Month: March 2007

Hawaiian Rep Calls Bush Emergency Iraq Budget “Baloney”

Trish

U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D — Hawaii), has given us talking points for when Republicans start claiming Democrats are the bad guys by refusing to keep up Bush’s sham emergency funding of his wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan. Abercromie is chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces, and he’s followed the money trail.

Some of the so-called emergency replacement items in the 2007 request won’t even be available until 2010 or later

The Bush administration has asked Congress to approve $93.4 billion in emergency funding for Iraq and Afghanistan for the rest of 2007 and another $141.7 billion for next year. This, on top of a proposed 2008 defense budget of $481.4 billion.

Please note that the two supplemental appropriations requests are termed “emergency,” which ought to mean unexpected or unpredictable costs. But the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been funded through emergency spending requests since they began. …

Why is a supplemental request the budget vehicle of choice? Because as an emergency measure, it doesn’t count against the budget ceiling that Congress adopts to guide spending, and therefore isn’t figured into government estimates of our annual budget deficit. So, for the last four years, these emergency spending bills have helped President Bush obscure the true cost of the war.

As “emergency” legislation, these supplemental requests don’t get the same scrutiny as regular annual appropriation bills. In fact, for the last five years, there’s been heavy pressure from the administration and the Republican majority in Congress to approve them quickly and without argument. Those who have opposed, or even questioned, any part have been accused of “not supporting our troops.”

The Bush administration is already saying that if it doesn’t get everything it wants — or if Congress adds requirements for troop readiness or demands for protective equipment — our men and women in combat will run out of bullets or be left stranded in the desert.

Baloney.

[…]

PBS to Air Inconvenient Truths About Mormons — and Romney

Trish

PBS is working on a two-part special on Mormons, set to air April 30 and May 1. The Boston Globe’s Alex Beam says it could hurt Republican presidential candidate Gov. Mitt Romney, since the less Joe Sixpack knows about the tenets of the cult (oops, I said the C-word), the better.

“PBS claims it has 75 million viewers a week…It’s bad math for the Mittster”

The Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormons call themselves, cooperated with “The American Experience ” and “Frontline, ” the show’s co-producers. [Filmmaker Helen] Whitney in turn pays the church the compliment of taking its faith very seriously indeed. The positives are there for all to see: the Mormons’ triumph over persecution in mid-century America; the dramatic “exodus” from Illinois to Utah, the “country no one else wanted,” according to Wallace Stegner, a great admirer of the Mormon pioneers; the devotion to family and community.

But also on view are doctrines and practices that most Americans would view as strange…

“The Mormons” even tackles the ultimate red herring, “celestial marriage,” Joseph Smith’s term for polygamy…”The Mormons” estimates that 30,000 to 60,000 fundamentalist believers practice polygamy. Whitney has footage of 11 happy children passing plates around the dinner table, with three mothers and a father in attendance. Heather has three Mommies! Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

Michael Sullivan, “Frontline” executive producer for special projects, calls the project “respectful but frank. We’re not out to get the Mormons.” He says “there is a small section on Romney” in the portion of the documentary that is still being edited. Romney declined to be interviewed for the show.

What does it all mean? PBS claims it has 75 million viewers a week. Let’s say one-tenth — no, one-twentieth — of that audience watches “The Mormons.” That’s almost 4 million men and women who will know more about the Mormon faith than Romney might wish them to know. It’s bad math for the Mittster.

Rudy Giuliani’s Home Life is a Mess

Trish

Rut-roh! America’s mayor isn’t the world’s greatest dad. According to his son, Rudy’s kids are not that into their dad’s third wife. Then again, Rudy doesn’t seem that into his kids.

Though he supports his father, Andrew Giuliani does not plan on participating in his campaign. “I will not be active in his campaign,” he said. “I am too busy with golf.”

Andrew Giuliani said he and his father have recently tried to reconcile after not speaking “for a decent amount of time.” In the [recent New York] Times article, Andrew attributed their strained relationship to [Judith] Nathan, saying, “There’s obviously a little problem that exists between me and his wife.”

