Friday Mashup Part One (9/24/10)

1) It seems that “Governor Bully” is going to be appearing on “Oprah” shortly today (probably has already by now); as noted here…

The Oprah Show, which flashes on Garden State screens in just a few hours, features the Oprah-adulation of (Newark Mayor Cory) Booker you expect (she’s given millions herself to…Newark), but also features a warm hug from herself to the Governor. Makes me wonder if her people prepped her to understand that while we’re talking $100 million, he just pulled a $400 million dollar rug out from the rest of New Jersey’s kids.

Also, I thought this post (cross-posted from Blue Jersey) had some interesting thoughts on that state’s public employee pension crisis, particularly the following…

…I say we call his bluff.

If Christie’s “reforms” go through, the NJEA (that state’s most influential teacher’s union…not sure if there are any other such organizations – ed.) ought to turn to him and say: “OK, in that case, we’re out. You are on the hook for all current obligations – but our members are no longer going to contribute. Everyone not vested gets their money back with interest; no one contributes anything more into the system.

“Instead, WE”LL run the whole thing. We’ll move to defined contribution if we have to, but it will be better than the raw deal you’re proposing. We’ll take over all retirement benefits from now on, and we’ll be overseen by members, a public board, and federal regulators – certainly better than what we have now. So you don’t get to touch our money any more – you’re out.

“And we’ll negotiate employer contributions with the districts. Try to stop that and we’ll see you in the Supreme Court.”

In many ways, it would be his worst nightmare. ALL obligations would have to be met by the state’s contributions and investment returns. I’d love to see him weasel out of that one.

Well, I can dream…

No word on whether or not Christie would be amenable to this; as noted here, he’s been busy confronting hecklers at GOP campaign events, among other non-NJ-related events (and just what on earth is he doing traveling across the country campaigning for other GOP pols anyway?).

2) Also, I’ve noticed our corporate media suddenly paying attention to American Crossroads, the Karl Rove/Ed Gillespie-fronted GOP fundraising outfit relying on a few well-off donors and corporations (as this tells us, they raised $2.6 million in August).

That’s not bad, I’ll admit, but as noted here, Act Blue raised about $6.7 million in July and August; split the difference at about $3.35 mil apiece, and that still beats what American Crossroads did over the same period.

Yes, I know I shouldn’t get preoccupied with the “horserace” political stuff either, but all I’m asking is that you remember this the next time you find yourself hearing more than you’ll ever want to know about Republican party activism (particularly those zany characters with their funny hats and racist/violent signs – more on them in a minute) and next to nothing about what is going on with the other side.

3) Finally, if you’re like me, I’ll bet you’re just chomping at the bit, as it were, when it comes to finding out whether or not the core constituency (or so they think) of the Republican Party supports “Contract on America II” unveiled this week (and I’m talking about those “values voter” “fundies” – here)…

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins released a statement Thursday morning on the House Republican leadership’s “Pledge to America.”

“While I have some disappointment that the pledge to honor the values issues such as traditional marriage were not more clearly defined within the document, this is a significant improvement over the 94 Contact with America which was silent on the moral issues. The Pledge is not exceptional, but it is satisfactory, as it does lay a foundation to build upon, and it moves Congressional Republicans to a place of public acknowledgment that values issues are to be a part of the conservative way forward.”

And I guess it should be thoroughly unsurprising to note that Perkins has said that gays should be allowed to serve “if you want a military that just does parades” (here).

Despite that somewhat tepid endorsement, Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition stated as follows (here)…

The agenda embraces time-honored values like traditional marriage and ending taxpayer-funded abortion as well as lower taxes and reduced spending. The message was unmistakable: we will not be divided by a false choice between fiscal responsibility and strong families. We will fight for both, and indeed we must do both if we are to restore America’s promise.

And I thought this was particularly funny from Reed…

Pro-family candidates are the most likely to be fiscal conservatives, and Tea Party candidates are the most likely to be pro-life.

No word on whether or not their “pro-life” bona fides extend to those with whom they disagree of course.

In a related note, some of our lower life forms are gathering at Shady Brook Farm in Lower Makefield, PA apparently to re-enact “Lord of the Flies,” which should begin any moment (here) – my kingdom for the EPA dome over Springfield from “The Simpsons’ Movie.”

Karl Rove “Goes There” On Katrina And The BP Spill

As noted here…

Today in the Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove pens an op-ed titled: “Yes, the Gulf Spill is Obama’s Katrina.” He predictably places blame on Obama for a “lethargic,” “slow,” and “unacceptable” response to the BP oil spill. But the real significance of the op-ed is not what Rove has to say about Obama; rather, it’s that Rove is implicitly acknowledging that Bush screwed up the response to Katrina. Rove is essentially trying to make the case that Obama mismanaged a disaster almost as terribly as he and Bush did.

This is breaking news because, for years, despite all the evidence to the contrary, Rove has defended his administration’s disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina.

And “Bush’s Brain” began his at-least-once-a-month-Obama-bashing screed today as follows…

As President Obama prepares to return to the Gulf Coast Friday, he is receiving increasing criticism for his handling of the oil spill. For good reason: Since the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up on April 20, a lethargic Team Obama has delayed or blown off key decisions requested by state and local governments and left British Petroleum in charge of developing a plan to cap the massive leak.

The “delayed or blown off key decisions” is a typical Repug smear, of course. And I think it’s more than a little perverse that the people who now criticize Obama for letting BP take the lead on this before the company finally owed up to the fact that they didn’t know what they were doing would probably be the first to complain that Number 44 is staging some kind of a “big gumint” takeover of the oil biz if the situation weren’t so catastrophic.

And as far as the part about “state and local governments,” I think the following should be kept in mind from here (concerning Louisiana’s governor “Kenneth The Page”)…

For their part, White House officials are puzzled by Jindal’s increasing criticism of their efforts. The governor and his staff have been in nearly constant contact with Obama’s team since the first days of the spill, and those interactions have been cordial and businesslike, with little of the sharp rhetoric of his most recent public statements, administration officials maintain.

“Everything he’s asked for, he’s gotten, except for the sand idea, which has some real possible problems,” said one official familiar with the situation.

On Monday, Jindal met with administration officials, emerging to tell reporters he was frustrated with federal efforts to place containment booms around endangered coastal wetlands before the brown tide of oil seeps into fragile marshland.

Jindal said the administration had deployed 815,569 feet of hard containment boom, but claimed the Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security have yet to act on a request for 5 million additional feet of hard boom that he made on May 2, less than two weeks after the spill started.

“It is clear that the resources needed to protect our coast are not here,” he said. “Boom, skimmers, vacuums and jack-up barges are all in short supply. Every day oil sits and waits for clean up, more of our marsh dies.”

Allen, who is coordinating the federal response, told reporters Monday that he will consider the request once the demands of a multistate “contingency plan” for the spill are met.

Democratic critics aren’t the only ones put off by Jindal. Some Republicans favor the more laidback approach of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former Republican National Committee chairman, who has stood up for the oil industry and suggested that liberal environmentalists are exploiting the catastrophe to curtail deep sea drilling.

“Haley has actually taken the smarter approach, from a national perspective,” said a GOP operative close to both politicians. “Haley doesn’t have oil on his beaches. … But he has taken the long view, that this shouldn’t kill an important source of energy. Bobby has been a little frantic, running around, much more concerned about how he’ll look on tonight’s TV news.”

“Liberal environmentalists trying to curtail deep sea drilling” – I’ll laugh over that absurdity if any species of ocean life ends up living in the Gulf after this tragedy is over, assuming it ever is.

As Think Progress tells us above, though, the real takeaway here is Turd Blossom’s admission that he and his boss screwed up on Katrina after years of typical denials.

Though, as recently as last March, he said the following (here, to sell his book of course)…

Rove insisted, as the White House did at the time, that it wasn’t clear how desperate the situation was. He blamed local and state officials in Louisiana for the failure to communicate and said the federal government lacked “real-time information” on what was going on in New Orleans. Critics have said all he had to do was turn on the television to see how desperate the situation was.

“The media did not have real-time information. The media led people to believe there were snipers,” Rove said, which kept rescuers out of some neighborhoods. “You didn’t know about the suffering at the convention center until the government did. But the government should have known about it earlier. That’s one of the big reforms to come out of Katrina.”

So it was the fault of the media and “local and state officials” during Katrina. Who of course are utterly blameless now, as opposed to Obama (and I thought this was interesting on the supposed “snipers” in New Orleans after Katrina hit; also, here is a pretty comprehensive post on all the ways that the prior ruling cabal of which Rove was a charter member did all it could to exacerbate Katrina’s impact).

