Year: 2006

Justice O’Connor Warns of Dictatorship under GOP

Jon Ponder

Dictatorships flourish when governments are allowed to interfere with the judiciary, she says.

NPR’s Nina Totenberg reported on Friday that retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has launched a fusillade against against the leadership of her own party over the issue of judicial reform. In a speech at George Washington University, O’Connor said that Republicans have incited violence against judges and that their efforts to dismantle the independent judiciary are the first steps in the path toward dictatorship.

O’Connor prohibited audio or video recording when she spoke last Thursday, March 9, 2006, so all we have is a transcript of Totenberg’s report on Friday’s Morning Edition:

[…]

Feingold to Introduce Censure of Bush on Illegal Wiretaps

Jon Ponder

Sen. Russ Feingold (D – Wisconsin) has just announced on ABC’s “This Week” that will introduce a censure of President Bush tomorrow over the NSA illegal domestic wiretapping program.

Just found this on Raw Story.

Update: ABC has details:

In an exclusive interview on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold called on the Senate to publicly admonish President Bush for approving domestic wiretaps on American citizens without first seeking a legally required court order.

“This conduct is right in the strike zone of the concept of high crimes and misdemeanors,” said Feingold, D-Wis., a three-term senator and potential presidential contender.

He said President Bush had, “openly and almost thumbing his nose at the American people,” continued the NSA domestic wiretap program.

Frist! Frist! Frist!

Jon Ponder

Sen. Dr. Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican Majority Leader, won the presidential straw poll at the GOP frat party this weekend in Memphis — yes, that Memphis, the one in Tennessee.

Senator Frist won with 37 percent of the total vote and it was a great display of Party unity and grassroots energy for 06.

Second place went to Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, and Sen. Bill Allen of Virginia was third. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the nominal frontrunner, came in fourth.

I hope the Republicans nominate Dr. Frist in 2008. Democrats would have a field day over his involvement in the Terri Schiavo matter, when he diagnosed imminent recovery for a woman who’d been brain dead for almost 20 years — by viewing her on videotape.

Frist’s main problem is he is a Bush stooge who was annointed majority leader by the White House political office in 2002 when Sen. Trent Lott flamed out. The Bush presidency is going to be a long slo-mo train wreck from here on out, and the next Republican nominee will have no choice be to run away from the Bush presidency.

Frist has been complicit with President Bush by using his leadership position to rubberstamp the the administration’s failed policies. Bush wouldn’t have been able to get away with dereliction of duty on Katrina, illegal domestic spying and going to war based on a pack of lies without Dr. Frist’s enabling.

Here’s an email Frist sent to supporters this morning:

The Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Memphis this weekend was a tremendous success. With over 1800 people representing 26 states, 19 speakers and a number of very interesting seminars, VOLPAC was happy to participate in this Republican Party building activity.

Thought you would also be interested to know that Hotline conducted the first straw poll for the 08 Presidential Primary and Senator Frist won with 37 percent of the total vote and it was a great display of Party unity and grassroots energy for 06.

Run, Bill, run!

Chris Matthews Blamed Church Arsons on Angry Gays

Jon Ponder

On February 3, 2006, rightwing talk show host Chris Matthews did a segment on “Hardball” in which he speculated that the arsonists behind the church fires in Alabama might be gay activists:

Maybe a more liberal person who is gay for example would feel that they’ve been terrorized by the beliefs of [a conservative] church too.

Just hunching it out, being a bit of a cop here, I’m trying to think, could it be a person who doesn’t like what they stand for? Is there any outstanding disputes on social issues, gay right, marriage—let me see—abortion? Any of those issues out front where the Baptist Church might have got an enemy it didn’t know about here, or knew about?

And…

MATTHEWS: Is there anything in the papers down there where the Baptist Church has taken a position on some social issue: gay marriage—something that’s hot—where that would have aroused somebody?

GUEST: I haven’t seen that, Chris, but it’s very viable, because, you know, we had an arson of a Unitarian church in rural Virginia back in the summer and it was right after the church, on a national level, had embraced some gay members. And then there was an attack on this church in Staunton, Virginia, so things like that can happen.

