Five steps to a better presidency

The New Republic’s Ryan Lizza has laid out a five-point plan on How Bush Can Save His Presidency. (Why TNR feels compelled to outline such a plan, I cannot explain, although at least Lizza recognizes its futility, ending the column with the note, “Next week I'll be explaining how unicorns can solve the energy crisis.”) The proposal is as follows:

1. Fire Cheney.
2. Bring in McCain.
3. Champion Reform.
4. Get Your Hands Dirty in Iraq.
5. Make Iran Policy Bipartisan.

A couple of thoughts…

1. “I believe historians will trace all of Bush's problems back to July 25, 2000, the day he picked Dick Cheney as his running mate… Cheney has been at the center of most Bush screw-ups: the energy task force investigation, the policy battle over torture, White House stonewalling of numerous congressional investigations, the Iraq war, the intelligence failures, and many more. (Also, Cheney shot someone in the face.) Now Cheney is a recurring star in the court filings of Patrick Fitzgerald.”—Bush didn’t pick Cheney as his running mate; Cheney was tasked with finding Bush a running mate and picked himself. And perhaps the reason that Cheney has been at the center of the storm is because he’s the one calling all the bloody shots. It may be the Bush presidency, but it’s the Cheney administration. Bush ain’t firing anybody.

2. “McCain is the one Republican for the job that would signal Bush cares about governing from the middle.”—Jerry Falwell has hell and gone too much influence, but he (thankfully) still isn’t “the middle.” McCain waved bye-bye to the middle long ago.

3. “Instead of acting as the leader of his party and ignoring or staying mum about the scandals engulfing Republicans, he could act as the leader of the country, distance himself from Republicans, and lead a reform effort to clean up the lobbying, campaign finance, and earmark systems.”—This idea is predicated on the assumption that Bush is aware of the corruption and scandals plaguing his party; since he only watches Fox News and listens to his inner circle of blowjob-doling sycophants, he very well may not be. If he is, he’d have to consider them a problem before he’d find himself in a position to do anything about them, and, as we all know, Bush doesn’t admit mistakes. And considering the White House policy of no-commenting on ongoing investigations, I’m not sure he’d be able to convey the effort, were it to be made, short of holding daily interpretive dance shows for the press corps.

4. “One of Bush's problems on Iraq is that he appears impotent. He doesn't seem to be doing anything except making speeches justifying the original invasion.”—Forgive the semantic pedantry, but he doesn’t appear impotent; he is impotent. He clearly has no idea what’s going on, and he clearly has no idea what to do. The Iraq invasion was a neocon dream; they pitched it to him and he bought it without reading the fine print. He didn’t concern himself with the details then, and he isn’t doing so now. Forget getting his hands dirty; he needs to take an accelerated class on what the hell his precious little war is all about.

5. “Bush should bring the Democratic and Republican leadership of the relevant congressional committees into the policy-making process. He can't make a case against Iran on his own.”—Fair point; his credibility’s shot, so he needs the Dems. Lord help us, however, if they’re foolish enough to restore his credibility by going along with some crackpot scheme of his. Again.

Drum picks out another bit of Lizza’s piece and provides a useful retort:

Bush has to overcome these two characterological features that have cemented as conventional wisdom — that he's fundamentally incompetent and that he governs for the benefit of a handful of Republican special interests.

Well, OK. Except that Bush is fundamentally incompetent and he does govern for the benefit of a handful of Republican special interests. How does one "overcome" one's very raison d'etre?

On the other hand, I like the idea of shipping Bush off to Baghdad for the rest of his term. He could start a blog and report back regularly on all the progress we're making.

Ha.

(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)

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Specter Gets a Visit

Priceless.

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Respect Detox; Tame the Addiction!

Addicted to drugs? Worry not. Tom Cruise can “personally” help you cure your addiction. The Scientology detox program will get your ass off heroin in three days!

According to him, he’s not only seen it in action; he’s “personally helped people get off drugs.” Having to deal with his lunatic ass would probably make me start taking drugs. I’d be reaching for the closest chemicals I could find to dull the agony.

“What’s that—Drano? Just put it in a glass with a twist; I need something to cope with Xenuboy. His thetans are getting all up in my grill.”

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Bobo is a dodo.

I’ve been meaning to write something about David Brooks’ asinine Sunday column, Virtues and Victims (which Jessica aptly summarizes as “set[ting] it all straight for us silly lasses who had the audacity to think that rape was about anything else than the loss of chivalry”), but I haven’t gotten around to it, so go read Amanda, Jill, Echidne, and Lindsay instead.

