Year: 2007
By Stifling War Debate, GOP Senators Risk Handing Dems a Super Majority in ’08
In shutting down debate yesterday on Pres. Bush’s escalation of the Iraq war, Senate Republicans embarked on what could be the riskiest legislative gambit since House Speaker Newt Gingrich shut the government down during a budget dispute with Pres. Clinton.
If Dems were to hold all their seats in 2008 (as they did in 2006) and pick up just 10 of 13 GOP seats that are in play, they would have a 60-seat “super majority.”
The GOP filibuster puts GOP senators squarely on the opposite side of public sentiment. In a Rasmussen poll released last Friday, 55 percent of Americans said they favor a firm timetable for withdrawing troops that gets our troops out within one year — while only one-third (33 percent) said they believe the escalation will succeed.
All but two Republican senators voted with their leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, to close the debate on a non-binding resolution — a rebuke of the president so mild that critics view it as little more than a slap on the wrist. Sen. Joe Lieberman, the independent from Connecticut, voted with the Republicans.
The two GOP senators who voted with the Democrats — Susan Collins of Maine and Norm Coleman of Minnesota — are both up for reelection in 2008.
And they are not alone. In fact, what makes the GOP gambit so risky is that nearly half the members the GOP Senate conference — 21 out of 48 — are up for reelection next year, whereas only 12 of the 48 Democratic seats are in play. (Neither seat held by independents — Lieberman and Bernie Sanders of Vermont — are up.)
If their votes now to stifle debate on this unpopular war were to become an issue in campaigns next year, the GOP losses could hand a 60-seat majority to the Dems, giving them the magic number required to shut off filibusters on bills and nominations.
As things stand now, one GOP senator, Wayne Allard of Colorado, has announced his retirement, and five GOP seats are considered vulnerable — Collins, Coleman, John Sununu of New Hampshire, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and Gordon Smith of Oregon — with seven seats called “Republican favored.” If the Dems were to hold all their seats (as they did in 2006) and pick up just 10 of the 13 seats that are in play, they would have a 60-seat “super majority.”
In 1996, voters’ dim view of Gingrich’s government shut-down — especially after he admitted that he was motivated by a fit of pique after feeling slighted by Pres. Clinton on Air Force One — made it a winning campaign issue for the Clinton-Gore campaign.
Similarly, voters in 2008 who are angry over the Senate Republicans’ seemingly bizarre support for an unpopular war and an even more unpopular president may be surprised to learn that Minority Leader McConnell has close, even intimate, ties to the Bush administration. His wife, Elaine Chao, is a Bush Cabinet member; having served as secretary of labor since 2000.
Better Than the Super Bowl
PUPPIES!
This is for Buck, who probably missed the Super Bowl yesterday even though he was in the vicinity.
Microsoft’s PR Ploys Don’t Play at Pensito Review
Not for sale: It has come to my attention that recently Microsoft Corp. sent Acer Ferrari laptop computers to about 90 bloggers to assist them in reviewing Microsoft’s new Vista operating system. As a result, some columnists criticized said bloggers for accepting a $2,200 gift from a company whose product they were then supposed to objectively review for the supposed benefit of consumers.
Let me just set the record straight — we here at Pensito Review did not receive Acer Ferrari computers from Microsoft. At least I know I didn’t. And I’m pretty sure that my fellow editors didn’t either. Jon would have bragged if he had received one, and Trish would have broken it within 48 hours and would have told us that via e-mail from her favorite North Florida library branch.
We simply refuse to be stoogie tools of Bill Gates.
But the fact that we did not receive Acer Ferrari computers from Microsoft is beside the point — it’s our ethical standards that count, unlike those unscrupulous bloggers who kept their Acer Ferrari computers. Would we have sent our newly received Acer Ferrari computer back to the Microsoft public relations flack who sent it to us? You bet!
See, the only way that we here at Pensito Review can remain astride our high horses is to be living emblems of ethicality. The only way we can continue to muckrake is by staying above the muck or moral compromise. The only way we can, with clear consciences, lambaste wingnuts and Repugs with impunity is to be better than they are, which, though relatively easy, does require some effort. We have our standards, and by golly, we’re sticking to them, no matter how many Acer Ferrari computers Microsoft throws at us.
You know, this is not the first instance where Microsoft has tried to influence public opinion through a shameless public relations ploy.
In 1998, the Los Angeles Times reported that Microsoft, during its antitrust trials, hired PR companies to flood newspapers with fake letters of support, bearing ordinary individuals’ names but actually written by Microsoft PR staff.
Pensito Review did not run those fake letters, and not just because it didn’t exist in 1998. If it had existed, we still would not have run fake-o PR letters.
Later, during the antitrust trials, Microsoft attempted to prove the inseparability of Windows and Internet Explorer by playing a video for the judge. But the government’s lawyer noticed that as the tape rolled on, the number of icons on the desktop kept changing. Microsoft had spliced together footage from different computers to make its point.
We would have been too savvy for that one, too. Especially Jon, who lives in Los Angeles and thus is close to the motion picture industry.
Then in 2002, Microsoft’s Web site featured a testimonial called “Confessions of a Mac to PC Convert,” a first-person account by an attractive brunette “freelance writer” about how she had fallen in love with Windows XP.
Unfortunately, a Slashdot member discovered that the identical photo was available for rent from the stock-photo libraries of GettyImages.com. Sure enough: Microsoft had hired a PR firm to write the testimonial. The “switcher” did not actually exist.
That one would never have made it past our crack fact-checking team here at Pensito Review. Besides, anyone who has ever used a Macintosh computer would be utterly incapable of “falling in love” with Windows XP.
So the point that those “stunts” were pulled by Mircosoft before Pensito Review existed is moot. The real point is, our unassailable ethical standards would have protected us — like some kind of magical shield in a movie full of elves and orcs — from the evil minions of Microsoft.
I’m sure that Microsoft has not learned the error of its ways and the next time it introduces a new operating system it might send us a laptop computer to review that operating system. But we won’t take the bait from a company trying to exploit the lax ethical standards of the so-called blogosphere. We refuse to be stoogie tools of Bill Gates.
Nope. That puppy is going to be headed back to Redmond, Wash., just as quick as United Parcel Service can take it. Of course, it might not be fully functional. Right, Trish?
Quote du Jour
The enthusiasm for war, and the predatory temper of which it is the index, prevail in the largest measure among the upper classes, especially among the hereditary leisure class.
— Thorsten Veblen (1887-1929), American social scientist
What If Vice Pres. Gore Had Outed a Covert CIA Specialist in Terror Weapons?
Imagine the reaction from the media and the Republican Party if this story had been in the news ten years ago:
Looks like Cheney will get away with jeopardizing our national security without punsihment, or even a mild rebuke.
Sworn testimony has revealed that Vice Pres. Al Gore masterminded the unmasking of a covert CIA agent who specialized in the terrorist blackmarket for weapons of mass destruction — and that Gore’s motive was to exact political retribution against the agent’s husband, an outspoken critic of Clinton-Gore policies.
It is hardly an exaggeration to suggest that Vice Pres. Gore would have been hounded from office within weeks of such headlines — as Vice Pres. Mondale or any other Democratic vice president would have been.
And yet we now know from testimony by an FBI agent and others at Scooter Libby’s perjury trial in the CIA Leak scandal that it was not Karl Rove who masterminded the campaign to reveal agent Valerie Plame’s identity, as most of us assumed — it was Libby’s boss, Dick Cheney, the vice president of the United States.
It also clear from the evidence that Cheney was fully aware that Plame worked undercover for the CIA’s Counter-Proliferation Division, where she was involved hands-on in tracking of illegal sales and shipments of WMD around the world. It is also clear that Cheney was more than willing to risk whatever intelligence assets Plame had developed in order to retaliate against her husband, former Amb. Joe Wilson, who had dared to call the Cheney-Bush administration on its lies about Iraq’s purported nuclear capabilities.
If Cheney were a Democrat, and these accusations had been made against him as part of sworn testimony, the reaction in Washington would be as clamorous as it would be swift:
- Investigations would be launched by both the Senate and House committees on national security and government affairs.
- Even in advance of the hearings, the House would have drawn up Bills of Impeachment against the vice president and probably the president as well.
- Fox News would be leading with the story wall-to-wall, couching the news as a deliberate, pro-terrorist security breach orchestrated from the White House.
- Rush Limbaugh and his cohorts would be hammering away at the vice president, calling his patriotism into question and implying that he was revealing national secrets at the behest of his boss, the president.
Instead, what we have gotten from the media and the Congress is bascially, “So what? It’s just Cheney being Cheney.” It is apparent that the vice president will get away with jeopardizing our national security without punsihment, or even a mild rebuke.
Disaster: Bush Says He’ll Continue Meddling in Middle East After His Presidency
George Bush has informed his inner circle that after he leaves office he plans to invite Middle East leaders to his think tank in Texas, where he will school them in the finer points of democratic governance.
If Bush really is allowed to continue meddling in the Middle East after he leaves office, there could soon be nuclear bomb craters dotting the landscape from Tel Aviv to Teheran.
Too bad no one in his inner circle has the cojones to tell him that the rest of the world views his efforts in the region to date as having done more harm than good. His approach — bombing Iraq back to the Stone Age and then installing a weak-as-treacle democracy among the ruins — has supplanted the Vietnam War as the biggest foreign policy disaster in U.S. history.
Meanwhile, here at home, not since the Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in the Adams administration has a gang in government done more to assault the U.S. Constitution. Through his actions — from wiretapping U.S. citizens to creating “signing statements” that abrogate the bills he signs into law — Bush has demonstrated an aristocrat’s disdain for the institutions of democracy.
The president’s sad bluster about staying involved in Middle East politics would be funny if it weren’t so fraught with danger. Allowing him to meddle in the Middle East could easily result in nuclear-bomb craters dotting the landscape from Tel Aviv to Teheran.
‘Realists’ Pull Iran Report Because Neo-con Claims Went Too Far
It is interesting to learn that Sec. of State Condoleeza Rice felt empowered to withdraw a report on Iran’s weapons dealings because she and Sec. Defense Bob Gates thought some of its neo-con claims were too outlandish, but what we know about the neo-cons is that they always come out on top in this administration:
The big briefing planned by the Bush administration on supposed Iranian weapons shipments to Iraq had to be postponed because the presentation was judged exaggerated and unsubstantiated by Secretary of State Condi Rice and by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates. So that raises the question of who was spearheading this presentation inside the Bush administration? Getting Iran is an obsession of the Neoconservatives at the American Enterprise Institute and their plants inside the administration, such as Iran-Contra felon Elliot Abrams in the National Security Council and David Wurmser and John Hannah on Cheney’s rump Veep national security council. Many Neoconservatives and other sorts of wingnut have a secret alliance with the Marxist Islamist MEK terrorist organization, which feeds them allegations about Iran in Iraq just as Ahmad Chalabi used to with regard to the Baath regime in Iraq.
So have the Cheney Neoconservatives been at least somewhat reined in by a new Rice-Gates axis of Realists?
Finally — Proof that Limbaugh, Lawyers are from Same Circle of Hell
Dyn-o-mite: Not that there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that it could actually happen, but the fact that anyone would nominate Viagra-assisted blowhard Rush Limbaugh for any world-recognized prize beggars belief. Yesterday, however, hyper-conservative law firm Landmark Legal Foundation announced in a press release that it had nominated the radio wingnut windbag for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Either the LLF is mounting a ballsy and if so, pretty cool public relations stunt or, more likely, the outfit is experiencing complete disassociation from the plane of reality that you and I share:
‘Rush Limbaugh is the foremost advocate for freedom and democracy in the world today.’
Note: Ironic quote marks added for emphasis
Note: Ironic quote marks added for emphasis
Limbaugh, whose daily radio show is heard by more than 20 million people on more than 600 radio stations in the United States and around the world, was nominated for the prestigious award for his “nearly two decades of tireless efforts to promote liberty, equality and opportunity for all humankind, regardless of race, creed, economic stratum or national origin. These are the only real cornerstones of just and lasting peace throughout the world,” said Landmark President Mark R. Levin.