If any heads are going to roll on Team Obama, I would say that Ken Salazar’s should be on the proverbial chopping block, though the first person to go has done so, as noted here (not sure what Elizabeth Birnbaum or any other human being could have done to undo the mess of the Minerals Management Service in less than a year, but there you are).

Rove has always been one of the all-time greats, I hate to admit, when it comes to peddling just enough dookey in a public forum that seems believable to the easily led but repellant enough to not quite enough people to do anything about it. However, there are limits to all human faculties, particularly the sense of smell, and on this occasion, he has vigorously cleared that threshold.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go buy a case of Glade so I can fumigate my workspace.

Sweeping More “Turd Blossom” BS Under The “Afghan Rug”

“Bush’s Brain” opined as follows in the Murdoch Street Journal yesterday…

In an interview with CNN’s John King on Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said President Obama is now asking tough questions about Afghanistan “that have never been asked on the civilian side, the political side, the military side and the strategic side.” It was a not so subtle dig at Mr. Obama’s predecessor and was meant to distract from the White House’s mishandling of the war.

The Bush administration did in fact conduct a top-to-bottom strategic review of Afghanistan in 2008. That review was provoked by two developments.

The first was that Pakistan’s government wobbled starting in 2006. It cut deals with tribes that created safe havens for the Taliban and al Qaeda and then became distracted from fighting terrorism as President Pervez Musharraf was pressured to leave office and replaced by a new democratic government. The second was al Qaeda’s decision to refocus its efforts on Afghanistan after having been driven from Iraq.

In response, I’d like to provide this link that tells us that, while the threat of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq was quite real, to say nothing of the suicide attacks, “Pentagon documents leaked to the Washington Post (around April 2006) regarding Zarqawi have revealed that Al Qaeda in Iraq is fabricated.” And just to refresh our memories, this McClatchy story tells us the pains the Bushco regime went through to try and fabricate a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

And as far as the Obama White House’s supposed “mishandling of the war,” Cenk Uygur “keeps his eye on the ball,” so to speak, by telling us the following (here)…

Right now, there is a debate as to what President Obama should do in Afghanistan. As there should be. Should he send in more troops? Does it make sense to escalate the war without a viable partner in the Afghan government? Will this be his Vietnam? Woh, woh, woh … whose Vietnam?

What is not being talked about enough is the disastrous situation George Bush left for Obama in Afghanistan (as he did in just about every aspect of government). What the hell did Bush do in Afghanistan for over seven years? Apparently, not a damn thing.

Do you know how many troops Bush had in Afghanistan in early 2008? He had an unbelievably small contingent of 26,000 troops in the whole country. At the same time, he had 160,000 troops in Iraq. I don’t know if you know this, but Iraq did not attack us. The people who did attack us on 9/11 lived in … Afghanistan.

So Bush had 26K troops in Afghanistan, and we’re debating about whether or not we should have almost four times that amount now.

And before any of this occurred, Afghanistan had been our radar, as it were, since the Soviets were driven out of the country, mainly for the following reason (as noted here)…

The strategic location of Afghanistan can scarcely be overstated. The Caspian Basin contains up to $16 trillion worth of oil and gas resources, and the most direct pipeline route to the richest markets is through Afghanistan.

The Alternet article discusses in length how the American company Unocal (aided by an Arabian company, Delta Oil) fought Bridas, an Argentine energy company, who had leases to drill for oil in the region…

…and by November of 1996 (Bridas) had signed an agreement with General Dostum of the Northern Alliance and with the Taliban to build a pipeline across Afghanistan.

…

Unocal wanted exclusive control of the trans-Afghan pipeline and hired a number of consultants in its conflict with Bridas: Henry Kissinger, Richard Armitage (now Deputy Secretary of State in the Bush Administration), Zalmay Khalilzad (a signer of the PNAC letter to President Clinton) and Hamid Karzai.

Unocal wooed Taliban leaders at its headquarters in Texas, and hosted them in meetings with federal officials in Washington, D.C.

Unocal and the Clinton Administration hoped to have the Taliban cancel the Bridas contract, but were getting nowhere. Finally, Mr. John J. Maresca, a Unocal Vice President, testified to a House Committee of International Relations on February 12, 1998, asking politely to have the Taliban removed and a stable government inserted. His discomfort was well placed.

Six months later terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and two weeks after that President Clinton launched a cruise missile attack into Afghanistan. Clinton issued an executive order on July 4, 1999, freezing the Taliban’s U.S.-held assets and prohibiting further trade transactions with the Taliban.

Mr. Maresca could count that as progress. More would follow.

Immediately upon taking office, the new Bush Administration actively took up negotiating with the Taliban once more, seeking still to have the Bridas contract vacated, in exchange for a tidy package of foreign aid. The parties met three times, in Washington, Berlin, and Islamablad, but the Taliban wouldn’t budge.

Behind the negotiations, however, planning was underway to take military action if necessary. In the spring of 2001 the State Department sought and gained concurrence from both India and Pakistan to do so, and in July of 2001, American officials met with Pakistani and Russian intelligence agents to inform them of planned military strikes against Afghanistan the following October. A British newspaper told of the U.S. threatening both the Taliban and Osama bin Laden — two months before 9/11 — with military strikes.

According to an article in the UK Guardian, State Department official Christina Rocca told the Taliban at their last pipeline negotiation in August of 2001, just five weeks before 9/11, “Accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.”

And Think Progress tells us of the following from here, as the Iraq war and the neglected Afghanistan war dragged on…

JANUARY 24, 2006: Army has become “thin green line”
Stretched by frequent troop rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has become a “thin green line” that could snap unless relief comes soon, according to a study for the Pentagon. [AP, 1/24/06]

OCTOBER 4, 2006: Iraq and Afghanistan war vets say military is overstretched, underequipped. 63 percent of all Iraq and Afghanistan veterans believe the Army and Marine Corps are overextended. 67 percent of Army and Marine veterans believe their forces are overextended. [VoteVets Action Fund, 10/4/2006]

OCTOBER 19, 2006: Staff on the House Veterans Affairs Committee report that the “number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have sought help for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) doubled — from nearly 4,500 to more than 9,000 — from October 2005 through June 2006.” [McClatchy, 10/18/2006]

And Bush’s “boy genius” tells us more…

There is also the heavy whiff of politics in the administration’s war deliberations. The president’s senior political adviser, David Axelrod, apparently attends war cabinet meetings—something I did not do as President Bush’s senior political adviser.

For Rove to imply that he separated the wars from politics is laughable in the extreme; here is another reminder…

Implying that Democratic Party liberals were little better than traitors, Rove continued, “Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said: we will defeat our enemies. Liberals saw what happened to us and said: we must understand our enemies. Conservatives see the United States as a great nation engaged in a noble cause; liberals see the United States and they see … Nazi concentration camps, Soviet gulags, and the killing fields of Cambodia.”

Yep, I would call that an example of the “heavy whiff” of something, but not politics (certainly befitting of Rove’s nickname, though).

“Decisive support” of a new Afghan strategy is certainly required, though (one to help remedy the failures of the old strategy, or what passed for one, by Rove and the rest of the disreputable Bushco bunch).

Update 10/25/09: I guess it shouldn’t at this point any more, but it continually astonishes me how much our lapdog press seems to crave pro-Bushco BS like this (a “secret plan,” huh?).

Update 10/27/09: And silly me for thinking that Rove was telling the truth about supposedly not participating in “war cabinet meetings”; maybe he didn’t, but he’s a liar for saying that he never participated in high-level national security meetings, as noted here.

Monday Mashup (10/5/09)

I have to tell you that I, for one, am already sick of this narrative that “ooh, Obama suffered such a loss of prestige over visiting Copenhagen to lobby on behalf of Chicago for the 2016 Olympics, only to see Chicago eliminated in the first round” (and this reads like it was dictated directly from the RNC…why don’t you try commenting on some of this instead?).

As noted here, “Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Spanish King Juan Carlos (also came) to support Rio de Janeiro and Madrid” in their bids for the Games, with da Silva eventually winning the Rio bid.

Which, to me, begs the following question: I wonder if King Juan Carlos suffered a “loss of prestige” over the elimination of Madrid?

And as Think Progress notes here, the tourist Visa policies instituted by Dubya and his pals may have had more than a bit to do with the “Windy City’s” early elimination, though I’m sure you won’t hear a word of that from our beloved corporate media (more related commentary from Paul Krugman appears here, in which he quite rightly compares the Repugs to “bratty 13-year-olds” on this and other matters).

