Month: August 2007

Rove Left White House to Ensure Neocon Victory at Any Cost

Trish

We cheered when Karl Rove announced he was leaving the White House, but the nagging question is why? Here’s my theory: Rove needs total freedom to ensure that Republicans — and Republicans the neocons can continue to control — stay in power.

We are all looking forward to 01.20.09, Bush/Cheney’s last day in office assuming Pelosi continues to refuse to impeach. But they will be leaving behind a crime scene worthy of several teams of CSIs. The fingerprints, buried bodies, photographs, emails, and evidence of wrongdoing that you and I haven’t even thought of will be everywhere. They simply cannot let a Democrat win.

Bush/Cheney will be leaving behind a crime scene worthy of several teams of CSIs. They simply cannot let a Democrat win in 2008.

Rove knows this. And while in years past he obscured his partisan dirty work by using Republican National Committee computers, saving the presidency for neocons is too important to do it in half-measures. It will take massive election fraud to generate the numbers to carry a candidate who will most likely garner only about 25 to 30 percent of the vote, judging by current polls. Rove can’t do that from inside the White House.

Some people are wondering if he’s already setting a trap.

In this case, Rove’s weeklong broadside against Clinton…looks suspiciously like an exercise in reverse psychology that his team employed three years ago when it was preparing for President Bush’s reelection bid…

In the run-up to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, when it was not yet clear who Bush’s opponent would be that November, Rove and his aides had begun to fear that their most dangerous foe would be then-Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina…But instead of attacking Edwards, Rove’s team opened fire at Kerry.

Their thinking went like this, [former Rove ally Matthew] Dowd explained: Democrats, in a knee-jerk reaction to GOP attacks, would rally around Kerry, whom Rove considered a comparatively weak opponent, and make him the party’s nominee. Thus Bush would be spared from confronting Edwards, the candidate Republican strategists actually feared most…

If that sounds implausibly convoluted, consider Dowd’s own words:

“Whomever we attacked was going to be emboldened in Democratic primary voters’ minds.”

Rove knows us well, although he proved in the midterms that he’s not infallible. Still, the trick worked before.

Is Rove playing a similar game against Clinton? Is he trying to stampede Democrats into nominating her, having concluded that Obama, Edwards or someone else would pose a stiffer challenge to the Republican nominee?

…Conservative activist Grover Norquist said that he doubted conservatives were trying to meddle in the Democratic primaries and that nobody on his side thinks that party’s base would pay attention to Rove…

“I want to run against Hillary Clinton because I think she’s the easiest person to beat,” Norquist said. “But she’s by no means a pushover.”

Yeah, nobody on their team would pay attention to Rove. My ass.

The good news is Rove has left the building. The bad news is now we have no way to know what he’s up to.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

What this country needs is a good impeachment. In itself impeachment is not evil or divisive, unless it is done cheaply. If it is done admirably, and it tears the country apart, then the country is so fragile that anything could tear it apart.

— Gail Thain Parker (1941- ), American college administrator, educator, writer

Government Set to Contract Out Spying on You

Trish

Imagine the government watching you, listening to your conservations, reading your mail, and — someday probably — your thoughts as well.

Bad, right?

Now imagine the government farming out these repugnant tasks to private companies. Turns out you don’t have to imagine. It’s a done deal.

The proposed contracts reflect a continuing expansion of the Defense Department’s intelligence-related work and fit a well-established pattern of Bush administration transfers of government work to private contractors.

The Defense Intelligence Agency is preparing to pay private contractors up to $1 billion to conduct core intelligence tasks of analysis and collection over the next five years, an amount that would set a new record in the outsourcing of such functions by the Pentagon’s top spying agency.

The proposed contracts, outlined in a recent early notice of the DIA’s plans, reflect a continuing expansion of the Defense Department’s intelligence-related work and fit a well-established pattern of Bush administration transfers of government work to private contractors.

That’s right. Contractors like Diebold with corporate agendas of supporting rightwing initiatives and candidates, or Haliburton, with monetary and ideological ties to the Bush Administration, or even ChoicePoint, which bungled and leaked hundreds of thousands of consumer records online, will be in charge of collecting and maintaining “intelligence” on you. And — yikes! — me.

The DIA did not specify exactly what it wants the contractors to do but said it is seeking teams to fulfill “operational and mission requirements” that include intelligence “Gathering and Collection, Analysis, Utilization, and Strategy and Support.” It holds out the possibility that five or more contractors may be hired and promised more details on Aug. 27.

We’ll be waiting for those details. So will one congressperson.

“Mind-blowing,” was the reaction of Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, when she learned of the DIA proposal.

