Month: September 2006

Woodward: Bush’s Public Persona Has Become Defined by ‘Incompetence and Arrogance’

Jon Ponder
Card was enough of a realist to see that two negative aspects to Bush’s public persona had come to define his presidency: incompetence and arrogance. Card did not believe that Bush was incompetent, and so he had to face the possibility that as Bush’s chief of staff, he might have been the incompetent one.

Bob Woodward’s front page story for Sunday’s Washington Post is online now. Lots of bombshells about the Bush Administration’s campaign to deceive the American public about conditions on the ground in Iraq — and why they are doing it (hint: Henry Kissinger is advising them).

Here’s an excerpt from the end of the article about Bush’s former chief of staff, Andrew Card, and his private doubts about the prospects of success in the war after he had tried unsuccessfully to have Sec. of Defens Donald Rumsfeld fired. No bombshells here but apparently some confirmation of what we all suspect — that Bush is stubbornly following the wrong course of action, despite the better judgment of smarter people:

[In March of this year], White House chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr. prepared to leave the administration after submitting his resignation to Bush. He felt a sense of relief mixed with the knowledge that he was leaving unfinished business.

“It’s Iraq, Iraq, Iraq,” Card had told his replacement, Joshua B. Bolten. “Then comes the economy.”

One of Card’s great worries was that Iraq would be compared to Vietnam. In March, there were 58,249 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. One of Kissinger’s private criticisms of Bush was that he had no mechanism in place, or even an inclination, to consider the downsides of impending decisions. Alternative courses of action were rarely considered.

As best Card could remember, there had been some informal, blue-sky discussions at times along the lines of “What could we do differently?” But there had been no formal sessions to consider alternatives to staying in Iraq. To his knowledge there were no anguished memos bearing the names of Cheney, Rice, Hadley, Rumsfeld, the CIA, Card himself or anyone else saying “Let’s examine alternatives,” as had surfaced after the Vietnam era.

Card put it on the generals in the Pentagon and Iraq. If they had come forward and said to the president “It’s not worth it” or “The mission can’t be accomplished,” Card was certain, the president would have said “I’m not going to ask another kid to sacrifice for it.”

Card was enough of a realist to see that two negative aspects to Bush’s public persona had come to define his presidency: incompetence and arrogance. Card did not believe that Bush was incompetent, and so he had to face the possibility that as Bush’s chief of staff, he might have been the incompetent one. In addition, he did not think the president was arrogant.

But the marketing of Bush had come across as arrogant. Maybe it was unfair in Card’s opinion, but there it was.

He was leaving. And the man most responsible for the postwar troubles, the one who should have gone, Rumsfeld, was staying.

Was the GOP Leadership’s Cover Up of Foley’s Emails Illegal?

Jon Ponder

What did the Boehner and Hastert Know and When Did They Know It?

It’s telling that the boy’s congressman apparently went directly to Tom Reynolds, chair of the Republican’s campaign for the House this year, with news of the brewing scandal. But it is not credible that Reynolds never bothered to tell senior House leaders.

Boehner’s boner: The world found out about GOP Rep. Mark Foley’s sexually tinged emails to a 16 year-old male House page yesterday, but at least one key member of the Republican House leadership has known about them for about a year.

If one of the leaders knew about Foley’s emails, it seems likely that others did too — and that members of the GOP leadership have engaged in a strategy to keep the story out of the media until after next month’s elections.

Based on the content of Foley’s emails it is possible that he could be facing jail time for using the Internet to solicit sex with a minor. If that is so, the leadership could be guilty of covering up a crime.

Evidence of this includes a significant change in the reporting on the story yesterday by the Washington Post. Majority Leader John Boehner gave the Post one story Friday afternoon but changed his retelling of events later in the day, apparently after a discussion with House Speaker Dennis Hastert. The Post dutifully revised its story but offered no explanation for the change.

In fact, the only reason we know that the Post revised the story is because BuzzFlash.com caught it:

This Sentence Was Changed in the Following Washington Post Story on Foley: “…Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), and that Hastert assured him “we’re taking care of it.”It was not immediately clear what actions Hastert took. His spokesman had said earlier that the speaker did not know…” (as copied from the Post’s search engine on morning of 9/30).

That sentence became this sentence: “House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of inappropriate “contact” between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he then told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Boehner later contacted The Post and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert.” That’s Quite a Factual Change. Washington Post, Please Explain. 9/30

When Boehner spoke with Roll Call last night, he and Hastert were the same page:

Boehner strongly denied media reports late Friday night that he had informed Hastert of the allegations, saying “That is not true.”

In other words, “We’re not lying — we’re just incompetent.” Come on. Why didn’t the senior leadership know? How is that possible?

