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Rummy’s Parting Shot

Jon Ponder
What remains unclear is whether Rummy was fired because Bush considered the memo to be insubordination, or whether he was let go to appease voters and shift the spotlight off the Democrats’ victory in the midterms.

Someone leaked a memo to the New York Times last week that was written by outgoing Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld just two days before Pres. Bush forced him to resign. In the memo, we learn that Rummy may not have been as stupid about the Iraq Civil War as he appeared to be, or as stubborn as his betters in the West Wing continue to be:

“In my view it is time for a major adjustment,” wrote Mr. Rumsfeld, who has been a symbol of a dogged stay-the-course policy. “Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.”

Nor did Mr. Rumsfeld seem confident that the administration would readily develop an effective alternative. To limit the political fallout from shifting course, he suggested the administration consider a campaign to lower public expectations.

“Announce that whatever new approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so on a trial basis,” he wrote. “This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course, if necessary, and therefore not ‘lose.’ ”

“Recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) — go minimalist,” he added. The memo suggests frustration with the pace of turning over responsibility to the Iraqi authorities; in fact, the memo calls for examination of ideas that roughly parallel troop withdrawal proposals presented by some of the White House’s sharpest Democratic critics.

We may have to wait for Rumsfeld’s book (and you know there will be one) to find out whether he was fired over the contents of the memo, which Pres. Bush probably viewed as insubordination, or whether, as most people assumed before the memo was leaked, he was thrown overboard to appease voters and to take the spotlight off the Democrats the day after they won control of Congress.

Bolton-Free U.N.; Sanity-Free White House

Trish

That John Bolton and George Bush have accepted the inevitable and are finally relinquishing the U.N. ambassadorship is great news.

“This is a clear example of the breakdown in the Senate confirmation process,” Perino said. Huh?

Facing opposition from key senators, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton will leave office in a matter of days, the White House announced on Monday.

But how bizarrely they view things was evident in the comments of White House spokesperson Dana Perino.

“This is a clear example of the breakdown in the Senate confirmation process,” Perino said.

Huh?

Bolton being in the U.N. to begin with is a clear example of the breakdown and frickin’ subversion of the confirmation process — by Bush. Or has the White House already forgotten how they snuck Bolton in through the back door while everyone was leaving through the front?

Bush had bypassed the Senate in August 2005 by appointing Bolton to the position when the lawmakers were in recess, avoiding the confirmation process and angering senators concerned that Bolton had a temper and intimidated intelligence analysts to support his hawkish views while at the State Department.

At last, and thanks to the Democrats coming back (yah-hoo!), this smarmy move is being cancelled out. Take a few notes, and don’t try this underhanded crap again, you weasels.

On This Date – December 4

Jon Ponder
  • 2000 – A Florida state judge refused to overturn Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush‘s certified victory in Florida, and the U.S. Supreme Court set aside a ruling that had allowed manual recounts. [NYT]
  • 1991 – Hostage Terry Anderson was freed in Lebanon on December 4, 1991. [History Channel]
  • 1978 – Future California Sen. Dianne Feinstein became San Francisco’s first woman mayor when she was named to replace George Moscone, who had been assassinated. [NYT]
  • 1875 – On December 4, 1875, William Marcy “Boss” Tweed, notorious leader of New York City’s Democratic political machine, escaped from prison and fled to Europe. Between 1865 and 1871, Boss Tweed and his cronies stole millions of dollars from the city treasury. Convicted of forgery and larceny in 1873, Tweed was released in 1875. Immediately rearrested on civil charges, he was allowed daily visits to his family in the company of his jailor. On one of these trips, Tweed made his escape. Elected an alderman in 1851, the former bookkeeper and volunteer fireman worked his way up New York City’s Democratic hierarchy by holding various elected and unelected positions in the municipal government. He served one congressional term, but operated most effectively at the state level. By 1868, the year he gained a seat in the New York senate, Tweed firmly controlled the state Democratic Party. Two years later, he maneuvered passage of a revised city charter. A newly instituted board of audit became the principle means by which the Boss and his friends siphoned the city treasury of between twenty million and two-hundred million dollars. [Library of Congress]
  • 1860 – Outgoing President James Buchanan sends a distressed State of the Union message to Congress. In it he states that secession is unconstitutional, says the federal government lacks the authority to prevent it and calls for a constitutional amendment allowing Southern states to retain slaves as property. [Civil War Timeline]

WaPo Editorial: ‘He’s the Worst Ever’

Jon Ponder

Historian Eric Foner’s op-ed in the Washington Post today, “He’s the Worst Ever,” may be historic in its own right. It appears to be the first time a major daily newspaper, especially one so august as the Post, has pick up the “worst president ever” theme.

