Day: April 26, 2006

Makes Sense to Me: Bush Logic

Trish

Only in Bushistan does it make sense to waive air pollution laws because gas prices are high. WTF does one have to do with the other? Yeah, I know, some obscure connection between cleaner “summer gasoline blends” and something something. Whatever. It’s just another flimsy excuse for Georgie to do what he wanted all along.

So what other initiatives that follow W-logic should we expect? How about:

  • Enforcing a 7 p.m. curfew on Democrats to stop CIA leaks about secret prisons
  • Barring Cindy Sheehan from Texas to stem illegal immigration
  • Ordering an IRS audit of Kanye West to prevent hurricanes
  • Deporting Michael Moore so Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq will throw down their arms
  • Torturing detainees isolated at Guantanamo since 2001 to prevent future terror attacks (oh wait, they really do that!)

This quick list is just the beginning. Add your own examples of Bush reasoning now.

Hack to Flack and Back: Why Tony Snow Will Fail

Jon Ponder

His Majesty was not in a good humor today when he introduced his new press secretary, rightwing radio personality and former journalist Tony Snow, to the White House press corps :

[Snow is] not afraid to express his own opinions. For those of you who have read his columns and listened to his radio show, he sometimes has disagreed with me. I asked him about those comments, and he said, “You should have heard what I said about the other guy.”

The president gurned a certain muffled indignance when he read these words from the briefing book before him, with both Snow and outgoing spokesman Scott McClellan looking on.

Unlike Mr. Bush, I have read what Snow has said about “the other guy(s)” — Gore, Kerry, Dean, Hillary and the rest — and didn’t find that his derogatory comments about his enemies mitigated his criticisms of his own Dear Leader one little bit.

It seems predictable now that hiring Snow will turn out to be another incompetent move by the White House — that he’ll resign soon after the elections this November, if not before — not because of President Bush’s aversion to criticism, but because of Snow’s self worth and survival.

The scandals wrought by the high-fivin’ white guys who run the West Wing have only just begun to seep out into the light of day. They’ll do everything in their power, which is lot, to keep them bottled up until at least Election Day this November.

But their once masterful ability to hide their own faults and foibles from the electorate has lost its magic of late. Only the West Wingers, their lawyers and their prosecutors really know what’s lurking out there.

And they sure as hell haven’t leveled with Tony Snow — who was a highly paid media figure until today. He will not go down with HMS Bush. He has his career to think of, after all.

Rove Called Back to Testify Before Fitz Jury

Jon Ponder

Karl Rove’s recent demotion was not attributed to his need to “spend more time with his family” but rather his need to spend more time thinking up ways to trick the common folk into voting for Republicans again this November. We cynical types were a bit suspicious that the real reason was that he was about to become enshrouded in the heinous stank of scandal:

Karl Rove, the senior counselor to President Bush, is expected to appear this afternoon before a federal grand jury investigating the leak of a Central Intelligence Agency officer’s identity.

Even though it is news to us, Rove has known that he would be testifying today for a while — perhaps even as along as two weeks ago.

Support Public Radio and TV

Buck Banks

Keeping it public: In an effort to fend off Draconian budget cuts by Congress, public broadcasters have banded together and launched a Web site called TellThemPublicMatters.com. The site provides one of those nifty on-line response mechanisms whereby you can send a message in suppport of public broadcasting to your elected representatives.

Congress is considering cutting $201 million — 38 percent — of the funds allocated to public broadcasting nationwide. These are the same numbskulls who have appropriated more than $250 BILLION in supplemental spending for the war in Iraq!

Let Congress know that you value public broadcasting by signing on to join the campaign. And if you have a couple of scheckles lying around, consider donating them to your local public radio or television station.

Were Dirty Tricks in 2002 Election of Sen. Sununu Directed from the White House?

Jon Ponder

One of the ironies of the Watergate scandal was that undoing of President Nixon was triggered by the revelation of crime about which he had no prior knowledge — a bungled reconnaissance mission by GOP operatives at Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington D.C. In fact, it’s fair to say that most scandals are revealed in ways that do not seem obvious at the time, a fact that gives this story salience it might otherwise not have:

The facts are suspicious: dozens of phone calls to the White House by a man later convicted in the case; the national Republican Party agreeing to pay more than $2.5 million in legal bills; Democrats’ phone lines jammed on Election Day.

