Ann Coulter at the rightwing CPAC creepfest today:
“I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.”
We really need to hear what the Cheneys think about this — not just Mary and her spouse, Heather Poe, but the parents, Dick and Lynne.
Touchdown: In his State of the Union speech, Pres. George Bush signaled the priority his administration gives the post-Katrina recovery of New Orleans — by not mentioning it all. Adding salt to the wound, the president’s mangling of his talking points during a fly-in photo-op to New Orleans today has become the newest addition to the Bush dyslexicon:
Sometimes it’s hard to see progress when you’re living close to the scene. I guess the New Orleans Saints football team represents to me what’s happening in this part of the state — a resurgence, there’s a renewal. Even though there’s a lot of work to do, the spirit of the people down here is strong.
Entire sections of the city lay devastated within a few miles of the spot where the president made his remarks today. But he wouldn’t know that because he didn’t venture beyond the civilized areas into the neighborhoods still in ruins 18 months after the storm.
Vice Pres. Cheney gave an interview to reporters traveling abroad with him earlier this week with the understanding that they must say their source was a “senior administration official,” not Cheney himself. But even this he screwed up — big time. Here’s a partial transcript:
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The reason the President wanted me to come, obviously, is because of the continuing threat that exists in this part of the world on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border — a threat to Afghanistan, clearly, in our efforts there, the Taliban, cross-border operations; a threat to Musharraf and his government…
Let me just make one editorial comment here. I‘ve seen some press reporting says, “Cheney went in to beat up on them, threaten them.” That’s not the way I work. I don’t know who writes that, or maybe somebody gets it from some source who doesn’t know what I‘m doing, or isn’t involved in it. But the idea that I‘d go in and threaten someone is an invalid misreading of the way I do business.
I would describe my sessions both in Pakistan and Afghanistan as very productive. We’ve had notable successes in both places. I‘ve often said before and I believe it’s still true that we’ve captured and killed more al Qaeda in Pakistan than anyplace else. And I think we’re making progress in Afghanistan.
My sense of it was Karzai was more positive and optimistic than I‘d seen in my recent visits. That doesn’t mean that there’s no threat. That doesn’t mean — no rosy scenario. There’s a hell of a lot of work to be done…
Q You’ve spoken … though, about some of the things that Speaker Pelosi and Representative Murtha have said how that does play to the hands of —
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I was asked by one of your colleagues.
Q But your answer was very articulate.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I responded very carefully.
Q And you suggested that they make — they lend comfort to terrorists, essentially.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, what I said was that that the al Qaeda strategy is based on the notion that they can break the will of the American people. They know they can’t beat us in a stand-up fight. But they do believe — and I think there’s evidence to support this — that they can, in fact, force us to change our policy if they just kill enough Americans, create enough havoc out there. And they cite Beirut in 1983; Mogadishu, 1993, kill Americans, America changes its policy and withdraws. And Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri believe this. They talk about it. It’s not a mystery.
And my point was that if we follow what I believe Speaker Pelosi really wants to do in terms of withdraw, that that would validate the al Qaeda strategy. I was very careful in those words I selected. I didn’t say “give aid and comfort to terrorists.” I didn’t say “unpatriotic.” I said it would validate the al Qaeda strategy….
Not so very long ago, the right wing told us that anyone who criticized Pres. George Bush was “Bush hater” — and that criticizing our president during a time of war was tantamount to hating America.
Well, look who is hatin’ on America now:
[The] annual Conservative Political Action Conference that began this morning is a three-day extravaganza of activism in which purists, not pragmatists, are on parade — and they are busy bashing the president.
“We cannot afford to be ‘Bush Republicans,'” Phyllis Schlafly said, to great applause, in the vast Omni Hotel’s largest ballroom. “This has got to be a grassroots party,” and works best as such, as when “the whole conservative movement rose up to tell George Bush that we could not have Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court.”
Why, oh, why do conservatives hate America?
But wait, there’s more:
“We’ve got to stop this nonsense of teaching our schoolchildren in foreign languages,” she told the crowd. “We cannot afford to let Mexico turn us into a two-language nation.”
She was incensed, she said, that that George Bush had made such a big deal of signing the bill into law that would provide for a fence along part of the border between the countries: “Was that dishonest? I’ve been looking at TV every night and haven’t seen that fence being built yet. We want that fence!”
The less educated Americans are, the easier they are too fool. Right, Phyllis?
In an interview with CNN’s Larry King yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Pres. George Bush had asked her to call him when Vice Pres. Dick Cheney makes outrageous claims about Democrats:
Pelosi … blasted a comment made last week by Vice President Dick Cheney that legislative moves by Pelosi and other House Democrats to oppose Bush’s war policy would “validate” al Qaeda’s strategy.
“What the vice president said is beneath the dignity of his office and beneath the dignity of the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform,” Pelosi said…
The speaker confirmed she called Bush to complain about Cheney’s comments.
“The president had said to me … that he would not tolerate any undermining of anybody’s patriotism or our intention to protect the national security,” she said.
