Year: 2007

How Harry Reid Blew It

Trish

I consider Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) the Democrats’ own dirty little Mormon secret. I am embarrassed every time I hear the man speak. I cringe when he claims to represent people like me.

And I guess I’m not alone. The Houston Chronicle’s Cragg Hines seems to agree, showing how Reid keeps getting it wrong.

What did President Bush want? At least 60 more days to prosecute the ill-omened battles in Iraq. What did Reid’s move give Bush? At least 60 more days to prosecute the ill-omened battles in Iraq.

There should be an especially fiery place in the political hereafter for Harry Reid if the Democratic leader continues to mismanage the Senate debate on the Iraq war.

To the ga-ga applause of at least some of the most vocal antiwar forces, Reid yanked from further immediate consideration the legislative vehicle that provided a platform for the debate.

The ultimate goal of Reid, some of his senior colleagues and the antiwar movement is wholly admirable. But they have the strategy bass-ackwards.

Reid, once a Golden Gloves middleweight, got sucker punched.

What did President Bush want? At least 60 more days to prosecute the ill-omened battles in Iraq.

What did Reid’s move give Bush? At least 60 more days to prosecute the ill-omened battles in Iraq.

Given the long congressional recess in August, there is now little, if any, prospect for significant Senate debate on a real change of course in Iraq until after Labor Day.

Republican Cash MIA Over Slate of Drippy Candidates

Trish

Not only have Republicans told pollsters they don’t like their party’s candidates, they are also holding back donations.

First came the news that “none of the above” is increasingly the top choice among potential GOP voters.

The latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that nearly a quarter of Republicans are unwilling to back top-tier hopefuls Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, John McCain or Mitt Romney, and no one candidate has emerged as the clear front-runner among Christian evangelicals…

A hefty 23 percent can’t or won’t say which candidate they would back, a jump from the 14 percent who took a pass in June.

GOP Donor: ”It’s hard for some of us who have been loyal to one family for so long just to flip over to someone else… Ask yourself: Is it going to be the same as it was with Bush 41, with Jeb or with W?”

Now we hear that the big money in Florida, one of the deepest pockets for the Republicans, is missing in action.

Two-thirds of the top Florida donors to President Bush have yet to write a check to any Republican presidential candidate this year, reflecting a nationwide disquiet in the GOP that threatens to undermine its hold on the White House…

”We’re six months before the Florida primary. I would think at least half would be signed up with one campaign or another,” said Fort Lauderdale lobbyist Justin Sayfie, a top Bush donor turned fence-sitter.

The habit of giving to those lovable, whacky Bushes is hard to break, and harder to replace.

A Bush — the 41st president named George, the 43rd governor of Florida named Jeb, or the 43rd president named George W. — has appeared on seven of the last 10 general-election ballots in Florida.

”It’s hard for some of us who have been loyal to one family for so long just to flip over to someone else,” said Michael Hightower, a Jacksonville healthcare executive who served as the local GOP chairman. “I’m not saying we don’t have good candidates, but you ask yourself: Is it going to be the same as it was with Bush 41, with Jeb or with W? And the realistic answer is no, because we don’t have the same relationship.”

Excuse me while I gag.

Our team, of course, is doing fine.

Among Democrats, it’s a different story. About three-fourths of the leading fundraisers for the 2004 Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry, have put their money on a 2008 contender.

Those who really can’t find anyone they like still have a choice. The Committee Against Mediocrity in Politics (CAMP) is urging them to back an amendment that would let them vote for None of the Above.

CAMP is calling for Amendment XXVIII to the United States Constitution. This Amendment would add “None of the Above” to all federal election ballots, allowing voters to choose not to vote for a ballot of mediocre candidates.

Should the “None of the Above” option receive a majority of votes in any given election, then that election would yield no winner and the election would need to be rerun with new candidates on the ballot.

Ralph Nader should love it.

RIP Tammy Faye

Jon Ponder

She died yesterday:

Tammy Faye Messner, whose can-do Christian cheer helped her survive the PTL scandal and forge a second career as a pop-culture queen, died Friday after battling cancer for more than a decade.

