Anyone who thinks they have all the Answers before they've even heard the Question - is Dangerously Deluded! Real Truth Requires Vigilance, Perseverance and Courage, regardless of Party and who wields Power. Left, Right, Center, Corporations, Government, Unions, Criminals or the Indifferent.
Maddow: The most interesting thing about the first year of Obama's Presidency is how craxy the opposition has been to him.
You can say that again.
Wanna talk about really serious the cave called and wants it's BATSHIT BACK Crazy? How about treating a cartonnist exactly like the Taliban does with Death Threats simply beause you don't like his Cartoon?
Cartoonist like Mark Fiore:
"The death threats keep coming this fine morning. I guess the Tea Party crew is determined to have "death panels" one way or another. The dustup started because of this cartoon:"
To all of you who have written emails and comments, I really wish I could respond to every one of you. I truly appreciate your taking the time to write, even if we may be on different sides of the political fence. If there is one thing that my politically mixed San Francisco/Idaho background has taught me, it is benefit of continuing a discussion even if you don’t agree. Too often these days, the Left and the Right immediately shut down if you are deemed to be from the opposing camp. Here’s to good discussion even if we don’t agree.
Now please don’t kill me :-)
People that react to this kind of thing literally with Death Threats are not functioning rationally. You have no argument to whine when you hold up giant signs depicting holocaust victims and linking them to attempts to provide health care to 30 Million people.
There are legitimate arguments to be had about how the problems of health care,the economy, terrorism, climate-change and the future shape of America - but people like this, and increasingly their Republican representatives such as John Boehner, Michelle Bachmann, James Inhofe, Michael Steele and Sarah Palin are not even seriously taking part of the conversation - their off in some crazed La-La Land of paranoid delusion and fantasy.
Obama: Now it's not the time for partisanship, it is a time for citizenship.
In response to this call for Citizenship - we have Rush Limbaugh saying that we should be at War With Our President.
Treason Much?
More from Maddow and David Corn.
MADDOW: Is there a cost ultimately to that? Or does everybody just lie all the time in politics and even the flagrant ones don‘t count for us?
CORN: You know, people get away with these lies all the time. I think the cost is to the—you know, to the national discourse overall. I mean, these are serious issues and they‘re real issues, national security versus civil liberties. There‘s actually a case to be made about trying people as enemy combatants as oppose to keeping them in civil criminal trials.
I understand these are tough arguments. But we can‘t have them in a serious fashion and get to the best outcomes if you are throwing in weird lies like this. It shows that they‘re not really serious.
If they want to engage, there‘s plenty to engage on. You know, there are questions about, you know, what to do with Guantanamo and so on, that are very hard to wrestle with issues. But they‘re not serious.
MADDOW: I have—I have to tell you, David, I—without being snarky, I despair over this. I despair over this because there are real fights to have over the response to terrorism. You know, there are real fights to have over health reform.
But what did we do? We followed the Republicans‘ lead and spent all that time talking about death panels—which is made up.
CORN: Government takeover. Yes.
MADDOW: Yes. And on climate change. There are a lot of interesting ways to talk about the right way respond to that, but instead, it‘s climate-gate, it‘s all made up. Following the Republican framing into nonsense land and we‘ve ended up talking about stuff that is not real instead of talking about policy.
I want to have policy fights. I don‘t want to be fighting with people who refuse to acknowledge reality.
I agree, but the problem is that you can't have a battle of wits with the unarmed.
Moving at the lightening pace of a snail backing-up, the House Judiciary Committee has today, four months after their initial commitee vote of approval, finally issued a report to the full House on Contempt Citations against Joshua Bolten and Harriet Miers for failing to honor Congressional Subpeonas to testify on the DOJ Purge.
WASHINGTON - House Democrats threatened Monday to hold President Bush's key confidants in contempt of Congress unless they comply with subpoenas for information on the Justice Department's purge of federal prosecutors last winter.
Naturally the White House was impressed by this bold move by the Democrats to enforce the - what do you call it, oh yeah - the Rule of Law.
The White House shrugged off the ultimatum, saying the information is off-limits under executive privilege and that the aides in question — White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former presidential counselor Harriet Miers — are immune from prosecution.
"It won't go anywhere," predicted White House press secretary Dana Perino.
Or will it?
The White House is naturally quite confident that Miers, Bolten (and Rove who is also threatened by this contempt action) won't be prosecuted because - well, they have the prosecutors under their thumb don't they?
Assuming the full House votes to confirm the contempt citations - isn't it sickening that we have to "Hope" for this? - the issue would then be referred to District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor, who like all of those who were placed in the Justice department in lieu of prosecutors who were either too aggressive with Republicans (Carol Lam) or too lenient on Democrats (David Iglesias) for the White House's taste was placed in his position using a loophole in the Patriot Act which by-passed Senate Confirmation.
With this in mind it should be a surprise that the White House sounds pretty smug.
The White House showed no signs of budging, maintaining that the law does not require a U.S. attorney to prosecute someone carrying out a president's invocation of executive privilege.
"This Congress is proving to be the all time champion of investigations," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. "If the Judiciary Committee really wanted facts instead of headlines, they should have accepted the president's offer of accommodation to interview current and former advisers."
Although the DOJ has already Officially stated that it will not enforcethe law - contempt of congress against White House officals, one thing that might undermine their confidence is the fact that the Patriot Act Loophole has since been closed, which means that Jeffrey A. Taylor's time as the DC USA is coming to a close.
In fact, by my Calender Taylor's last day should have been Oct 12th (120 Days after the repeal was passed) but so far he's still there which is weird and I think quite possibly illegal. So naturally, I'm not surprised - are you?
