Month: December 2007
Bush Re-hires Wolfowitz, Puts Him in Charge of Arms Control Advisory Board
Sometimes a Medal of Freedom Just Isn’t Enough
In Bushworld, incompetence must be rewarded (in order to prevent the incompetent ex-employee from writing a tell-all book):
Nearly three years after Paul Wolfowitz resigned as deputy Defense secretary and six months after his stormy departure as president of the World Bank — amid allegations that he improperly awarded a raise to his girlfriend — he’s in line to return to public service.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has offered Wolfowitz, a prime architect of the Iraq War, a position as chairman of the International Security Advisory Board [ISAB], a prestigious State Department panel, according to two department sources who declined to be identified discussing personnel matters. The 18-member panel, which has access to highly classified intelligence, advises Rice on disarmament, nuclear proliferation, WMD issues and other matters.
“We think he is well suited and will do an excellent job,” said one senior official.
Right. What harm could he possibly do as head of this group:
The Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board, formerly called the Arms Control and Nonproliferation Advisory Board (ACNAB), provides the Department with independent insight and advice on all aspects of arms control, disarmament, international security, and related aspects of public diplomacy. The ISAB is sponsored and overseen by the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security. The Board provides its recommendations directly to the Secretary of State. The Board currently has 18 members and is chartered to have up to 25. Board members are national security experts with scientific, military, diplomatic, and political backgrounds. The Board meets in a plenary session on a quarterly basis.
The position was previously held by former lobbyist and U.S. senator, Fred Thompson, who is currently a Republican candidate for president.
Kiss ‘n’ Tell: Got Me Some of that Larry Lovin’
It was probably inevitable. The Idaho Statesman, the newspaper that originally broke the story of Sen. Larry Craig’s arrest in an airport restroom for soliciting an undercover cop, has published the names of four gay men who claim to have had sex with Craig, been solicited by him or experienced “unusual attention” from Mr. Wide Stance.
David Phillips. Mike Jones. Greg Ruth. Tom Russell.
Four gay men, willing to put their names in print and whose allegations can’t be disproved, have come forward since news of U.S. Sen. Larry Craig’s guilty plea. They say they had sex with Craig or that he made a sexual advance or that he paid them unusual attention.
They are telling their stories now because they are offended by Craig’s denials, including his famous statement, “I am not gay, I never have been gay.†Those words, spoken on live national TV on Aug. 28, are now memorialized on a just-released-for-Christmas Talking Senator Larry Craig Action Figure.
OK, so there’s no video, photos or other hard evidence that backs up what the four men say. However, the Statesman has investigated and reports that there’s nothing to disprove what the men say, either:
But the Statesman’s investigation, which included reviews of travel and property records and background checks on all five men, found nothing to disprove the five new accounts. The men offer telling and sometimes similar details about what happened, or the senator’s travel records place him in the city where sex is alleged to have occurred, or his accusers told credible witnesses at the time of the incident.
Needless to say, neither Larry the Love Machine nor his spokespeople would speak to the Statesman. However, a couple of concerned Idahoans did leave comments on the story. Here are the musings of someone who calls itself “PaulTheWasherWoman”:
I still can’t understand why gay men can’t be senators. Just what is it about this all makes it so he can’t continue. Nothing, that’s what. All this does is show the rest of the country that Idaho is either mormon controlled or neo-nazi controlled or whatever. In any case it completely sucks for our image as a state.
‘Nuff said.
Thanks to Bush & GOP, U.S. Debt Is Growing at $1 Mil Per Minute
This ought to drive a stake through the heart of the myth that Republicans are fiscally conservative.
According to the Associated Press, after seven years of mismanagement by George Bush and 12 years of Republican dominance of the Senate and control of the House, the national debt of the United States is now expanding by $1.4 billion per day and $1 million per minute:
What’s that mean to you?
It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States…
[The] government is fast straining resources needed to meet interest payments on the national debt, which stands at a mind-numbing $9.13 trillion.
By the time Bush is scheduled to leave office in January 2009, the debt will be $10 trillion, which is $10,000,000,000,000.00.
It’s Not O.K. to Say “Merry Christmas” To Us
As part of Pensito Review’s War on Christmas during this, the holiest of all shopping seasons*, we want everyone to know it’s not O.K. to say “Merry Christmas” to us. Save it. Zip it. Nip it.
The “It’s O.K. to Say Merry Christmas to Me” merchandising campaign has pushed us, when commanded on how to observe this holiday, from simply wincing on behalf of non-Christians, to groaning and rolling our eyes on behalf of reasonable people, to all-out open hostilities, as they say in the military, which incidentally, fights real wars.