In his first six years in office he has managed to combine the lapses of leadership, misguided policies and abuse of power of his failed predecessors.
— Eric Foner

Never mind that Bush’s last place among presidents has been a topic of discussion in political websites like ours for months. (We launched our “Worst President Ever” topic in November 2005. Today it includes 274 articles.) And never mind that the Washington Post, with its proximity to the White House, should have spotted this historically bad presidency well before we mere citizen pundits did.

According to Foner, until recently, Nixon was every historian’s favorite bad president because of his compulsive shredding of the Constitution. But Foner says George W. Bush has outdone Tricky Dick:

Bush has taken this disdain for law even further. He has sought to strip people accused of crimes of rights that date as far back as the Magna Carta in Anglo-American jurisprudence: trial by impartial jury, access to lawyers and knowledge of evidence against them. In dozens of statements when signing legislation, he has asserted the right to ignore the parts of laws with which he disagrees. His administration has adopted policies regarding the treatment of prisoners of war that have disgraced the nation and alienated virtually the entire world. Usually, during wartime, the Supreme Court has refrained from passing judgment on presidential actions related to national defense. The court’s unprecedented rebukes of Bush’s policies on detainees indicate how far the administration has strayed from the rule of law.

One other president bears comparison to Bush: James K. Polk. Some historians admire him, in part because he made their job easier by keeping a detailed diary during his administration, which spanned the years of the Mexican-American War. But Polk should be remembered primarily for launching that unprovoked attack on Mexico and seizing one-third of its territory for the United States.

Lincoln, then a member of Congress from Illinois, condemned Polk for misleading Congress and the public about the cause of the war — an alleged Mexican incursion into the United States. Accepting the president’s right to attack another country “whenever he shall deem it necessary,” Lincoln observed, would make it impossible to “fix any limit” to his power to make war. Today, one wishes that the country had heeded Lincoln’s warning.

Historians are loath to predict the future. It is impossible to say with certainty how Bush will be ranked in, say, 2050. But somehow, in his first six years in office he has managed to combine the lapses of leadership, misguided policies and abuse of power of his failed predecessors. I think there is no alternative but to rank him as the worst president in U.S. history.

Foner says historians also consider Franklin Pierce to be one of the worst presidents. Ironically, George W. Bush is a descendant of Pres. Pierce; the president’s mother is named Barbara Pierce Bush.

Related Reading: Rolling Stone had a front page story earlier this year titled, “The Worst President in History?“

Pahrump, Nev.: El Lugar Bueno ser Detenido

Trish

The town of Pahrump, Nev. is bracing for a crime wave after passing ordinances meant to show foreigners who’s boss.

Although Pahrump experienced a 32 percent drop in criminal activity in recent years (more about this in a minute), that was before so much stuff became illegal.

The ACLU will probably take legal action against the town. “People are nuts out there, totally nuts.”

First, there’s flying flags. Anyone who flies another country’s flag — say, just as a random example, Mexico’s — above an American flag, or worse yet, all by itself without an American flag, will get a $50 fine and 30 hours of community service.

Then there’s English. It’s now the official language of Pahrump, so don’t even think about speaking something else like — oh, off the top of my head — Spanish.

Finally, illegal immigrants will henceforth be denied benefits from the town. Which is kind of a hypothetical denial anyway.

“We don’t have any” benefits, town manager David Richards says. “If we ever have any, they’ll be denied to illegal immigrants.”

Pahrump is having a kind of time-delayed reaction to those uppity immigrants who made their presence known last spring.

The ordinance’s sponsor, Michael Miraglia, a retired Illinois state worker, said the flag restriction was a reaction to nationwide demonstrations in May against a crackdown on illegal immigration. He said he didn’t like seeing protesters waving Mexican flags and demanding immigrants not go to work that day.