Anywho, with or without Gonzalez's handpicked stooge lackey Mr. Taylor we still have the Mukasey problem to contend with. The Waterboarding Wonder is about about as likely to enforce the law against his soon to be bosses former aides as he's likely to find and hang-on to the Constitution with both hands covered in super-glue.
Justice sure does get slippery after a thick coating of GOP elbow grease.
This is just one additional step in a long and drawn out political tango. The only real option left for finding out exactly how and why 9 U.S. Attorney's were summarily fired without any cause that anyone in the DOJ can find will be to implement Inherent Contempt. Once Congress votes to hold Miers, Bolten and Rove in Contempt letters will fly back and forth furiously while the Mukasey DOJ (God, it's hurts just to type that) sits on it's hands and spins over the corpse of their constitutional oaths.
Eventually, Congress will be forced to vote again - this time having absolutely no choice - they will find these three scoff-laws guilty of Inherent Contempt of the Congress and have the House Sargent at Arms arrest and detain them in the House's own jail just as previous occured in 1927.
In McGrain v. Daugherty, a recusant witness (the AG's brother) refused to comply with issued subpoenas. The Senate issued a warrant authorizing its sergeant at arms to take custody of the witness and bring him before the bar of the Senate to answer questions. The deputy sergeant at arms went to Cincinnati, Ohio to pick up the uncooperative witness to place him in custody. The witness objected by filing habeas corpus, but the Supreme Court upheld Congressional legal authority to use its own process to compel persons to appear and testify on issues needed to enable Congress to exercise its Constitutional legislative function.
This action by the House would force Rove, Miers and Bolten to - get this - file a writ of Habeaus Corpus or else be indefinately detained until they either they squawk or produce the documents which explain how - in all likelyhood - our Justice Deptartment was nearly hijacked by the RNC!!
This one case has so far been the only situation where the Democratic Congres has shown any true spine. Besides their stand on SCHIP, holding fast on this issue has managed to succeed in forcing half a dozen DOJ Officials out of office including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, otherwise Dems have repeatedly rolled-over on Funding the Iraq War, Illegal Wiretapping, Sabre-rattling at Iran, Granting Immunity to the Telcoms and now the Mukasey nomination. The one thing we can't afford to do is to let our Representatives once again turn gelatinous before this job gets done.
Any Vichy-Crats in the House who fail to fail to uphold the law and hold the Bush Criminals accountable will be getting a personlized Call-Out Action Diary from yours truly. Count on it.
In the meanwhile Rep. John Conyers deserves your praise and support, he's been fighting the good fight - albiet at sub-glacial speeds while dotting every "T" and crossing every "I" - and we should never forget it.
Chicago Court Orders Discovery of DOJ Political Prosecutions HARPERS BY Scott Horton PUBLISHED October 13, 2007
Senior Republican operatives appear to have targeted John Edwards early in the process of the 2004 presidential election as the most likely Democratic nominee and opponent of the Bush-Cheney reelection effort. Extensively resourced efforts were launched within both FEC and DOJ to go after Edwards’s campaign funding resources, with a particularly ferocious focus on trial lawyers. At the same time, the Justice Department took quite extraordinary steps to camouflage its conduct, for fairly obvious reasons—it was sensitive to the potentially adverse damage to the Bush Administration and its re-election efforts that would result from the disclosure of its use of the machinery of the criminal justice process to attack a political adversary.
......................
Improper White House manipulation of criminal justice machinery took a consistent form: political appointees, acting on White House instructions, would “allocate resources” and “deny resources.” When Rove wanted people “taken out,” copious resources—FBI investigators and prosecutors—would be allocated to concocting a case. When Rove wanted to shield Republican operatives who came under suspicion, federal prosecutors would be fired, transferred, retired or reassigned with regularity. The so-called U.S. Attorneys scandal is one manifestation of this process, but in fact it is reflected in a consistent pattern of dealings that stretch back to the beginning of the Bush Administration.
Papers filed in the Beam case provide further evidence of how the scheme was surreptitiously carried out. It appears that Justice Department lawyers involved in the scheme improperly issued subpoenas to financial institutions designed to collect information on campaign fundraisers for Edwards. The subpoenas were marked with a legend saying that their existence was to be treated as a secret. Since the subpoenas were issued in violation of federal laws protecting the secrecy of information by financial institutions, one has to suspect that this extraordinary step was taken because the Justice Department officials involved knew their conduct was unlawful and sought to obscure that fact by avoiding detection. In any event, the existence of the subpoenas was not a fact entitled to protection. The prosecutors also invoked grand jury secrecy requirements as a reason for maintaining secrecy, a contention which is sure to raise eyebrows in light of the aggressive leaking of grand jury materials in a wide array of political prosecutions. More likely, the prosecutors were extreme anxious to insure that the full breadth of the scheme targeting the Edwards campaign be kept out of public knowledge.
.........................
Gonzales personally authorized a small army of nearly 100 federal agents to raid a law office and simultaneously raid the homes of its employees and their families. Indeed, one agent commented about how he had been flown in from Iraq to help find out why American citizens had made contributions to the John Edwards campaign.
In the last week Moveon.org has made the reich-wing of the Republican Party practically apoplectic with outrage that they would intimate "betrayal" on the part of General Patreaus.
In response to these attacks most Democratic leaders did what they seem to be best in response to the GOP and backed away from these comments so rapidly they practically left behind skid marks. Most that is, except for Hillary Clinton, who choose not to distance herself from Moveon, and instead dramatically said nothing. In turn this prompted a scathing attack from Rudy Giuliani which alleged that Hillary's non-Democratic non-Reaction was somehow an endorsement of attacking our troops.
