the ban was lifted. Paulson went back to demanding his near trillion dollar blank check so that he could buy toxic assets off the hands of banks. . . investment banks included. Never mind that Paulson never was able to explain how that plan would actually solve the problems at hand.

All of this dicking around took weeks, of course; weeks where markets tanked, credit froze, jobs were lost, and the whole mess, by most accounts, grew worse and more expensive to fix.

By the way, there is a downside to the equity injection plan—that is if you own bank stock. If you own shares in a bank that opts in to an injection plan, a bank like, maybe, say, Goldman Sachs, the value of your shares will be diluted because the bank will have to issue additional preferred shares to exchange for government capital.

You don’t think that might adversely affect Hank’s “blind” trust, or the coffers of many of Paulson’s pals, now, do you?

I guess that’s a kind of leadership.


. . . .

Congratulations to Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate.



(cross-posted on Daily Kos and The Seminal)

Jeepers, Veepers

Well, bygollygosh, Sarah—is it OK if I call you Sarah?—ya’ didn’t stare blankly into the camera like a moose in headlights, or make sick allover that pretty jacket yer wearin’, so I guess you can be vice president now fershure.

And what, dear readers, does being vice president mean to Sarah Palin? In her “own” words:

PALIN: I'm thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president's policies. . . .

IFILL: Governor, you mentioned a moment ago the constitution might give the vice president more power than it has in the past. Do you believe as Vice President Cheney does, that the Executive Branch does not hold complete sway over the office of the vice presidency, that it it is also a member of the Legislative Branch?

PALIN: Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president's agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we'll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation. And it is my executive experience that is partly to be attributed to my pick as V.P. with McCain, not only as a governor, but earlier on as a mayor, as an oil and gas regulator, as a business owner. It is those years of experience on an executive level that will be put to good use in the White House also.

Whoa, Sally! What are you saying there? The United States Constitution allows for the Vice President to take more power if he or she chooses? More than the current usurper? Really? The powers of the vice president are a matter of choice? (So, now you’re pro-choice, are ya’?) And, given the choice, you are going to make sure that legislature—the Senate—that you have chosen to take under your wing will be “supportive and cooperative” of and with the president, President McCain? Do I have all this right?

I don’t know if I have to spell out all the problems here, I mean, Senator Joe Biden did give it a good go in his response:

Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.

And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.

The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he's part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous.

But I want to go just a bit further. No vice president—or president, for that matter—gets to choose how much or what kind of power he or she will have. To structure the government that way is to assert that we are a government of men (and/or women) and not a government of laws. The roles of the executive branch are pretty well defined after two centuries of amendments, laws, and court decisions, and if we had had a legislative branch worth its salt these last eight years, President Bush and Vice President Cheney would have been firmly told to play those roles—no improvising allowed.

In a debate that will likely be judged mostly on its intangibles, I found this the most terrifying substantive point. Sarah Palin, who once “joked” that she was waiting for someone to tell her what a vice president does (she wasn’t joking—this is just another post-hoc rationale for a bad answer out of the McCain-Palin team), has now decided that the only thing that constrains her vice presidential authority are the boundaries of her own ambition.

I figure that sounds like a great self-help mantra, but it makes, as Joe Biden said, for a fucking awful government.

That one of the night’s biggest revelations/gaffes came in an answer to a follow-up question is not a surprise, but that there were so few of these follow-up opportunities was surprising.

When I heard earlier in the week that Gwen Ifill had fallen and broken her ankle while carrying her debate material down the stairs, I imagined Thursday’s moderator precariously balancing a stack of briefing books—giant three-ring binders that went flying though the air when she fell. After seeing Ifill at the debate, I now envision two three-by-five note cards fluttering slowly to the floor.

Ifill asked broad, generic questions with few specifics, few facts from the candidates’ records, few quotes from their prior statements, and almost no follow-ups.

Ifill asked a broad question about Pakistan and Iran; Palin answered by talking about Iraq. Did Ifill say, “But I asked for your thoughts on Pakistan and Iran”? No.

Palin stated that the McCain health plan wouldn’t require tax increases and was revenue neutral; even the McCain campaign has admitted that their plan will levy taxes against the value of private health insurance policies and that the program will require additional federal money. Did Ifill challenge Palin with these points? No.

Palin repeatedly called the NATO commander in Afghanistan “General McClellan” (his name is McKiernan) and then asserted that he didn’t say that a surge in Afghanistan wouldn’t work (he said exactly that). Did Ifill call her on either of these gaffes? No.

Palin claimed that she has a record as a non-partisan executive, saying, “You do what I did as governor. And you appoint people regardless of party affiliation. Democrats, independents, Republicans, you walk the walk, don't just talk the talk.” Well, numerous news outlets have published facts quite to the contrary (like this NYT exposé)—did Ifill call out the governor on this? No.

Palin announced that she wasn’t obligated to answer the questions that were being put to her by the moderator. Did Ifill even push back on that one? Amazingly, no!

It was a remarkably deficient performance, proven more so by the last two weeks worth of Katie Couric clips. (Couric, not previously known for her tough interviews, managed to reveal much about Sarah Palin simply by asking, and re-asking, if necessary, for clarification and specifics.) Maybe it was the painkillers prescribed for her ankle, but whatever the reason, Ifill did America—and the candidates, really—a great disservice.

Joe Biden didn’t exactly knock it out of the box. The Senator started the debate bogged down in numbers, and I felt the sightlines made Biden’s brow look more prominent and severe than I’ve ever seen it, making him look a little too Herman Munster for my tastes. But, as the evening wore on, Joe warmed up—and looked up—finishing with passion and heart. He was a solid defender of the proposals outlined by the top of his ticket, and he spoke with an easily recognizable authority on most issues. It was in stark contrast to Palin’s attempts to run from the Bush-McCain record, and, as time wound down, cram in her money shots. I found myself thinking: Joe Biden spoke from his experience; Sarah Palin spoke from her notes.

