Anyone? If Bush has an extra billion to throw around, I could think of some better ways to spend (invest) it!
President Bush proposed $1 billion in humanitarian and economic assistance on Wednesday to help rebuild Georgia after its short, disastrous war with Russia last month, but he stopped short of committing the United States to reequipping the country’s battered military.
...it would be funny.
Via Political Animal:
Here's the new press policy at the NHTSA, the federal agency in charge of auto safety. (1) Agency experts are no longer allowed to talk to reporters on the record. (2) The communications office (!) is not allowed to talk to reporters on the record. (3) The agency's administrator is not available to talk on the record about the policy barring staffers from talking on the record. (4) Her chief of staff explained to a reporter that "we were finding a lot of stuff did not need to be on the record," but then insisted that this statement itself was off the record.
Over on The Huffington Post, there was an article about who is actually going to be writing the Septmber report on the "progress" in Iraq. Unbelievably, after all the "let's wait for General Petraeus' report" talk, the political hacks in the White House will be writing the report. I'm sure it will all be factual and about what's really happening on the ground...
Anyway, the bigger surprise to me was reading the original Los Angeles Times story. They totally buried the lead, instead going with:
Intent on demonstrating progress in Iraq, the top U.S. general there is expected by Bush administration officials to recommend removing American troops soon from several areas where commanders believe security has improved, possibly including Al Anbar province.
Administration and military officials acknowledge that the September report will not show any significant progress on the political benchmarks laid out by Congress. How to deal in the report with the lack of national reconciliation between Iraq's warring sects has created some tension within the White House.
Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.
And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report's data.
The senior administration official said the process had created "uncomfortable positions" for the White House because of debates over what constitutes "satisfactory progress."
During internal White House discussion of a July interim report, some officials urged the administration to claim progress in policy areas such as legislation to divvy up Iraq's oil revenue, even though no final agreement had been reached. Others argued that such assertions would be disingenuous.
"There were some in the drafting of the report that said, 'Well, we can claim progress,' " the administration official said. "There were others who said: 'Wait a second. Sure we can claim progress, but it's not credible to . . . just neglect the fact that it's had no effect on the ground.' "
From today's Washington Post: Bush May Try to Cut Corporate Tax Rates
I don't know why this news surprises me...but I do like Nancy Pelosi's response...
Appearing before cameras at the Treasury Department alongside his economic team, the president vowed to veto spending bills that exceed his targets, and he accused Democrats of plotting the largest tax increase in history to fund an additional $205 billion in discretionary spending over five years.
"Put another way, it's about $1,300 in higher spending every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every year for the next five years," he said. "Now, somebody is going to have to pay for it. And that, of course, will be the hardworking American people. . . . I will use the veto to keep your taxes low and to keep federal spending under control."
Democrats quickly returned fire, noting that Bush inherited a surplus that turned into a deficit and that he never vetoed a spending bill during the six years that Republicans controlled Capitol Hill, even as the budget grew by 50 percent.
"After six years of reckless spending in Washington, President Bush is the last person who should brag about fiscal responsibility," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). She accused the president of misrepresenting Democratic spending plans, which she said come in lower than his and have received some Republican support. And she said Bush wants "to spend $2,800 each second . . . to keep our troops in the middle of a civil war in Iraq."
Despite the fact that President Bush and VP Dick Cheney have committed high crimes and misdemeanors, I have not been very supportive of those calling for their impeachment. But, like Mike Lux, writing at the Huffington Post, today's news was the last straw for me:
With the announcement yesterday that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges filed by Congress, the Bush administration has made it 100% clear, once and for all, that they consider themselves utterly and totally above the law. Democrats in Congress have to take a stand, and have to push back. They have to make it clear to the country that the President and Vice-President are not free to do whatever they want, whenever they want.
I wouldn't stop at impeachment either. Congress has an "inherent contempt" power, allowing them to hold their own trials and jail those found in defiance. It hasn't been used since 1934, but it's time to roll that power out of the mothballs. Democrats, if you fear going the impeachment route because of the reasons I mentioned above, then that idea is worth trying.
I think many of us living in the real world, with some sense of human nature (the good and the bad) have been saying this for a while, but it's finally coming from within the Bush Administration. Let's hope they listen (but again, those of us in the real world doubt it will make a difference):
The latest National Intelligence Estimate concludes that al-Qaeda and its leader have only grown stronger since the inception of Bush's war.
While the president diverted the military to Iraq, the real terrorist threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan intensified. If he reads the estimate, he will weep for the more than 3,000 lives lost and billions of dollars spent in a war that's only heightened the hatred of Americans in the Islamic world and increased their desire to kill us -- here.