To Republicans, the New Hampshire phone-jamming incident is an isolated case of political dirty tricks that took place more than three years ago.

To Democrats, it’s a scandal with echoes of Watergate that may reach all the way to the White House.

Republican leaders are facing questions stemming from a criminal case involving efforts to suppress voter turnout in a U.S. Senate election in the state in 2002. Republican John Sununu won that race over Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, helping Republicans retake control of the Senate.

The facts, on the surface at least, are suspicious: dozens of phone calls to the White House by a man later convicted in the case; the national Republican Party agreeing to pay more than $2.5 million in legal bills; phones jammed on Election Day, not only of Democrats but of a firefighters’ group, in the first U.S. congressional elections since the Sept. 11 attacks. Democrats say that disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff may even be involved.

“The calls to the White House and the relationship with White House staff are a real eye-opener and should be a cause for concern on all fronts,” said Sheila Krumholz, acting executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington- based research group. “It calls into question who the person was on the end of that telephone line.”

Poll: Public Suffering ‘Bush Fatigue’

Buck Banks

Sooooo tired: A savvy Pensito Review reader coined the expression “outrage fatigue” a while back, which aptly expressed the ennui many of us feel when we are confronted with the most recent outrageous antics of Bush Co. Well, apparently, about two-thirds of Americans are feeling “Bush fatigue,” according to an April Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey.

The survey found that 62 percent of Americans agree with the statement, “I am tired of all the problems associated with the Bush administration.” In comparison, during the latter part of the Clinton administration 71 percent expressed a similar sentiment in August 1999, and 72 percent in September 2000).

‘I am tired of all the problems associated with the Bush administration.’
— America

Of course, “Bush fatigue” varies by party affiliation. Most Democrats (82 percent) and independents (69 percent) expressed weariness with the administration, compared with just 30 percent of Republicans.

The survey indicated that the sense of a need for change crosses party lines: Nearly half of moderate and liberal Republicans (48 percent) and about a third of conservative Republicans (31 percent) say they want the next president to offer policies that are different from Bush Co.’s. Overwhelming numbers of independents (81 percent) and conservative and moderate Democrats (91 percent), as well as virtually all liberal Democrats (98 percent), want the next president to set a new policy course.

The real danger of Bush fatigue, of course, is that once one slips into the sticky morass of political ennui, it’s hard to pull oneself out of the tar pit of indifference (I love to mix metaphors!). “Tired of Bush” could develop into “tired of politics,” which would spell trouble for the potential policy change that many of us are wearily hoping for.

More Quotes from Tony Snow Trashing Bush

Jon Ponder

Last night, we posted a quote from White House spokesman-to-be Tony Snow who likened President Bush’s speech patterns to those of a person with anxiety disorders. This morning, Think Progress has more recent quotes from Snow’s radio shows and columns in which he has been highly critical of the president:

“The president doesn’t seem to give a rip about spending restraint.”
— new W.H. spokesman Tony Snow

– Bush has “lost control of the federal budget and cannot resist the temptation to stop raiding the public fisc.” [3/17/06]
– “George W. Bush and his colleagues have become not merely the custodians of the largest government in the history of humankind, but also exponents of its vigorous expansion.” [3/17/06]

– “President Bush distilled the essence of his presidency in this year’s State of the Union Address: brilliant foreign policy and listless domestic policy.” [2/3/06]

– “George Bush has become something of an embarrassment.” [11/11/05]

– Bush “has a habit of singing from the Political Correctness hymnal.” [10/7/05]

– “No president has looked this impotent this long when it comes to defending presidential powers and prerogatives.” [9/30/05]

– Bush “has given the impression that [he] is more eager to please than lead, and that political opponents can get their way if they simply dig in their heels and behave like petulant trust-fund brats, demanding money and favor — now!” [9/30/05]

– “When it comes to federal spending, George W. Bush is the boy who can’t say no. In each of his three years at the helm, the president has warned Congress to restrain its spending appetites, but so far nobody has pushed away from the table mainly because the president doesn’t seem to mean what he says.” [The Detroit News, 12/28/03]

– “The president doesn’t seem to give a rip about spending restraint.” [The Detroit News, 12/28/03]