Update: And it will be interesting to see how our corporate media spins this against Obama, though they will try of course.

This Pew study tells us what we already knew, and it is that most stories having to do with everyday Americans were absent from the coverage of the economic crisis (and by the way, speaking of strange media coverage, can anyone hazard a guess as to why the Inky decided to publish a column by former sports columnist Bill Lyon about former Phillies closer Brad Lidge in its “Currents” section yesterday, which is supposed to pass for Sunday Review and Opinion?).

I just have three words to say in response to this: pot, meet kettle.

Another point over which Obama has been beaten up lately is the supposed controversy over speaking directly with Gen. Stanley McChrystal “only once since June” (not counting recently), reiterated by Turd Blossom here as part of Obama’s alleged “hands off” style (yes, I know this is about what we can expect from the supposed political genius whose fingerprints are all over our current foreign policy and domestic miseries).

(By the way, let’s not forget that McChrystal is Number 47 on this list.)

Of course, being a filthy, unkempt liberal blogger, I would consider President Obama’s interactions with his generals as nothing more than following the chain of command. But what do I know?

You want a portrayal of “hands-off style,” Karl? Here it is, you dirtbag (based on this, and we know what happened a month after this photo was taken – your good buddy decided to go “clear brush” for awhile and then go and sit dumbfounded in a Florida classroom while this country burned).

And comparing Obama to his predecessor once more, it should be noted that (from here), our current president has chosen not to meet with the Dalai Lama, a move intended to avert the rage of our “good friends” the Chinese.

However, Obama’s predecessor did decide to meet with the Tibetan leader, as noted here. And before you think to yourself that, “gee, Bush actually had a spine on this while the ‘aloof’ Obama…another pointless editorial slam disguised as news aimed at Number 44…didn’t,” consider that Bush had to more or less make amends with the country holding the vast majority of our debt by attending the Olympic games in Beijing last year in the face of protests from other countries over China’s atrocious record on human rights.

You tell me who made the right moves here and who didn’t.

A Wednesday WaPo “Turd Blossom” Tantrum

As long as our beloved corporate media believes that Karl Rove should be given a forum to spew partisan bile, then I guess it will be incumbent upon me and others to clean it up and sling it right back at him.

Today in the Washington Post, Dubya’s “boy genius” rants as follows…

…the Obama administration is ahead of the confirmation pace of previous administrations, but it should be. Changes in law and the energetic cooperation of the Bush White House made it easier for Team Obama to get its people in place quicker than any administration in history. There have, however, been many more fumbles than should have occurred. These have generated bad headlines and a slower-than-promised pace in filling the government. For that, the Obama White House has only itself to blame.

Though these are slight digs at Obama, I should note that, as nearly as I can determine, Bushco did basically effect a relatively smooth handoff to the Obama Administration (go figure – it took their departure to actually do some things right…no tales of missing “W” keys, for example; I should point out, though, that I’ve seen some reporting on that from our corporate media, and I’ve also seen some thorough debunking on other blogs about it as an urban legend of sorts, so I’m more inclined to go with the latter).

Back to Rove (still ignoring a congressional subpoena, by the way)…

The (Obama) vetting process has been poorly executed and consistently sloppy. Were potential nominees asked the catch-all question all recent administrations have asked about anything in a nominee’s background that could embarrass the president-elect? Or did this administration simply have an overabundance of office seekers with unpaid taxes or ongoing federal investigations? The White House that hired the Democratic Party’s best opposition researcher to work in the Counsel’s Office apparently didn’t subject its own nominees to the same level of scrutiny it intends to provide its adversaries.

Har dee har har har! – OMG, it is definitely waaay too funny to hear Rove complaining about a “level of scrutiny” a presidential administration “intends to provide its adversaries” considering that he found all kinds of ways to politicize governmental bodies that had been pretty apolitical until the dark days of Bushco beckoned (he also participated in the so-called “White House Iraq Group,” whose job it was to sell this country on the war, and he also said that “liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers”…all of that and more is noted here – and the crack about “ongoing federal investigations” is particularly uproarious given the story from the CNN link).