It isn’t. Foley’s flirtatious email exchange occurred late last summer. At least one member of the GOP leadership, Rep. Tom Reynolds, chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), was informed about Foley’s emails sometime in the fall:

_The congressional sponsor of the page, Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., said he was asked by the youth’s parents not to pursue the matter, so he dropped it.

_Alexander said that before deciding to end his involvement, he passed on what he knew to the chairman of the House Republican campaign organization, Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y. Reynolds’ spokesman, Carl Forti, said the campaign chairman also took no action in deference to the parents’ wishes.

_Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., chairman of the Page Board that oversees the congressional work-study program for high schoolers, said he did investigate but Foley falsely assured him he was only mentoring the boy. Pages are high school students who attend classes under congressional supervision and work as messengers.

_The spokesman for Speaker Dennis Hastert, Ron Bonjean, said the top House Republican had not known about the allegations. Shimkus said he learned about them in late 2005.

It’s telling that the boy’s congressman apparently went directly to Tom Reynolds, chair of the Republican’s campaign for the House this year, with news of the brewing scandal. But it is not credible that Reynolds never bothered to tell senior House leaders.

The only alternative is that Hastert and Boehner have been sitting on the scandal for almost a year. Now the question is, what have they done to suppress the information.

This Just In: Foley Resigns After Approaching Underage Male Intern

Trish

Just this morning, I was thinking there was nothing to the story circulating around Florida of U.S. Rep. Mark Foley (R-Palm Beach) being improper toward a male teenaged former page in email.

And when I’m wrong, I’m wrong big.

ABC is reporting Foley just resigned.

Here’s the background:

The boy served as a page to a Louisiana congressman last year and came to know Foley, 52. He sent the congressman a thank-you note when his term as a page ended. After the boy returned to his home in Louisiana, Foley used his personal e-mail account to correspond with the teen.

Under the AOL Instant Messenger screen name Maf54, Foley made repeated references to sexual organs and acts

In the exchange, Foley asked the boy about weathering Hurricane Katrina and wrote, “send me an e-mail pic of you.” In another e-mail, Foley told the boy he was on a break from Congress and was in Florida. He asked the boy, “how old are you now?”

The boy forwarded excerpts from the e-mails to congressional staffers and said, “Maybe it is just me being paranoid, but seriously. This freaked me out.”

The boy, who is not being identified because of his age, told the St. Petersburg Times in an interview last November, when the Times first learned of the e-mails, that he cut off correspondence with Foley.

“I thought it was very inappropriate,” the boy told the Times. “After the one about the picture, I decided to stop e-mailing him back.”

…ABC News reported that Foley’s office said he routinely asked interns and job applicants for photographs. But when the Times asked Foley about the e-mails nearly a year ago, he did not mention that practice. He said he was merely trying to be friendly and did not mean to make the boy uncomfortable.

Foley has had e-mail exchanges with at least one other former page who told the Times he was surprised to get an e-mail from a congressman.

So check this out:

Saying he was “deeply sorry,” Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) resigned from Congress today, hours after ABC News questioned him about sexually explicit internet messages with current and former congressional pages under the age of 18.

A spokesman for Foley, the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, said the congressman submitted his resignation in a letter late this afternoon to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.

Hours earlier, ABC News had read excerpts of instant messages provided by former male pages who said the congressman, under the AOL Instant Messenger screen name Maf54, made repeated references to sexual organs and acts.

In a statement, Foley said, “I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent.”

Did you get that? The chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children?! Man, those Republicans are sick puppies.

Update: Here’s some of the text of the emails/instant messages. Maf54 is Marky Mark.

Maf54: You in your boxers, too?
Teen: Nope, just got home. I had a college interview that went late.
Maf54: Well, strip down and get relaxed.
…
Maf54: What ya wearing?
Teen: tshirt and shorts
Maf54: Love to slip them off of you.
…
Maf54: Do I make you a little horny?
Teen: A little.
Maf54: Cool.

Investigation Finds HUD Secretary Might Be Kind of Guilty

Buck Banks

Faction Jackson: Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson got in trouble in May for telling a Dallas business meeting that loyalty to President Bush was a prerequisite for receiving HUD contracts. Pensito Review covered the first report of the speech here and Jackson’s half-assed mea culpa here.

‘People [expletive] dog-out the president but still want contracts and money from the administration.’
— Alphonso Jackson

A recent investigation into HUD’s procurement policies and political culture was not conclusive, but suggested that Jackson might be a little guilty. And, while it could not turn up a specific instance where a contract had not been awarded because of the recipient’s lack of support for Bush, it would appear that Jackson was at least not completely fabricating his “fabricated” Dallas anecdote. It must have been frustrating for investigators not to find definitive evidence:

Assistant Deputy Secretary Aronetta “Jo” Baylor recounted an incident in which she and Jackson ran into Brian Maillian of Whitestone Capital Group in the HUD lobby. Her account of that meeting partly mirrors the anecdote Jackson told the business group — that Maillian thanked the secretary for a contract he had struggled for years to win, and said he did not support the president.