Yesterday, Moveon decided it wasn't going to wait for any prominent Democrat to come their rescue (Snort). They punched back on their own - hard - with a new ad called "Betrayal of Trust".
The Giuiliani ad dares to point out that when Rudy had a chance to do something about Iraq and Al Qeada by being a part of the Iraq Survey Group he skipped out on the meetings to go make Millions at lucrative speaking engagements.
Hm - Patriotism and Service or Cold Hard Cash, which would a traitor choose?
Rudy's clear problem with this ad is the fact that it's absolutely true as opposed to repeated claims by Conservatives of Democratic and Liberal cowardice and betrayal - which aren't.
STEWART: No. They keep saying we don't understand the nature of this war. And critics keep saying, we understand the nature of it. You've been doing it wrong.
HAYES: Right, so why is that -- what's the, what's the quality of difference there?
STEWART: Well, no the, the difference there is, we're not calling them traitors.
With these new ads MoveOn.org seems to have now irrevocably changed that fact. NOW we're calling them "Traitors".
Amazingly Haynes denied that the administration and it's supports have regularly engaged in this type of character assassination against Democrats for years. At the time of his statement I myself compiled this list of examples.
Right-Wing Radio Pundit Buzz Patterson : "Democrat politicians, big media, academia, popular culture, and nongovernmental organizations" of forming "a Fifth Column" that is "facilitating defeat against Islamo-fascism" and that Most Liberals are Traitors.
Radio Host Mike Gallagher on Fox News: the U.S. government should "round up" actor Matt Damon, "The View" host Joy Behar, and MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann and "put them in a detention camp until this war is over because they’re a bunch of traitors."
Fox News Host : Wall Street Won’t Let A ‘Puny Little Traitor (who leaked the NSA Story)...Take Down Our Market’
Bill O'Reilly on Cindy Sheehan : I think Mrs. Sheehan bears some responsibility for this [publicity] and also for the responsibility for the other American families who lost sons and daughters in Iraq who feel this kind of behavior borders on treasonous.
South Carolina GOP chairman Katon Dawson : "Which one of the Democrat [sic] contenders are going to take [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid [D-NV] to task about giving aid and comfort to the enemies by claiming the global war on terror is lost?"
Dean Esmay on New York Times reporters: "Exposing such a secret program is not whistle-blowing -- it is high treason. When I say 'treason' I don't mean it in an insulting or hyperbolic way. I mean in a literal way: we need to find these 21st century Julius Rosenbergs, these modern day reincarnations of Alger Hiss, put them on trial before a jury of their peers, with defense counsel. When they are found guilty, we should then hang them by the neck until the [sic] are dead, dead, dead."
Michael Savage : former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright "should be tried for treason, and when she is found guilty, she should be hung."
Coulter on the Hamdan Decision : [Y]ou just expect Democrats to side with Al Qaeda." Coulter also stated that she couldn't "imagine that this country could have won World War II if this is the way one of the parties was behaving."
Rush Limbaugh : "Did (Joe) Wilson lie about Niger? Did Wilson commit treason?"
And then members of the Administration itself (who've been less direct but have still made the same point).
George Bush : "However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses."
Dick Cheney : "It’s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again,"
George Bush : "I asked Congress to give me the flexibility necessary to be able to deal with the true threats of the 21st century by being able to move the right people to the right place at the right time so we can better assure America we're doing everything possible. The House responded, but the Senate is more interested in special interests in Washington and not interested in the security of the American people." [Bush remarks in Trenton, New Jersey, 9/23/02, emphasis added]
John Ashcroft : "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty; my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists - for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends." [Washington Post, 12/7/01;]
Karl Rove : "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." Conservatives, he said, "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war."
This past Sunday on Meet the Press John McCain made the following accusation against Democrats.
McCain .I hope that we will have the patience and the understanding on the part of the American people that they’ve made great sacrifice and all of us are saddened by it. But I hope we can also point out the consequences of failure, which is what the Democrats are proposing now.
Fortunately John Kerry was sitting beside him and (having learned from bitter previous experience) refused to take that accusation lying down.
SEN. KERRY: Listen to that. You just said the Democrats are proposing failure. We’ve had...
SEN. McCAIN: Yeah. (Unintelligible)...failure.
SEN. KERRY: ...four and a half years of failure. The Republicans stood up and cheered for Rumsfeld, who had a policy of not enough troops. To his credit, John at least said he needs more troops. But the fact is they’ve supported every step of this president, misleading America about the course of this war. Last January the president stood up to Americans. You know what he said, Tim? He said, "We will hold them accountable to their benchmarks." They’re not holding them accountable. They have no means of holding them accountable because they’ve said we’re going to stay there with 130,000 troops into next summer. They have no leverage.
We are not proposing failure, as John loves to assert and Republicans loves to assert. We are proposing a way to strengthen America in the region. We’re proposing a way to, in fact, make Iraq successful to the degree that it can be by playing to the real undercurrents of their, of their cultural and historical divisions. Nothing in the surge addresses the question of Shia, Sunni divide. Nothing in the surge is going to resolve the fundamental reluctance of Iraqi politicians to make a decision, Tim.
Now, we’re not talking about abandoning the place. Why do the Republicans have a complete inability to envision a foreign policy, as we used to have, Republican and Democrat alike, which plays to our strengths and builds alliances with other countries? Bring the United Nations back in. Bring the neighbors into this. Have a standing summit in a standing conference where we resolve these differences as best as can be. The United States can’t do it alone. And we have to change the equation so we regain leverage and initiative. That’s not walking away, that’s walking forward and putting us in a stronger posture.