According to the Times, Rudy Giuliani used to pride himself on attending all his children’s events, but at some point after his marriage to Nathan in 2003 he stopped. He missed his son’s graduation in 2005 and his 17-year old daughter’s plays in the last 18 months…

Though he supports his father, Andrew Giuliani does not plan on participating in his campaign. As a Duke University sophomore and aspiring professional golfer, he has no time for distractions.

“I will not be active in his campaign,” he said. “I am too busy with golf.”

Now there’s a rousing endorsement. At least one pundit, presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, thinks Rudy’s home life could be a liability.

According to Brinkley, the critical area candidates must keep pristine during the grueling race to the White House is their wholesome family image. Scenes like Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., with his irresistible little girls or Republican Mitt Romney surrounding himself with his children and grandchildren when he announced his run for president are priceless.

“The big moment, the memorable moment, isn’t the speech but it’s when the candidate steps forward, the wife comes on, the kids rush on and you hear this great ‘aww,’ and everyone feels there is a specialness to this person,” Brinkley said.

But Rudy is special. How many people have married their second cousin, then moved in with a T.V. personality while still married to her, then had the marriage annulled since it was — after all — to his second cousin, proceeded to marry the T.V. chick and have two kids with her while carrying on a long-term and fairly public relationship with a staffer, then called a press conference to announce he was divorcing the second wife before mentioning it to her, and then married, not the staffer, but a drug company rep?

Yes, there is a “specialness” to Rudy that few men can match. I hope.

Quote du Jour

Jon Ponder

“He’s not bright enough to be President. For a long time, anyone who questioned Bush’s ability to think was pointed to the opinion polls and told that discussing whether or not the President is borderline stupid was bad manners and counterproductive. Actually, that is the main problem with Bush. He neither reads, nor writes, nor speaks well. It turns out that a C average is not good enough for the Presidency.”

— Molly Ivins, March 2004

When Will Cable News Report on the U.S. Attorney Scandal?

Jon Ponder

Now that Anna Nicole Smith’s body has been buried (for the time being anyway) maybe the cable news channels can find time to do in-depth reporting on the Bush administration’s mass firing of U.S. attorneys last December.

With no underlings to blame for the firings, the White House will resort to its next best trick — they will launch a coordinated smear campaign against the prosecutors as early as Monday morning.

If nothing else, they could cover a hearing into the matter announced by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee for Tuesday at 2 p.m. Four of the fired prosecutors — Carol Lam of California, David Iglesias of New Mexico, H.E. “Bud” Cummins of Arkansas and John McKay of Seattle — have been subpoenaed to appear.

Bush officials say they are surprised about the uproar over the firings — and shocked, shocked, I tell ya — that the Dems would say the dismissals were motivated by politics. True to form, however, the excuse they offer for the purge — that the prosecutors all had poor performance records — does not square with reality on the ground. In fact, the fired attorneys appear to have been well-respected, competent and independent. Several had just received exemplary performance reviews, and none have been reported to have had bad reviews.

Democrats suspect that it was the prosecutors’ independence that led to their dismissals — that the White House judged them as not toeing the Bush line sufficiently, and now intends to replace them with Republican hacks.

In a dismaying and rather unbelievable turn of events, Democrats also recently learned that a heretofore overlooked provision in the Patriot Act grants Attorney Gen. Alberto Gonzalez the power to fill the vacancies without Senate approval. (Didn’t anybody read that bill before they signed it?)

On top of all this, there are the charges of political meddling in investigations. In New Mexico, David Iglesias, the U.S. Attorney who was fired, has said that two Republicans from the state’s congressional delegation tried imprpoperly to influence an investigation into a Democratic politician. He says he received calls last October from a senator and a House member — and that because he would not accede to the pressure, the senator urged the Justice Dept. to fire him.

Today the Washington Post reported that Sen. Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico, has admitted he made a call to Iglesias, but says he called simply to inquire about the status of the investigation, but did not threaten or pressure Iglesias, which would have been an ethics violation. However, Domenici also admits he did recommend that Iglesias be terminated.

Iglesias also said he would name the senator and the representative (assumed to be Heather Wilson) if asked during the hearings, so Domenici’s admission — released into the Sunday news void — was done preemptively to soften the blow on the ethics charges.