But Baylor said Jackson said nothing to the man on the spot, instead complaining privately to her afterward “that people [expletive] dog-out the president but still want contracts and money from the administration.”

Maillian told investigators that he did not recall such a meeting, and Maillian’s contract with HUD has since been extended.

Investigators also heard from two senior staff members — Chief of Staff Camille Pierce and Deputy Secretary Roy Bernardi — that Jackson told political appointees at a staff meeting that it was important “to consider presidential supporters” in the award of “discretionary” contracts. Other officials said they had not heard Jackson make that remark.

Another official, General Counsel Keith Gottfried, said he had heard rumors that Jackson tries to help his friends win contracts, though he said he had never heard of contracts being rescinded or terminated as a result of the secretary’s actions.

The full report is secret, but a 340-page executive summary was leaked, and you can find a link to the PDF here.

Some aids on Capitol Hill were making noise about Democratic Senators calling for investigations, but those boys have been spanked one too many times this week. And with a two-month hiatus for the midterms, Jackson’s actions will likely be forgotten by the time Congress reconvenes in December.

Is It Me, Or…?

Trish

…Every time you hear Bush say he’d rather fight them “over there” than here, do you cringe at the effect these words must have on every Iraqi who hears them? I mean let’s just come right out and say to these people who have lost thousands of friends and family members — not to mention life as they knew it — that it’s better to destroy their lives and their country than ours. Jeez.

…Does it seem like there are a lot more books exposing the dirty workings of the Bush administration than any other, including Nixon’s and Clinton’s? Hardly a day goes by that someone doesn’t publish a new tome. Do you, like me, suspect that people are writing books instead of news stories because news stories get no play?

…Do you have trouble finding the patriotism in boycotting Citgo, which employs 4,000 Americans, because it’s owned by Venezuela? “Yeah, we’ll show those Bush-hatin’ commies. We’ll buy more oil from the Middle East. ‘Cause they love us over there!”

Cold War Officially Over – U.S. Withdraws Troops from Iceland

Buck Banks

‘g skil ekki: It’s official – the Soviet Union no longer poses a threat to Iceland, and, as of tomorrow, the U.S. military presence that held Nazism and Communism at bay for 65 years will end. Despite the fact that the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, heralding the break-up of the USSR, the U.S. has maintained a troop presence in Iceland for … some reason.

According to the Armed Forces Information Service’s press release, we’ve kept troops in Iceland because of the contemporary threats of terrorism, international crime and drug trafficking. And, while those threats still persist, it appears the need for more cannon fodder in Iraq and Afghanistan outweighs the threat to our NATO ally Iceland.

Bless, Reykjavik!

Play ‘Rank the Presidents’ at AOL

Jon Ponder

AOL has an online poll up in which you are asked to rank the last four presidents from best to worst. As of 5:40 AM Pacific, Ronald Reagan was ahead of Bill Clinton but George W. Bush was safely last, behind his father.

History has been kind to Reagan. Personally, I found it hard to maintain my dislike of a man who suffered for so long — I even developed some sympathy for Nancy. And, frankly, dying has helped his legacy. But the Reagan was always a lucky S.O.B. and the luckiest thing that ever happened to him was the presidency of George W. Bush, which has been such a disaster that even the Reagan presidency looks good.

Still, there is no comparison between what President Clinton accomplished in his eight years and the meager results of the Reagan years — on the economy, foreign relations, social issues and the rest. Even on the scandal front, there were nearly 200 prosecutions for malfeasance in the Reagan Administration, but onlya handful of prosecutions of Clinton officials, despite the vast rightwing conspiracy’s multimillion dollar, multi-year investigations into so-called scandals.

It’s Friday, you’re at work. How better to waste a minute and a half than by giving Bill Clinton his due.

Go here: AOL Rank the Presidents.

NC 08: Ads for Dem Challenger to Rep. Hayes, Heir to Mill Fortune, Focus on Common Sense Values

Jon Ponder

In North Carolina’s 8th Congressional District, Democrat Larry Kissell is running against Republican Rep. Robin Hayes, who is a principal heir to the founder of Cannon Mills, a cotton mill empire that dominated the southern Piedmont of North Carolina for most of the Twentieth Century.

In the ad above, Kissell comes across as being cut from the mold of Piedmont North Carolina’s archetypal favorite son, Andy Griffith. It underscores the preception that Rep. Hayes is a cipher by completely ignoring him. The blue grass banjo underscores his down-home appeal but the content of what Kissell says in the voice over is spot on:
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