MATTHEWS: That’s why I’m thinking like that, because the more liberal churches would drive some people on the right crazy and maybe a more liberal person who is gay for example would feel that they’ve been terrorized by the beliefs of another church too. We don’t know.

It is fascinating and awful.

And dead wrong:

Law enforcement officials arrested three men March 8 in connection with a string of nine fires at Baptist churches in rural Alabama.

Benjamin Nathan Moseley and Russell Lee Debusk, both 19-year-old students at Birmingham-Southern College, said they set the fires as a “joke,” authorities said.

Liberal Punditry Is a Straight Boy’s Club

Jon Ponder

Caro at Make Them Accountable has a chart that shows the ratio of men to women in the leftwing echo chamber is about two to one.

She breaks out lists of leading personalities among radio talk show hosts, newspaper columnists, editorial cartoonists, magazine writers and editors, book authors and bloggers.

Check out the chart.

(Couldn’t help but notice that the ratio of straight to gay people on the list is probably better than 10 to one.)

Schadenfreude: the President’s Truthiness Construct Bites Him on Ports Deal

Jon Ponder

Nobody Believes Bush on the Ports Deal Even Though He’s Not Lying — For Once

The president created a construct of the enemy based on truthiness: Arab Muslims attacked us on 9/11, therefore all Muslims are terrorists.

I caught a few minutes of President Bush’s address yesterday to a convention of newspaper executives in Washington. His performance was absymal, as usual. He has more trouble reading from a script than most people do speaking extemporaneously.

But on Friday there was a new quality to his speechifying, especially when he was discussing the failed Dubai Ports World deal. He sounded a bit chastened and aggrieved:

“I’m concerned about a broader message this issue could send to our friends and allies around the world, particularly in the Middle East,” Bush said… “In order to win the war on terror, we have got to strengthen our relationships and friendships with moderate Arab countries in the Middle East.”

“Moderate Arabs?” I guess that means “Arabs who are not terrorists.” Until now it has suited President Bush’s interests to obfuscate the existence of moderate Arabs in order to build up the fictional Muslim Arab terrorist bogeyman he sent America’s sons and daughters to fight in Iraq.

[…]

Nashville Didn’t Kick the Chicks — Can You Say “Texas?”

Trish

Fellow PR editor Jon posted today on the three-year anniversary of the defamation of the Dixie Chicks. Jon wonders, “if the Bush worshippers in the Nashville music establishment treat the unofficial king and queen of country the same way they treated the Dixie Chicks.”

Jon asks an excellent question, but there’s one problem: you go have to a lot further south than Nashville to find the guys who dropkicked the Chicks.

For one thing, the Dixie Chicks are all women, not one of America’s favorite straight couples.

Leading the charge was Atlanta-based Cumulus Media — the second largest owner of radio stations in the country — which banned the Chicks, then held the first of many rallies across the country in Shreveport, La. (just across the Texas state line) in which bulldozers smashed Chicks CDs, posters, etc.

Jumping on the bandwagon and riding it from sea to sea was Clear Channel, mega mega owner of the airwaves, which held onto the issue — and the Dixie Chicks — with a death grip.

Clear Channel is also not based in Nashville, but in sunny San Antonio, which I should mention, is in Texas. SourceWatch.org has the 4-1-1 on Clear Channel.

“The vice chairman of Clear Channel is Tom Hicks… When Mr. Bush was governor of Texas, Mr. Hicks was chairman of the University of Texas Investment Management Company, called Utimco, and Clear Channel’s chairman, Lowry Mays, was on its board. Under Mr. Hicks, Utimco placed much of the university’s endowment under the management of companies with strong Republican Party or Bush family ties. In 1998 Mr. Hicks purchased the Texas Rangers in a deal that made Mr. Bush a multimillionaire.”

“In addition, Hicks steered a controversial scheme to use the University of Texas’ $13 billion endowment for private investment. Among the beneficiaries were the Carlyle Group, the arms investment firm tied to both George Bush Snr and the bin Laden family, and George W Bush’s controversial Harken Oil drilling project in Bahrain.”

[…]

Country Stars Tim McGraw and Faith Hill Criticize Bush – But Will They Be Treated Like the Dixie Chicks?

Jon Ponder

Three years ago today, March 10, 2003, during the run-up to the war in Iraq, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks caused a political firestorm when she stated from the stage in London that, as native Texans, she and her bandmates were “ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.” The repercussions of her statement back in the States led to a boycott of Dixie Chicks on country radio and radio station stunts like running over a pile of Dixie Chicks CDs with a bulldozer.

In fact, it was the Dixie Chicks incident that emboldened the rightwing to set up its new paradigm of pure political thought:

Criticizing Bush = Hating America

Now a pair of huge stars in the country music firmament, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, have gone on record criticizing President Bush — not on the war, but on his disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina:

Faith Hill and Tim McGraw — two stars who usually stay out of politics — blasted the Hurricane Katrina cleanup effort, with Hill calling the slow progress in Louisiana and Mississippi “embarrassing” and “humiliating.”

The country music artists — who are natives of the storm-ravaged states — were at times close to tears, and clearly angry when the subject of Katrina came up during a news conference today. They had met with reporters in Nashville to promote their upcoming Soul2Soul II Tour, but when asked about the hurricane cleanup, the stars pulled no punches.

“To me, there’s a lot of politics being played and a lot of people trying to put people in bad positions in order to further their agendas,” McGraw, a 38-year-old native of Delhi, La., said after ABC News Radio’s Dan Gordon asked about Katrina.

[…]

Bush Loses Big Time on Ports Deal — But Will Halliburton Win in the End?

Jon Ponder

President Bush suffered the worst defeat of his presidency today — so go ahead, savor it:

The announcement [that President Bush had lost the DP World deal] was an extraordinary retreat that signaled a shift in the power relationship between the White House and Congress. Bush has been unused to losing. But this time, the Republican-led House of Representatives, which has been a rubber stamp for the president for the past five years, was the first to revolt.

But like most of victories over Bush this one may leave us with a bitter after taste. If Congress passes a law that restricts ownership of security-sensitive infrastracture like ports to American-owned companies, the list of U.S. companies capable of such undertakings is very small — the Veep’s alma mater, Halliburton and a few others.

Novak: GOP Congress Hates Bush

Jon Ponder

When Democrats criticize President Bush, Republicans accuse them of hating the president, which is the same as hating America. Writing for the ultra-rightwing website Human Events Online, GOP propagandist Robert Novak chronicles the growing tide of Bush-hatred among Republican members of Congress:

Republican congressmen are tired of being bullied and ignored by a heavy-handed executive, and they are playing hardball with their President. Given his unpopularity, many of them find it useful to distance themselves from Bush anyway. In short, Bush has little leverage left within his own party, and his transformation to lame-duck status is all but complete.

Republicans in Congress is are arraying themselves against their Dear Leader across the board:

Ports Deal: [Language] de-funding the ports deal will be written into the upcoming emergency supplemental [by the GOP congressional leadership]. This would be some real intra-party hardball—Bush would have to veto funding for Katrina, homeland security and the troops, or else suffer the undoing of a deal he has promised will go forward.

And…

Budget: Another Republican rebellion is breaking out on the budget front, where independent-minded Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is taking on the administration for its budgeting proposal. Bush’s budget zeroes out the so-called “Crime Victims Fund,” which is funded through criminal fines, fees and forfeitures, and thus pays for itself. Coburn is accusing the administration of playing a “budget shell game” by zeroing out the fund in order to make room for more spending elsewhere, but planning to restore the fund later.

Coburn’s hearings, set for today, will include a victim of the Oklahoma City bombing. They are significant because they could be politically damaging for Bush if anyone notices them. More and more conservatives seem emboldened nowadays to snipe at the President, whose poor efforts at reaching out to Congress have not helped his overall cause.

And…

Katrina: [The] administration’s inert posture and opacity with respect to the Katrina rebuilding process is all the more baffling. The White House has done little to get its act together and work with members of Congress on the reconstruction… Moreover, through its curious inflexibility and inaction, the White House has again incurred the wrath of conservative Republicans in Louisiana’s congressional delegation, including Sen. David Vitter (R) and Rep. Richard Baker (R). Even in matters as small as the itinerary of visiting congressmen, FEMA proved inflexible, drawing criticism from conservative Rep. Bobby Jindal (R).