So, Palin, with her well-rehearsed talking points and even more practiced “Joe Six-pack” (her words) folksiness lives to fight another day. . . or, I’m guessing, given what happened with Couric, Palin more likely lives to hide another day. She didn’t look or sound any more qualified to run a country (any country), but she didn’t get herself kicked off the ticket, either. The race will likely continue pretty much in the same direction it was going before this debate—as will the economy, the war in Afghanistan, the reconstruction of New Orleans, the illegal domestic spying, the privatization of our public institutions, and the cronyism, calumny, and corruption of the last eight years.

Sure, Sarah, even a small town hockey mom can run for the future vice president of the United States. . . but you can’t hide from your party’s past.



(cross-posted on The Seminal and Daily Kos)

Bush on econ crisis: I got nothin’

With the US economy in crisis and the markets in something close to freefall Wednesday, the White House let it be known that President Bush would deliver an important statement come Thursday morning. At about a quarter after 10am yesterday, Bush stepped to a lectern placed in the Oval Colonnade and read the following:

The American people are concerned about the situation in our financial markets and our economy, and I share their concerns.

I've canceled my travel today to stay in Washington, where I will continue to closely monitor the situation in our financial markets and consult with my economic advisors. I spoke to Secretary Paulson this morning, and I will meet with him later on today.

In recent weeks, the federal government has taken extraordinary measures to address the challenges confronting our financial markets. We've taken control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- the home finance agencies -- to help promote market stability and to ensure they can continue to play a role in helping our housing market recover. This week, the Federal Reserve acted to prevent the disorderly failure of the insurance company AIG -- a development that could have caused a severe disruption in our financial markets and threatened other sectors of the economy. Yesterday, the Security and Exchange Commission took action to strengthen investor protections and step up its enforcement actions against illegal market manipulation. Last night, the Federal Reserve, in coordination with central banks around the world, took a substantial step to provide additional liquidity to the U.S. financial system.

These actions are necessary, and they're important. And the markets are adjusting to them. Our financial markets continue to deal with serious challenges. As our recent actions demonstrate, my administration is focused on meeting these challenges. The American people can be sure we will continue to act to strengthen and stabilize our financial markets and improve investor confidence.

Thank you.

And that was it. Bush took no questions, and submitted no supplementary materials.

This, of course, is not an important statement—it is a recap. There are no proposals or directions here, no new policies, not even a hint that the president might have a next step up his sleeve. Nothing.

Needless to say, this statement did nothing to calm the markets. What, you say, but the markets rebounded on Thursday—the Dow had its biggest one-day gain in years.

True, but that gain is even more impressive considering that after Bush made his remarks, the Dow had actually continued to fall another 200 points. The late day rally of some 600 points was not because of the US president’s words, but because there was a rumor circulating that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke were close to announcing a plan of their own.

Paulson and Bernanke, along with the recently unpopular SEC head Chris Cox, did meet with Congressional leaders from both parties on Thursday night, but they emerged several hours later with no plan to announce.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said he expected a proposal from the Administration not in days, but “in a matter of hours,” but, as of this writing, there is still nothing to report.

Asian markets are as of now holding their own based on the continuing belief that Treasury and Congress will craft a deal. . . a deal to bail out the multitude of troubled financial institutions.

Should Paulson, Bernanke, et al. disappoint, however, expect to start next week with another round of financial panic.

The problems here are myriad, but let me just focus on one: what are we doing hanging on every word from a disengaged, incurious, and uncaring president; what are we doing betting the house (no pun intended) on a last-minute deal for another stopgap government bailout?

This crisis is not a surprise—none of it. The Bear Stearns collapse was in March; the subprime mortgage bubble burst last year. And yet, the current administration—the CEO President (remember that boast?) and his pro-business brain trust—did nothing to reform the system; they didn’t even do anything to minimize the risk to the system.

Instead, we get the continued privatization of wealth hand-in-hand with the continued socialization of risk. The upper echelons of bank/investment house/insurance industry management continue to be rewarded for pushing financial instruments designed to skirt regulations and maximize short-term gain; when those schemes fail, the government must attempt to walk a lose-lose line between public expenditure and global economic fallout.

President Bush, as evidenced by his “important statement,” has offered zero leadership and zero desire to reform the system. The man who wants to continue his Republican economic policies, John McCain, has looked just as ridiculous. He opposed the AIG bridge loan before he was for it, he proposed a “9/11-style commission” to examine the roots of the crisis while almost simultaneously bragging that, as head of the Senate Commerce Committee, he had a hand in every aspect of this economy, and he claimed he would, if elected, fire SEC Chair Cox, even though he helped confirm him, can’t legally fire him, and won’t get the chance to try because Cox has made it clear he leaves with the current administration—and that was just this week.

It would be amusing if it weren’t so terribly real. Jobs will be lost, life savings will disappear, homes will have to be abandoned. Bush has personal wealth and a federal pension, Wall Street CEOs have gargantuan compensation packages and golden parachutes, and John McCain has his twelve houses and Cindy’s beer money. But American workers (you know, the “strong fundamentals” of the American economy), what do they have?

In too many cases, after decades of market deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, and Republican class warfare, they have what Bush had on Thursday morning—nothing.


(cross-posted on The Seminal and Daily Kos)

McCain trots out laundry list; America prepares to get taken to the cleaners

I thought it was the worst speech by a nominee that I've heard since Jimmy Carter in 1980. I thought it was disorganized, I thought it was it was theme-less, I thought it was very, very boring. . . I personally cannot remember a single policy proposal that he made because they had nothing connecting them. I found it shockingly bad.

That was Jeffrey Toobin, speaking on CNN, just after John Bush, er, um, John McCain delivered his tedious, uninspired, disjointed, hackneyed laundry list of standard Bush-era Republican talking points in place of the bold acceptance speech we were all told to expect by Team McCain’s spin doctors. Normally, I take vocal aim at the establishment punditocracy—of which Toobin is most definitely a part—but such a sizeable number of them, from across what passes for a spectrum in this arena, saw what I saw, I am reduced to quoting liberally.

Take Michael Gerson, one-time George W. Bush speechwriter, who spoke from the floor of the Xcel Center soon after McCain’s confetti canons were set to “stun”:

The policy was the problem, the policy in the speech was rather typical for a Republican, pretty disappointing. It didn't do a lot of outreach to moderates and independents on the issues that they care about. It talked about issues like drilling and school choice, which was really speaking to the converted. I think that was a missed opportunity. Many Americans needed to hear from this speech something they've never heard from Republicans before, and in reality a lot of the policy they've heard from Republicans before.

Or, how about one-time Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton advisor David Gergen:

I did not think that the substantive part of the speech worked very well. It was mostly a rerun, retread of a lot of old Republican ideas that have brought us to where we are now. I think the country is looking for fresh answers. It's hard to separate yourself out from President Bush when you essentially have the same economic policies as President Bush. I thought that the policy presentation was a little thin.

Stunning, but maybe you are thinking, Wait, if the right is so upset with the speech, maybe there was something good here. Cue left-of-center soon-to-be-host of her own MSNBC show Rachel Maddow:

Honestly it was sort of like a long term paper about Bush Republican economics. . . But people aren't mad at Barack Obama about the economy, people are mad at George Bush about the economy, and [John McCain] just proposed a lot of Bush's economic ideas.

And, Maddow’s more “centrist” colleague, David Gregory:

I am however surprised. . . that there is not more of a blueprint of an appeal to independent and swing voters on policy issues that they will work off of. . . When [McCain] talks about education, he talks about it being a civil right for the new century; that is a George W. Bush line from the year 2000 when he called education the new civil right. It's a carbon copy.

In fact, the more inaccurate (and absurd) evaluations of Senator McCain’s ramble came from print reporters that seemed to be nowhere in range of Johnny Mac’s awkwardly mis-modulated voice, and from some of the TV correspondents unfortunate enough to have been on the floor of the convention as the mother of all balloon drops buffeted them about the head.

Take, for example, Adam Nagourney and Michael Cooper of the New York Times. Their story, comically titled “To G.O.P., McCain Issues Call for Change,” was actually published over half an hour before McCain had finished his speech.

Standing in the center of an arena here, surrounded by thousands of cheering Republican delegates, Mr. McCain firmly signaled that he intended to seize the mantle of change Mr. Obama claimed in his own unlikely bid for his party’s nomination.

. . . .

With his speech, Mr. McCain laid out the broad outlines of his general election campaign. He sought to move from a convention marked by an intense effort to reassure the party base to an appeal to a broader general election electorate that polling suggests has turned sharply on Republicans and President Bush.

To that end, Mr. McCain returned to what has been his signature theme as a presidential candidate, including in his unsuccessful 2000 campaign: that he is a politician prepared to defy his own party.

Now, I understand that candidates release texts of their speeches to journalists in advance of delivery—it’s a useful courtesy—but wouldn’t it have been courteous to their readers if AdNags and Cooper had waited to actually hear McCain deliver that text, hear what he emphasized and what he glossed over, hear what got rabid applause and what provoked deathly silence?

And maybe it would have been worth a minute or two of their time to listen closely for something other than McCain’s self-assessment of his “mavrick” status. Were there any actual proposals in the speech? Anything a President McCain might do to change course after eight years of Bush-Cheney misrule? The Times twosome might have read that McCain would state, “Again and again, I’ve worked with members of both parties to fix problems that need to be fixed. That’s how I will govern as president,” but did they look or listen for any specific fixes, any specific plans?

If they had, they would have discovered that there were none.

None.

Beyond his calling for pretty much a total elimination of foreign aid (stupid, counterproductive, and a fiscal drop in the bucket), McCain did not say anything that could be confused with a proposal or even a roadmap for a different course.

Instead, all that the America actually listening got was a recitation from the standard-issue Republican hymnal: lower taxes, smaller government, school vouchers, a judiciary free of “activist” judges. . . and McSame read it with all the zest and zeal one would reserve for a “honey-do” list.

The tedium was contagious, and so, when the television reporters stationed on the convention floor were forced to give their instant “analysis” (read: summary) of the speech, they could only seem to remember the last ten minutes.

Those final passages, to no one’s amazement, were about John McCain’s time in a North Vietnamese prison, about how he was severely injured, brutally tortured, and coerced into betraying his country (no, he didn’t quite put it that way—McCain said that he eventually “broke” under torture). Like practically every other speaker at the RNC, McCain lingered on the gory details of his time as a POW. The fetishization of the torture and violence was squirm-in-your-seat uncomfortable.

But that is not really a surprise. For several months now, many have joked that McCain’s speeches and interviews had become “a noun, a verb, and POW.” The surprise here was that floor reporters (Kelley O’Donnell and Andrea Mitchell come to mind) decided that this was the first time that John McCain had “opened up” about his POW experience.

What??? I really have no way to even analyze that. Were they paying no attention? Was it just the pressures of the TV format, requiring that they make some broad declaration to justify their airtime? Did they just turn to the only memorable narrative from the entire 45-minute speech? (Was it head trauma caused by the balloons?)

And it is the only narrative—memorable or otherwise—that McCain has to tell. “Maverick” has been reduced to a buzzword, a stand-in for an idea that has no substantive underpinning. Senator McCain has spent the last six years cozying up to the Bush agenda (need I remind anyone that he has voted with Bush 95% of the time?), and he has spent this lengthy campaign season pandering to the rightwing Republican base deemed essential for Johnny Mac to realize his burning ambition. He is no more the maverick than any of the other Bush-Cheney apologists that took to the Xcel stage. . . even if most of them scrupulously avoided any mention of their party’s leaders, Republican President George W. Bush and Republican Vice President Dick Cheney.

