Little Lord Pontchartrain
mikethemadbiologist | February 24, 2007At a recent National Press Club roundtable about the effect of the internet on the job of the White House correspondents, journalist Richard Wolffe had this to say about bloggers:
They want us to play a role that isn't really our role. Our role is to ask questions and get information. ... It's not a chance for the opposition to take on the government and grill them to a point where they throw their hands up and surrender. ... It's not a political exercise, it's a journalistic exercise. And I think often the blogs are looking for us to be political advocates more than journalistic ones.
In…
mikethemadbiologist | February 22, 2007...El Jefe Maximo is still pushing the elimination of the estate tax because the offspring of the ludicrously wealthy need a break:
If the Estate Tax were to be repealed completely, the estimated savings to just one family -- the Walton family, the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune -- would be about $32.7 billion dollars over the next ten years.
The proposed reductions to Medicaid over the same time frame? $28 billion.
Or how about this: if the Estate Tax goes, the heirs to the Mars candy corporation -- some of the world's evilest scumbags, incidentally, routinely ripped by human rights…
mikethemadbiologist | February 19, 2007If you thought Bernie Kerik was bad, wait until you hear about Republican presidential hopeful Rudi Giuliani's new best friend: Paul Singer, a long time Republican campaign contributor who has pledged to raise $15 million for Giuliani. The phrase "vulture capitalist" might sound trite, but when you hear how Singer made (and still makes) his fortune, you'll agree there's no other way to describe it.
Singer was the inventor of what are known as "vulture funds." A vulture fund buys discounted international loans from developing countries and then sues the country and forces it to repay the…
mikethemadbiologist | February 17, 2007Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH) had a great speech on the House floor yesterday:
"You go to war with the President you have, not the president you wish you had."
Heh heh.
mikethemadbiologist | January 30, 2007Bush is trying to do an end run around the newly elected Democratic Congress. Because we all know the American people spoke clearly in the last election, and they said, "We want to gut environmental and worker protection!" From the NY Times (italics mine):
President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.
In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a…
mikethemadbiologist | January 26, 2007This is not George Bush
(image from here)
The Peter Pan syndrome is in full effect at the White House. After meeting with George Bush, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described the meeting (italics mine):
In an interview, Pelosi also said she was puzzled by what she considered the president's minimalist explanation for his confidence in the new surge of 21,500 U.S. troops that he has presented as the crux of a new "way forward" for U.S. forces in Iraq.
"He's tried this two times -- it's failed twice," the California Democrat said. "I asked him at the White House, 'Mr. President, why do…
mikethemadbiologist | January 17, 2007It would appear that seven U.S. attorneys, some of whom are in the middle of investigating Republicans, have been sacked and replaced by Republican political appointees. Thanks to the Patriot Act, these appointees, regardless of their qualifications, don't have to be confirmed by the Senate (does Congress even read the legislation they sign? And if not, how do I get on that gravy train?). Josh Marshall describes one appointee, J. Timothy Griffin:
Well, top of the list seems to be his stint at the White House where he worked for Karl Rove doing opposition research on Democrats. That was…
mikethemadbiologist | January 14, 2007The frustration of the soldiers in Afghanistan must have just 'surged'. Why? Because, as part of the Bush-McCain surge, soldiers in Afghanistan will be withdrawn and sent to Iraq just in time for a Taliban offensive:
A US Army battalion fighting in a critical area of eastern Afghanistan is due to be withdrawn within weeks to deploy to Iraq.
Army Brigadier General Anthony J. Tata and other US commanders say that will happen as the Taliban is expected to unleash a campaign to cut the vital road between Kabul and Kandahar.
The official said the Taliban intend to seize Kandahar, Afghanistan's…
mikethemadbiologist | January 10, 2007Let there be no doubt, Bush still has tremendous potential to foul things up (and make lots of people dead). But Little Lord Pontchartrain just cried uncle:
In a concession to the Senate's new Democratic majority, President Bush won't rename four controversial federal appeals court nominees whose confirmations were blocked last year, Republican officials said Thursday.
William Haynes, William G. Myers III and Michael Wallace all asked to have their appointments withdrawn, these officials said. Judge Terrence Boyle was informed of the White House's decision, according to an ally.
Haynes is…
mikethemadbiologist | January 10, 2007White House spokesvermin Tony Snow yesterday just propelled us a little bit further down the path of either tyranny or impeachment:
"You know, Congress has the power of the purse," Snow said, then added: "The President has the ability to exercise his own authority if he thinks Congress has voted the wrong way."
