Month: August 2005
MoDo: War Flounders on While Bush Is Stymied by Arbitrary Infexibility
“W. says he can’t set a deadline to bring the troops home. But he started the war on an artificial deadline; he declared a ‘Mission Accomplished’ end to major hostilities on an artificial deadline; he was inflexible on deadlines for handing over Iraqi sovereignty and holding elections. And he tried to force the Iraqis to produce a constitution on his deadline when the squabbling politicians of the ethnic and religious factions hadn’t even reached consensus on little things like ‘Do we want one country?’
— Maureen Dowd
California Attorney General Charges Drug Companies with Fraud
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer (D) has charged the top brands in Big Pharma with bilking the state out hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade by overcharging the state’s taxpayer-funded medical service.
In the charge, Lockyer accuses the pharamceutical companies of systematically defrauding the state’s taxpayers by billing the Medi-Cal system up to 10 times the price they charge private pharmacies and hospitals.
Medi-Cal serves California’s elderly and other citizens who are unable to afford private insurance. Its $34 billion annual budget is derived from both state and federal taxes. Drug costs make up about $4 billion of Medi-Cal’s annual budget.
Lockyer’s filing included charges against Abbott Laboratories, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Amgen, Baxter Healthcare, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Mylan Laboratories, Novartis, Schering-Plough and about 30 other companies.
How Many Bush Officials Does It Take to Screw in a Light Bulb?
Answer: Twelve.
- One to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed, despite utter darkness in the room;
- One to hire a male prostitute to pretend to be a journalist and write an article supporting the administration’s opposition to changing the light bulb;
- One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be changed;
- One to create a faith-based initiative to curse the darkness, rather than screwing in a new light bulb;
- One to finally admit that the light bulb needs to be changed, while claiming that the adminstration had favored changing the light bulb all along;
- One to blame the discrepancy in the record that clearly shows the adminstration had opposed changing the light bulb on the Librul Media’s distortion of their position;
- One to blame Clinton for burning out the light bulb;
- One to take millions of dollars in contributions from lobbyists for light bulb manufacturers;
- One to write legislation that sends light bulb manufacturing jobs overseass, putting thousands of Americans out of jobs and raising the price of light bulbs 10,000 percent – that passes through the GOP Congress on a party line vote;
- One to blame the loss of light bulb jobs on gay marriage, thereby gaining the votes for the GOP of thousands of out-of-work light bulb workers;
- One to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton for screwing in the new light bulb;
- And finally one to write a speech that President Bush reads from a teleprompter in which he confuses Americans about the difference between screwing in a light bulb and screwing up the country.
Source: Emails making the rounds, with a bit of our own special flavor
Daily Show Examines Bush’s Exit Strategy – for Getting Out of Answering Tough Questions
If President Bush spent as much time preparing for governing the nation as he does memorizing weasely tricks to help him avoid answering reporters’ questions, he might one day become a third rate president. Instead, he is a master of media manipulation – and the worst president in the history of the United States.
Via Journalists Against Bush’s Bullshit, here’s a brilliant analysis of how the president avoids governance and accountability by using carefully practiced verbal perambulations, by the leading provider of insight into modern politics, Jon Stewart on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” (August 25, 2005) :
STEWART: (Bush) has developed a sophisticated exit strategy … for getting out of questions about the war. It’s a strategy known as repetition, or “repetition.” It’s one he’d used with great success many times before.
“But Jon,” you ask, “how does it work?” … The first step is to let people know you’re aware of their questions. Then the president can reduce these nuanced concerns into a simplistic misguided concern that he can easily refute.
Jagger Razzes Das Guber
“As a matter of fact, he was seen out in front of Fenway Park tonight raising funds by scalping tickets and tee-shirts.”
— Mick Jagger, at the Stones concert in Boston this week, referring to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who sold only three $100,000 tickets to the show
Santorum Lied When He Claimed He Was Critical of Bush’s War
Santorum’s office couldn’t find public statements of the senator questioning the Iraq war, despite the senator’s claim last week that he has publicly expressed his concerns. But Santorum said that doesn’t mean he hasn’t made the comments.
