by Rich Miles
June 28, 2007
So here's what the WaPo enlightens us with this morning:
Bush Plans Envoy to Islamic Nations
Hmmm...this whole concept seems awfully familiar. Where have I heard of this before?
Oh yeah...Karen Hughes named to State Dept. job
I mean, you really gotta read this. It's the exact same idea, even in some parts the exact same words used in describing it. Almost 2 years ago.
They really do think we're this stupid. They're right a lot of time about a lot of the country, but still...it's galling.
What's really mystifying about this WaPo piece, though, is that the writer, Michael Fletcher, didn't know about Hughes' prior effort, or at the very most charitable, didn't find it worthy of mention.
Just as an idle guess, you s'pose the reason the first time out didn't take was that Bush sent a woman into one of the most sexually-segregated and gynephobic cultures on Earth? Never mind whether she had the smarts and the experience for such a mission (she didn't, but it had nothing to do with her gender) - why would you send someone as a supposed envoy for peace who would, by her mere appearance, inflame half of her audience and enrage the other half? Does that seem like a consideration worth taking? Or am I just being picky?
I'm just sayin', maybe that might have required a bit more thought in the first place?
Damn, I can't wait to be rid of these morons. January 09, c'mon!!!
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Friday, June 22, 2007
Friday, June 01, 2007
WH Finally Cops: The 'Base' are Stupid
by Rich Miles
June 1, 2007
(Update below)
It's growing increasingly easy in recent days to find articles by the leading lights of supposed "conservative" thought outlining the death, indeed the cold-blooded murder, of conservatism at the hands of the Bush administration. Hardly a day goes by that some old GOP warhorse or other doesn't publish an opinion piece somewhere saying how much of a screwup GWB is, and how what the Republicans need now is someone who will return to "traditional conservative standards" in the 2008 campaign. In other words, the current rejection of the Right is because they haven't been Right-wing enough. The entirely laughable proto-candidacy of Fred Thompson is a case in point, as are the rumblings of that Smaug of the Right Newt Gingrich. If there were ever two candidates who would, if elected, ensure the death of America as we have known it for 200 years, these two would land near the top of the list.
But back to the massive "rats deserting a sinking ship" phenomenon: It's a tawdry spectacle, based mainly in these old farts' covering their asses in advance of an anticipated electoral conflagration, and perhaps even criminal charges against their overlords. The thinking seems to be: if we disassociate ourselves from the political and human carnage that is Bush NOW, perhaps he won't take us down with him when he, inevitably, goes.
But it's something else as well: it's a rehab project intended, once again, to pull the wool over the American people's eyes, and play to their stupidity, their intellectual laziness, and their short memory. In short, it's an attempt by a floundering GOP to resurrect the Reagan Era, aka "Morning in America." They hope we won't remember, and in some ways they may be right to hope it, that Reagan was a laughable old fraud whose main contribution to American history was his espousal of the (till then) biggest deficits in the country's history, and his failure to notice that, now communism was "defeated" with no help from him or his people, we needed to look to the Middle East and try to figure out what THOSE people are so pissed off about.
If there isn't already enough proof of this thesis found in the recent Republican candidates' debates, let me offer the following article, written by none other than the Grande Dame of right-wing apologists, former Reagan "special assistant", and Bush the Elder speechwriter Peggy Noonan:
Too Bad: President Bush has Torn the Conservative Coalition Asunder
There's a very interesting observation in the following quote from this article - as recently as two years ago, could you ever even have IMAGINED a leading Republican saying this?
The White House doesn't need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don't even much like the base. Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out their disdain. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.(emphasis mine)
Frankly, I hope Bush and his dead-enders remain true to form, and continue to ignore the signs that are rife around them. I hope the Republican Party continues to think that the way to electoral victory is by simply digging in their heels and being even BIGGER warlike, bloodthirsty assholes than they are now. I hope they continue to miss, and ignore, and stomp on the will of the American people and the international zeitgeist.
But too many more articles like this one, and the GOP might just wake up to reality. At least, long enough to get elected again in 08. Then they can go back to the rape and destruction of America they've been bent on for at least the past 40 years.
Update 6/4/07
Dammit, dammit dammit:
Glenn Greenwald: The great rightwing fraud to repudiate George W. Bush
June 1, 2007
(Update below)
It's growing increasingly easy in recent days to find articles by the leading lights of supposed "conservative" thought outlining the death, indeed the cold-blooded murder, of conservatism at the hands of the Bush administration. Hardly a day goes by that some old GOP warhorse or other doesn't publish an opinion piece somewhere saying how much of a screwup GWB is, and how what the Republicans need now is someone who will return to "traditional conservative standards" in the 2008 campaign. In other words, the current rejection of the Right is because they haven't been Right-wing enough. The entirely laughable proto-candidacy of Fred Thompson is a case in point, as are the rumblings of that Smaug of the Right Newt Gingrich. If there were ever two candidates who would, if elected, ensure the death of America as we have known it for 200 years, these two would land near the top of the list.
But back to the massive "rats deserting a sinking ship" phenomenon: It's a tawdry spectacle, based mainly in these old farts' covering their asses in advance of an anticipated electoral conflagration, and perhaps even criminal charges against their overlords. The thinking seems to be: if we disassociate ourselves from the political and human carnage that is Bush NOW, perhaps he won't take us down with him when he, inevitably, goes.
But it's something else as well: it's a rehab project intended, once again, to pull the wool over the American people's eyes, and play to their stupidity, their intellectual laziness, and their short memory. In short, it's an attempt by a floundering GOP to resurrect the Reagan Era, aka "Morning in America." They hope we won't remember, and in some ways they may be right to hope it, that Reagan was a laughable old fraud whose main contribution to American history was his espousal of the (till then) biggest deficits in the country's history, and his failure to notice that, now communism was "defeated" with no help from him or his people, we needed to look to the Middle East and try to figure out what THOSE people are so pissed off about.
If there isn't already enough proof of this thesis found in the recent Republican candidates' debates, let me offer the following article, written by none other than the Grande Dame of right-wing apologists, former Reagan "special assistant", and Bush the Elder speechwriter Peggy Noonan:
Too Bad: President Bush has Torn the Conservative Coalition Asunder
There's a very interesting observation in the following quote from this article - as recently as two years ago, could you ever even have IMAGINED a leading Republican saying this?
The White House doesn't need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don't even much like the base. Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out their disdain. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.(emphasis mine)
Frankly, I hope Bush and his dead-enders remain true to form, and continue to ignore the signs that are rife around them. I hope the Republican Party continues to think that the way to electoral victory is by simply digging in their heels and being even BIGGER warlike, bloodthirsty assholes than they are now. I hope they continue to miss, and ignore, and stomp on the will of the American people and the international zeitgeist.
But too many more articles like this one, and the GOP might just wake up to reality. At least, long enough to get elected again in 08. Then they can go back to the rape and destruction of America they've been bent on for at least the past 40 years.
Update 6/4/07
Dammit, dammit dammit:
Glenn Greenwald: The great rightwing fraud to repudiate George W. Bush
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June 22, 2007
(Originally posted in a slightly edited form as a comment on BluegrassReport.org)
(Updates below 1 - 2)
Without further introduction, from today's WaPo on this matter:
...Vice President Cheney's office has refused to comply with an executive order governing the handling of classified information for the past four years and recently tried to abolish the office that sought to enforce those rules, according to documents released by a congressional committee yesterday.
Since 2003, the vice president's staff has not cooperated with an office at the National Archives and Records Administration charged with making sure the executive branch protects classified information. Cheney aides have not filed reports on their possession of classified data and at one point blocked an inspection of their office. After the Archives office pressed the matter, the documents say, Cheney's staff this year proposed eliminating it.
(emphasis added)
============================================
To all the right-wingnuts who visit and occasionally comment on this site:
Where do we go from here? I mean, is this just OK with you, that this sort of lawlessness in the highest offices of our land go not only unpunished but virtually unremarked for nearly FOUR YEARS?
Will Pres. Bush call Cheney down on this, and fire him if he refuses to comply? (See update #2 below for the answer.)
Will the Gonzales Justice Dept. cite him, and charge him if he refuses yet again to comply with the law?
Will the stacked, 5-4 in-favor-of-Bush-as-God Supreme Court find constitutional fault with his recalcitrance?
Or will the just-barely-Democratic Congress find the votes, or more to the point the political courage to impeach an Executive Branch official who flaunts the law in this way?
Where do we, the people, go for redress when our leaders are not only lawbreakers but flagrant and admitted lawbreakers, who protect each other at the grave expense of our democracy?
This is the box that the Bush administration has built for our country: they have so successfully loaded our government and our courts with their friends and fellow-travelers that there IS no redress. Cheney will almost certainly NOT be called to task for this unconscionable breaking of the law, and no one can do anything about it.
And some folks, mostly right-wing nutcases who seem incapable of seeing what damage is being done to America and Americans on a daily basis, but also a few people who see themselves as "thinkers", think that's just A-OK. They think it will never backfire on them, and that the government that takes their civil rights from them is "protecting" them by doing so. They never seem to imagine what it would be like if some of these "protections" were used against them.
And so our nation sinks ever lower into the pit of despotism, and there are still folks who cheer the descent and those who are taking us there.
Seriously, folks, you on the right who think all this is OK: do you really want this - lawbreakers in positions of power - to be America's message to the world?
Never mind, I fear your answer would only depress me further.
In closing, let me offer this from Salon's Glenn Greenwald. Yes, he's a liberal - but that doesn't make him wrong. At least not automatically. If you still think Bush is a strong and steadfast and righteous leader, read this, with at least a half-open mind. See if there isn't something you can learn from it.
A tragic legacy: How a good vs. evil mentality destroyed the Bush presidency
The America Bush has created is NOT the America I grew up in, and is most assuredly not the America I wish to die in.
UPDATE 1: Cheney DID NOT say he is No Longer a Member of the Executive Branch: The Real Story is Much Worse
UPDATE 2: Bush claims oversight exemption too