You said it sister.

Was Rudy’s Luxury Command Center Built at WTC So It Could be His Lovenest?

Trish

Lovebirds Rudy and Judi at the recent Pepsi 400 in Daytona

Palm Beach Post writer Frank Cerabino contrasted the sexploits of two politicians and found the one involving Rudolph Guiliani not getting nearly enough play.

Palm Beach Post: Was tragic placement of New York City’s emergency command center at ground zero because of its convenience as a cozy private love nest for a mayor-turned- presidential candidate and his mistress-turned- third-wife?

Florida State Rep. Bob Allen (R-Merritt Island) continues to dig deeper holes for himself — now requiring some of that mining equipment going unused in Utah and China. First he demonstrated that getting arrested in a public bathroom for offering $20 for homosexual sex isn’t the worse mistake a politician make. One of Allen’s many defenses for the bust was that he was afraid of the undercover officer he solicited because the man was black.

Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio piled on, criticizing Allen for injecting “a very disturbing element to an already troubling incident.” Rubio stripped him of his legislative committee posts.

Allen promptly put his foot in his mouth again by likening the actions of Rubio, who is the first Cuban-American leader of the House, to Fidel Castro’s.

“That’s a Cuba thing, something Fidel Castro does,” Allen said, before claiming to be greatly misunderstood.

I’m not sure if you have to live in Florida to understand how egregious it is to compare any Cuban-American politician with Castro. If so, then just take my word that it’s a) never been done and b) very, very bad.

But the sex story that actually matters, Cerabino says, is Rudy’s.

Wayne Barrett of The Village Voice has written about the lavish emergency command center that former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani fashioned in one of the former World Trade Center buildings.

“Giuliani’s office had a humidor for cigars and mementos from City Hall, including a fire horn, police hats and fair hats, as well as monogrammed towels in his bathroom. His suite was bulletproofed and he visited it often, even on weekends, bringing his girlfriend Judi Nathan there long before the relationship surfaced,” Barrett wrote. “He had his own elevator.”

After the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, some officials had suggested that the city’s emergency command center be built in Brooklyn. But Giuliani wanted it within walking distance of city hall in Manhattan. The World Trade Center command center, which was destroyed in the Sept. 11 attacks, has since been constructed at the Brooklyn site Giuliani rejected.

…if there’s even a smidgen of consideration in the tragic placement of New York City’s emergency command center at ground zero because of its convenience as a cozy private love nest for a mayor-turned-presidential candidate and his mistress-turned-third-wife, then I think it deserves far more attention than the amusing fate of an inconsequential Florida legislator.

Time Magazine Makes Billy Graham Horny

Trish

Hey, what’s with the horns on Billy Graham? If you’re a wingnut, you’ll find it’s the liberal press sending a subliminal message.

“Well, the left media continues its crusade of soft propaganda,” wrote conservative blogger John Ruskin.

“This time, the target is Rev. Billy Graham. Yeah, tell me that was an innocent mistake.”

O.K. “Hey John Ruskin, that was an innocent mistake.”

Actually, it wasn’t even a mistake, it was a layout.

Besides, everyone knows Rev. Graham wears his horns the other way, facing front, not to the side.

Excuse me but I have to go now. I just heard there was a tortilla with Elvis on it across town that I need to see.

Public Service, GOP Style: Tony Snow Will Quit White House ‘When Money Runs Out’

Jon Ponder

Tony Snow left his job as a mid-profile but extravagantly paid GOP propagandist for Fox “News” radio to take an extremely high-profile job with a salary in the measly $150,000 range as a GOP propagandist for the White House.

It is shocking to hear a top White House official say he’s quitting because the pay is lousy. It not only reveals a lack of class, it shows that the man who speaks for George Bush appears to hold a smoldering contempt for him.

Now he says he has warned his betters at the White House that he will only stay on as press secretary until his government salary no longer supports the lifestyle he became accustomed to as a media elite:

HUGH HEWITT: Your intention to go the distance, Tony Snow?

TS: No, I’m not going to be…I’ve already made it clear I’m not going to be able to go the distance, but that’s primarily for financial reasons. I’ve told people when my money runs out, then I’ve got to go.

HH: How long will that be?

TS: I’m not going to tell you.

HH: Well, come on, make some news.

TS: No.

HH: All right.

It is shocking to hear a top White House official say he’s quitting because the pay is lousy. It not only reveals a lack of class, it shows that the man who speaks for George Bush appears to hold him in contempt. Normally, a White House official making this sort of statement would hasten to add that it is an honor and a privilege to serve the president and so forth, even if he didn’t mean it. Snow didn’t bother.