But, if it is the case that most people tuned out (or never tuned in), and they get their talking points from the New York Times (or from an AP wire story that is even more absurdly off base), and they somehow find themselves voting for this non-non-partisan, hobbyhorse maverick, then they will get exactly what John McCain promised in Thursday’s acceptance speech: Nothing.

Nothing but more of the same, anyway.


(cross-posted on The Seminal and Daily Kos)

Urgent plea: John McCain caught in endless loop of his own circular logic—can you help?

Some jokes, as they say, write themselves. . .

The Politico has posted the new! improved! Jobs for America: The McCain Economic Plan, and this can be found on page four:

The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit. Since all their costs were financed with deficit spending, all their savings must go to deficit reduction.

So, let me see if I have this right: assuming he can claim victory in this long struggle where victory cannot be defined, and McCain ends a deployment that he believes might require another 100 years, he is going to take the money not added to the deficit that was never included in the annual budget to pay down the budget deficit.

This is an argument so absurdly twisted back on itself that it almost lies outside the bounds of basic written language to debunk it. (At this moment, I have an image of comedian Lewis Black shivering with rage, screaming, “If it weren’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college!” But, honestly, that statement contains far more logic than McCain’s.)

Let’s put it this way: If all of the wars’ “costs” have been “financed with deficit spending” (“costs” “financed” by “spending”? oh, never mind) and you somehow miraculously end the wars (even though you have no intent to do so, and no plan as to how if you did), then you don’t actually get money back—you just stop adding to the deficit!

Now I guess you could call that deficit reduction of a sort—stopping the making it larger—if those expenditures had actually ever been counted against the revenue stream in the annual budget. . . except, of course, they never were. The Bush Administration has financed its folly via supplementals—which, at the president’s insistence, have never been included in the calculations of the annual federal budget.

And who voted for those supplementals every single time? Who never so much as made a peep or raised a finger in protest? Who went along with the Bush Administration’s irresponsible and dishonest ploy every step of the way and, even today, continues to tow the Bush line on the Iraq fiasco?

For the sake of the rhetorical device and “the google,” I will tell you. The man who has supported the Bush war and the Bush budget the last five years, and has pledged to carry on the occupation with no new plan to end it and no meaningful pledge to honestly finance it, is none other than long-time Republican Senator and presidential wannabe John McCain.

And you know, as comical as that first plank up there is, the next paragraph is perhaps just as stupid:

A one-year spending pause. Freeze non-defense, non-veterans discretionary spending for a year and use those savings for deficit reduction. A one-year pause in the growth of discretionary spending will be imposed to allow for a comprehensive review of all spending programs. After the completion of a comprehensive review of all programs, projects and activities of the federal government, we will propose a plan to modernize, streamline, consolidate, reprioritize and, where needed, terminate individual programs.

A pause? You mean like the pause we’re supposedly enjoying in Iraq these days? Will the jobless rate, inflation, the crumbling infrastructure, Medicare costs, or a host of other national priorities too long ignored pause while you waste the first year of your presidency (and all of our time) figuring out what you are going to do?

What has John McCain been thinking about during the last year while he ran to take over for George W. Bush—not to mention what was he thinking about over the last eight years? Did he not think that maybe Americans might want to know what he planned to do before they voted? After he’s sworn in, he expects us to wait another year while he studies the situation—man, talk about not being ready on “day one.”

Besides, while he pauses, the military budget will continue to grow—he says so right there—and since there is no actual plan in the McCain “plan” to increase revenue (beyond the cutting of waste that apparently he plans to add to his own budget in order to cut it—yes, this sounds like paragraph one to me, too), the deficit will grow larger than the one his review will be studying. . . unless, of course, they plan to “finance” the extra spending with additional pork inserted into the budget in advance of the cut.

Hey, don’t laugh—it’s not really a joke. . .

. . . it’s actually his plan!

If John McCain isn’t willing to propose a serious solution during his remaining time in the Senate, I see no reason to consider him as a leader somewhere down the line.

But that’s linear thinking, a form of logic apparently alien to John McCain.


(cross-posted on Daily Kos and The Seminal)

NYT calls BS on the FISA “compromise”

Here’s the skinny: When you see the words “Republican” and “compromise” in the same phrase, it should pretty much tell you all you need to know about a piece of pending legislation. Republicans don’t actually believe in compromise; either that, or they don’t understand what it means. The GOP, as it now stands, either gets its way, or, if it doesn’t, demands a recount or a do-over. Politics for this bunch is both blood sport and a zero sum game—they don’t play nice, and they don’t meet you half way. That’s been the case for the better part of the last fifteen years. . . at least.

That’s all you need to know, that’s all Democrats in Congress should need to know, but I’m going to tell you more.

In recent weeks, word has leaked out of a compromise on new FISA legislation drafted by Republican Senator Kit Bond (MO).

Republican.

Compromise.

This “compromise” [cough] has been mostly the stuff of rumor, so, even though I fancy myself a close watcher of things FISA, I have tried to keep my powder dry. Until Kit and his colleagues put it on paper—paper that we all could see—I figured my outrage would just be a fusillade of concerned citizen energy expended against a barricade of plausible deniability. At the time of this writing, nothing about this Bond plan has been made any more concrete, official, or real, but the faux-compromise is apparently real enough for the New York Times to sound the alarm. . . and so I will, too.

The lead editorial in today’s Times spells it out pretty simply:

In the waning months of his tenure, President Bush and his allies are once again trying to scare Congress into expanding the president’s powers to spy on Americans without a court order.