The Truth, which Kerry put so well, is that Democrats have been the ones standing up and pointing out Bush and the Republicans repeated failure, after failure after failure - and as a reward they've been repeatedly attacked as traitors, appeasers, cowards, cut-and-runners and surrender-monkeys.
Frankly hurting the troops delicate little feelings (with the truth, ugly though it may be), as if they were Tinkerbell in desperate need of applause - does not make anyone a "traitor".
The truth is that Bush and his supporters are the traitors, and it's well past time we began saying so regularly as MOveon.org has finally started to do.
Anyone who...
Willfully ignored warning after warning (from Richard Clarke, George Tenet to Condi, August 6th PDB, George Tenet in Crawford, 52 FAA hijack alerts) that the U.S. was under threat of imminent terrorist attack in 2001 - is a traitor.
Failed to respond to the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole once al Qeada was confirmed at the culprit - is a traitor.
Failed to ensure that our troops have adequate training and oversight (abu Grhaib), bullets, (not so hillbilly) armor, vehicles, helmets, clean water (KBR), health care (Walter reed) and treatment for PTSD, depression and suicide is a traitor.
Ignores a drowning American City for nearly a week and lets it SINK INTO OBLIVION then leaves it that way for two years (and counting) while letting the rest of our infrastructure slowly crumble into dust - is a traitor.
Failed to protect our national interests by engaging in diplomacy, even with our so-called enemies (as every previous administration has done) is a traitor
Failed to even try to kill or capture Bil Laden because we are an "ally" of Pakistan which has a non-aggression treaty with the Taliban and has merged with Al Qeada - is a traitor!
Tries to use the American Justice System to FIX ELECTIONS - is a traitor.
Violates National Security Rules and Guidelines by pretending to be in some mysterious Fourth Branch Of Government - is a Traitor.
Has Falsified and distorted current intelligence on the ground in Iraq, ignoring the GAO, the NIE, troops in the 82nd Airborne and 71% of the Iraq Public to proclaim that the "Surge is a Success" simply to keep our troops in harms way for political reasons - no matter how many ribbons are on his chest - IS A TRAITOR!
All of these people have betrayed their oath of office to uphold the Constitution and abide by the laws of this nation, all of these people have repeatedly abused and betrayed the trust of the American public time and time again.
But guess what? Most of those people Aren't Democrats!.
We've all been well aware of this for years now, it's well past time we weren't afraid to say so out loud.
I understand why prominent Democrats back away from such language, so do prominent Republicans (in public). They openly use Coulter-geist and Limp-baugh as the mouth pieces for their dirty work while trying to keep their own hands "clean". But it's also clear that they're working in concert - tag team style - Good GOPer/Bad GOPer.
It high time that we learned and began to employ that trick. We are the solders, the grunts, we make sure the dirty jobs get done. Sure Pelosi might not use the same fiery language we do - but that doesn't mean she isn't on the same team.
Fact is: A Spade is a spade and a Traitor is a Traitor. Say it Loud. Say it Proud.
Last night on Countdown Rachel Maddow made a very moving and eloquent case that the Minnesota Bridge Collapse is a perfect symbol of the rot and decay that anti-Government/anti-People Conservatism has wrought.
At the same time on O'Reilly Michelle Malkin - guest hosting for BillO - was making the case that Liberals have begun the "Kossification" of this collapse and just can't help themselves from blaming everything on Conservatives.
Particularly when it's their fault.
The crux of the problem revolves around the age old issue of taxes. Typically Republicans want taxes as low as possible, and sometimes even lower that what's possible under the argument that "government is wasteful and bloated" and the theory that "the free market will provide."
Progressives have a different view, that some tasks are simply too large, too expensive and too unprofitable to expect private industry to perform -- and many of these tasks are fundamental necessities that we simply can't do without.
Thing's like clean breathable air and water. Police, Fire and emergencies services that you can depend on. Access to affordable Health Care. Roads and Bridges that are safe and properly maintained so that they don't come crashing down like a souffle.
Of course there is the argument that Progressives have been a bit quick to assess blame for the Bridge Collapse as this diary explains.
Sure, the entire neo-con evilification of taxes -- a simplistic, mono-syllabic repetition of the notion that all your hard-earned money is simply bled off through liberal-endorsed taxes and then thrown to welfare cheats -- has led to the current situation. Not enough taxes to perform maintenance of infrastructure leads to collapse of roads, bridges, tunnels, etc.
But can the Progressive base please give up a little credit? Only a handful of months ago, Hurricane Katrina caused the deaths of hundreds and hundreds of people.
This bridge collapse killed, what, about a dozen people?
That my friends, is what the neo-con Republicans are doing: learning from their mistakes, killing far fewer people. Hell, by election time, they might be back to only killing Death Row inmates who may actually be guilty of the crimes they were convicted of.
So go up to a neo-con today and thank him or her for not killing quite as many people today as they did last year or the year before. That's real, measurable improvement.
Yes, that's right "We're making good progress" here.
How can we blame Governor Pawlenty for the collapse simply because he vetoed a gas tax measure last year that would have provided more funds for infrastructure projects?
I mean, geez, where's the connection here? It's not like Pawlenty has suddenly decided to do an about face and reconsider that measure in the aftermath of the collapse, right? (Psst.. He has)
Just consider these comments by Senator Klobuchar:
We're spending half a trillion dollars in Iraq, while our bridges are collapsing at home. Our priorities are "messed up"
Then there's Senator Rep. Louise Slaughter who claimed:
The bridge victims are "almost victims of war, because out perpetual war depletes the funds to maintain our infrastructure"
During the segment Keith pointed out that some estimates are that it would take over $100 Billion to bring all of the bridges who need repairs among the 500,000 in this country up to par while we've spent over three times that in Iraq (in a War that we've essentially lost)
Rachel made several critical points.
