Year: 2007

Is Bush’s Base Softening on Impeachment?

Jon Ponder

Over the past week or so, conservatives who oppose Pres. Bush’s immigration bill have been on the receiving end of insulting and denigrating attacks in the media from the president and his flying monkeys. They are apoplectic over being framed as unpatriotic and bigoted, and they seem genuinely shocked to find that, like any old-school messianic cult leader, Dear Leader treats all opposition as heresy.

“Message To The Left: I’m not saying you should impeach him, I’m just sayin’, you know, go with your hearts.”
— Conservative blogger

Peggy Noonan, who has been as Bush cult-y as anyone, described the angst among Bush’s base in a column dramatically subtitled, “President Bush has torn the conservative coalition asunder”:

The president has taken to suggesting that opponents of his immigration bill are unpatriotic–they “don’t want to do what’s right for America.” His ally Sen. Lindsey Graham has said, “We’re gonna tell the bigots to shut up.” On Fox last weekend he vowed to “push back.” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff suggested opponents would prefer illegal immigrants be killed; Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said those who oppose the bill want “mass deportation.” Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson said those who oppose the bill are “anti-immigrant” and suggested they suffer from “rage” and “national chauvinism.”

And then she asks, beseeachingly, “Why would they speak so insultingly, with such hostility, of opponents who are concerned citizens?”

Welcome to our world, Peggy. Bush and company have been directing insults and hostility toward us “concerned citizens” on the left for seven years.

At the top of her piece, Noonan asserts that Bush’s base hasn’t broken with him on immigration, it’s the other way around:

What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. What President Bush is doing, and has been doing for some time, is sundering a great political coalition.

How bad is it among Bush’s base? The National Journal’s Blogometer posits that if congressional Dems were to move toward impeachment over Bush’s violations of the FISA laws, they would find conservatives in no mood to object:

Let’s pretend the House Judiciary Cmte. tires of Monica Goodling and Co., and returns their attention to the NSA surveillance program. Article II powers aside, has anyone really made the case Pres. Bush didn’t violate FISA? Wouldn’t monitoring Americans phone records contra to federal law constitute a high crime or misdemeanor? And if articles of impeachment were drawn up, after the immigration debacle, who exactly would come to Bush’s defense? Laura Ingraham? National Review? Conservative stalwart Ace of Spades sums up conservative sentiment: “Message To The Left: I’m not saying you should impeach him, I’m just sayin’, you know, go with your hearts.”

Blogometer also put together a round up of angry posts about Bush from conservatives, many of whom discuss the possibility of impeachment:

[…]

Romney Would Likely Donate Presidential Salary to Mormon Church

Trish

If Mitt Romney is elected president, the Mormon Church can expect quite a windfall.

Romney says if he wins, he will donate his presidential salary to charity. If he stays true to past form, that means most of the money will go directly to the Church of Jesus of Latter Day Saints.

Romney explains his largess with that ol’ golly-gee Republican bootstraps rags-to-riches fairy tale.

Go ahead, vote for Romney. The Mormons need your money.

“When I got started, I went to school and I never anticipated that I’d be as financially successful as I was, and then my business went far better than I expected it would,” Romney said at a question-and-answer session…

Mitt’s business was probably really boosted by the fact that his father was the governor of Michigan and former chair of American Motors. At any rate, Romney is rich. Way rich. So rich he doesn’t need to collect the paltry salary we taxpayers are willing to pay a president.

Aides have said Romney’s net worth reaches into the hundreds of millions of dollars, but a clearer snapshot of his finances will emerge when he files financial disclosure documents with the federal government in the coming weeks. Romney, who has given millions to charity in the past, is believed to be the wealthiest candidate in the 2008 race.

Which is why he can well afford to be generous with those less skilled at picking parents. As recently as 2005, he gave to the Mormons in a big way. Like a $2.2 million way.

Governor Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, have donated nearly $2.9 million to more than 40 healthcare groups, schools, and other charitable organizations since 1999, including $2.2 million to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Globe review of Internal Revenue Service documents shows.

The couple’s private charitable foundation donated primarily to groups in Massachusetts and Utah, where they lived while Romney ran the 2002 Winter Olympics. The foundation stepped up giving to groups based in Massachusetts after Romney was elected governor in 2002.

His contributions to the Mormon church, where he has long been active, are by far the largest. The foundation gave $1.9 million to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2003, the first year Romney was governor, and $311,000 more in 2000 and 2001. The foundation donated $250,000 to the Mormon-affiliated Brigham Young University of Provo, Utah, including $50,000 in 2004.

Go ahead, vote for Romney. The Mormons need your money.

Troops in Iraq are Getting Shortchanged on Medical Care

Buck Banks

Need some M*A*S*H with that surge? A recently uncovered Army report (not released to the media or public, of course) found that medical support services in Iraq are not what they should be. The report noted shortcomings in medical staff training, medevac facilities and a lack of lab personnel and facilities that means blood samples are shipped all the way to Germany for testing.

