Day: September 7, 2006

Officials Getting Paid to Sell Out the Environment

Trish

Not that kind of green: The Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, and TPMmuckraker.com (LCV) have proof that the more lobbyist greenbacks your man and woman in Washington accept, the more likely they will vote brown.

What’s the connection between a bad environmental voting record and corruption? Follow the money.

Six years into George W. Bush’s presidency, anti-environmental extremism has become Capitol Hill’s standard operating procedure. Hardly a major bill goes by that someone doesn’t saddle with a rider to drill the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge…

What’s the connection between a bad environmental voting record and corruption? Follow the money. Votes against clean air and water are not cast out of antipathy to summer zephyrs and babbling brooks but to help some favored campaign contributor make an extra buck.

The LCV ranks elected officials based on their environmental voting record. So just to see if the theory would hold, the groups also looked at how involved the low-rankers were in the Abramoff/K Street scandals.

The results are convincing. The list of two-time losers (those with money scandals and anti-environment records) begins with former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.). There’s also a state-by-state roll call of elected officials who earned a score of cold zero from the LCV. My guy, U.S. Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) is on it. Is yours?

Poll: Mixed Messages on Terror

Buck Banks

Scared or confused: According to National Journal’s PollTrack, it appears Bushco’s unrelenting focus on the “War on Terror” is beginning to have an effect on his polling numbers … or not.

A recent CBS News/New York Times poll shows that 55 percent of respondents approve of the way he’s handling “the campaign against terrorism.” That’s up four points since mid-August, and the current survey was conducted prior to the speech he made Wednesday afternoon, in part addressing counterterrorism efforts since Sept. 11, 2001.

The same poll has other indicators, however, that show the public’s confidence in anti-terrorism efforts isn’t consistent. Forty-nine percent said the nation is “adequately prepared to deal with another terrorist attack” — down 15 points since March 2003.

Similarly, respondents aren’t nearly as satisfied with the Bush administration’s progress in creating a “comprehensive plan” for safeguarding the country against terrorism as they were a year and a half after the 9/11 attacks. In May 2003, 42 percent said the White House team had made “a lot” of progress; that figure has dwindled to just 16 percent in the current survey.

CNN pollsters also found discontent about “the way things are going” for the United States in its war on terror. Nine percent said they were “very satisfied,” compared with 53 percent who said they were either “not too satisfied” or “not at all satisfied.” Forty-nine percent fell into the dissatisfied bloc at the same time last year.

And in a recent Pew Research Center poll, responses were split evenly on a question that asked respondents why they thought there hasn’t been another terrorist attack on the country since 2001. Forty percent attributed it to luck, while 39 percent said “the government is doing a good job protecting the country.”

More Questions About Rove Exorcism

Trish

Cousin Jon beat me to this newser but I still have to add my two cents’ worth.

I was going to say it would be funny if you could just ignore the other parts.

Rove, the Bush political shaman Democrats love to demonize, enlisted a trio of clergymen to exorcise Hillary Rodham Clinton’s left-wing spirit when he moved into her West Wing office in 2001…

“I talked to Karl; he said it’s not true and, beyond that, he will have no comment,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said…

Deal Hudson, a former Fordham University professor Rove enlisted to woo Catholic voters, told Moore and Slater that he witnessed the exorcism, which he described as “an actual liturgical ceremony.”

Other parts: Is this what actual leaders of organized “mainstream” religions do?

Does Rove honestly fear other people — in this case, Hillary Clinton — and believe them able to hurt him through their leftover “vibes”?

If was just an attempt to be cute, can Rove and his “actual liturgical cohorts” be more cynical or blasphemous than to invoke God’s protection against someone who only happens to hold differing views?

Rove Denies Holding Exorcism in His White House Office

Jon Ponder
“If the story is true … they sure did exorcise any lingering competence right out of the building.”
— Spokesman for Sen. Clinton

According to a new book, when Karl Rove moved into his office in the White House, he held an exorcism conducted by three clergy members to cleanse the place of evil spirits.

Whose spirit had the big bad bully spooked? That of the office’s previous occupant, First Lady Hillary Clinton:

“I talked to Karl; he said it’s not true and, beyond that, he will have no comment,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

Clinton smiled and shook her head in disbelief Wednesday when asked about the tale, which appears in “The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power,” by James Moore and Wayne Slater. “I’m speechless,” she finally said, heading toward a Senate elevator.

Later, Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines quipped, “If the story is true … they sure did exorcise any lingering competence right out of the building.”

Trish has more on Rove’s White House exorcism here.

Quote du Jour

Trish

“I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.”

— Adlai Stevenson (1900 – 1965), Illinois governor (1949-1953), Democratic candidate for President in 1952 and 1956, and United States Ambassador to the United Nations (1961-1965)

Are ‘NASCAR Wives’ Wising up to Bush?

Jon Ponder

If you read the complete AP article, the assertion that Southern women are turning on Bush appears to be based on anecdotal evidence. There are upwards of 40 million women in the states of the Old Confederacy, roughly a third of whom are African American. I think the authors are talking about a group that we might call “NASCAR wives” — and if that group has started to wise up about Bush, that is good news.

President Bush’s once-solid relationship with Southern women is on the rocks. “I think history will show him to be the worst president since Ulysses S. Grant,” said Barbara Knight, a self-described Republican since birth and the mother of three. “He’s been an embarrassment.” In the heart of Dixie, comparisons to Grant, a symbol of the Union, is the worst sort of insult, especially from a Macon woman who voted for Bush in 2000 but turned away in 2004.

In recent years, Southern women have been some of Bush’s biggest fans, defying the traditional gender gap in which women have preferred Democrats to Republicans. Bush secured a second term due in large part to support from 54 percent of Southern female voters while women nationally favored Democrat John Kerry, 51-48 percent…

The movement of some Southern women away from the Republican Party tracks with national poll results showing that women have become more disillusioned with the war and were more likely than men to list the conflict as the important issue facing the country.

Nationally, the AP-Ipsos poll found that only 28 percent of women approve of Bush’s handling of the war. Bush did better in the South, but only slightly — just 32 percent of women in the region said they approve of his handling of the war.