Also, on the matter of Dubya’s transition from the Clinton White House, it should be noted that it was a “mixed success” you might say, which was partly due to the contested 2000 presidential election over the Florida vote and the court proceedings that followed, as noted here (the General Services Administration wouldn’t allow funding to transition team head – heh – Dick Cheney until an electoral winner was decided).

Generally, President Bush was given a lot of credit for having his cabinet appointees in place early despite the problems surrounding the election. However, the administration was not so effective in filling the top federal posts. In fact the Brookings Institution concluded that, “On average, Bush appointees were confirmed 8.5 months after the inauguration compared to 2.3 months during J.F.K.’s administration.”

Furthermore, there were many key federal vacancies left unfilled in the administration for up to twenty two months. This was well after September 11th. In this environment many Clinton appointees were asked to serve on including Richard A. Clarke at the National Security Council. This touched off a mini firestorm of controversy between the new Bush II administration and the conservative interest group community. The infighting at the sub cabinet level was intense and involved controversy over an appointees’ ideology. Those especially targeted were Clinton appointees and this controversy well exceeded the month of March in the new administration. In fact the phrase “complete and total disarray” was used to describe the first month in Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s office. Of course it did not appeal to conservatives that the early Bush Administration was reaching out and discussing cabinet posts with prominent democrats such as Senator John Breaux from Louisiana.

…There was a sense that the Bush II Administration was going to do thing differently than the Clinton Administration. Any Clinton policy advice was suspect. Thus newness and hubris helped to cancel out any benefit of advice derived from the Clinton people. This, would in turn impact policy and affect the tragedy of September 11th. Former president Clinton recalls giving incoming President Bush advice concerning terrorism and security issues with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda at the top of the list. President Bush changed to subject from policy to the nature of the president’s job. Again newness, hubris and perhaps a little naiveté were at work here. One way of combating these traits is to think about formal, mandated and structured ties to both incoming and outgoing administrations.

Really? Why, color me shocked!

So basically, Rove has no room to criticize Obama or his people for the incoming transition; both teams did some thing right and both teams did some things wrong (more wrong, on balance, on the Bushco side of the ledger by all appearances).

Besides, if Rove is going to criticize Obama for his appointments, he should try criticizing his own party for its pointless opposition to the incoming Labor Secretary first, as noted here.

Update: Color me skeptical over this, by the way (particularly since it’s being reported by Pickler – my guess is that Conyers caved because Obama didn’t want to have to make the call; if that turns out to be wrong, I’ll let you know).

Update 3/6/09: Kudos to Think Progress for this.

A Question For Our Corporate Media

If a Democratic presidential administration had launched two wars that it had not been able to manage to a resolution of some sort that approximated victory (including one that was totally unnecessary and based on lies); if a Democratic presidential administration were responsible for the worst record of job creation over its eight years that this country has ever seen; if a Democratic presidential administration had abrogated international treaties and conducted renditions and surveillance (to say nothing of destroying evidence in the process); if a Democratic presidential administration had tripped over itself in the clumsiest way imaginable while a hurricane destroyed a large swath of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast (here); if a Democratic presidential administration had joked about missing WMD (with those weapons that had been destroyed ostensibly used as a reason for its unnecessary war); if a Democratic presidential administration had systematically politicized and gutted the functions of the government agencies under its purview (here, here, and here for starters)….well, if all of this and much more had taken place over the eight years of a Democratic presidential administration, would the chief counselor/architect/propagandist of that administration end up as an invited guest to the Sunday morning talk shows, and other outlets for “Villager” pontifications (and kudos to Katrina Vanden Heuvel here, by the way – of course, Rove wouldn’t be Rove unless he had a typically deceitful response at the ready)?

I didn’t think so.

Not Enough Lipstick To Smear Onto This Pig

I may keep coming back to this article that appeared on Sunday in the Austin American-Statesman in which Bushco insiders try to paint a rosy picture of Dubya’s legacy; it is ripe with posting material, but there are a couple of excerpts that I should reply to immediately, so I will do so here.

The first is from none other than Turd Blossom himself…

Rove also blames Washington partisanship for the scandals and subpoenas embedded in the Bush legacy, including leaks involving a clandestine CIA agent’s identity.

He offered himself as an example.