This week, the White House and Democratic and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill hope to announce a “compromise” on a domestic spying bill. If they do, it will be presented as an indispensable tool for protecting the nation’s security that still safeguards our civil liberties. The White House will paint opponents as weak-kneed liberals who do not understand and cannot stand up to the threat of terrorism.

The bill is not a compromise. The final details are being worked out, but all indications are that many of its provisions are both unnecessary and a threat to the Bill of Rights. The White House and the Congressional Republicans who support the bill have two real aims. They want to undermine the power of the courts to review the legality of domestic spying programs. And they want to give a legal shield to the telecommunications companies that broke the law by helping Mr. Bush carry out his warrantless wiretapping operation.

I will add a rather important third aim: they want to give a legal shield to themselves.

Sure, Republicans (and, sadly several Democrats, too) like to help out their corporate cronies, but if the Bush-Cheney team truly wanted to help the telecoms defend themselves in court, all they would have to do is provide the records and correspondences sought by lawyers on both sides of the surveillance lawsuits. If the telecommunications companies can show that they were ordered by the Bush Administration to wiretap without a warrant, or if they could show that they were deceived by the administration as to the existence of a warrant or the legality of the spying, then (warning: IANAL) the liability of the companies would be severely limited or might disappear altogether.

But the White House and its enablers aren’t really concerned about their pals in the private sector—not that much. Much more important is to hide their own grievous wrongdoing. And to do that, they must keep the lawsuits against the telcos from progressing in any way, for, as the Times understands: “Lawsuits against those companies are the best hope of finding out the extent of Mr. Bush’s lawless spying.”

This administration is committed to keeping the extent of that spying secret, of course, for if details came out, we would come to understand that the White House not only violated the Constitution, they did so not to protect us from any terrorist threat, but instead to protect their own hold on power. Remember, the warrantless surveillance started seven months before the 9/11 attacks, and was used to keep tabs on journalists and United States citizens inside the US. We know this much partly because of reporting in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today, among others, but we know more about the timing and targets because of what has come out in open court cases so far.

The “compromise” that Kit crafted has a federal district court deciding questions of retroactive telecom immunity—however, the court would be required to decide the matter based on a presidential “certification” that telcos were told that the spying was legal.

No real public hearing, no evidence read into the public record, just a piece of paper with George Bush’s John Hancock saying “trust us.” It guarantees the lawbreakers—public and private—will get off scot free, and allows the Bush Administration to say it was all legal “because we said so.” It neither helps expose past transgressions nor constrains future ones.

The (theoretical) bill has other big problems:

It gives the government too much leeway to acquire communications in the United States without individual warrants or even a showing of probable cause. It greatly reduces judicial review, and it would remain in force for six years, which is too long.

I could throw out some inside baseball terms like “basket warrants” (it allows them) and “minimization” (it doesn’t require it), but suffice it to say that this proposal is neither a good fix for FISA or a legitimate compromise.

Besides—and the Democrats that hold the majority in both houses of Congress need to hear this—there is no compromising the Constitution.

That could and maybe should be the final word, but I want to include a few of the final words from the NYT editorial, because some people need to hear this, too.

At a minimum, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, should oppose FISA expansion and pledge to revisit it next year. If any significant changes are going to be made, they should be made under the next president.

There are clear differences between the candidates. Senator John McCain, who is sounding more like Mr. Bush every day, believes the president has the power to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant.

Senator Barack Obama opposes immunity and voted against the temporary expansion of FISA. We hope he will show strong leadership this time. He might even take time off from the campaign to vote against the disturbing deal brewing in the back rooms of Congress.

* * * *

I might have been keeping my powder in its flask, but others have been more on the ball. Lovers of our Constitution from a diverse set of groups are organizing to show our elected officials where we stand. Please read this Greenwald post for some important background and more information on how you can help.


(cross-posted on Daily Kos and The Seminal)

C is (also) for cookie

Remember when Hillary Clinton got in trouble for not baking cookies? (Think hard, it was a really long time ago, like practically before time, like 1992.) Well, John McCain might think his wife is a—well. . . you know—but he’s not going to let Cindy get caught without her baked goods.

Even if they have to steal the recipes.

Another crack is showing in the McCain campaign's attempts at crafting a down-home image.

The campaign contributed a recipe to Parents magazine, "Cindy McCain's Oatmeal-Butterscotch Cookies." However, it looks like it was copied directly from the Hershey's site.

The McCain campaign previously got caught copying some other recipes, purportedly from Cindy McCain herself, off of the Food Network's site.

You might think this latest McCain campaign “scandal” amounts to less than a whoopee pie’s worth of marshmallow fluff—a tempest in a cookie jar—but I would argue that these little morsels mean a lot about what might lie ahead.

I had to think back only a few years, to the last presidential campaign, when George W. Bush pulled into Philadelphia and made a big deal about his more authentic cheesesteak proclivities. Whereas Kerry ordered his pander-sandwich with Swiss cheese, W pointed out that he was more deserving of the Keystone vote because he liked his cheesesteaks “Whiz Wit.”

Problem is, he didn’t. The Bush 43 team ordered up a mess o’ steaks with American cheese and ketchup. As I wrote over two years ago, with a pronounced degree of amazement, “The man lied about cheese!”

But then I got to thinking about why. What makes this absurd low-level lying necessary?

I realize that the lies, at least in part, are there to cover up for the innate incompetence of this administration’s figurehead. And the reason they need to do that—the reason this White House has no Rovian equivalent in the policy division—is because it’s all about accumulating and keeping power, not marshalling it. It’s about political capital, but, funny enough, not about spending it.

Power is used to satisfy greed and ego, it seems, more than ideology. . . at least at the top of this regime. Power can help you promote and reward friends and boosters. Power can be used as the world’s largest back-scratcher—as in, I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. Power can be exercised to marginalize, harass, and silence your opposition—just because, only because, they are a threat to your power.