“Rush Limbaugh is the foremost advocate for freedom and democracy in the world today,” explained Levin. “Everyday he gives voice to the values of democratic governance, individual opportunity and the just, equal application of the rule of law — and it is fitting that the Nobel Committee recognize the power of these ideals to build a truly peaceful world for future generations.”
Whew! I almost fractured my irony bone while reading that. Fortunately, the thoughtful Landmark folks provide a description of the prize in the press release:
The Nobel Peace Prize, which is given by a committee of the Norwegian Storting (the Norwegian Parliament), was created by inventor Alfred Nobel in his will in 1896 to be given to the individual or organization who “shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding of peace congresses.”
Shall we compare the sentiment in that description to a few choice Rush quotes culled from his Web site?
“Did you see ExxonMobil’s profit? Oh, this is great! Makes me feel proud to be an American! Makes me love capitalism! The largest annual profit in US history: 39 1/2 billion dollars. Yes!”
“When you focus on Tony Dungy’s and Lovie Smith’s race, you’re doing them an injustice. They are great men. They happen to be the best in their conferences this year. And both of these guys are ‘clean’ and ‘articulate’ — absolutely right.”
“Mike, I can’t believe that you’re going to hire a maid and only pay her $7.15. You know what I pay my maid, you cheap bastard? I pay my maid more than you will make in a lifetime!”
“The Democrats are worried that any action against Iran might get the country behind the president. Did I just say that? Yes, I said it! I am quoting them! They said it! Here we are in the war on terror, and these people have it out for us. I mean, there’s no other way to put it!”
“What do these four things have in common: embryonic stem cells, synthetic fuels, global warming, and Hillary Rodham Clinton? They are all a lifetime away from delivering their promise. They’re all liberal Democrat fantasies, pure and simple.”
“Don’t insult me — I haven’t made $7 million a year in 14 years! Do you realize how that humiliates me in front of my audience and this country?”
I imagine that his Nobel acceptance speech would be like his radio show — stream-of-consciousness potty talk punctuated by bombastic blather and preposterous pronouncements. That’s okay, though, Rush is as far away from the Nobel Peace Prize as Joe Biden is from becoming president.
In a fit of non-irony, Landmark Legal Foundation disclosed that Limbaugh serves as an unpaid member of its board of advisors.
Bush Lied Again: Troop Surge Could Total 48,000
Referring to his escalation of the war in Iraq in last month’s State of the Union speech, Pres. Bush said he was sending “reinforcements of more than 20,000 additional soldiers and Marines to Iraq.” The key phrase in the quote is “more than” — much more:
Remember the bad old days when the media used to get exasperated with the Clinton administration because they had to parse their statements about Pres. Clinton’s sex life? Where is their consternation now?
A study released today by the Congressional Budget Office shows that the real troop increase associated with President Bush’s escalation policy could be as high as 48,000, more than double the 21,500 soldiers that Bush has claimed.
As DefenseTech notes, extra forces are expected because the combat units being sent into Iraq “need to be backed up by support troops, ‘including personnel to staff headquarters, serve as military police, and provide communications, contracting, engineering, intelligence, medical, and other services.’†The CBO’s low estimate envisions at least 15,000 additional support personnel. The alternative scenario “would require about 28,000 support troops in addition to the 20,000 combat troops.â€
Additionally, the cost of the escalation could be as much as five times higher than White House estimates:
According to the study, the costs for the “surge†would also be dramatically different than the President has said. The White House estimated a troop escalation would require about $5.6 billion in additional funding, the CBO now believes “that costs would range from $9 billion to $13 billion for a four-month deployment and from $20 billion to $27 billion for a 12-month deployment, depending upon the total number of troops deployed.â€
Remember the bad old days when the media used to get exasperated with the Clinton administration because they had to parse their statements about Pres. Clinton’s sex life?
Except for Keith Olbermann on MSNBC’s “Countdown” last night, I haven’t heard a single cablenewser express concern that when Pres. Bush said “more than” 21,000, he meant “more than double” 21,000.
Bustards!