Guys should be especially pleased to note that with splendid little passages like this one:

[I]t was believed that each of us had a godlike and a demonic side, and that decent people perpetually strengthened the muscles of their virtuous side in order to restrain the deathless sinner within. If you read commencement addresses from, say, the 1920's, you can actually see college presidents exhorting their students to battle the beast within…

…Brooks manages to cast all of you as, apparently, having an angel on one shoulder and a naughty little rapist on the other.

Why is it that so many conservatives seem to subscribe to the notion that each of us has within not only the capacity for atrocity, but also the real probability of committing any and all manner of offense without perpetual vigilance? A lot of us just don’t need to struggle to not be rapists or murderers or thieves. I am deeply troubled by anyone who feels compelled to frame arguments with the assumption that actively wrestling to keep such proclivities at bay is universal.

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Cheney’s got bad aim…as usual

Pitchy keen:

Greeted with a loud chorus of "boos" and some cheers, Vice President Dick Cheney threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Washington Nationals' Major League Baseball home opener on Tuesday.

Christening the team's second season as they played the New York Mets, the vice president stood directly in front of the mound and released a ball that hit the dirt in front of home plate. Nationals catcher Brian Schneider scooped it up.

Well, at least he didn’t hit anyone in the face.

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They're Evil! Evil, I Tells Ya!

Ever eager to demonize her new targeted group of brown people, Michelle Malkin has once again been shrieking about the supposed "extremism" of the protesters, and has linked to yet another lie.

This is exactly what is driving me nuts about this entire immigration "debate." It is impossible to discuss anything in a rational manner with people that insist on smugly saying "they're called illegal immigrants, so that's the phrase I'm gonna use," (need I point out that these same people who refuse to label anything Prezint Stumbly McDoofuspants does as "illegal," even when it's blatantly proven to be just that?) and labeling them as fascists. When you refuse to see how a flag can be a symbol of cultural pride, and are unable to see past the vastness of your own privileged existence and open your eyes to masses of people being systematically marginalized, I really don't see how you can expect anyone to take any of your talking point regurgitations seriously.

The response, as always, is more claims of that much-loved security blanket of the bigot, reverse discrimination, and more blatant gleeful racism. It also doesn't hurt to fill the working poor in this country with terror that their job might be taken by one 'o them dirty illegals.

Until people that hold all the power in this country are able to recognize and admit to their system of privilege that has been set up since the beginning, and can get over their ridiculous fear of losing their status as Grand Poobah, we're never going to see anything remotely resembling civil justice and equality.

For more on racism and the white power movement (and more Malkin bullshit), read the brilliant David Neiwert's guest post at Firedoglake.

For more on White cultural identity and fear of loss of privilege, read Beverly Danie Tatum's "Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria?"; particularly the sections on "Understanding Whiteness in a White Context," and "White Identity and Affirmative Action."

(Everybody is a star... one big cross-post goin' round and round...)

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More bad news for Bush

Americans are spun out. As if Waveflux's post, below, didn't make it evident, the latest polling certainly does.

The latest USA Today/Gallup poll finds more than 6 in 10 Americans critical of President George W. Bush on the leak controversy. The more closely people are following the issue, the more likely they are to say he did something illegal rather than unethical.

Breakdown by party affiliation.
Skippy, taking a look at the woeful results, notes that the combined 70% of Independents who view the president as having done something unethical or illegal must not be making the GOP very happy. Note to Dems: Exploit, explot! Sic 'em! (Skippy also quips about the president's stagnant—or "steady," ahem—approval rating: "If that was an ekg on a hospital patient, we wouldn't say steady, we'd say flat-lined." Heh.)

Roxanne responds with a call to forget about censure and move right on to The Big I.

After last Thursday's revelation that Bush himself authorized Libby's leak of "classified" information to the Times, I think censure would be inadequate. It's time for the American public to push for impeachment…

[A]re there modern-day Goldwaters willing to pick up the impeachment banner? Bush's free-fall in the polls, coupled with predictions about GOP losses in the mid-terms, may move some Republicans out of political expediency, if not principle.

Excellent point. What the GOP may lack in principle, it certainly balances with political expediency, which oozes out of its every member's pores.

Oh, and tangentially—those people who arent following the issue closely? It might be because they're watching Fox.

(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)

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Tom Harkin: Embarrassed by Dems

Appearing on the Bill Press Show, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin—the only Senate Democrat to back Feingold’s censure resolution—was asked why more Democrats hadn’t shown their support.