They say that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Is it any wonder, then, that a President so bent on amassing absolute power has shown himself to be so absolutely dishonest. . . so absolutely corrupt?

Which brings us back to the present day, and the man running to be Bush 43.5, John McCain. What is behind, inside of, or at the head of a campaign that feels the need to lie about the candidate’s wife’s favorite recipes? Well, again, I would argue, it is the monomaniacal pursuit of power. McCain is a man that wants nothing more than to be president.

And I really mean “nothing more”—he has no great passion to do anything, he just wants to be president (or, as Johnny Mac often says, and I think this is telling, he’s running to be “commander in chief”). McCain has no great vision that extends beyond his own age-spotted epidermis.

What would result if some weird conspiracy of events allowed this self-obsessed empty suit to realize his dream? Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say, but I think the current blancmange in the Chateau Blanc tells us it’s a recipe for disaster.

As for what will become of cookie-gate, I suspect I’ve just given it more space than you will see allocated in the entire establishment media (even including the few publications that were burned by Cindy’s fake baking)—which would be fine if I knew that those serious journalists were instead devoting their time to serious issues like war, poverty, and the environment. But I know better.

“Just try to imagine,” Eric Kleefeld writes at the end of the piece I linked to up top, “the outpouring of pundit outrage and ridicule if a Dem did something like this once, let alone twice.” As the cookie-gate of 1992 has shown us, Eric, we needn’t imagine at all.


(cross-pposted on Daily Kos and The Seminal)

McCain on Warrantless Surveillance: the more he McFlip-Flops, the more he’s McSame

Memo to John McCain: Republicans run to the right in the primaries, and to the left in the general.

That would be the usual pattern, anyway, but this is not a usual year, and because John McCain stands for little more than getting himself elected, he is still trying to shore up his rightwing base long after he clinched the Republican nomination. Which leads to articles like this:

Adviser Says McCain Backs Bush Wiretaps

WASHINGTON — A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.

Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance.

Mr. McCain believes that “neither the administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the A.C.L.U. and trial lawyers, understand were constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin wrote.

OK, then, if you vote for McCain, you are voting for four more years of the Bush Administration’s illegal domestic surveillance programs. That seems clear enough. Except that just six months ago, McCain said something kind of different.

In an interview about his views on the limits of executive power with The Boston Globe six months ago, Mr. McCain strongly suggested that if he became the next commander in chief, he would consider himself obligated to obey a statute restricting what he did in national security matters.

Mr. McCain was asked whether he believed that the president had constitutional power to conduct surveillance on American soil for national security purposes without a warrant, regardless of federal statutes.

He replied: “There are some areas where the statutes don’t apply, such as in the surveillance of overseas communications. Where they do apply, however, I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is.”

Following up, the interviewer asked whether Mr. McCain was saying a statute trumped a president’s powers as commander in chief when it came to a surveillance law. “I don’t think the president has the right to disobey any law,” Mr. McCain replied.

David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said that while the language used by Mr. McCain in his answers six months ago was imprecise, the recent statement by Mr. Holtz-Eakin “seems to contradict precisely what he said earlier.”

While McCain’s imprecise language probably represents his incomplete understanding of the issues at hand, McSame’s recent voting record pretty much tells you where his ambitious, pandering, and (for a man who’s been through so much) remarkably empty heart lies:

In February, for example, Mr. McCain voted against limiting the Central Intelligence Agency to the techniques approved in the Army Field Manual on Interrogation, which complies with the Geneva Conventions. Mr. McCain said the C.I.A. needed the flexibility to use other techniques so long as it did not abuse detainees.

He also voted for legislation that would free telecommunications companies from lawsuits alleging that they illegally allowed the N.S.A. to eavesdrop on their customers’ phone calls and e-mail without a warrant. The legislation would also essentially legalize a form of surveillance without warrants going forward.

As the Times article notes, the folks at the National Review are thrilled no end that McCain has obliterated any daylight that might have existed between himself and George W. Bush. And, as Glenn Greenwald says in the same article, the new McCain spying doctrine is a “complete reversal” designed to “shore up the support of right-wing extremists.”

The misadventures of some McCain surrogates over recent weeks (again, detailed in the article) seem to show that their standard-bearer lacks a clear understanding of all that the current illegal surveillance debate encompasses—or likely doesn’t care to know much beyond whatever it takes to get McCain’s big money telecom donors off the hook. But the “evolution” of McCain’s position on warrantless wiretaps does teach an important lesson about McCain’s broader instincts: First, check with the interested corporate lobbyists; if still in doubt, just do the same as Bush.


(cross-posted on guy2k, The Seminal, and Daily Kos)

McCain “Smitten with the Celebrity of Power”

As I remarked in a couple of posts last week, I often find attempts to limn Republican presidential wannabe John McCain’s motivations to be overly complex. Most notably was Matt Bai’s NYT Magazine piece that tried to somehow link McCain’s experience as a POW with his ridiculous embrace of Bush’s war in Iraq. My response was that there really is no complex worldview when it comes to McSame, no nuanced position on the use of American military might, and certainly no sense of honor bound duty to his fellow fighters.

Rather, McCain’s “positions”—if you can dignify his empty posturing as such—are the result of political expedience. John McCain, though touted as a maverick, just put his “Straight Talk Express” on what he thought was the straightest road to the White House—if he wanted the Republican nomination, he had to go along not just to get along, but to get the financing he needed, too. What motivates this third generation Navy man to embrace a “strategy” that continues to send his brothers and sisters to their needless deaths? Naked ambition, pure and simple.

Many who have crossed paths with McCain in the last few decades have observed as much, though some try to put in nicer terms. Now, writing in the New York Times, David D. Kirkpatrick has given us more evidence of McCain’s lust for power. . . not to mention his penchant for hypocrisy.