‘It could be a bloody — it could be a very difficult August.’
— George W. Bush, on his surge

A shortage of lab and pharmacy technicians makes it difficult to conduct tests near the battlefields, according to briefing slides prepared by the Army Medical Department. When the Army can hire lab personnel, they frequently need additional training, according to the briefings. To complete lab tests, the Army must send patients’ samples to the Landstuhl Regional Army Medical Center in Germany, a process that can take two to three weeks to return results to medical facilities in Iraq.

Even when lab work can be done in Iraq, it is often conducted on an ad hoc basis. “Blood collection and apheresis [separation of blood components, such as platelets] are ‘Hey you’ tasks,” according to the briefings, which were conducted in February during a mid-year review for Maj. Gen. Ronald Silverman, commander of the Iraq-based Task Force Three Medical Command. The Army Medical Department Center and School conducted the review, which included representatives from major Army commands, divisions and brigade combat team surgeons.

The findings point out deficiencies in what is otherwise a vast improvement in battlefield medicine in the past 15 years. The advances, together with a system of medevac helicopters that can transport a wounded soldier from the battlefield to a field hospital in an hour or less, have boosted the survival rate of Iraq casualties to nearly 95 percent.

Still, the briefings portray a combat medicine operation struggling under inadequate and poor training. For example, the briefings describe combat medics who are poorly trained to perform emergency surgical airways when working in the field. Performing airway procedures is a key component of emergency medicine, which includes insuring that a patient can breathe and stopping a patient’s bleeding.

Government Executive, which broke the story, sent written questions to the Army regarding the specifics of the briefings. The Army’s response was a typical Catch-22:

Army headquarters did not respond by the time this article was posted. Cynthia Vaughn, head of public affairs at the Army Medical Department, declined to respond because she said the briefings were marked “For Official Use Only” and “are not intended for public release, and it would be inappropriate for us to respond to questions relating specifically to this document.”

So let’s be clear, since the materials were not intended for public release, the Army won’t comment on them, even though the materials now have been released, as of publication of this article. Sounds like a new version of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” only it’s now “You Can Ask Till You’re Blue in the Face, but We Won’t Tell.”

Although the survival rate of casualties is about 95 percent, the kinds of wounds inflicted in Iraq are typically more serious than in previous conflicts. And as improvised explosive devices get ever more powerful, the wounds they cause require faster, better critical care. We have just finished what has been the bloodiest month of 2007, with 127 Americans and two Britons killed in May. The total of American casualties has now exceeded 25,000 since the war began.

And it looks like it will get worse before it gets better. Even George Bush has admitted that his so-called surge will likely produce more U.S. casualties.

“We’re going to expect heavy fighting in the weeks and months. We can expect more American and Iraqi casualties,” Bush said at a press briefing in the Rose Garden in late May. “It could be a bloody — it could be a very difficult August.”

And just when the troops will need it most, it appears that their medical support won’t be as good as it should be. Typical. Just like the administration sent them into Iraq without body armor or armored Humvees, so it now is surging them with insufficient medical supplies, personnel and facilities.

Heckuva job, Bushie!

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

What is the arms race and the cold war but the continuation of male competitiveness and aggression into the inhuman sphere of computer-run institutions? If women are to cease producing cannon fodder for the final holocaust they must rescue men from the perversities of their own polarization.

— Germaine Greer

Fred Thompson Worked as a Washington Lobbyist for 18 Years

Jon Ponder

There’s fresh word today that Fred Thompson will announce in July that he is getting in the GOP presidential race. Coincidentally, here’s a bullet point on his resume that was news to me:

Thompson’s successes as a lobbyist include pushing for deregulatory legislation that led to the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s

Over about two decades of lobbying (during which he also acted and practiced law), Thompson made nearly $1.3 million and represented clients including a British reinsurance company facing billions of dollars in asbestos claims, Canadian-owned cable companies, and deposed Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, according to government documents and media accounts from his first run for the Senate in 1994…’There’s nothing wrong with lobbying. It’s an honorable profession,’ Thompson spokesman Mark Corallo said…A year after stepping down [from the Senate in January 2003], he registered to lobby for British reinsurance company Equitas Ltd. The company paid him $760,000 to guard its interests against several bills seeking to protect businesses from asbestos lawsuits.

And:

Critics point out that Thompson’s aw-shucks, shit-kicker populism is more than a little bit phony. That he spent 18 years as a registered Washington lobbyist, doing the bidding of such high-powered clients as General Electric and Westinghouse, pushing for the passage of the deregulatory legislation that led to the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s.

Conservatives have been hailing Fred as the living incarnation of St. Ronnie, but “Republican lobbyist” has become synonymous with “D.C. call girl,” thanks to Jack Abramoff and his merry band of pranksters and murderers.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

Journalism in America is not only an obsession but a drawback that cannot be overrated. Politicians are frightened of the press, and in the same way as bull-fighting has a brutalizing effect upon Spain (of which she is unconscious), headlines of murder, rape and rubbish excite and demoralize the American public.

