Day: November 11, 2005

Bush Defiles Veterans Day Speech with Political Attack

Jon Ponder

What was he thinking? We can only assume that Bush/Rove message team meant the president’s Veteran’s Day speech today to play to their pro-military base. Maybe it worked. Perhaps using a solemn occasion to launch a counter-attack against his political enemies successfully rallied the hyper-patriotic guts and glorys crowd.

For everybody else, it came across as inappropriate. And that’s the problem with constantly having to shore up your base: You risk alienating Independent voters.

Typically, the president defends himself against charges of lying by telling more lies. From ThinkProgress:

In his speech today, President Bush claimed that members of Congress who voted for the 2002 Iraq war resolution “had access to the same intelligence” as his administration. This is patently false.

Nevermind that much of the intelligence offered to the public and to Congress was inaccurate and misleading, or that according to the Downing Street memo and other documents, such intelligence was likely intentionally “fixed.” It is simply not true to state that Congress received the “same intelligence” as the White House.

ThinkProgress offers back up and sourcing on each of these facts on their site:

  • Dissent From White House Claims on Iraq Nuclear Program Consistently Withheld from Congress:
  • Sen. Kerrey: Bush “Has Much More Access” to Intel Than Congress:
  • Rockefeller: PDBs, CIA Intel Withheld From Senate:
  • War Supporter Ken Pollack: White House Engaged in “Creative Omission” of Iraq Intel:
  • White House Had Exclusive Access to “Unique” Intel Sources:

Jeb Consoles Arnold and Fellow GoOPs

Trish

Leave it to Jeb to look on the bright side. Florida News’ Mike Vasilinda, in a blurb called “The Jebinator” quotes the sunny* Florida governor’s words of hope for Arnold and the nation.

Florida’s Governor doesn’t seem to have much political clout on the left coast. Jeb Bush helped California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger raise money to try and pass four constitutional amendments. But voters in the golden state said no to all four, plus 4 others that were on the same ballot. Bush says the terminator didn’t do so well.

“Arnold took it on the chin, but he’s a strong guy and he’ll get up again,” Bush said. “Here’s an example of someone who was doing right in his mind and took on some very powerful interests. And while he didn’t win, I hope that doesn’t discourage him or others to do the same thing. It was…in terms of the Republican Party it’s not a great day, but two Democratic governors were replaced by Democrats. There was no net gain.”

No one said there was, Jebby. But everyone without exception is saying the recent elections showed Republican domination has peaked and is on the way downhill from here. And that sounds like the definition of a “great day” to me.

*Note to non-Floridians: Yes, this is sarcasm.

Who You Callin’ a Republican? Them’s Fighting Words!

Trish

How do you smear a progressive Democrat? Call him a Republican. An email, labeled a hoax, proclaims Tom DeLay’s support of Florida candidate for governor and state senator Rod Smith.

How bad is it when the way to make someone else look bad is to say they are like you?

The e-mail sent to Smith supporters mixes crude innuendo with suggestions that Smith — campaigning as a moderate Democrat — is a closet Republican. Smith’s campaign calls the missive “crude and juvenile.”

But the e-mail seeks to poke fun at Smith, who often says he’s the only Democrat in the race who can appeal to Republicans and independents, as well as to conservative Democrats who have fled the party in recent years.

DeLay, the faux e-mail from ”Republican Rod” says, endorsed Smith because of his “reliably conservative voting record.”

Smith’s campaign said it hasn’t spent much time tracking down the origin of the e-mail, which refers to Smith as “The Mallet” — a play on DeLay’s moniker in Congress, “The Hammer.”

Since I am more amenable to the other guy, U.S. Rep. Jim Davis, I would hate to think – and have a hard time believing – his campaign is behind this. They of course deny it.

The really tantalizing thought is that Republican strategists – and there are some nasty ones in Florida – cooked this up. How bad is it when the way to make someone else look bad is to say they are like you?