The knee jerk reaction of the Bush White House is to pin blame for controversies and scandals on their flunkies. But they are on the record as having signed off on the dismissals, although they insist it was all just routine.

With no underlings to blame, the White House will have to rely on its next best trick — a coordinated smear campaign against the fired prosecutors, which could start as early as Monday morning.

Bushevik to Chair Giuliani Exploratory Committee

Trish

The Dallas Morning News:

AUSTIN – Houston lawyer and Republican fundraiser Pat Oxford has been named chairman of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s presidential exploratory committee.

Mr. Oxford is managing partner at Bracewell & Giuliani, the Houston-based law firm that amended its name when the Republican former federal prosecutor signed on in March 2005. Mr. Oxford has been the point person in Texas for Mr. Giuliani’s preliminary efforts to seek the White House.

A longtime ally of Texas Republican political figures, Mr. Oxford was a “Pioneer” for George W. Bush, in the elite tier of fundraisers who collected at least $100,000 for the president’s election. He also was chairman of two of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s Senate races.

As governor, Mr. Bush appointed Mr. Oxford to the University of Texas Board of Regents and he’s remained an adviser to the Bush administration on judicial selections.

Testimony in ‘Denver Three’ Case Reveals White House Deceptions

Jon Ponder

Last month, testimony in the Scooter Libby trial revealed that former White House spokesman Scott McClellan knowingly lied when he told reporters that neither Libby and Karl Rove had anything to do with leaking of the name of a covert C.I.A. agent. This week, testimony in another court case, this one in Denver, has exposed another deliberate on-the-record lie by McClellan, as well as the legally questionable practice of White House operatives allegedly impersonating Secret Service agents at public events.

Results of a separate investigation into whether White House staffers impersonated Secret Service agents were swept under the rug by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Denver.

The case concerns the expulsion by White House operatives of three non-Republicans, Leslie Weise, Karen Bauer and Alex Young, from a January 2005 appearance by Pres. George Bush in Denver. The event was taxpayer-funded, and the three taxpayers had tickets. Nonetheless the “Denver Three” were escorted out of the area by volunteer Republican Party operatives. Later, men dressed like Secret Service agents told them that they were tossed out because they had arrived in a car with a bumper sticker that read, “No More Blood for Oil.”

On March 30, 2005, McClellan blamed the expulsion of the three suspected liberals on the Republican volunteers:

… I did look into that a little bit more yesterday … My understanding is that it was a volunteer involved in that matter. My sense is that the volunteer thought that these individuals, these three individuals were coming to the event to disrupt it. And those individuals — I think if you look at some of the early news reports even said something to that effect.

Questioned under oath last week, the volunteers said their orders came from the White House staff members. Reporters contacted the staffers who both said they were following White House policy:

A former White House official who ordered three activists expelled from a 2005 Denver public forum with President Bush says it was White House policy to exclude potentially-disruptive guests from Bush’s appearances nationwide.

The former official, Steve Atkiss, revealed the policy today in an interview after two volunteer bouncers identified him and a current White House staffer, Jamie O’Keefe, as the officials who ordered the so-called “Denver Three” activists sent away.

Atkiss is now a U.S. Department of Homeland Security chief of staff.

McClellan cast blame on the volunteers knowing that they were just following orders — knowing all along that it that suspected dissenters were always barred from Dear Leader’s presence.

An earlier investigation in the matter revealed that the Secret Service agents were actually White House staffers:

The Secret Service later investigated whether a Republican volunteer committed a crime of impersonating a federal agent. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Denver declined to press charges, giving no explanation.

Swept under the rug.

Bush Approval in GOP Drops 13 Percentage Points

Jon Ponder

Republicans have a remarkable ability to live in denial:

In the months since the Congressional elections, President Bush has lost substantial support among members of his own party, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

Mr. Bush’s approval rating dropped 13 percentage points since last fall among Republicans, 65 percent of whom now say they approve of the way he is handling his job as president, compared with 78 percent last October.

Over all, Mr. Bush’s job approval remains at one of its lowest points, with 29 percent of all Americans saying they approve of the way he is doing his job, compared with 34 percent at the end of October. Sixty-one percent disapproved, compared with 58 percent in October, within the margin of sampling error.