- There aren't "Republican Bridges and Democratic Bridges".
- We in the country are paying a heavy price for a brand of conservatism that hates and demeans government.
- (Republicans claim that) Any spending on "the common good" is somehow "soft headed and suspect"
- (The legacy of Reagan and Goldwater is) a country that's just falling apart.
- Just this weak the President used anti-tax rhetoric to explain why he's going to veto kid's health insurance and a waste water infrastructure bills.
- If you only look at bridges that carry 190,000 cars a day, there are at least 20 that rate worse than that bridge that collapsed
- Historically 80% of highway money comes from the federal government, this White House would like to make this seem like a "State Problem"
None of these points are things you're were likely to hear from Michelle Malkin as she attempted to point a finger at Democrats - for finger pointing.
Tragedy brings out the best in people and the worst in people. The first instinct of many heroes at the collapse site was to save others first rather than save themselves, the first instinct of many armchair observers on the left was to "point their finger rather than lift a finger"
Yeah, because we wouldn't want to consider how any of this might have happened or how we can prevent in it the future would we? Right.
Continued:
The Radical Left-Wing DailyKos Fumed:
We spend billions on Iraq while things fall apart at home
Y'know I put that quote into the site search and iI couldn't find it. Malkin's graphic claims this was a "Kos Statement" that was made on August 1st, so I checked the front page diaries for that day.
Nada.
I looked at posts made specifically by Kos Himself - Nothing.
But I didn't give up, cuz I'm not a quitter or anything - I tried searching for comments and bingo - I found it. from the Liveblog on the accident.
We spend billions in Iraq (190+ / 0-)
While we fall apart at home.
"You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis." - Tyler Durden
by RandySF on Wed Aug 01, 2007 at 04:36:57 PM PDT
Guess what Mr. RandySF? You are now infamous for apparently daring to make a partisan (yet true) statement on a partisan website.
The shear nerve - what were you thinking? That taxes and spending on things people need might have something to do with what happens when they don't get those things?
It's not like Senators from Minnesota and New York haven't said the same damn thing.
Fucking Kossacks must have put them up to it. Had to be. They couldn't have made the connection between taxes and government priorities all on their own.
More Malkin (if you can stomach it).
But it wasn't just anonymous (not anymore) commenters playing the "Blame Game", Air America radio host Randy Rhodes - famous (!?!) for joking about the assassination of President Bush - railed...
... so here we are wasting a trillion dollars in Iraq, protecting that lie at all costs, right? Wiretapping our own citizenry so that nobody gets to uppity about that trillion being spent. And it takes like a quarter of that to repair our infrastructure... and nothing's being spent. The bridge collapse is the result of wasting a trillion dollars in Iraq
CNN's Jack Cafferty slavishly regurgitate the same talking points...
In light of the Minnesota Bridge collapse, how could America better spend the two billion dollars were pouring into Iraq here at home?
And when asked how he would find money for bridge repair, Democrat (sic) Congressmen Barney Frank claimed he would "End the War in Iraq."
Now I have to admit that Randy was clearly way off the mark with her comments. They were obviously over-the-top and completely uncalled for because we all know damn well ... It's only Half A $Trillion.
Well, So far...
But what brilliant point did Malkin make to show that everything these people had said was completely unfair and unreasonable? How did she expertly prove them all wrong in their desperate attempt to equate spending priorities with - um - spending priorities?
Read and weep. I did.
The Leftists have lost their heads. Infrastructure problems have existed in Minneapolis and across the country for decades, long before George W. Bush took office, long before the invasion of Iraq.
It's a bi-partisan failure, that needs bi-partisan fixing.
So, where are all the Democrat (sic) leaders who will condemn the poisonous Kossification of public discourse in a time of crisis? They're all at the Dailykos Convention pandering to the leftists who would rather burn political bridges than help build them.
Oh I see, Republicans are now the party of Fixing Stuff! They want to be shiny-happy bi-partisan people now that their policies are doing a prat fall onto the Mississippi river?
Let's not criticize or point out the freaking obvious in the midst of a time of crisis, that would be "burning bridges."
So while President Bush is threatening to veto CHILDRENS HEALTH CARE and infrastructure bills - we're supposed to expect him and his party to actually help "fix this problem" while they continue their War without End and stick the children they won't even give health care with the bill?
Tell me something, how are they going to Privatize this? Are we going to start a fire sale on all of our Interstate Highways now?
You are now traveling on I-10 - Brought to you by the good folks at Monsanto!
Is that how it's going to work? We'll have no more taxes, but every bridge will be a toll bridge owned and operated by a corporate entity, just like most of our Sports Stadiums have become.
Can't afford pay the toll? Sorry, you don't go to work today. Never mind school, and forget that trip to the Hospital - you're Ambulance just got stuck at the Walmart Pass.
Is that how's it's supposed to work?
Wasn't it the Bush Government that has wasted $Billions on Katrina Spending by putting the money in the hands of private industry and the Defense Department.
Across the 91 counties in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama designated as Katrina disaster areas, 57 percent of residents say most of the approximately $44 billion the federal government has spent on hurricane recovery in the last year has been wasted -- and that rises to 66 percent in New Orleans, an ABC News poll finds.
While billions more in government funds and services remain unspent and unused almost two years later?
