The last whispy trails of Mr. Cheney’s credibility took another self-inflicted hit at the National Press Club today:
REPORTER: About a year ago, you said that the insurgency in Iraq was in its final throes. Do you still believe this?
CHENEY: I do.
And Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead after 31 years.
Last year, as part of a defense appropriation bill President Bush signed last year, he is required to work up a phased withdrawal plan for Iraq this year:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California said she and other Democrats would introduce a resolution this week calling for a phased withdrawal, noting that Bush signed a defense bill last year calling for that in 2006.
“Three years and three months into the war, with all of the losses, the insurgency, the burgeoning civil war that’s taking place, an open-ended time commitment is no longer sustainable,” she said.
“We want to see an end to this thing. We want to transition the mission. That isn’t cutting and running,” Feinstein said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”
Unfortunately, President Bush does not feel obliged to obey the laws he signs — or any others.
Jeb Bush isn’t saying what he plans to use the $1.9 million he’s amassed in a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) organization. The Foundation for Florida’s Future web site is decorated with apples and glowing headlines about how great the FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Acheivement Test) is, so we would assume it has something to do with education. Not necessarily. The Palm Beach Post says the fund it can be whatever Jeb wants it to be.
Bush has since been coy about what the foundation will fund.
“No plans yet,” he said last week.
Despite its vague goals, Bush faithful — those who have been well rewarded for loyalty by various Bush family members — continue to give generously to the fund.
…donors, including a host of developers and construction industry-related magnates from around the state, say they don’t care how he spends it.
…Jacksonville engineer Richard Blankenship, who served Bush’s brother, President George W. Bush, as ambassador to the Bahamas for two years, said he has given the foundation at least $185,000 over its lifetime.
… The top donation, $500,000, was given by Tampa-based Cast-Crete Corp., which makes building materials and is headed by conservative activist Ralph Hughes.
The Geo Group, a Boca Raton-based company that runs private prisons, donated $100,000. Its major shareholder is George Zoley, a Florida Atlantic University graduate Bush appointed to the university’s board of trustees.
Of all the headlines on the FFF web site about the FCAT, there were no links to the most recent story, about how the people employed by a private company to grade the test are not educators but instead, pizza delivery drivers and movie theater popcorn technicians. Read on for more.
The Florida test that determines whether students graduate, how much schools are funded, and even property values are being graded by pizza delivery drivers.
Democratic state senators are calling for state government to take over grading of the all-powerful Florida Comprehensive Acheivement Test. Until recent revelations that the people hired by CTB/McGraw-Hill under a three-year, $86.5 million contract were unqualified, most Floridians assumed the test was already in state hands.
A review of 2,947 employment files showed 1,845, or 64 percent, lacked degrees or teaching experience in subjects they were grading on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test as required by the contract, said Sens. Les Miller and Walter “Skip” Campbell.
For some of the FCAT graders, their only other work experience was in non-education jobs including hair styling, pizza delivery, store clerk, janitor and popping corn at a movie theater.
The two are also calling for the resignation of the current Education Commissioner, John Winn. The last education head was forced to resign after news that many of the private schools receiving vouchers under Jeb’s pet plan — later ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court — were actually storefronts and post office boxes, or in at least one case, terrorist-affiliated.
Winn said he would resign only if the State Board of Education asks him to. The board, appointed by Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, hired Winn, a former Bush staffer.
Winn himself is unconcerned about the graders’ diverse backgrounds.
Winn acknowledged some graders failed to meet the specialization criteria to score written responses to reading, writing and math questions. All have at least a bachelor’s degree as required but no checks are made to verify those credentials, he said…
“It’s not the work experience that matters,” he said. “There’s no data that shows us that teachers perform any better than people with other backgrounds.”
And if there were, you’d just ignore it anyway.
While I was off the grid traveling on the East Coast last week, the White House Press Secretary Tony Snow made (at least) two gaffes:
It turns out Capitol police officers aren’t the only ones who need a face book to recognize members of Congress. White House press secretary Tony Snow last week apologized from the lectern for misidentifying Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) as Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.).
McKinney, of course, is the legislator accused of accosting a Capitol police officer after he stopped her when she tried to bypass a security checkpoint. The officer said he didn’t recognize her as a member and that she was not wearing her member’s pin. Jackson Lee, however, was the congresswoman at a meeting with the president talking about Iraq on June 7, not McKinney as Snow said the next day.
2. From Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: Snow says military death toll is just a number:
In the Senate yesterday, we had a moment of silence because we lost our 2,500th troop in Iraq. It was a solemn milestone which we observed in this Chamber.
Over at the White House, I guess they have a different feeling. In all the news around the country today, there’s a quote from Tony Snow, the President’s Press Secretary, who said in response to the news, “it’s a number.”
“It’s a number.”
I say to the White House, it’s more than a number. It’s somebody’s son or daughter, someone’s father or mother, a neighbor, an uncle, or an aunt.
Markos Moulitsas, the founder of DailyKos, seems like a savvy fellow, so it is surprising he lost his cool last week after Maureen Dowd was a bit snarky in her column about the first-ever YearlyKos convention in Las Vegas, which she attended.
About being interviewed by Dowd, Moulitsas said to another blogger, “Maureen Dowd is an insecure, catty bitch.”
Waiting at Dulles yesterday for my flight back to Los Angeles after 10 days of fun and business on the East Coast, I heard Moulitsas tell Howie Kurtz on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” that he regretted the “bitch” part.
But what exactly was it that MoDo wrote that Kos didn’t like?
You’ll find the full text of the column here, and a representative excerpt here:
Pundits say that Trump’s $5,000 midterm bribe was an overreach,
And they agree that if lies were a crime, he’d be impeached.
Despite all the dividend promises he’s made,
The fact is, not one has ever been paid,
So even before the midterms, he already owes us $8,000* each.
*$5000 stimulus checks via “DOGE dividend”; $2000 stimulus checks via a “tariff dividend”; $1000-plus checks via “savings” from expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies
