Month: February 2007

South Florida Under Influence of Giant Underground Weirdness Magnet

Buck Banks

I don’t often read Dave Barry because I grew tired of booger jokes back in fifth grade, but sometimes the guy is worth reading. Today’s commentary is a case in point where Barry attributes all the weird stuff that gravitates to South Florida (O.J. Simpson, Elian Gonzalez, hanging chads, Virgin Mary cheese sandwich, Anna Nicole Smith, etc.) to a giant underground weirdness magnet that we must find and dig up to rid us of this constant flow of life’s rich pageant.

We need to find it, dig it up, and get rid of it.

I’m talking about the South Florida Giant Underground Weirdness Magnet. It’s buried around here somewhere. It has to be. How else can you explain why so many major freak-show news stories either happen, or end up, in South Florida?

O.J. Simpson, for example. Why is he here? Did anybody in South Florida ever say, ”Hey O.J.! Why don’t you pack up your golf clubs, your one glove and your remaining cutlery, and come be part of our community!”? Of course not! Nobody WANTED him here. He was DRAWN here, by the Giant Underground Weirdness Magnet.

Read the rest here.

Poll: Conservatives Play Blame Game on Viguerie’s Site and You Can Play Too

Buck Banks

Texas pick ’em: Our favorite strident-voiced REAL conservative Richard Viguerie has a poll running on his site that is kind of fun in a perverse way. He lists 31 people or reasons why the Republican Party got beaten worse than Keith Moon’s snare drum in last fall’s elections and invites us to choose 10 of them.

Of course, you have to provide a name and party affiliation “to prevent fraud,” and you can’t vote for more than 10 (I tried), but it’s still interesting to be forced to make some hard choices when all you really feel like doing is pushing every button. Viguerie gives the results of how those identifying themselves as Republicans voted and how the total vote count came out with Dems, independents and others included.

According to Viguerie, the number-one reason for blame chosen by 76 percent of the Repugs was “Conservative leaders who kept silent when the GOP became the party of Big Government,” which coincidentally is one of Richard’s obsessions. Second was “Illegal corruption, such as Mark Foley, Robert Ney, and Jack Abramoff” at 64 percent, followed by George W. Bush at 57 percent.

Those percentages and rankings were about the same when all results were lumped together, but that makes sense, since Republicans constituted 75 percent of the poll pool, which is a testament to all the liberals who don’t go to Viguerie’s site: 76 percent for silent conservative leaders, 64 percent for illegal corruption and 63 percent for Bush.

Viguerie plans to release his “findings” to the MSM on Monday, provided he can get anybody’s attention besides the guy who writes the column on crackpots. So there is still time to get your votes in and skew the findings. If we all vote as Dems or independents, we can perhaps help George Bush win again by being named the number-one reason why Repugs lost the House and Senate.

Go here to vote.

Dems Plan to Repeal Bush’s 2002 War Resolution

Jon Ponder

This would be sweet justice if it happens:

Senate Democratic leaders intend to unveil a plan next week to repeal the 2002 resolution authorizing the war in Iraq in favor of narrower authority that restricts the military’s role and begins withdrawals of combat troops…

In both chambers, Democratic lawmakers are eager to take up binding legislation that would impose clear limits on U.S. involvement in Iraq after nearly four years of war. But Democrats remain divided over how to proceed. Some want to avoid the funding debate altogether, fearing it would invite Republican charges that the party is not supporting the troops. Others take a more aggressive view, believing the most effective way to confront President Bush’s war policy is through a $100 billion war-spending bill that the president ultimately must sign to keep the war effort on track.

The 2002 resolution, which had Karl Rove’s pudgy political fingerprints all over it, was rammed through Congress in October, immediately before the mid-term elections in order to get Democrats in Congress on the record about Bush’s bogus war plans.

The resolution has had long-ranging political ramifications. It successfully snared Bush’s opponent in 2004, Sen. John Kerry, who stupidly said, on the record, that he voted for the resolution before he voted against it. Even now, 2008 frontrunner Sen. Hillary Clinton is being pressured to apologize for her vote in favor of it.

Repealing the resolution would likely put the president and the Congress on a course toward a constitutional showdown over the War Powers Act and the president’s ability to wage war without congressional interference.

Rightwing Terrorist Terry Nichols Says FBI Was Behind OK City Attack

Jon Ponder

Oh, here we go:

Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols says a high-ranking FBI official “apparently” was directing Timothy McVeigh in the plot to blow up a government building and might have changed the original target of the attack, according to a new affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Utah.

The official and other conspirators are being protected by the federal government “in a cover-up to escape its responsibility for the loss of life in Oklahoma,” Nichols claims in a Feb. 9 affidavit.

Documents that supposedly help back up his allegations have been sealed to protect information in them, such as Social Security numbers and dates of birth.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Utah had no comment on the allegations. The FBI and Justice Department in Washington, D.C., also declined comment.

Please, GOP, Don’t Swift-Boat Hillary! (You Might Rally the Wrong Base)

Jon Ponder

That rustling you hear in the dark, acccompanied by the putrid smell of decay, is the rotting carcasses of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy pulling themselves up from the grave. What has given new life to the cadaver corps, of course, is the announcement that Hillary Clinton is running for president.

Nothing could energize the Democratic base faster than seeing the poo-slinging monkeys on Fox Noise and AM radio coming after Sen. Clinton with their patented brand of lies and innuendo.

Instead of a DNA-stained blue dress, the undead zombies have announced that they will be wearing a different costume this time — the threadbare uniform of the Swift Boat veterans for Truth, a group from the 2004 campaign whose name has become synonymous with lying:

Conservative admirers of the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth media blitz that helped torpedo Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry’s presidential candidacy in 2004 are now agitating to “Swift-boat” Clinton.

“People are doing what they’re doing because they want to defeat her before she has a chance to win. You can’t hold off your silver bullet to the end,” said veteran Republican operative David N. Bossie, who is involved in [an anti-Hillary, pseudo-documentary] film project with Dick Morris, a former advisor to Bill Clinton…

“Those Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were the real heroes of the 2004 election,” one online exhortation reads. “We at the StopHillaryPAC want to do the same thing to Hillary.”

That group’s website, headed by former Rep. John LeBoutillier (R-N.Y.), collected enough early funding to launch a round of negative television ads on Iowa stations timed to Clinton’s visit there in late January…

Bossie, a blunt-spoken opposition researcher who has mined Clinton controversies since Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, said that the [mock-documentary] film would mimic the hard-edged partisan style of left-wing filmmaker Moore and that camera-carrying “trackers” would tail Clinton during campaign events.

Bossie is delving into Clinton’s roles in the Whitewater real estate deals, her $100,000 profit from cattle futures and the firing of White House travel officials — well-trod controversies that Clinton aides dismiss as old news. He and GOP allies are convinced new nuggets will turn up — and they also see new opportunities in contrasting Clinton’s avowed centrism with what they call her “polarizing liberalism.”

“Conservatives believe she’s more dangerous today as a potential president than when she tried to take over the healthcare plan and root it in socialism,” said public relations man Greg Mueller, who handled media appearances for anti-Kerry veterans in 2004.

Bossie and his Citizens United partners have long vexed the Clintons and Democratic presidential contenders. Morris — the architect of Bill Clinton’s mid-1990s political revival until he was fired in August 1996 after revelations he consorted with a prostitute — declined interview requests from The Times, though he has discussed the movie on Fox News. Bossie said his partner’s past “is an acceptable risk we’ll take because of Dick’s personal knowledge of Hillary Clinton

This is all they’ve got?! Whitewater, cattle futures, the travel office? That same old tired crap is it?

Nothing — nothing — could switch hardcore Dems like Yours Truly off of our neutral-to-negative stance on Hillary Clinton faster than seeing the Bossies and Morrises of this world, along with poo-slinging monkeys on Fox Noise and AM radio, coming after Sen. Clinton with their patented brand of lies and innuendo.

Karen Hughes Turned Bush into a Caricature, Now Is ‘Tired’ Of Seeing Him Treated Like One

Jon Ponder

This is rich:

[Bush loyalists] are increasingly angry at criticism leveled at him. Karen Hughes, the communications adviser who famously went back to Texas when her teenage son grew homesick but has since returned as an under secretary of state, says she is tired of seeing Mr. Bush treated as a “caricature.”

We’ll stop treating him like one when he stops being one.

Does Bush’s Homophobe Base Know His Longtime Sidekick Is Gay?

Jon Ponder

If you know the name Israel Hernandez, you probably know him as “Altoids Boy,” the young man in charge of George W. Bush’s breath mints. (He says his real Dubya-assigned nickname is Izzy.)

Hernandez was 23 when he signed on as the Charlie Young to Bush’s Jed Bartlet 14 years ago, and is like a member of Bush’s family.

Izzy is also gay:

Izzy, now 37, travels the world on the government dime as an assistant secretary of commerce, which, frankly, is the sort of job a pol would give a crony’s ex-mistress.

Israel Hernandez was a fresh-faced college graduate from the Texas border town of Eagle Pass in the summer of 1993 when he landed a job in Dallas as the personal aide to the part-owner of the Texas Rangers George W. Bush.

Together, they spent months driving the dusty back roads of the Lone Star State to promote the team, Mr. Hernandez behind the wheel of Mr. Bush’s Lincoln Town Car.

“He would speak to a rotary or chamber and say, ‘You need to come to the ballpark and we’ll make it Athens, Texas, Day. We’ll put you in your own special section; we can say ‘Welcome Athens, Texas,’ on the big screen; you can come to batting practice, ‘’ Mr. Hernandez recalled…

Mr. Hernandez, who is so close to the Bushes that he moved in with them in Dallas after his apartment was burglarized,

Do the homo-haters in Bush’s conservative Christian base know that he used to travel all over hell and half of Texas with a hot young gay dude, and that same young homo also lived with the Bushes in Texas?

Despite evidence to the contary, George Bush is not gay. He is a hyporcrite. He attacks gay people in order to gain poltical advantage — leaving millions of his unsmart-American base with the impression that he hates queers as much as they do.

How do Republicans do it? How do they send their political goons out to whack gay people in the afternoon and then sit down to dinner with their Izzy Hernandezes, Mary Cheneys, Ken Mehlmans and, who knows, Josh Boltens and Condi Rices?

Worse still, how do these self-loathing gay people square the circle in their own minds that they are lap dogs to the masters of the same people who spend their days ensuring their continued oppression and disenfranchisement?

For his loyal years of service, Izzy, now 37, travels the world on the government dime as an assistant secretary of commerce, which, frankly, is the sort of job a pol would give a crony’s ex-mistress.

Good for him. I’m sure he deserves a reward after years of service to such an unpleasant, aristorcratic boor.

Obviously, Izzy has reconciled himself to the fact that this man to whom he devoted his youthful time and energy has done more to hobble the cause of gay civil rights than anyone else in our time — but I, for one, can’t imagine how.

Update: Corrected name of West Wiing character. Thanks, West Wing Fan!

Hey David Geffen — Can I Get a Witness?

Trish

David Geffen deserves applause, not contempt, for his comments to MoDo about why he supports Obama over Clinton.

Get over it, Hil. There will be plenty of other people who agree with Geffen, or support John Edwards, or who just cannot get past your inability — so like the Current Occupant’s — to admit when you’re wrong.

“Not since the Vietnam War has there been this level of disappointment in the behavior of America throughout the world, and I don’t think that another incredibly polarizing figure, no matter how smart she is and no matter how ambitious she is — and God knows, is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton?” Geffen told the Times’ Maureen Dowd…

“Obama is inspirational, and he’s not from the Bush royal family or the Clinton royal family,” Geffen told Dowd.

Geffen also alluded to possible campaign distractions caused by Bill Clinton’s personal life should his wife secure the Democratic nomination, saying, “Everybody in politics lies, but [the Clintons] do it with such ease, it’s troubling.”

The founder of Geffen Records continued, “I don’t think anybody believes that in the last six years, all of a sudden Bill Clinton has become a different person,” calling the former president “a reckless guy” who “gave his enemies a lot of ammunition to hurt him and to distract the country.”

Whether or not Bill has changed, and I suspect he has — kind of — I for one, am already sick of Jay Leno ending every reference to Hillary with the fact that Bill cheated. I was sick of the dirty yucks when he was president and they haven’t gotten any funnier in the time since.

But the reaction of the Clinton folks actually disappoints me. It’s as if they begrudge Geffen the right to have an opinion or support someone else.

This morning, Clinton aide Howard Wolfson demanded that Obama remove Geffen from his campaign and return the money he had helped raise…

“If Sen. Obama is indeed sincere about his repeated claims to change the tone of our politics, he should immediately denounce these remarks, remove Mr. Geffen from his campaign, and return his money,” the Clinton backer said.

Why? What did Geffen say that disqualifies him from polite company? That he prefers Barak to Hillary? And…?

Although Clinton herself is not associated with Wolfson’s remarks, you can bet she favors them. Get over it, Hil. There will be plenty of other people who agree with Geffen, or support John Edwards, or who just cannot get past your inability — so like the Current Occupant’s — to admit when you’re wrong.

Republican Hack Knew Pelosi Plane Story was False Even as He Peddled It

Trish

A little follow-up by the hometown paper on the bellicose voice behind the “Nancy Pelosi’s plane is bigger” brouhaha shows why the public is over Republicans.

He calls the Pelosi plane story, whatever its legitimacy, “the first break [Republicans] have had from the media in driving our message since before the Mark Foley story broke.

U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Bartow, Fla.) was out in front on the story, supplying quotes and moral high ground by claiming Pelosi wanted a more luxurious plane than her predecessor, Big Denny Hastert. But the 32-year-old wonderGOoP blames the media for starting it and says he was only exploiting the opening they gave him.

Ick.

Putnam now acknowledges he had no personal knowledge of any Pelosi request. He said he was commenting on an anonymously-sourced story in The Washington Times and additional coverage from CNN.

“This was a classic case where the media got out in front of us,” Putnam said. “Did we jump on it? Yes.”

And he is unapologetic about that. He calls the Pelosi plane story, whatever its legitimacy, “the first break [Republicans] have had from the media in driving our message since before the Mark Foley story broke.”

Let’s get this straight. Putnam sees Pelosi needing a plane that will fly nonstop to California instead of Illinois equivalent to former Rep. Mark Foley spending years pressuring teenage male pages for sex while the Republican leadership at best turned a blind eye and at worse, covered it up?

Ick.

But Putnam is just getting warmed up — he’s been appointed chairman of the House Republican conference committee.

It is the conference chairman’s responsibility to coordinate message and manage media relations for House Republicans. That means developing themes that counter and discredit an agenda set by the new Democratic majority. It’s a role Putnam has embraced in the new Congress.

…After Democrats swept to a congressional majority in November’s elections, Putnam moved up in the Republican leadership to conference chairman, the third-ranking House Republican position. Only Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and the whip, Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, outrank Putnam.

And if you’re expecting him to play fair, forget it. Facts just get in the way of whatever makes the best story.

…a set of talking points titled “Air Force 3 – A symbol of Democrat Excess” remained prominently displayed on the regularly updated Web site of the House conference committee days after the story was discredited. It mentioned Pelosi by name and said she was pursuing “an unprecedented perk.”

Asked about the talking points Friday, Putnam responded: “You must check the Web site more often than I do.”

…Putnam blamed any unfairness in how the Pelosi plane issue was portrayed on the media that covered it, and he said he found it “curious” that reporters would question how the story spread.

I guess reporters should just accept these stories on their face and make his life that much easier.

Ick.