No, he doesn't. If Congress does not allocate funds for a troop increase, then the president is illegally using money appropriated for another purpose. It's that simple, although Senator Kennedy laid it out far more eloquently. Snow also said that he doesn't "want to play junior…
mikethemadbiologist | December 18, 2006You might have heard about the $500 million that El Jefe Maximo is trying to raise for his presidential library. Apparently, no price is too great for the rehabilitation of his 'legacy.' It was supposed to be housed at Southern Methodist University. One problem, though: the Methodists--Bush's own church--don't want to house the library.
mikethemadbiologist | December 15, 2006But you know you want to read it anyway. From Iraqslogger:
A driver is stuck in a traffic jam on the highway. Suddenly a man knocks on his window. The driver rolls down his window and asks, "What's going on?"
"Terrorists down the road have kidnapped George W. Bush and Dick Cheney," the man says, "They're asking $100 million ransom. Otherwise they're going to douse them with gasoline and set them on fire. We're going from car to car taking up a collection."
The driver asks, "How much is everyone giving on average?"
The man responds: "Most people are giving about a gallon."
mikethemadbiologist | December 9, 2006...an LBJ moment?
President Johnson listening to tapes made by his son-in-law and Marine Cpt. Charles Robb during Robb's tour in Vietnam
In light of what Bush has said publicly and what he has said to Jim Webb, combined with a complete absence of detectable empathy towards anyone (LBJ did, after all, push very hard for civil rights legislation because he thought it was the right thing to do), I think the casualties just don't bother him. Or rather, they bother him because it makes him look foolish and stupid, not because of the horrific human cost.
mikethemadbiologist | December 7, 2006I know with a war on, the using of the Constitution for toilet paper, and so on, this concern of mine is trivial, but it is so very symbolic. By way of digby, we find out that the White House sells hand soap. And, you guessed it, it contains triclosan. Really. Why don't they just put cadmium in it? It would be so much faster. What morons.
mikethemadbiologist | November 29, 2006So finally, a war supporter, albeit a former one, proposes something kind of like an exit strategy. George Packer argues that we should stay long enough to get exit visas those Iraqis who helped the U.S.:
Those Iraqis who have had anything to do with the occupation and its promises of democracy will be among the first to be killed: the translators, the government officials, the embassy employees, the journalists, the organizers of women's and human rights groups....
If the United States leaves Iraq, our last shred of honor and decency will require us to save as many of these Iraqis as…
mikethemadbiologist | November 27, 2006To avoid possible brain damage, the Surgeon General recommends that Sebastian Mallaby's columns only be read using the StupidVu 9000
Someone needs to tell Bush that when I wrote a post titled "Democrats Crush GOP; Bush Declares 'Mandate'", I was joking. Now that El Jefe Maximo has psychologically disinvested from the Iraqi Occupation, he has decided that the message the American electorate sent in the 2006 elections was "You've done such a great job with foreign policy, FEMA, and the budget deficit, we would really like you to screw up Social Security."
Really, Bush is once again, after…
mikethemadbiologist | November 9, 2006So Bush fired Rumsfeld. Big deal. He should have done it 2800+ lives ago. Lest you think this election will somehow make Bush wiser, consider whom El Jefe Supremo Maximo picked to replace him: Bob Fucking Gates. Who is Bob Gates? Oh, that Bob Gates:
Robert M. Gates was the Central Intelligence Agency's deputy director for intelligence (DDI) from 1982 to 1986. He was confirmed as the CIA's deputy director of central intelligence (DDCI) in April of 1986 and became acting director of central intelligence in December of that same year. Owing to his senior status in the CIA, Gates was close…
mikethemadbiologist | November 5, 2006It's so hard to keep up with the Iraqi War and Occupation justifications. For those of us who opposed the Iraqi War and Occupation from the beginning, one reason was that our fellow citizens should not die to keep oil prices low. While it appears that the low oil prices never materialized, Bush and other Republicans are now arguing that we need to stay in Iraq to stabilize oil prices. It seems the GIs who unofficially named Iraqi base camps "Exxon" and "Mobil" knew what they were talking about. To paraphrase John Kerry from long ago--back when he was eloquent, what do you say to the last…
mikethemadbiologist | November 3, 2006Buckling under to conservative pressure to find the non-existent evidence that Saddam Hussein had, in fact, been building weapons of mass destruction, about a year ago, the Bush Administration placed online documents from the Saddam Hussein era that provided technical information on building various nuclear devices. Quoth the Grey Lady:
The campaign for the online archive was mounted by conservative publications and politicians, who said that the nation's spy agencies had failed adequately to analyze the 48,000 boxes of documents seized since the March 2003 invasion. With the public…
mikethemadbiologist | November 1, 2006Why couldn't Kerry have said this in 2004? Despite what the Washington Mandarins think, anger is the appropriate emotion. Sigh.