She was 65. News of her death at her home near Kansas City, Mo., was posted on her Web site Saturday night.

A family service was held Saturday in a private ceremony, where her ashes were interred, said Joe Spotts, Messner’s booking agent. Spotts said that the family is considering a public memorial service for the coming weeks.

For Tammy Faye, like Elvis, no last name was necessary.

Romney: When al-Qaida Calls, America Answers

Trish
“We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the Bush Administration.”

Mitt Romney is too stupid to live.

“Our president, for all the criticism he receives, has kept America safe these last six years, and he has done it by: One pursuing the Patriot Act, which has given us the intelligence information we needed to find out who the bad guys were and get them out before they got us, and No. 2, when al-Qaida was calling America, he made sure someone here was listening,” Romney said. “And No. 3 … when terrorists were detained, were captured, he made sure we interrogated them.”

Olbermann Not Always an Uber-Good Guy

Buck Banks

Co-editor Jon thinks MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann is the cat’s pajamas. He’s fond of posting Olbermannic diatribes and lambastings and bully-pulpit blatherings of the increasingly distinguished-looking anchor of Count Down with Keith Olbermann. Jon even posted an angry seven-minute-plus Obermann oration today.

Now that one was a real tour de force, but as the folks at FishBowl NY note, Keith and Count Down don’t always take the high road:

Considering its “Nappy ‘Hos” history, MSNBC should’ve learned a lesson or two about off-handed, misogynistic remarks. Still, no one should be surprised — Olbermann and Countdown have done this kind of thing before. One example, as we reported way back in October, involved a pre-penitentiary Paris Hilton. At that time, it wasn’t the “A Slut and Battery” that drew our attention — it was what he said: “Paris Hilton claims she was punched in the face yesterday morning at a nightclub in Hollywood. [pause] ‘Course she’s had worse things happen to her face …”

Appears you can take the pundit out of the locker room, but you can’t take the locker room out of the pundit.

Cheney To Be President While Bush’s Ass is Probed

Trish

I was enjoying the thought of Bush’s impending colonoscopy and the discomfort it might inflict upon the world’s biggest ass’s ass. Then I realized with horrifying clarity that Cheney will be president while Bush is under anesthesia.

Snow says the president will hand over presidential powers to Vice President Cheney while he is under anesthesia.

White House press secretary Tony Snow says Bush will have the procedure at Camp David in Maryland.

Snow says the president will hand over presidential powers to Vice President Cheney while he is under anesthesia.

Bush did this before in 2002, at that time becoming only the second president in history to invoke Section 3 of the 25th Amendment. The first was none other than Ronald Reagan — again for a colon procedure — making Poppy Bush the first “acting” president in history.

Why the overabundance of caution? As Bush likes to persuade us, we’re at war. Whether an occupation really qualifies as “war” I’m not sure, but in a 2002 press conference he said it did.

Q Should we read anything into the fact that you are going to transfer the power, the length of time of this?

THE PRESIDENT: No, not at all. It’s just that I made the decision. We looked at the precedent. I’m the first President to have done so under this type of procedure and/or physical examination. I did so because we’re at war and I just want to be super — you know, super cautious.

And I informed the Vice President of this and he’s fully prepared to — he’s standing by. He’ll realize he’s not going to be President that long. (Laughter.)

The more cynical among us might wonder if he’s doing it so there can be no question of Dick’s authority.

Anybody up for a coup?

Bush Launches Campaign to Blame War Failure on Critics

Jon Ponder

The Pentagon’s attack on Hillary Clinton’s patriotism yesterday may be the opening salvo in an aggressive new disinformation campaign from the White House, according to Keith Olbermann on MSNBC’s Countdown last night:

“This, sir, is your war. Sen. Clinton has reinforced enemy propaganda? Made it impossible for you to get your ego-driven, blood-steeped win in Iraq? Then take it into your own hands, Mr. Bush. Go to Baghdad now and fulfill, finally, your military service obligations. Go there and fight, your war. Yourself.”
– Keith Olbermann

…For days, possibly for weeks, there have been these murmurs and rumblings in places that this was the next political tactic to be taken by the administration, that it was time to get out the blame the critics, it‘s the antiwar faction‘s fault, if only they had not said what they said, did what they did, protested violations that they protested, this all would have gone well in Iraq.