“In Pahrump, we had Mexican restaurants closed that day,” he complained. “Only one restaurant stayed open.”

Well then, you can understand the outrage. It was probably a chain restaurant like Chili’s or Taco Bell. I’d pass a law too, I guess, but the American Civil Liberties Union is being a party pooper.

[Nevada board member Lisa] Rasmussen said the ACLU would probably take legal action against the town.

“People are nuts out there,” she says. “Totally nuts.”

Maybe so, but we at Pensito Review have a soft spot in our hearts for Pahrump. The town, about 60 miles closer to L.A. than Las Vegas is, arrested one Jon Ponder last year for robbing the Bank of America. Don’t worry, Buck and I made sure our Jon Ponder had an airtight alibi. Still, we’re keeping an eye on the town, just in case.

On This Date – December 3

Jon Ponder
  • 2002 – Thousands of personnel files released under a court order showed that the Archdiocese of Boston went to great lengths to hide priests accused of abuse, including clergy who allegedly snorted cocaine and had sex with girls aspiring to be nuns. [NYT]
  • 1964 – Police arrested some 800 students at the University of California at Berkeley, one day after the students stormed the administration building and staged a massive sit-in. [NYT]
  • 1948 – The House Un-American Activities Committee announced that former Communist spy Whittaker Chambers had produced microfilm of secret documents hidden inside a pumpkin on his Maryland farm. [NYT]
  • 1828 – Andrew Jackson was elected the seventh president of the United States. [NYT]

Democrats Learn about Secret Gov’t Data Mining Program

Jon Ponder

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the incoming chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has learned that for the past four years the Bush Administration has been secretly tracking the personal data of millions of Americans who have traveled abroad.

Leahy also learned that the government has been sharing its citizens’ personal data with just about everyone but the citizens:

“It is simply incredible that the Bush administration is willing to share this sensitive information with foreign governments and even private employers, while refusing to allow U.S. citizens to see or challenge their own terror scores,” Leahy said. This system “highlights the danger of government use of technology to conduct widespread surveillance of our daily lives without proper safeguards for privacy.”

As Olbermann pointed out last night, it is outrageous that the program was kept secret from Democrats. The authoritarians have been unsurpervised for six years. Imagine what else they’re hiding.

On This Date – December 2

Jon Ponder
  • 2005 – Pres. Bush bails on jury duty. [PR]
  • 2005 – Claiming that an “intoxicated” and “scantily clad” Anna Nicole Smith marred this summer’s Live 8 concert in Philadelphia, organizers of the charity fundraiser yesterday sued the Trimspa diet firm for failing to control its erratic spokesmodel and not paying a six-figure promotional fee. According to a federal lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The concert raised funds to help impoverished people in Africa. [TSG]
  • 1997 – Republican David Cantania became the first openly gay person to be elected to the Washington DC city council.[365Gay]

Research: Bush Worship Is an Indicator of Psychosis

Jon Ponder

A researcher in Connecticut has produced evidence that there is a link between strong support for Pres. Bush and psychosis. The study is not a joke, and the researcher, Christopher Lohse, describes himself as a “Reagan revolution fanatic.”

The more psychotic the voter, the more likely they were to vote for Bush.

The study was produced as part of Lohse’s master’s degree research at Southern Connecticut State University:

The thesis draws on a survey of 69 psychiatric outpatients in three Connecticut locations during the 2004 presidential election. Lohse’s study … found a correlation between the severity of a person’s psychosis and their preferences for president: The more psychotic the voter, the more likely they were to vote for Bush…

“Our study shows that psychotic patients prefer an authoritative leader,” Lohse says. “If your world is very mixed up, there’s something very comforting about someone telling you, ‘This is how it’s going to be.’”

And:

“Bush supporters had significantly less knowledge about current issues, government and politics than those who supported Kerry,” the study says.

Lohse says the trend isn’t unique to Bush: A 1977 study by Frumkin & Ibrahim found psychiatric patients preferred Nixon over McGovern in the 1972 election.

My personal experience listening to callers to C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” every morning on the “support Bush” line strongly confirms these findings.