“He said, ‘Could you let me know if this happens?’ So I wanted to let him know that it happened.”
I’m so sure George took Dick to the woodshed over his mean remarks.
Apocalypse now: New reporting by Robert Parry on the behind-the-scenes battle between Pres. Bush and the U.S. military’s top generals picks up where the Seymour Hersh’s story in the New Yorker leaves off — painting a picture of a what amounts to a quiet military coup at the very top ranks of the Pentagon against the neocon cabal at the White House.
The nation’s top brass are convinced that attacking Iran would yield calamitous results, and yet the White House — under the sway of the neocons and Vice Pres. Cheney — is determined at any cost to escalate the sectarian war it has started in Iraq into a full-scale regional war between Sunni Arabs and Shiite Iran.
In an elaborate contest of wills, the generals, apparently including Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have leaked the broad strokes of Cheney’s secret war planning to the media. They have also let it be known that many of them would resign if Cheney and Bush take the country to war.
To counter this threat, Cheney has instructed the Pentagon to be ready to start bombing Iran within 24 hours after a signal from the White House — relying on the military’s “do or die” ethos to force the generals to stay at their posts until after the damage is done:
By creating such a tight time frame for action, Bush would negate the possibility for the Pentagon brass and Congress to mount any serious opposition to a presidential order on Iran, even if they are convinced Bush’s actions will be catastrophic.
The tradition of the U.S. military is to implement presidential orders regardless of doubts. Perhaps months later, a dissenting commander might quietly resign.
That practice and the 24-hour window may help explain why several U.S. generals are pondering now how to stop Bush from blindsiding them with a new war. One of their tactics appears to be leaking indications of their strong opposition to the press.
It was the order to set up the 24 hour trigger that prompted several top generals to signal to the Sunday Times of London this week that they would resign if the order to start the war is given. And, as unlikely as it may seem, it appears that the generals’ resistance may have been worked, at least in the short term:
[One] source told me that the resistance — from the Pentagon, Blair and even Democrats in Congress — appears to be having an effect on Bush’s decision-making. This source said he believed Bush had planned to launch an attack on Iran, possibly as early as this week, but was getting “weak knees.”
Nonetheless, based on the way Cheney and Bush drove the country to war against Iraq in 2002, the best assumption is that the new war against Iran could begin at any moment. It will come, according to Parry’s sources, with an attack by Israel on Iran, probably on its nuclear facilities. When Iran retaliates, the U.S. will come in full force to defend Israel, launching a bombardment of Iran’s infrastructure similar to the “shock and awe” bombing at the start of the war in Iraq.
What the generals want the American people to know is that this nightmare scenario is real, the planning is complete and ready to go — and that an attack could begin at any moment that would likely trigger a full-scale war in the Middle East.
Last Friday, I posted an article about a poll being conducted by Richard Viguerie, poster boy for the Goldwater school of conservatism, and ever so wisely predicted that he would rig the poll to support his far-right platform. See, Viguerie and his cronies feel betrayed and marginalized by the Bush neocons, so what better way to highlight that fact than to mount a rigged poll? Viguerie got what he was looking for, despite the noble efforts of me and Trish to skew the results toward sanity.
The poll was hosted on Viguerie’s Web site ConservativesBetrayed.com. It asked only one question: “Who was responsible for the Republicans’ disastrous defeats, including loss of control of the House and Senate, in the 2006 elections?†Readers were encouraged to select no more than 10 reasons from the 31 choices provided. Viguerie’s agenda is clear from his presentation of the results:
Their number one culprit: “Conservative leaders who kept silent when the GOP became the party of Big Government.†Coming in sixth was “Conservative media that kept silent while the GOP became the party of Big Government.†More than 77.1 % of Republicans selected conservative leaders, with 47.8% selecting conservative media, as one of the reasons for the negative outcome of the election.
“While many conservative leaders and conservative media outlets kept quiet, or were even cheerleaders for the White House and Congress, the grassroots noticed very little of a conservative agenda but huge increases in federal spending,†Viguerie explained. “And because the Big Government Republican politicians were not receiving criticism from conservative leaders and conservative media, they felt free to indulge their tendencies to spend and spent in order to buy votes.â€
“It is interesting to note that the #3 reason cited by Republicans was ‘legal corruption’ to ‘buy’ votes through the use of taxpayers money for special interest purposes. That strategy backfired with the voters,†Viguerie said.