Mr. McCain has often said he decided to run for office because he felt his war injuries would make attaining the same rank as his father and grandfather “impossible.” But Mr. Lehman, now an adviser to the McCain campaign, and two other top Navy officers familiar with Mr. McCain’s file insist that was not the case.

Instead, many who knew him say, Mr. McCain seemed bored by Navy life. “Sitting down with Anwar Sadat or Deng Xiaoping and being treated as an equal — that is pretty heady stuff,” said Rhett Dawson, a former aide to Mr. Tower who is now president of an electronics trade group. “It had opened his eyes to a much broader world.”

Mr. McCain was captivated, recalled Jeffrey Record, then an aide to former Senator Sam Nunn, the hawkish Georgia Democrat. “He thrives on competition, and he thrives on political combat,” Mr. Record said. “He saw the glamour of it. I think he really got smitten with the celebrity of power.”

Considering that former Press Secretary Scott McClellan, who is now making the rounds promoting his book, attributes much of what went wrong during the Bush Administration to what’s been called the “permanent campaign”—using the authority of the office for partisan gain—and the president himself becoming overly impressed with his own power, does America really want another chief executive that thrives on political combat? And can we survive another four years of a man so taken with the idea of power for power’s sake?

I think the whole world—from the sultans to the serfs, from the admirals to the GIs, from the celebrities to the wannabes—knows the answer. Well, the whole world minus one, I guess.


(cross-posted on guy2k and The Seminal)

Bush: For Troops this Memorial Day, Time = Money

Fresh off Thursday’s rejection of an additional 0.5 percent pay increase for America’s active military, President George W. Bush has a better idea for how this country might honor our troops: A “moment of remembrance.”

President Bush asked Americans to pay tribute to veterans by pausing on Memorial Day for "a moment of remembrance."

Bush had several suggestions for how to honor the sacrifices of those who have fought for the United States -- place a flag at a veteran's grave, go to a battlefield or say a prayer. He said the moment of remembrance would be marked Monday at 3 p.m. local time.

"At that moment, Major League Baseball games will pause, the National Memorial Day parade will halt, Amtrak trains will blow their whistles and buglers in military cemeteries will play taps," he said in his weekly radio address.

The president said that as people "fire up the grill" and mark the unofficial beginning of summer, they need to honor the sacrifices that make freedom possible.

"No words are adequate to console those who have lost a loved one serving our nation," Bush said. "We can only offer our prayers and join in their grief."

No, Mr. Bush, sir, I believe we can offer a heck of a lot more than “our prayers.” You could start by paying the living that you and your folly have so needlessly placed in harms’ way something close to what they deserve. I don’t expect you to go so far as to pay the troops as much as you dole out to your elite mercenaries at Blackwater and the like, but surely you could spare the extra half-point approved by the Congress in the recent Defense Authorization Bill—an increase that would bring the entire raise up to a whopping 3.9 percent.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, that tiny added increase in troop pay would mean spending an extra $324 million next year—or less than the cost of one day of war in Iraq. It is 0.2 percent of the $165 billion requested by the White House for continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To put it another way, that money amounts to roughly a quarter- less than four percent of what a recent pentagon audit found was paid by the Army to private contractors—and for much of what was purchased with that $8.2 billion, there is no record that anything was received.

Or, Mr. President, you could drop your opposition to the new GI Bill that just overwhelmingly passed both houses of Congress. That small expenditure would offer much deserved medical and education benefits to returning veterans.

While you’re at it, you could really fix the VA. You could de-privatize all the programs you farmed out to your cronies and political benefactors. You could clean up and repair the hospitals and clinics, you could expand mental health services, you could stop your minions from purposefully minimizing the number of PTSD diagnoses, and stop them from classifying those still hampered by mental or physical injuries as fit for combat so that they can be sent back into your meat grinder.

Or, I’ve got an even better idea still. You could start bringing the troops home—for once, for all, for good. You could admit your mistake and end the occupation that needlessly adds—each and every day—to the list of those that we must memorialize.

Do that, and I’ll make you a deal—I’ll not only forgive you your patronizing, fatuous, callous, insulting “moment of remembrance,” I’ll agree to let you go back to your golf game.


(cross-posted on guy2k, The Seminal, and Daily Kos)

Bush thinks he lands a zinger; world tastes a little bit of its own vomit

As I remarked (in a comment) yesterday, I actually got a little queasy thinking about the discussion among the Bush speechwriters that hit on this idea of having the grandson of a Nazi sympathizer/financier/profiteer (you choose which) invoke the Holocaust to make a US domestic political point. . . while standing before the Israeli Knesset.

Bad enough that the president abandoned the “all politics stop at the water’s edge” axiom. Bad enough that he (or the speechwriter) was dumb enough to quote a Republican Senator’s wish of talking to Hitler. Bad enough that Bush would mar what was supposed to be a celebration of Israel’s founding with a nakedly political speech. Bad enough that he would cheapen the Holocaust and dishonor its victims by invoking it just to serve his partisan goals. And certainly bad enough that a sitting president would sink so low as to liken the Democrat running against Bush’s third term to a Nazi appeaser. . . but. . .

As bad as all of this is—and it is very, very bad—I didn’t know how high my disgust could rise until later in the day when I watched the Bush speech a few times on TV.




It’s not as easy to see on this YouTube, but look closely at Bush’s face when he finishes the quote from Senator Borah. Right after Bush says, “All of this might have been avoided,” but before he engages his over-rehearsed headshake, you will see a little smile break across the president’s face. It’s just a flash, almost a micro-expression of a smile, but it is, to me, clearly macro-filled with self-satisfaction.