“You’ll notice there was outrage when it was thought that I was the person behind outing Valerie Plame. And then when it came out that it was the sainted (Deputy Secretary of State) Richard Armitage, there was no interest. I don’t remember seeing anybody camped out on his doorstep like they were camped out on mine. (It’s) because he was part of the acceptable culture of Washington, and I was not. I was one of those Texans who came up. He was one of those perpetual I’ll-scratch-your-back-if-you’ll-scratch-mine Washington leakers,” Rove vented.

As I once said, please allow me to reply with this thoughtful and reasoned observation…

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!

Oh, boo hoo for Karl! Aww, let’s pretend to feel sorry the life form who once said, “Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers” (more “golden moments” with Karl appear here).

More to the point, this Media Matters post tells us…

…A Newsweek article by (author Michael) Isikoff, posted on the magazine’s website on August 27, reveals the authors’ contention that Armitage was (reporter Bob) Novak’s primary source for his July 14, 2003, column, which first publicly identified Plame as a CIA operative.

However, as Media Matters noted, then-Time magazine White House correspondent Matthew Cooper, in his first-person account (subscription required) of his testimony before the grand jury in the CIA leak investigation, identified Rove as his original source for Plame’s identity and Libby as his confirming source. Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller identified Libby as her primary source for Plame’s identity. (Reporter David) Corn noted in an August 27 entry on his Capital Games weblog for The Nation that Armitage’s role in the Plame leak — whatever it may have been — does not undermine the allegation that there was a “concerted action” by “multiple people in the White House” to “discredit, punish, or seek revenge against” Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Nice try, Karl.

And the American-Statesman article also quotes Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, as follows…

Spellings said that when she went to work in Bush’s 1994 gubernatorial campaign, she found a “glass-half-full guy if ever there was one.”

“His attitude is good. He is obviously reflective, but I think he feels he gave it his all, and I think he feels that he has accomplished a lot,” Spellings said. “I think he’s the same George Bush I’ve always known.”

I actually agree with that; more’s the pity (and by the way, this tells us about the “Reading First” scam perpetrated as part of the even-bigger Every Child Left Behind con with Spellings’ blessing, this tells us of how Dubya’s brother Neil made a bundle marketing his utterly useless “Curriculum on Wheels,” or COWs, as part of NCLB, again with Spellings’ consent, and this tells us that Spellings “loves” Dubya….eeeewwwww!).

To conclude…

“I think he is smart and able and has a great big heart and is a good human being,” Spellings said. “I’m sad that more Americans don’t see him as I do. Maybe they will eventually. I certainly hope so.”

We’ve seen all of this life form we ever want to see. And after 1/20/09, I pray to God I never see him again (or, failing that, as little of him as possible).

(And once more, I should note that K.O. gave a hell of a smack down last night to Dubya apologists everywhere, but the video is unavailable from MSNBC – wankers.)

Tuning Into America

I thought this was an interesting New York Times article, which basically tells us that, while the image of this country abroad has suffered mightily under President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History, it seems that the rest of the world just can’t get enough of what gets churned out by the entertainment biz in the U.S., regardless of who’s in charge.

And I thought this excerpt was kind of funny, though perhaps inappropriately so…

Hilary Rosen, the former chairwoman of the Recording Industry Association of America, who was also present at the post-9/11 meetings, said that (Karl) Rove and other White House officials were looking for the kind of support Hollywood gave the United States during World War II.

“They wanted the music industry, the movie industry, the TV industry to produce propaganda,” she said. “Rove was putting a lot of pressure on us.”

I say “inappropriately” because of what had happened prior to that, of course, but when you realize how much of our corporate media (the Beltway “chattering classes” in particular) were totally “in the tank” for our ruling cabal of crooks, to the point where they were nothing but ciphers for Rove and company anyway…yeah, it’s kind of laughable (also considering how much conservatives routinely demonize Hollywood as some sort of hot bed of liberal subversion – oh, and by the way, I wonder if “An American Carol” is out on DVD yet? Any shot at turning a profit?).

Well, the answer seems plainly obvious, even to a filthy, unkempt liberal blogger such as yours truly; we need to turn our political-media culture (such as it is) into entertainment (aside from the low farce that it often is anyway, I mean).