We find the latest gambit from the Focus on the Fambly folks, whose revenues during 2005 were nearly $140 million, especially repellent. Through its Alliance Defense Fund (2004 revenues: $18 million), it claims an astounding 95 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas. That would be a huge jump from Oct., 2005, when a Harper’s article identified considerably fewer Christians in this country.
Depending on which poll you look at and how the question is asked, somewhere around 85 percent of us call ourselves Christian…a smaller number of Americans—about 75 percent—claim they actually pray to God on a daily basis, and only 33 percent say they manage to get to church every week.
But, Christian, Jew, Muslim, or Other, we evidently loves us some Christmas!
We’re not buying it — literally. We personally know both Christians and Non who do not celebrate the birth of Christ, or more accurately, Cool, Now What Else Did You Get Me Day.
What those who use the holiday to ostracize people who choose to do something else on Dec. 25 is really all about is apparent from the ADF “It’s O.K.” web site. “Products” is listed first in the home page navigation, followed by “Donate,” “E-Card,” “Your Rights,” “Attacks on Christmas” and “Legal Request.”
My favorite is the rip-off (can you rip off a rip-off?) site “itsoktosay.com.” It offers design-free t-shirts with the hostile phrase, along with the complaint, “IT’S HIS BRITHDAY AND YOU CANT EVEN SAY HIS NAME!” Maybe they should ask Santa for a spell checker this Xmas.
* Thanks, Earline Gilley
Report: GOP Initiative To ‘Steal’ White House Is Lagging But Still Viable
Organizers Appear to Have Time to Make Up Shortfalls in Donations and Signatures
On Saturday, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Republican-backed effort to give about 20 of California’s 55 Electoral College votes next year is lagging both in fundraising and in the number of signatures required to place the measure on the ballot next June:
As deadlines came and went, backers of [the initiative] continued struggling Friday to gather enough signatures to place the measure before voters.
Organizers had set this week as a deadline for wrapping up their petition drive, but said they had not raised the roughly $2 million needed to pay petition circulators. Secretary of State Debra Bowen had recommended a deadline of Nov. 29.
Campaign manager Dave Gilliard said that agents would work through the weekend to obtain the 434,000 valid signatures required to put the Electoral College initiative on next June’s ballot and that he expected to submit the names by midweek.
The report says Gilliard is “less than certain” that paid signature collectors hired by the campaign would meet their goal 700,000 names this week. The 300,000 “extra” names are needed to replace invalid signatures that will be tossed out during the next step: vetting of the names and addresses by election officials in local districts.
Gilliard also told the Times that fundraising goals have not been met:
Tapping some Republican stalwarts, proponents have raised more than $1 million; the actual figure won’t become public for several days. But Gilliard said $200,000 to $250,000 more was needed to pay circulators for the signatures they have gathered.
“Until it is the bank, I don’t want to make any pronouncements,” he said.
According to the California Secretary of State’s website, the deadline for the initiative is Feb. 8, 2008, so despite the current difficulties, it appears there is technically enough time for organizers to meet both their signature-gathering and fundraising goals.
If the initiative passes and goes into effect next November, the 20 or so Electoral votes ceded to the Republican nominee — roughly the equivalent to those of the state of Ohio — would more than enough to “win” the presidency.
The life cycle of this initiative has been plagued with scandal. In October, a previous version was withdrawn after the lead organizer discovered that the campaign’s only anonymous donor was a major back of Rudolph Giuliani’s presidential campaign.
Huckabee Tells Falwell’s ‘Madrasa’ That God Is Directing His Surge in Polls
During a visit last week to Liberty University, the late Jerry Falwell’s Christian “madrasa” in Virginia, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, the former Baptist preacher and Arkansas governor, told a convocation that his recent surge in polls in Iowa is God’s handiwork, according Falwell’s son Jonathan:
Without irony, apparently, Huckabee also “… identified the ‘fanatic religious zealotry’ of Islamo-fascism as a ‘real threat’ that must be confronted to protect the American way of life.”
Mr. Huckabee … said that Divine providence was responsible for his recent surge in the polls in Iowa, as he noted that he is the candidate with much less capital firepower than his rivals. Despite his fundraising shortfall, his message seems to be resonating with voters.
Without irony, apparently, Huckabee also “… identified the ‘fanatic religious zealotry’ of Islamo-fascism as a ‘real threat’ that must be confronted to protect the American way of life.”
Many political observers believe that the “fanatic religious zealotry” of Christian nationalists like Huckabee, the late Falwell and Pat Robertson, the multimillionaire African diamond miner and television broadcaster, and their followers who advocate replacing the U.S. government with a bible-based theocratic system similar to Islamic Sharia law, are a far greater threat to American democracy than Third World terror groups.
At Liberty, Huckabee also spoke in favor of outlawing abortion and against gay civil rights.