Over the last year, FEMA has became a four letter word often used by survivors when venting out frustrations, and now Louisiana state officials are taking on the weight of the heightened tension by residents, city leaders, and parish leaders who have voiced complaints about the crawling pace of the storm recovery. Much of the growing tension between state and local officials in Louisiana stems from delays in federal programs that were established to reimburse local officials for a number of infrastructure projects, including road repairs, public building construction and debris removal.
FEMA has paid the state of Louisiana roughly $5.1 billion to reimburse local officials for infrastructure projects following Katrina, but only about $2 billion of that money has reached communities nearly 18 months after the storm that had 80 percent of the city of New Orleans under water. Other towns were wiped off of the map entirely.
Where is the rest of money?
And oh, by the way the temporary trailers provided by FEMA for Hurricane survivors are toxic.
For nearly a year now, the ubiquitous FEMA trailer has sheltered tens of thousands of Gulf Coast residents left homeless by Hurricane Katrina. But there is growing concern that even as it staved off the elements, it was exposing its inhabitants to a toxic gas that could pose both immediate and long-term health risks.
The gas is formaldehyde, the airborne form of a chemical used in a wide variety of products, including composite wood and plywood panels in the thousands of travel trailers that the Federal Emergency Management Agency purchased after Katrina to house hurricane victims. It also is considered a human carcinogen, or cancer-causing substance, by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and a probable human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
That's a Heckuvajob you guys are doing there Michelle. Heckuvajob.
Let's get one thing straight, yes, there are and have been infrastructure problems ever since we - or rather Democrat(sic) President Franklin Roosevelt - built the infrastructure. The issue here isn't the infrastructure itself, it's maintenance and upkeep of our critical resources. Y'know, those things that Republicans Historically Don't give a SHIT about?
We're not the ones who've "burned the bridges" with harsh words here - you guys are with your actions.
But if you guys really want to come to the plate and start doing your damn job of helping safeguard the people of this nation instead of fear mongering about "killers who are going to hurt our families" while our food is full of toxic chemicals, stop demeaning and demonizing the poor and the infirm while shipping their jobs overseas, stop giving massive subsidies to companies that refuse to provide health care to their employees, stop spending all your energy finding ways to bash those "Damn Dirty Democrats" and actually begin to Protect. The. Homeland....
You know where to find us (probably getting more and more Kossified by the minute)!
An article in the Denver Post cuts through the rhetoric and double-talk and explains exactly how much damage GWB has done to our system of Justice.
Bush justice is a national disgrace By John S. Koppel Article Last Updated: 07/05/2007 11:48:30 PM MDT
As a longtime attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, I can honestly say that I have never been as ashamed of the department and government that I serve as I am at this time.
The public record now plainly demonstrates that both the DOJ and the government as a whole have been thoroughly politicized in a manner that is inappropriate, unethical and indeed unlawful. The unconscionable commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's sentence, the misuse of warrantless investigative powers under the Patriot Act and the deplorable treatment of U.S. attorneys all point to an unmistakable pattern of abuse.
In the course of its tenure since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has turned the entire government (and the DOJ in particular) into a veritable Augean stable on issues such as civil rights, civil liberties, international law and basic human rights, as well as criminal prosecution and federal employment and contracting practices. It has systematically undermined the rule of law in the name of fighting terrorism, and it has sought to insulate its actions from legislative or judicial scrutiny and accountability by invoking national security at every turn, engaging in persistent fearmongering, routinely impugning the integrity and/or patriotism of its critics, and protecting its own lawbreakers. This is neither normal government conduct nor "politics as usual," but a national disgrace of a magnitude unseen since the days of Watergate - which, in fact, I believe it eclipses.
In more than a quarter of a century at the DOJ, I have never before seen such consistent and marked disrespect on the part of the highest ranking government policymakers for both law and ethics. It is especially unheard of for U.S. attorneys to be targeted and removed on the basis of pressure and complaints from political figures dissatisfied with their handling of politically sensitive investigations and their unwillingness to "play ball." Enough information has already been disclosed to support the conclusion that this is exactly what happened here, at least in the case of former U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias of New Mexico (and quite possibly in several others as well). Law enforcement is not supposed to be a political team sport, and prosecutorial independence and integrity are not "performance problems."
Today the Justice Dept turned over another 46 pages of emails between the White House and DOJ concerning the Attorney firings which clearly show that there was a great deal of involvment specifically from members of Karl Rove's Office. Case in point - the recently resigned WH political affairs director Sara Taylor to Kyle Sampson on Tim Griffin.
"Tim was put in a horrible position; hung out to dry w/ no heads up," Taylor lashed out in the e-mail, which was sent from a Republican Party account rather than from her White House e-mail address. "This is not good for his long-term career."
Former Rove assistant Tim Griffin being installed as a U.S. Attorney in place of Bud Cummins who was apparently removed for no reason other than to create an opening for Griffin isn't the biggest thing he's going to have to worry about in his future career. I think the Voter Caging Thingy might just be a wee bit worse.
But note this, to Taylor although Cummins is the one who got fired and it's Griffin she's worried about?
And oh yeah, let's not forget that most of these email were not sent from Taylor's White House account, but were instead being transmitted through her RNC Blackberry in yet another example of attempts to by-pass the Presidential Records Act.
Let's just say that Sen Leahy is not amused.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the documents "provide further evidence that White House officials like former political director Sara Taylor were deeply involved in the mass firings of well-performing prosecutors."
Ya think?
Naturally the White House's third string shill thinks this is much-ado-about nothing really since most of these emails are about the aftermath of the firings...