FEMA Given Green Light to Work in the Dark

Trish

A federal judge in Fort Myers, Florida has ruled that it’s none of our business how FEMA spends our money.

The case involved the efforts of three newspapers — The Fort Myers News Press, Florida Today and the Pensacola News Journal — to obtain the names and addresses of people who received disaster aid after the 2004 hurricane.

Judge John Steele rejected the request, ruling that releasing that information would violate recipients’ right to privacy…the information could cause the residents embarrassment or make them subject to identify theft. Unscrupulous contractors could use the information to scam people looking to repair their homes.

Exactly what is embarrassing about finding a tree in your dining room and accepting some government cash to remove it, I’m not sure. It’s not like it’s a big secret anyway. The FEMA guy (or gal, in our neighborhood’s case) pulls up in the white FEMA truck and stands in the front yard, interviewing you about your damage. If you’re lucky, he or she will issue you a FEMA roof (blue tarp). Then they go next door, and to the house after that, and the one next to that, and so on. No one has electricity during this process, so they are either sitting outside trying to catch a breeze or clearing debris from the yard. There are no secrets – and no shame – after a hurricane.

Except for the secret of who’s getting your tax dollars.

…FEMA distributed close to $6 billion in Florida after last year’s hurricanes. Taxpayers deserve an accounting. Some questionable expenditures already have been uncovered…

Releasing the names of those who received FEMA dollars and how they were spent would guard against waste and abuse. If necessary, certain details could be excised from the public record.

…The likelihood of harm to recipients is small, whereas the likelihood of taxpayers being swindled if FEMA’s expenses are kept in the dark is great.

Tipping Point: Bush’s Polling Slides Toward Impeachment

Jon Ponder

Outside the Beltway The Dems in Congress may not be contemplating the impeachment of President George W. Bush, but according to a several recent polls, half of American voters are ready to rumble.

A majority of Americans support impeachment if Bush lied about the reasons for war – and 57 percent now believe that he lied.

A Zogby International poll released November 4th found that 53 percent of Americans want Congress to consider impeaching Bush if he did not tell the truth about the reasons for war. Similarly, an Ipsos Public Affairs poll from early October found that by a margin of 50 percent to 44 percent, Americans would favor impeaching President Bush if he lied about the reasons he took America to war.

These numbers represented a sharp uptick from a similar poll in June in which 42 percent told Zogby that they support impeachment if Mr. Bush lied in the run-up to war.

If you marry these numbers with a spate of recent polls that show that majorities among the public have come to see that Mr. Bush is not honest (finally!), you see that the White House has a potential crisis looming.

In particular, the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that a whopping 57 percent believe Mr. Bush lied about the reasons for the reasons for war.

[…]

GOP Lies: Claims That Dems Saw Contents of Iraq War NIE Are False

Jon Ponder

Blame game: Earlier this week, CNN reported that the Bush White House will go on the offensive to counter accusations that they lied about the reasons for war by implicating that the Democrats colluded with them in their deception of the American public.

As Buzzflash put it:

On Veterans Day, on the defensive (a good sign), Bush is going to claim Democrats saw the same intelligence on Iraq he did. Well, not really, because he saw the intelligence before it was “fixed.” The Democrats saw it after Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Bush manipulated the intelligence and forced the CIA to come up with speculation, no matter how doubtful, and turn it into propaganda factoids — along with assistance from Rumsfeld’s “little neo-con elves of deception” shop over at the Defense Department. So the Democrats voted to authorize Bush to go to war based on lies and only if all U.N. options were exhausted, which they weren’t.

There’s another lie that the GOP echo chamber is floating – and, as is typical, it floated out of Wolf Blitzer’s mouth on CNN last week – and that is that the Democrats in Congress saw the contents of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).

In a news conference a few days ago, three Democratic senators – Dianne Feinstein, Dick Durbin and Jay Rockefeller, the vice-chairman of the Intelligence Committee – flatly refuted that assertion that they were routinely briefed on the contents of the NIE.