Well, Bill, quite frankly I don't know, and I'm embarrassed that more democrats haven't lined up on this. I mean, for crying out loud, the republicans, they can see fit to impeach… IMPEACH a president, Bill Clinton for lying about having an extramarital affair. But they won't stand for a censure. The democrats don't have the guts to stand up to censure a president who misled us, who lied to the American people, who broke the law and violated the Constitution of the United States in spying on the American people. I tell you, we've got to get some more backbone to a lot of democrats. We need to hear from people. We need to hear from people. The American people need to know, and to show support for this resolution.

Snap!

Good on ya, Mr. Harkin.

(Via Jan Frel at Echo Chamber.)

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For sale: Military secrets, slightly used

Oddjob points to this post at BlondeSense, which directs us to a stunning article in the LA Times.

No more than 200 yards from the main gate of the sprawling U.S. base here, stolen computer drives containing classified military assessments of enemy targets, names of corrupt Afghan officials and descriptions of American defenses are on sale in the local bazaar...

The thefts of computer drives have the potential to expose military secrets as well as Social Security numbers and other identifying information of military personnel...

The drives also included deployment rosters and other documents that identified nearly 700 U.S. service members and their Social Security numbers, information that identity thieves could use to open credit card accounts in soldiers' names.

More troubling information has been found on some of the drives recovered by a reporter, as well, including documents marked "Secret," slide shows prepared for American military officials, classified briefings, military maps, and an array of documents that reveal concerns and strategies regarding prominent figures in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is, suffice it to say, shocking to learn that this information is being hocked on hard drives at a local market.

Lt. Mike Cody, a spokesman for the U.S. forces here, declined to comment on the computer drives or their content.

“We do not discuss issues that involve or could affect operational security,” he said.

I think the cat's out of the bag, mate. Someone had better say something about this, and fast.

(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)

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The boy crisis and tales from the DOD.

Brad Plumer points to this WaPo op-ed on the myth of the boy crisis, and highlights an interesting passage toward the end of the article:

The Department of Defense offers a better model [for schools]. DOD runs a vast network of schools on military bases in the United States and abroad for more than 100,000 children of service members. And in those schools, there is no class and race gap. That's because these schools have high expectations, a strong academic focus, and hire teachers with years of classroom experience and training (a majority with master's degrees).

Hmm. Interesting. My first thought was that it's probably due to DOD schools not being dependent on revenue from property taxes, leaving poor districts struggling and wealthy districts awash in opportunity, and Plumer, who always does his homework, finds an article which looked at the disparity between public and DOD schools, and found that economics does indeed play a role, if not an exclusive one. In addition to the stable incomes, guaranteed healthcare, and "culture of discipline" that life on a military base ensures:

The military school districts have "twice as much money to spend per student as the average Texas district"—not to mention fewer students in the first place. That means smaller classes, more aides, more assistants, more ESL classes. Across the country, the disparities aren't quite as stark, but base schools still spend $9,500 per student, as compared to a national average of $8,800 in public schools. No one can really say exactly how much of the success of military base schools is due to money and how much due to the other stuff, but that's obviously a big gap.

A gap that becomes embarrassingly large when drawn between per-student spending at base schools and schools that round out the bottom of that national average.

(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)

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Leaky McLeakerson

I am authorized to do any goldurn thing I wants ta.
Now sleep... sleeeeep!

So, Prezint Dribblelips finally ambled his way in front of a camera and made some statements about the pre-war intelligence leak that he authorized. That's right, true believers, we have confirmation. I'm sure you're all amazed.

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Monday that he declassified sensitive prewar intelligence on Iraq back in 2003 to counter critics who claimed the administration had exaggerated the nuclear threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

He slid into his favorite tactic; speaking to the American People as if they were idiots. Most likely doing this, as people smarter than myself have pointed out, because that is how he has things explained to himself. (Check the video link at the bottom; the guy is such a condescending prick.)

"I wanted people to see the truth and thought it made sense for people to see the truth," Bush said during an appearance at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

"You're not supposed to talk about classified information, and so I declassified the document," he said in a question-and-answer session after delivering a speech on Iraq. "I thought it was important for people to get a better sense for why I was saying what I was saying in my speeches. And I felt I could do so without jeopardizing ongoing intelligence matters, and so I did."

Okay, if you're all quite finished laughing yourself sick over Bush's ironic use of "the truth"... hey... calm down.. all right, that's enough, you two! Don't make me separate you! I'll turn this car around right now, and then no one gets to go to Great America!