Watch again—Bush thinks he got in a good one! He thinks he’s landed a zinger! You almost expect to hear a rim-shot or a “bang! zoom!” You know the president hears it in his own hollow head. (It takes him back to the days when he would towel-snap his naked classmates in the locker room.) I will go out on a limb and bet that the guy is basically congratulating himself for working in a Hitler reference for a room full of Jews.

“Aced it!” he’s thinking. “These Israelites [sic] know there’s nothin’ worse than makin’ nice with Hitler. They’ll eat this up like a pastrami sandwich!”

So, yes, I not only think that Bush is a vain, indecorous moron—I think he’s an anti-Semite.

Like (grand)father, like (grand)son.

And the president’s speechwriters—the guys that turned Bush’s thumbnail stereotype into a full-bleed portrait—what to make of them?

Idiots? Anti-Semites? Apple-polishers? Pigs?

Appeasers?


(cross-posted on guy2k and The Seminal)

Is this America?

I know, I know. . . in year eight of the Bush-Cheney regime, we all know: things are not how they should be. They break our laws, take our money, and kill our children—and lie, lie, lie—it’s like breathing to them, and nothing should surprise us anymore. At this point, our cynical meters have pinned in the red zone; we console ourselves—or try to—with the knowledge that come next January, these criminals will be ushered into the dustbin of history. We’d like a little more accountability, but we’ll start with just getting these imperious, greedy cowards the fuck out of our White House.

And, yet, with all that scumbag fatigue, two stories from Wednesday’s news were still enough to spike my blood pressure, and dilate the pupils in my half-open/half-shut eyes.

First was the fourth part of a series called Careless Detention running in the Washington Post. The headline on page A1:

Some Detainees Are Drugged For Deportation
Immigrants Sedated Without Medical Reason

The carefully researched piece by Amy Goldstein and Dana Priest describes how the US government injected powerful psychotropic drugs into hundreds of people awaiting deportation—injected them with high doses of Haldol, Ativan, and Cogentin for reasons that could best be described as lazy, vengeful, and venal.

In a Chicago holding cell early one evening in February 2006, five guards piled on top of a 49-year-old man who was angry he was going back to Ecuador, according to a nurse's account in his deportation file. As they pinned him down so the nurse could punch a needle through his coveralls into his right buttock, one officer stood over him menacingly and taunted, "Nighty-night."

Involuntary chemical restraint—that’s what it is called—and it is a violation of several international human rights treaties, not to mention our own government’s rules:

Federal officials have seldom acknowledged publicly that they sedate people for deportation. The few times officials have spoken of the practice, they have understated it, portraying sedation as rare and "an act of last resort." Neither is true, records and interviews indicate.

Records show that the government has routinely ignored its own rules, which allow deportees to be sedated only if they have a mental illness requiring the drugs, or if they are so aggressive that they imperil themselves or people around them.

Stung by lawsuits over two sedation cases, the agency changed its policy in June to require a court order before drugging any deportee for behavioral rather than psychiatric reasons. In at least one instance identified by The Post, the agency appears not to have followed those rules.

That body, the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), didn’t follow the rules some 250 times in the last five years. At least that’s what the Post team was able to document. (I urge you to click over and read that documentation—the article gives several graphic example—though I warn you, it is extremely disturbing.)

Equally as disturbing was a press release I got yesterday from the American Civil Liberties Union. That story summarized what the ACLU learned from Department of Defense documents it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act:

"These documents provide further evidence that the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody abroad was not aberrational, but was widespread and systemic," said Amrit Singh, a staff attorney with the ACLU. "They only underscore the need for an independent investigation into high-level responsibility for prisoner abuse."

The papers contain the stories of several men that died in US custody after some degree of Bush Administration-directed “enhanced interrogation” (what decent people call “torture”), the objections raised by Army and Navy investigators, previously withheld DoD criminal investigation files, and communications from the Departments of Justice and State.

The documents have only just been released (after a legal battle), so it is pretty sure that there is more unsettling news to come.

Common to both stories is how our civil machinery has been harnessed by Bush and Cheney to do harm to other human beings. Unjustified, unconscionable, and yet carefully orchestrated harm. Cabinet-level government agencies, staffed with living, breathing Americans—vetted, no doubt, to insure their ideological solidarity with the administration—organized to break our laws, inflict pain, and destroy lives.

It left me with the voice of Fannie Lou Hamer echoing in my head: Is this America?

That voice, that question—is this America?—tells me that these stories are not something that I can just put on a shelf. And they are not something that we—as a country—can just put aside while we wait for our next president to “fix it.”

In fact, I don’t even know what “fix it” means.

The Bush-Cheney crew brought with them a sickness, and it has thoroughly infected almost every organ of our government. Justice Department lawyers categorize and catalog the torture; trained medical professionals administer the illegal injections. Bush’s wars (on terror, truth, science, political opposition) are malign pathogens that have wormed their way into the very tissue of our society.

I don’t know of any one thing that cures us of this sickness, but I do know that we need to start treatment—or at least start looking for a treatment—stat.

Congressional investigations into each of the travesties discussed here need to start this summer. Indeed, we have to commit ourselves to a complete workup, a stem-to-stern examination of what went wrong, how it went wrong, and what happened as a result. We should start it now, and we should be prepared to keep the inquiries going well past the end of the Bush regime.

And, right now, we should demand something very simple from our presidential candidates—a commitment to the investigations and a promise to stop the practices.

Upon swearing in, our next president could sign executive orders prohibiting the involuntary chemical restraint of ICE detainees and the torture of anyone in our custody or under our control—why not commit to it now? Why not tell us voters—and the entire world—that because this is America, this will not happen. . . at least not anymore.

So, Senators, are you up to it? Tell me right now that you will not tolerate unnecessary sedation or unconscionable torture—tell me that you won’t allow it, tell me that you will hold accountable those that do it—because a country that does permit such behavior isn’t, as you see it, America.


(cross-posted on The Seminal)