— Margot Asquith

DeLay: My Adultery Was Less Immoral Than Newt’s

Jon Ponder

In his book, “No Retreat, No Surrender,” Tom DeLay, the indicted former House Majority Leader, admits that in the days when he was drinking as many as 10 martinis a day, he engaged in extramarital affairs:

“I was no longer committing adultery by that time, the impeachment trial. There’s a big difference.”
— Tom DeLay

In this period, he earned the nickname Hot Tub Tom. Then he found Jesus and, he said, stopped sinning. In the book, he freely confesses to committing adultery. “I had put my needs first,” he told me. “I was on the throne, not God. I had pushed God from His throne.”

In the book, DeLay attacked his former colleague, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, for having an affair while he was leading the impeachment of Pres. Bill Clinton because he committed perjury when asked under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. DeLay says Gingrich’s adultery was worse than his — due to the implicit hypocrisy:

[Gingrich was] conducting an affair with a Capitol Hill employee during the 1998 impeachment trial of Bill Clinton. (The woman later became Gingrich’s third wife.) “Yes, I don’t think that Newt could set a high moral standard, a high moral tone, during that moment,” DeLay said. “You can’t do that if you’re keeping secrets about your own adulterous affairs.”

A reasonable person might see this as splitting hairs, but so-called Christians always have an “out” when it comes to accountability:

“I was no longer committing adultery by that time, the impeachment trial. There’s a big difference … Also, I had returned to Christ and repented my sins by that time.”

But what about “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” Tom?

Christians Wait Until Cheney Infant Is Six Days Old Before Attacking His Gay Parents

Jon Ponder


Six days after the birth of his grandson, the Republican Party’s Christian base launched a vicious attack yesterday on Vice Pres. Cheney’s gay daughter, Mary, and her partner, Heather Poe. The assault came from Concerned Women of America, an anti-feminist organization that promotes homophobia, which issued a statement denigrating the relationship between Poe and her son, specifically, and all adoptive parents, in general.

“[The] President’s number two, right hand man, Vice President Dick Cheney, clearly rebels against his superior, makes a public mockery of the President … and clearly holds to a different set of moral standards and beliefs.”
— Concerned Women for America

CWA is upset because the caption of a photo of the vice president and his wife holding the baby posted on the White House website read, “[The baby’s] parents are the Cheney’s daughter Mary, and her partner, Heather Poe.” The group objects to this description of the Cheneys’ family arrangements, but the tone of the the statement is unusually bitter and mean-spirited, especially considering the fact there is an blameless infant at the bullseye of their attack:

If the Vice President and his wife Lynne are joining their daughter Mary in playing this homosexual game of “house,” then all have chosen their roles and designated lesbian lover Heather Poe as the “Daddy.”

Everyone knows there can only be one REAL biological Mommy. We are all grown adults. Playing “house” is a game for children, not for The White House or the Vice President and his wife.

Got that, adoptive parents? You’ll never be REAL parents to your children, so you might as well ship them back to the orphanage.

What is so hypocritical of this Administration is its “double-speak.”

President George W. Bush held several presses conferences calling for a Federal Marriage Amendment to protect the God-ordained institution of marriage between one man and one woman, while homosexuals pushed for the union of two men or two women to be equally recognized as real “marriage.”

However, the President’s number two, right hand man, Vice President Dick Cheney, clearly rebels against his superior, makes a public mockery of the President and the current Administration he is supposed to represent, and clearly holds to a different set of moral standards and beliefs.

When President Bush stood on the victory stage several years ago after being elected into office by values voters, Mary Cheney was on stage as well with her lesbian lover, Heather Poe. It was a slap in the face to the values voters who had just elected the duo into office. That wound has never healed.

While this little innocent child Samuel David Cheney deserves every fighting chance at life, the sins of two women, Mary Cheney and Heather Poe, have deliberately denied the Vice President’s grandson one of the most basic human rights of all: the right to a Daddy and a Mommy.

I say shame on the White House, shame on the President and shame on the Vice President for allowing such a caption to be “officially” added onto the White House website and such a beautiful photo of two happy grandparents and their new grandchild.

Predictably, the author of this homophobic screed is a bisexual:

[Stephen] Bennett lived the homosexual lifestyle for over 11 years with over 100 partners, until he finally left it all in 1992. Today, Stephen is happily married to his wife Irene of almost 14 years.

(According to his bio, Bennett also operates a website that apparently provides resources and support for Christians who are shunning their gay children and relatives. What would Jesus do, indeed.)

Vice Pres. Cheney is the Bush administration’s designated attack dog. In 2003, for example, he famously went so far as to potentially jeopardize national security when he directed a campaign to out a covert CIA specialist in weapons of mass destruction, Valerie Plame Wilson, after her husband accused Pres. Bush of lying in his State of the Union speech about Iraq’s nuclear capabilities.

But chances are slim that the vice president will seek revenge against Concerned Women of America over this assault on his family. CWA is too important to his ever-dwindling political base. His daughter, her partner and their baby are merely collateral damage in the political wars.