"I know this is becoming terribly frustrating for Democrats, but once again documents show no wrongdoing in the decision to replace U.S. attorneys," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.
Well, gee Tony maybe that's because so far the White House has refused to release the emails from before the firings which just might or might not show there was "no wrongdoing" there either except for the fact that there were people in the White House are talking about Government Business through their RNC Blackberry, and the fact that all of these DOJ emails have been under subpeona for over a month and have just now suddenly shown up even though the RNC initially claimed that they LOST THEM.
So they finally decided to look under the couch cushions did they?
"No Wrongdoing here... move along now, move along."
Yeah, right.
And it's not like we've seen the deliberate effort by the White House to hide public information - from the public. Things like say Cheney requesting that the Secret Service scrub the White House Visitor Logs.
Maybe the entire Jeff Gannon/Guckert incident(s) had something to do with that, and then again, maybe not. It's not like the public has a right to know how many times a gay prostitute masquerading as a "journalist" has been doing the in/out at the White House front desk.
So far Rove's office has lost Griffin, Taylor and not long ago immediately after the revelations by David Kuo concerning that "f*cking faith based thing" and "the nuts" former Jack Abramof assistant Susan Ralston resigned from Rove's office. (You'll also remember Ralson was the second person following Monica Goodling to invoke the fifth amendment and seek immunity before Congress in the last few weeks)
That's not exactly a stellar track record their ol' Turd Blossom.
At this rate Witness Protection is going to have to create a special ex-Rove assistant division, meanwhile Karl is going to have to setup a Job Fair to replace all his fallen tin-soldiers.
On the DOJ side we've had Sampson, McNulty and Goodling all hit the bricks.
Bit by bit the details of this little cauldron of corruption are slowly being peeled back like an union and the casualties are mounting up.
American commanders are turning to a strategy “that they acknowledge is fraught with risk: arming Sunni Arab groups that have promised to fight militants linked with Al Qaeda who have been their allies in the past.” Critics say the plan “could amount to the Americans’ arming both sides in a future civil war.”
Today’s no-confidence vote on Attorney General Gonzales deserves the vote of every senator “concerned about the American justice system,” the New York Times opines. “The Justice Department is in shambles. Top officials have left under a cloud and have not been replaced. Morale is said to be terrible.” Bush derided the vote as “meaningless.”
“At least one-third of the immigration judges appointed by the Justice Department since 2004 have had Republican connections or have been administration insiders, and half lacked experience in immigration law,” a new Washington Post analysis shows.
“The Taliban carried out an apparent attempt to assassinate Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday, firing rockets that missed him by several hundred yards as he spoke to a group of elders. No one was injured.”
“In what may be a sign of things to come, the lawyers for I. Lewis Libby Jr. last month invoked the rarely used courtroom tactic: the ‘bloggers can be mean’ defense.” Libby’s lawyers urged the judge not to publicly release letters written in support of their client, given “the real possibility that these letters, once released, would be published on the Internet and their authors discussed, even mocked, by bloggers.”
A bipartisan group of senators, including “several conservative Republicans,” introduced legislation Tuesday to use the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations “as the foundation for future U.S. policy in Iraq.” The bill aims to “begin the withdrawal of U.S. combat brigades by early 2008 if certain benchmarks are met.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has approved a proposal that would allow an independent outside panel to decide which ethics complaints merit investigation by House ethics committee. “This is gigantic,” said Sarah Dufendach of the watchdog group Common Cause. “If they really do this, it will be a very serious step forward.”
The House oversight committee is expanding its investigation “into ties between jailed GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the White House and have contacted several Abramoff associates recently about testifying to Congress.”
“International family planning groups cut off from aid because of their position on abortion could gain access to U.S.-donated contraceptives under legislation approved by a House panel Tuesday.” The bill also “gives Bush and future presidents the right to waive current law that requires that one-third of U.S. aid for HIV/AIDS prevention be spent on abstinence programs.”
“The United States will refuse to agree to targets and timetables for cutting greenhouse gases” at G8 summit, President Bush’s science adviser reiterated yesterday. “At this point in time we are not prepared to adopt that proposal,” James Connaughton told reporters.
Bradley Schlozman has emerged as a central figure in the politicization of the Justice Department, particularly for his focus on squashing the voice of minorites prior to major elections.
As an interim U.S. attorney in Missouri, Schlozman brought felony indictments of four workers in the minority advocacy group ACORN just a week before the 2006 election. That move ran counter to a longstanding policy in the Justice Department, and voter fraud charges against ACORN were dismissed. Schlozman also killed an investigation of Native American voter suppression in Minnesota, a practice that was resulting in “electoral discrimination against Indian voters.”
As TPMMuckraker noted, Schlozman played dumb today when asked about the political leanings of ACORN. But later in the hearing, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) caught Schlozman baselessly labeling groups that reach out to minority voters as the “liberal” counterparts to the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society
I guess this means that agencies who are attempting to fuck minorities in ze goat ass - must be "conservative"? Scholzman after denying that he used a partisian litmus test for highing at the Civil Rights division also bragged about how many Republicans he'd hired.
During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) asked Justice Department official Bradley Schlozman about evidence that he hired officials for their conservative or Republican affiliations. Schlozman insisted that such qualities were “irrelevant to the hiring decision for a career position.”
But minutes later, Schumer asked Schlozman, “Did you ever boast to anyone that you hired a certain number of Republicans or conservatives for any division or section at the Justice Department?” Schlozman said he had. “I probably have made statements like that,” he said
A former West Virginia federal prosecutor said Friday the White House fired him in 2005 in the middle of a corruption and vote-buying investigation but never told him why.
