Day: June 25, 2005

Independents Have Abandoned Bush

Jon Ponder

From the latest American Research Group poll via DailyKos:

Approve Disapprove
Republicans 84 12
Independents 17 75
Democrats 18 77

The same poll has Bush’s approval level at 42 percent, which – as I have noted – is astronomically high for an Administration characterized by incompetence, secrecy and prevericating, to put it politely.

When it comes to the way Bush is handling his job as president, 42 percent of Americans approve, 53 percent disapprove, and 5 percent are undecided. Among Americans registered to vote, 42 percent approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 53 percent disapprove.

George W. Bush is the luckiest president this country has ever had. But scoring a 17 percent approval from Independents means his luck is about to change.

Bush Nominates Karl Rove’s Gay Assistant for High Post

Jon Ponder

Yes, you read the headline correctly. And, yes, it is apparently true. Mike Rogers at blogActive has the story. It also got picked up by the New York Daily News gossip column:

President Bush isn’t letting potential howls from the Christian right stop him from nominating an openly gay man as assistant secretary of commerce.

[He] has tapped longtime aide Israel Hernandez for the post, which also carries the title of director general of the United States and Foreign Commercial Service.

The 35-year-old Republican go-getter has been a Bush acolyte since the President’s 1994 campaign for governor of Texas. (Among Hernandez’s duties was supplying the candidate with breath mints, prompting Dubya to dub him “Altoid Boy.”)

Most recently, the graduate of Texas A&M’s George H.W. Bush School of Government served as aide-de-camp to senior White House adviser Karl Rove.

One source tells us Hernandez waited until Bush was sworn in for a second term to formally tell him he is gay. By then, says a source, he’d brought his partner to several official events.

At Hernandez’ confirmation hearing this week, when he was asked to introduce his family to the Senate candidate, he introduced everyone but his life partner. Can you say “self-loathing?”

It is beyond hypocritical – an obscenity, really – that any gay person could work for Rove and Bush as they stoke the fires of bigotry – not out of anything they themselves believe or even give a shit about – but specifically to energize their base of knuckle-dragging, homophobes. The whole thing is just plain evil.

GOP Chair of House Ethics Committee Under Suspicion

Jon Ponder

Seattle Times:

Rep. Doc Hastings, already under fire as chairman of the stalled House ethics committee, accepted a $7,800 trip to England in 2000 from a company he championed for a multibillion-dollar contract at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, records released by an advocacy group yesterday show.

In addition, other records released yesterday by a political Web site show that Hastings, a Republican from Pasco, did not file a required travel report for a 2004 trip to a resort on Stuart Island, B.C. That was paid for by another company also working at Hanford.

Hastings has been under fire for not scheduling hearings on ethics allegations against House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. DeLay is accused of accepting a trip paid for by lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is under investigation over allegations that he defrauded clients of millions of dollars.

For the past two weeks, Democrats have been trying to link Hastings to Abramoff and the lobbyist’s former employer, Preston Gates & Ellis, an influential law and lobbying firm based in Seattle.