And here are some ideas…

“GOP Survivor: Washington, D.C.” – Freshmen Republican U.S. House members gather at a “watering hole” in nearby Georgetown to plot, form alliances, and generally belittle each other in private interviews prior to participating in a series of competitions, with the winner to be awarded the position of House Minority Leader. Contestants must compete to see who can stand on perches mounted inside the Capitol rotunda for the longest period of time, conduct the longest interview on C-SPAN without a “bio break,” and see who can come up with the biggest list of pejorative words to describe the Democratic Party opposition (spoiler alert; no one wins because, at the end, the current minority leader, John Boehner, refuses to give up his position).

(Update 12/3/08: Just for the record, I messed up some things in that prior writeup that I fixed a few minutes ago.)

“The Harry And Mitch Variety Hour” – This week’s show features comedian Rush Limbaugh introducing a home video he made after popping too many OxyContin pills before flying down to Puerto Rico looking for hookers. Future episodes will include the song stylings of former Attorney General John “Lost An Election To A Dead Guy” Ashcroft, a re-enactment of his misadventure in the Minneapolis, MN airport men’s room with Larry Craig, and a film tribute of President-Almost-Gone George W. Bush and his most memorable malaprops. And as always, the show closes with the theme song “No, Harry,” describing all the ways Harry bargains, cajoles and occasionally sells his soul to pass legislation in the Senate, only to have Mitch defeat it in the end. Brought to you by Geritol.

“Barack!” – The creators of “CSI” bring us this cutting-edge drama starring the first African-American President of the United States, meeting with key Cabinet secretaries in the morning, flying out on Air Force One to resolve an international terrorist crisis – sometimes while brandishing an assault rifle or shoulder-fired rocket launcher – in the afternoon, and returning to our nation’s capital to resolve a family conflict in the evening (the “blaxploitation” genre lives again, with a healthy dose of the Huxtables and a dash of “The ‘A’ Team”).

And in this week’s episode, the Speaker of the House comes down with a case of “jungle fever.”

(Hey, compared to what most of the world thinks of us at this moment, how could this NOT be an improvement?)

Rove Gets “Fried” On “The Third Rail”

(Re: Markos at The Daily Kos used that term to refer to issues of economic class in this country for a certain Democratic presidential candidate, and I would tend to agree – based on last April’s fiasco over a certain speech in San Francisco, I would say that, as far as Caucasians are concerned, African Americans aren’t supposed to talk about how the former group is affected by the economy.)

Well, with that long preamble out of the way, please allow me to take note of this Think Progress post, which tells us that Turd Blossom had the following to say about my beloved commonwealth…

“But it’s a conservative part of the state, and then if you take the far southwestern corner over there near Pittsburgh and the suburbs, that’s coal country, and that’s the kind of people who really do cling to their guns and their faith, and took a lot of — you know that was part of the state where Obama might be expected to do well.”

And with that, pretend liberal Alan Colmes immediately sprang to life and asked permission from host Sean Inanity to slap Rove on the wrist with a wet noodle.

Well, given this little slipup by the supposed electoral genius who oversaw the loss of both houses of Congress to the Dems two years ago, let’s play a little game, shall we? I propose that we take a few of those quotes thrown at Barack Obama when he made those original remarks and apply them to “Bush’s Brain,” OK? It’s easy and fun.

From here…

Was (Rove) simply flattering his (audience) by casting aspersions on the idiocy of small-town life?

He’s disdainful of small-town America — one might say, of bourgeois America. He’s usually good at disguising this. But…the mask slipped.

And what are the grounds for his supercilious disdain? If he were a war hero, if he had a career of remarkable civic achievement or public service — then he could perhaps be excused an unattractive but in a sense understandable hauteur. But what has (Karl Rove) accomplished that entitles him to look down on his fellow Americans?

And John W. McBush campaign manager Steve Schmidt chimes in here..

“It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking,” Schmidt said.

Wow, Rove gets punk’d by his protege; and from here…

“I think (Rove knows) he (has) to talk to the middle class who he actually insulted — Levittown especially — since we’re the ones he had in mind when he said that stuff about clinging to guns and religion.”

And as J.D. Mullane of the Courier Times tells us here…

You may have heard what (Karl Rove) thinks of small town Pennsylvanians: They are “bitter” and “cling” to guns, religion and bigotry because they don’t have good jobs.

Oh boy – I think Rove has more work to do while he keeps busy defying a congressional subpoena.

Stay tuned.

Update 10/24/08: Lie after lie after lie…