Karl K. "Kasey" Warner said he has "concerns" and sees parallels between himself and eight other ousted U.S. attorneys. Congress and an internal Justice Department agency are investigating whether those firings were politically motivated.
Oh no, here we go again!
After the original eight firings, last week during the Gonzales hearings we were informed of a possible ninth and tenth!
House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers via Bradblog.
"After hours of testimony, the first and most basic question remains: who created the list of US Attorneys to be fired and why? As I said in the hearing, the bread crumbs are steadily leading toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
"We learned from the media today that Todd Graves was the ninth fired US Attorney, and Thomas Heffelfenger of Minnesota may have been the 10th. That begs the question that my colleague, Rep. Sánchez asked earlier, are there any others?
Today we seem to have the answer to that question. Number 11 has arrived.
Warner would not elaborate on what concerned him about his August 2005 firing but rejected the idea that he was fired over his performance.
"The facts speak for themselves. Look into how I ran my office. See how I managed the office," Warner said. "If they want to look at the cases I had and the corruption cases we have now, people can come to their own conclusions about why I was let go."
Warner said he refused to resign when asked by the Justice Department, responding that he took his direction from President Bush.
"Next thing I know, I get a letter from the president's counsel, Harriet Miers, saying I'd been fired, no reason given," Warner recounted in a telephone interview.
Now is it possible this firing had nothing what-so-ever to do with politics? Sure, it's possible. But with this administration, one that politicized the selection of personnel for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq... (as documented by Washpo's Rajiv Chandrasekaran - via Marc Cooper)... just about everything is about politics with Bushgov.
Instead of seasoned experts putting together the New Iraq, the Bushies employed snot-nosed Young Republicans whose top skills -- beyong organizing keg parties-- were dumbly herding into a polling booth and voting GOP or having a Republican-connected Mommy or Daddy. This stuff should make anyone's blood boil. The job selection was done, by the way, by another mediocre party hack, Jim O'Beirne, hubby of the grotesque right-wing pundit and Republican cheerleader Kate O'Beirne:
Let me reiterate, because they we're willing to put crass partisan politics above picking up the pieces in Iraq when they had a chance, their ineptitude led to a loss in confidence between the U.S., the U.S. installed Iraq Government and the people of Iraq - these partisan punk-asses essentially lit the fuse for the time-bomb that exploded into the insurgency once Abu Ghraib was revealed.
Just how bad was it? This bad.
Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting...
... Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort..
A University for Home-schooled evangelicals? Why that seems familiar - oh yeah, I know who this reminds me of. Monica Goodling.
"You have a Monica problem," Ms. Ashton was told, according to several Justice Department officials. Referring to Monica M. Goodling, a 31-year-old, relatively inexperienced lawyer who had only recently arrived in the office, the boss added, "She believes you’re a Democrat and doesn’t feel you can be trusted." [...]
Me thinks I detect a wee bit of a pattern here.
And guess what, that pattern doesn't seem to end with Warner. Here comes Number 12!
Warner's statements echo those by former Maryland U.S. Attorney Thomas M. DiBiagio, who in March said he believed he was fired for investigating corruption in a Republican governor's administration.
The Justice Department said DiBiagio was fired for writing e-mails calling for "front-page" corruption indictments before Election Day.
That's right, investigate a legitimate curruption case by a Republican and risk getting fired, but trump up a bogus case against Democrats just in time to derail an election and you - Mr. Loyal Bushie - are home free.
BushGov in a nutshell: Partisanship First, Competance Never.
“The Senate on Thursday narrowly passed legislation ordering U.S. troops to begin coming home from Iraq by Oct. 1. The vote was 51-46. The House on Wednesday passed the same war spending bill, and President Bush next week is expected to receive, and swiftly reject, the legislation. The veto could fall on the fourth anniversary of the president’s Iraq ‘victory’ speech, which is Tuesday.”
UPDATE: AMERICAblog has video of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) remarks HERE.
UPDATE II: A case of the pot calling the kettle black — the “White House warns of a ‘P.R. stunt.’” Dana Perino said, “If it is the case that they withheld money for the troops in order to try to play some ridiculous P.R. stunt, that is the height of cynicism.” 1:23 pm
You can watch Bill Moyers’ full documentary HERE. Glenn Greenwald writes:
If you didn’t watch Bill Moyers’ documentary last night regarding the joint, coordinated behavior of our government and its media in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, I can’t recommend it highly enough. […]
One of the most important points came at the end. The institutional decay which Moyers chronicles is not merely a matter of historical interest. Instead, it continues to shape our mainstream political dialogue every bit as much as it did back in 2002 and 2003. The people who committed the journalistic crimes Moyers so potently documents do not think they are guilty of anything — ask them and they will tell you — and as a result, they have not changed their behavior in the slightest.
28 percent: President Bush’s approval rating in a new Harris survey, the lowest of his presidency.
“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday she has already answered the questions she has been subpoenaed to answer before a congressional committee” and suggested she is not inclined to comply with the order. “I am more than happy to answer them again in a letter,” she told reporters.
“White House officials conducted 20 private briefings on Republican electoral prospects in the last midterm election for senior officials in at least 15 government agencies covered by federal restrictions on partisan political activity,” the White House acknowledged yesterday.
“The Justice Department has asked a federal appeals court to impose tighter restrictions on the hundreds of lawyers who represent detainees at Guantánamo Bay,” proposing “new limits on the lawyers’ contact with their clients and access to evidence in their cases.”
“The White House has turned over to a House committee about 200 pages of documents” related to a suspicious contract it had with a company owned by Brent Wilkes, who pleaded guilty to bribing former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA).