What’s interesting to note, Richard, is that George W. Bush was listed in fifth place when most people would agree that the election was a referendum on his incompetence and failed policies. How could you look at what happened in the 2006 elections and not blame the Republican loss on George Bush? Should have been number-one, if you ask me, but Viguerie’s cohorts loaded the results with a focus on the media’s influence and dumb stuff like Ted Stevens of Alaska:
The Top 10 selections made by 850 self-identified Republicans were:
1. Conservative leaders who kept silent when the GOP became the party of Big Government
2. Illegal corruption, such as Mark Foley, Robert Ney, and Jack Abramoff
3. Legal corruption, such as spending on special interest groups to “buy†their votes, including earmarks
4. Mainstream media that may have influenced the voters to throw out the Republicans
5. President George W. Bush
6. Conservative media that kept silent while the GOP became the party of Big Government
7. Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), former President Pro Tempore of the Senate and promoter of the $223 million Bridge to Nowhere
8. Blunders and misstatements by Republican candidates
9. Former Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN)
10. Congressman Dennis Hastert (R-IL), former Speaker of the House
Viguerie delightedly noted that “There were only minor variations in the order of the list among self-identified Democrats, members of other political parties, and independents.” Well, duh, Dickie, there were like 20 times as many self-identified Republicans voting on your site, compared to a handful of those of us with the intestinal fortitude to stomach your site’s content long enough to vote.
Another tale of rank homophobia in professional sports. Just two weeks after retired NBA player Tim Hardaway told an interviewer that he “hated” gay people, campaign finance forms from the 2004 election cycle reveal that Tom Ward and Aubrey McClendon, two of the owners of the NBA Seattle Sonics and the WNBA Seattle Storm, provided nearly 100 percent of the funding, over $1 million, for Americans United to Preserve Marriage a group run by professional homophobe Gary Bauer:
The campaign finance records I’ve reviewed show that Sonics/Storm co-owner Tom Ward has contributed $475,000 to Gary L. Bauer’s Americans United to Preserve Marriage.
And another Sonics/Storm co-owner, Aubrey McClendon, contributed $625,000.
Both men made their first contributions to the group, $250,000 apiece, on September 8, 2004 — the day after the group was formed.
As I said, the controversial group doled out $1,056,962 in the 2004 election cycle, which means Storm owners Ward and McClendon basically bankrolled the whole thing. Indeed, records show that between the 2004 and 2006 cycles the group spent $1.3 million total while Ward and McClendon’s donations total $1.1 million.
These same millionaires recently sought a huge tax break from the Washington state legislature:
The millionaires who’ve turned to this state’s left-leaning Legislature to authorize a $300 million tax subsidy for a new basketball arena have been playing right-wing politics. Two members of the new Sonics ownership group are heavyweight financiers of a national political group dedicated to banning gay marriage.
A spokesman for the teams’ owners said the two men have a right to their opinions:
“People are entitled to have their views, they are not views that I happen to agree with … but they are not trying to impose them on anyone out here,” [Jim] Kneeland said.
“I won’t argue that some of the owners may have more conservative political views than the norm out here; one of the things that they agreed to when they bought the team is that they would leave their politics at the state line,” Kneeland said. “They have done that. They were not involved in the election cycle out here last year and have no intention of doing so.”
It is a fact of life that gay women are among the biggest fans of women’s sports, so on a marketing level, at the very least, you’d think these bubbas would have more sense than to fund a group the sole purpose of which is to deny rights to gay people.
I doubt you’ll see too many gay women at future Storm games — in fact, the team is likely facing a boycott. As the man said, everyone has a right to their views.
Earlier this month, the board of directors of the Minuteman anti-illegal immigrant group forcibly removed founder Jim Gilchrist as president, saying it found over $400,000 missing from the organization’s bank accounts.
Gilchrist took the matter to court yesterday, asking a judge to reinstate him, and leveling counter-charges at his former allies:
Gilchrist said all money raised by his organization was accounted for and that his critics had leveled false allegations to gain control of the organization. In court papers, he accused his opponents of hacking into the Minuteman website, stealing money from Minuteman bank accounts, diverting other money to funds they control and stealing 20,000 pieces of letterhead and envelopes.
And Guy Mailly, Gilchrist’s attorney, argued in court that the three members on the seven-member board who ousted Gilchrist had no voting power and, if they had, they voted him out without a required quorum.
Minuteman board members say that:
[A] direct mail company helped raise $750,000 for the group in 2006, but that she believes the Minuteman campaign received only $311,000. [New treasurer Deborah] Courtney said she and others had been unable to trace the rest of the money…
Gilchrist’s opponents also allege in interviews that he used Minuteman funds to promote the book he co-wrote — “Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America’s Borders” — but kept the royalties.
They also said he should not have used $13,000 in Minuteman funds to defend himself in court against their allegations. He said the group must pay to defend itself against “rogues.”
Rev. Marvin Stewart, the group’s new president says that Gilchrist’s charisma drew him into the group, but an organization set up to fight something illegal ought to be rigorous about obeying the law. “[When] we talk about the rule of law as an organization fighting illegal immigration, we too as an organization must be in compliance with the rule of law,” Stewart said. “When we allow these things to occur with any organization, we send a message to the public.”
Are you sure you’re a Republican, Rev. Stewart?
Trump and the Iranians seem to be in different realities,
Though they share a callousness toward the war’s casualties.
Is Trump insane
Or just insanely vain?
And how can we extract ourselves from his “Quagmire of the Vanities?”