Karl Rove need no longer pore over polls to find out which way the wind is blowing in public opinion about the war in Iraq. He need only take a gander at the rats deserting the sinking ship. Case in point, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Bestiality) – a primo GOoper tool if there ever was one – has been caught jumping overboard so fast it has made his own head spin.
Santorum is facing opposition in his bid for re-election next year from Democratic state treasurer Robert Casey Jr. When Casey criticized Santorum for not asking tougher questions about President Bush’s reasons for taking the country to war, a very surprising thing happened.
Instead of bloviating the latest talking points about the war fed to him by his betters, Santorum capitulated – and in capitulating, he lied:
The Only Thing the Bush Administration Does Well Is Smear Its Critics
“The Bush White House and its right wing allies are responding to Cindy Sheehan and the military families’ vigil in Central Texas in the same way that they always respond to bad news –by unleashing personal attacks and smears against her. This White House never wants an open public discussion, and it certainly never wants to be told that it is wrong. It always tries to change the message by attacking the messenger.
— Former Ambassador Joe Wilson
GOP Reps Face Constituents’ Ire over Price of Gas
We just paid $3.01 per gallon here in West Hollywood, purchasing our very first $40 tank of gasoline – and we couldn’t help thinking back 30 years or so when politicians were put on the hot seat when the price of essentials went through the roof. But that was before the country had been thoroughly corrupted by conservativism, and it’s “What Me Worry?” Alfred E. Newman credo.
As consumers feel pain at the pump, record high gas prices are registering as a political problem with congressional Republicans.
At a town hall meeting this week, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) wanted to talk about Social Security and Medicare, but the session quickly turned to gas prices.
When Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) toured a Veterans Affairs clinic Wednesday, the first question put to her was: “What are you going to do about the high price of gasoline?”
And a growing number of GOP officials worry that, as the party in power, Republicans will pay their own high price — at the ballot box. They are scrambling to find ways to respond.
“People are mad as hell,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said.
Remember: These folks wanted it all, and now they’ve got it. They are so conditioned to find someone to blame – or smear – when things go wrong that it’ll be interesting – and potentially loads of fun! – to see how they handle a political problem that’s not made up.
For example, next year the Gops are planning a full scale assault again on gay marriage. But when the argument comes down to “inflation” vs. “gay marriage,” the dynamics of politics as usual will change in ways they haven’t experienced since they seized control of all three branches of the government.
Watching them try to squirm their way out of this one will be almost worth the price of gas.
Americans Hate “No Child Left Behind” Almost as Much as “No Pump Left Behind”
A new poll shows most Americans aren’t sold on the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, testing standards, or any of the rest of the crap intended to undermine public schools dreamed up by the Bushes.
When asked directly about the testing being done as a result of the No Child Left Behind law, more than two-thirds said they don’t think a single test gives a true picture of how a school is doing.
Eighty percent said testing students only in math and English fails to show if a school needs improvement…
About a fifth of those surveyed said they’re worried about how schools will get the money they need.
Connecticut is suing the government for what Republicans, before they became the social activist party, used to refer to as “unfunded mandates.”
Regular PR readers will recall that we take a very dim view of Florida’s version of comprehensive testing, the FCAT. Recently, Florida students’ ACT scores were lower than the national average, despite Jeb’s redirecting of the entire public education experience into FCAT prep. See the earlier story.
Meanwhile the No Pump Left Behind (NPLB) campaign is going great, according to a group lobbying for repeal of the NCLB Act.
Unlike their NCLB program to raise test scores and take good care of all children in all schools – a program that has sputtered, faltered and produced little worth crowing about – NPLB has been a triumph of government engineering, achieving high prices at every single pump in every single state.
“We can announce with pride today that there are no malingerers, no laggards and no gas stations guilty of the soft bigotry of low expectations,” proclaimed Federal Gas Mogul, Mr. Donald Petrolowner.
“Unlike the principals and teachers of this nation who have been unable to lift the scores of all children so that all read above average, we have had 100 per cent success.”
“According to our data, every American family can now count on paying inflated gas prices no matter what station they visit and no matter what pump they select.”
Good stuff.