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., sent a letter to Bush on Monday asking him for details about how the document was declassified. "There are many questions that the president must answer so that the American people can understand that this declassification was done for national security purposes, not for immediate political gain."

But it was done for political gain, Blanche, it was! I wouldn't expect Stumbly McMushmouth to be able to explain that without at least another week of coaching from Rove. How long did it take him to finally come out and make this statement? The guy needs to be prepared, after all... unless of course he's wearing his Captain Rocketman "Feed Me The Answers, Karl" earpiece.

On Sunday, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Bush and Cheney should speak publicly about the CIA leak case so people can make their own judgments about what happened. But Bush said he can't talk about an ongoing legal proceeding.

"You're just going to have to let Mr. Fitzgerald complete his case," Bush said. "And I hope you understand that. It's a serious legal matter that we've got to be careful in making public statements about it."

Okay, first of all, Dick Cheney doesn't speak to anyone. They had to put a chain through the ring in his nose just to drag him out in front of the cameras after he shot someone in the face. Second, as far as this "can't talk about an ongoing legal proceeding" that we're all getting very sick of hearing, it's about time to take that talking point out back and shoot it. I'm just waiting for Bush to blurt, "When I said that I didn't know anybody in my Administration who leaked any information, I gotta admit that I had no idea that I was still in my Administration."

(R-A-G-G, M-O-P-P, cross-post!)

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The hypocrite-in-chief and the failed firewall

I can remember when many people regarded George Bush as a straight shooter, a man of his word, unvarnished but fundamentally honest. Never mind that it was all a colossal put-on; it seemed plausible, and that was enough. These days...well, not so much. Linda Feldman of the Christian Science Monitor explores the damage caused by Bush's double-dealing on intelligence leaks:

President Bush has long railed against leaks of classified information as a threat to national security; his administration is vigorously investigating unauthorized revelations of classified material to the press about secret overseas prisons and warrantless wiretapping. Now, a revelation of grand jury testimony establishes Bush himself as a player in White House efforts to discredit an Iraq war critic through the use of classified information.

The president is not accused of illegality. And no one questions his legal right to declassify information. But critics are now charging Mr. Bush with hypocrisy - a development that makes efforts to put his presidency back on track all the more daunting.

The situation may charitably be described, as Robert Silvey suggests in a parallel between Richard Nixon's leak situation and Bush's, as a "slow-motion political drowning" - though the notion of a tremor prefiguring imminent collapse seems just as apt.

The Bush administration seems not to sense this, just as it has trouble grasping that problems don't exist in a vacuum. Compartmentalization is a reassuring concept but terribly hard to execute; as hard as White House mouthpiece Scott McClellan might try, there's no way to erect firewalls in the collective mind of the populace between Bush's authorization of intelligence leaks (to which he admitted only when he had no choice), the exposure of CIA entity Valarie Plame to reporters, the sheer awfulness of intelligence that Bush used to justify the war in Iraq, and the bloody and open-ended mess that war has become. Bush and his people seem to believe that people can't - or don't - connect dots. But, slowly and surely, they do.

"Here's why this hurts: It reminds people again that the intelligence was bad and we're in Iraq without end for some of the wrong reasons, and that's at the heart of his 36 percent," says Larry Sabato, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, referring to Bush's job approval rating in recent polls.

That echo from afar? That's the sound of firewalls, falling.

(That's right, boys. It's Dr. Cross-Post!)

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Photo Dump: Confused, Frustrated, Sad

These were taken during the president's resoundingly successful Q&A earlier today.

Confused.


Frustrated.


Sad.

Poor Georgie.

Poor us.

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Question of the Day

What's the best movie series ever? Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, Bond - anything. Heck, anything that even has a sequel. What gets your vote?

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Telephone Shenannigans

As Waveflux said earlier, this has not been a good Monday for Bush. Boo fucking hoo, right? Well, just when you thought you'd hit the bottom of the barrel, there's a whole new layer of shit to dig through.

Phone Jamming Records Point to White House

WASHINGTON - Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.

The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 — as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.

The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was "preposterous" to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.

The Justice Department has secured three convictions in the case but hasn't accused any White House or national Republican officials of wrongdoing, nor made any allegations suggesting party officials outside New Hampshire were involved. The phone records of calls to the White House were exhibits in Tobin's trial but prosecutors did not make them part of their case.

Lots more at the link.

