Day: February 3, 2009

Gonzales: Torture, Waterboarding, Attorney Firings Were “Little Negatives”

Trish

Oh man. I see why no one wants to give former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a job. His memory, missing in action during his testimony to Congress on Justice Department malfeasance, is back. And the way he remembers it, he did a heckuva job. In an interview with CNN’s Campbell Brown, Gonzales was just amazing.

  • His overall record at Justice: “I hope history will reflect the fact that during my tenure both at the White House and at the Department of Justice we did a tremendous job in protecting our country and also as attorney general we focused on protecting our kids from sexual predators, we focused on making our neighborhoods safe from guns and drugs…so many people are focused on the little negatives that occurred.”

  • Firing attorneys because of party affiliation: “I’ve already testified, as I’ve indicated before and spoken to the American public about wishing that I had done things differently with respect to the removal of the U.S. attorneys. But I think you need to look at the overall record of the department during my tenure and the good things that we accomplished.”

  • Lobbying Attorney General John Ashcroft in the hospital, hours after major surgery, to O.K. illegal wiretapping: “Andy Card and I were sent on behalf of the president of the United States to talk to General Ashcroft. It was an announced visit. We were sent there on behalf of the president to inform the attorney general of a very important meeting that we had just had at the White House with congressional leadership about probably the most important intelligence collection program for the United States government.”

  • Approving waterboarding and other forms of torture: “Clearly there is no disagreement about the principle of not torturing. That is something that President Bush announced that his administration would follow that principle, which we tried to do. The issue of coercive interrogation to gather information from dangerous crim– dangerous terrorists to help protect our country is one that we clearly wrestled with.”

  • His future prospects: “I can understand in a very tough economy, some employers are going to be very hesitant about bringing someone like me on when you have ongoing investigation…I am anxious to move on to the next phase of my life. I feel like I still have a lot to contribute to our community and to our country and I want to do so.”

How’s about you don’t, Alberto, and we just say you did?

Remember: When the GOP Was in Charge, They Flew $12 Bil in Cash into the Iraq War Zone – And Lost It All

Jon Ponder

It is nothing less than astounding that Pres. Obama and the congressional Democrats have allowed themselves to be put on the defensive about stimulus spending by the same Republicans who, with George Bush, ran the national debt into the trillions in just six short years.

It does not bode well that the president and the Democrats can’t find the cojones to cram the Republicans’ hypocrisy on spending back in their faces.

In particular, this would be a good time to remind Sen. McConnell, Rep. Boehner and the rest that it was they who sat idly by while Bush’s men shrink-wrapped $12 billion in U.S. currency — 363 tons of $100 bills — loaded it onto pallets and flew it on transport planes into the Iraq war zone in mid-2003.

That money vanished into thin air, and Republicans have stonewalled Democrats’ efforts to find out what happened to it ever since.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

When you really analyze it, if you want to stimulate economic growth, you have to have people investing, creating capital and creating jobs. Basically, a big part of that (stimulus package) went for extending unemployment. It’s a nice thing to do, but when you extend unemployment, you take the incentive away from people to go out and get a job. So it almost has a counter negative effect.

— Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), in an interview with the Daily Herald.

Republicans Have Hijacked the Stimulus Message

Trish

Joan Walsh at Salon says Republicans are winning the media war over the economic stimulus package.

This had merely been a stupid GOP talking point until 10 minutes ago; now it’s becoming a stupid media talking point. Funny how that works.

…the stimulus fight is tougher than it should be for Democrats. Clearly the best ally the Republicans have is the economic illiteracy of the pundit class in America. I’m watching NBC’s Chuck Todd say the Democrats have lost the “message war” over the stimulus, because it’s now just seen as a “spending bill.” There’s no way for a stimulus bill not to be a spending bill…This had merely been a stupid GOP talking point until 10 minutes ago; now it’s becoming a stupid media talking point. Funny how that works.

Walsh says timing is bad for Democrats, with the failures of the TARP bailout all over the news. The question is, why isn’t this bad for the Republicans? That bill was passed under Bush and managed by his Republican administration. It was their idea to take away taxpayer oversight of how the funds were distributed.

It’s not good that we’re debating how to spend the second “tranche” of the awful TARP program at the same time as we’re having the stimulus debate; I think the inequities and inefficiencies of TARP are smogging the atmosphere for the as-yet-unfinished stimulus bill. We all heard about a desperately needed $700 billion bailout bill a few months ago — it rewarded bad behavior and, worst of all, it didn’t work. So why should Americans be any more optimistic about the separate (and it’s hard to keep straight that it is separate) stimulus bill Obama has championed?

Walsh offers a good suggestion on how to salvage the media battle and get the right message to the citizenry.

…Obama and the Democrats need to break three or four categories of spending out of the bill, and crusade for them daily, in real-life, real-job, real-money terms. This mess is complicated, and I’m not suggesting that Obama demagogue or exaggerate, but what the plan will accomplish is getting lost in debate over tax cuts and tax credits, shovel-ready vs. forward-looking projects, and confusion over the stimulative role of direct grants to the states. There is so much confusion and ignorance at work here, only some of it willful. Obama has an enormous educational and not merely political task in front of him this week, and he can’t expect much help from most of the media.