Earlier in the week, Sen. Clinton wrote to the Pentagon to inquire about the status of planning for a redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq. As a member of the Armed Services Committee, the senator’s request was hardly out of bounds. And yet the response from the Pentagon came in the form of a barely veiled allegation that even by inquiring about withdrawal she wasaiding and abetting the terrorists:

“Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq,” [Under Sec. of Def. Eric] Edelman writes, “reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia.”

Edelman adds: “Such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks.”

Edelman, a partisan Republican, was said to have written the letter under the direction of the vice president. (It sure doesn’t sound like Sec. Gates.) Sen. Clinton responded by calling Edelman’s accusations “outrageous” and “dangerous.”

Olbermann was less restrained. He accused the president of attempting to make his critics the scapegoats for his own failings as a war president:

[…]

West Hollywood Becomes 80th City to Call for Impeachment of Cheney and Bush

Jon Ponder

On Wednesday, the West Hollywood City Council unanimously adopted a resolution calling for the impeachment of Pres. George W. Bush and Vice Pres. Dick Cheney:

The … resolution states that President Bush and Vice President Cheney have repeatedly violated the U.S. Constitution and other laws of the United States.

The resolution cited these impeachable actions:

  • Stripping Americans of their constitutional rights
  • Ordering and authorizing the U.S. Attorney General to override judicial order for the release of detainees
  • Directing the National Security Agency to spy on Americans
  • Misguiding Congress and the country on false intelligence in order to lead the United States into war

The resolution was co-sponsored by Mayor John Duran.and city council member Abbe Land, one of two openly straight members of the five-person city council.

West Hollywood is the 80th city in the country to adopt an impeachment resolution, and, according to the National Impeachment Center in Los Angeles, it is the first in Southern California to do so.

President of the Christian Action League, 74, Is Arrested after Allegedly Paying Hooker with Checks

Jon Ponder

Privette on two occasions allegedly paid the prostitute with checks then reported the checks stolen.

Coy Privette, Tiffany Denise Summers

Rev. Coy Privette, the president of the Christian Action League, a North Carolina ultraconservative Christian political organization based in Raleigh, has been arrested for soliciting prostitution:

Privette, 74, was charged with six counts of misdemeanor aiding and abetting prostitution by renting a hotel room and paying for sexual acts, according to State Bureau of Investigation Agent Kevin Canty. Tiffany Denise Summers, 32, of Salisbury, was charged with six counts of misdemeanor prostitution, Canty said.

And:

Police said officers were investigating a forged check case, which led them to the prostitution charges. Privette on two occasions allegedly paid the prostitute with checks then reported those checks as stolen, officials said.

According to its website, the Christian Action League is:

a Christian public policy organization that addresses public policy and legislative issues from a Christian worldview. The Christian Action League has a full-time presence in the General Assembly of North Carolina and has garnered considerable respect from both the Republican and Democratic parties. The League’s purpose is to assist the church in fulfilling Christ’s command to be the “salt” and the “light” of the earth.

The Christian Action League is funded by the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, and it is affiliated with the ultra-rightwing American Family Association.

For over three decades, Privette has been one of the best known and most outrageous spokesmen for “family values” and Christian extreme right politics in North Carolina. In the 1970s, he was serving as minister at the North Kannapolis Baptist Church when he joined the tide of evangelicals entering politics that included the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition. He served in the N.C. Legislature from 1984 to 1992, and has been a member of the board of commissioners in Cabarrus County since 1998.

He and his wife, Betty, have four children.

Hat tip to VRW, LCD, Judy