So, does this mean Bush was authorizing phone-jamming schemes to block Democrat voters? Who knows? Who cares? We've gotten to the point with this "president" that just about any story sounds plausible. I'm sure this will be sneered away as tinfoil hattery, but christ, if it were true, would it even matter? Would anything happen to this criminal that's drunk-driving our country off a cliff and into the LaBrea tarpits?

And, more importantly, will pooh-poohing of Bush's involvement in this crap erase the fact from the minds of the public that Republicans were scheming and carrying out plans to stop Democrats from voting?

If we don't have free elections in this country, we have nothing.

While national Republican officials have said they deplore such operations, the
Republican National Committee said it paid for Tobin's defense because he is a longtime supporter and told officials he had committed no crime.

By Nov. 4, 2002, the Monday before the election, an Idaho firm was hired to make the hang-up calls. The Republican state chairman at the time, John Dowd, said in an interview he learned of the scheme that day and tried to stop it.

Bullshit.

Robert Kelner, a Washington lawyer representing the Republican National Committee in the civil litigation, said there was no connection between the phone jamming operation and the calls to the White House and party officials.

"On Election Day, as anybody involved in politics knows, there's a tremendous volume of calls between political operatives in the field and political operatives in Washington," Kelner said.

"If all you're pointing out is calls between Republican National Committee regional political officials and the White House political office on Election Day, you're pointing out nothing that hasn't been true on every Election Day," he said.

True. But I'm not putting anything past these people anymore.

(I put on some makeup... turn on the crosspost, and pull the wig down from the shelf...)

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Unbelievable Video of Bush

Seriously—what the fuck? This was this morning.

(Thanks to Eponymous, who got it from Philadelphia Will Do. This video is titled “President Bush pants like a dog,” btw. Good fucking lord. What a total embarrassment.)

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I totally know the feeling.

Greg:

From the Skeptic's Dictionary entry on "trepanation" : Trepanation is the process of cutting a hole in the skull...

I bring this up as a roundabout way of saying that I'd rather drill a hole in my head that write another damn post about the corruption of George W. Bush...but I'm a political blogger and writing about this crap is my lot in life, so I'd better get used to writing the same post over and over until 2008.

Sigh.

It's those days when you sit and stare at the screen and begin to consider you'll never finish the post on which you're working if you can't come up with a creative new way to say "corrupt asshole" that the term blogger burnout gets stuck in your head and won't come loose. Failing, perhaps, a little trepanation.

Sometimes I feel like this isn't a blog, but the longest Mad Lib ever invented.

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Joementum

Joe Lieberman says he won’t rule out running as an Independent if he loses the Democratic primary for his Senate seat.

He says he’d prefer to run as a Democrat, because he’s “been a Democrat all [his] life,” which I find an interesting explanation. Not so much Democratic principles, but habit—which is at least honest. As an Independent, he certainly wouldn’t have the likes of Barack Obama showing up to support him.

Republican Paul Streitz who is seeking his party's nomination to challenge for the Senate seat, said he would gain if Lieberman runs as an independent.

"A Republican would win, obviously," he said. "It would split the Democratic vote."

You know, something tells me that wouldn’t bother old Lieberman too much.


Mmm, delicious.

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Smackdown

Knight-Ridder:

The revelation that President Bush authorized former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to divulge classified information about Iraq fits a pattern of selective leaks of secret intelligence to further the administration's political agenda.

Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials have reacted angrily at unauthorized leaks, such as the exposure of a domestic wiretapping program and a network of secret CIA prisons, both of which are now the subject of far-reaching investigations.

But secret information that supports their policies, particularly about the Iraq war, has surfaced everywhere from the U.N. Security Council to major newspapers and magazines. Much of the information that the administration leaked or declassified, however, has proved to be incomplete, exaggerated, incorrect or fabricated.

Leakers, liars, losers. Busted.

The whole story is basically about how the administration only leaks bullshit that supports their untenable positions. It quotes the McClellatron’s “Don’t question the king” rigmarole in which he parses the difference between “providing declassified information to the public when it's in the public interest and leaking classified information that involved sensitive national intelligence regarding our security,” and basically responds by saying, “Still not good enough, you nitwits. We’ve examined the value of that information, and we’ve found it utterly lacking.”

Incomplete, exaggerated, incorrect or fabricated. Good stuff.

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Caption This Photo

Litbrit pulled this one from the St. Petersburg Times:

Litbrit’s caption: Heh heh...now, see, these will fit real nice over Scooter's head when we start cross-examining him at our special facilities, heh heh...

Mine: Panty Waste.

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