The nation's 16 intelligence agencies began compiling the report last October and completed their assessment in June. Though the report indicated that Hizbullah may become a threat if the US takes action against Iran or seriously threatens or attacks the Islamic organization, the majority of the report focused on the "rejuvenating effect the Iraq war has had on Al Qaeda."
For the last few years intelligence officials have suggested much of Al Qaeda's central leadership has been neutralized, and that the primary national security threat came from splinter groups [Osama] bin Laden inspired but doesn't command. Yesterday's assessment summary concludes that the same organization that meticulously planned and executed the September 11th attacks is alive and well.
"This clearly says Al Qaeda is not beaten," said Michael Scheuer , who formerly headed up the CIA's bin Laden search team.
Former Surgeon General Says He Was Muzzled
By REUTERS
Published: July 10, 2007, NYT
Filed at 4:25 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The first U.S. surgeon general appointed by President George W. Bush accused the administration on Tuesday of political interference and muzzling him on key issues like embryonic stem cell research.
"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried," Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as the nation's top doctor from 2002 until 2006, told a House of Representatives committee.
"The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds. The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party," Carmona added.
My question to Dr. Carmona: Why did you keep working for these people for four years????
Holy shit! This is some severe punishment for government officials!
China Executes Former Food and Drug Regulator
By JOSEPH KAHN
Published: July 11, 2007, NYT
BEIJING, July 10 — China executed its former top food and drug regulator today for taking bribes to approve untested medicine as Beijing scrambled to show that it is serious about improving the safety of Chinese products.
Okay, okay, China, we get it, you are serious...
Okay, I really didn't think I was going to write anything about the Libby fiasco. I keep turning the channel every time a liberal and a conservative windbag start going at it and I've skipped most of the blog entries on the topic. We all know Bush is an idiot and that he was never going to let Libby go to prison...aren't there bigger crimes this administration has committed?? Let's let him hang himself on this one and move on.
But, this headline at Huffington Post stopped me and I had to read what Tony Hendra had to say:
War Criminal Commutes Sentence of Convicted Perjurer at Behest of Traitor
Honor among liars, killers -- and thieves.
Forget the carefully measured, judicious judicial analyses. Here's what actually went on today. George Bush who has so far been directly responsible for the deaths of at least two hundred thousand of his fellow human beings (that was the most reliable count more than a year ago) is a mass-murderer. That's letting him off the hook for the close to half a million lives lost in the civil war he set in motion. And it doesn't even count the most important figure of all: the 3500-plus incalculably precious lives of our children, which he's squandered with his bare-faced lies and whom he refuses to stop sending to their deaths because then he would lose face, the poor thing.
This gutless coward who deserves to spend the rest of his worthless life in a 23-hour lockdown has just set free a convicted perjurer. For the buzz of the drug called power, aforementioned perjuring reptile did anything for his master however immoral, unconstitutional and criminal, but just like they got Al Capone for taxes, The Man got him on a technicality: lying under oath. (You know that thing his fellow mobsters impeached Bill Clinton for).
But this was no ordinary lie under oath. It was a coverup for his employer who is almost certainly a textbook traitor. That's not polemic overstatement. Just to drive this home one more time: revealing a covert CIA agent's identity is treason. It's treason because it gives aid and comfort to the enemy by informing him that all the other people that person has dealings with may be threats to him. Especially in time of war, a state in which according the Banana Republican junta, we are currently residing. For ordinary people this treason would be punishable by death and few would complain.
Which brings us to the main event: a sack of moral sewage called Richard Cheney.
The angry white whales of the troglosphere can huff and puff all they want about outing a covert agent being no big deal. (Chiefly no doubt because it was a Girl - you know not a real covert agent like one of those cool guys in Ludlum novels). But that's what Richard Cheney did: the five time draft-dodger, the flesh-eating military-corporate parasite Eisenhower warned us about, the snarling hate-mongering flag-waving terror-gogue, stabbed a fellow-member of the national security establishment in the back during time of war. And did so never forget, to save his own soft, white, muscle-free hide.
It really is like 70+% of us live in one reality, while Bush and the Bushies live in another. From Josh Marshall:
President Bush, yesterday: "Now, many critics compare the battle in Iraq to the situation we faced in Vietnam. There are many differences between those two conflicts, but one stands out above all: The enemy in Vietnam had neither the intent nor the capability to strike our homeland. The enemy in Iraq does.”
There are so many problems and distortions with this statement that it is difficult to know where to start. But here's one place. Can we review the main arguments for why we were in Vietnam? Or at least try to distinguish them from the ones for getting out?
President Bush appears to be embracing the argument that the Vietnam War was a fight against Vietnamese nationalists who wanted to kick us out of Vietnam but had no interest in us one way or another beyond that. Certainly they weren't going to launch attacks against the US mainland. But that was the Doves' argument. The premise of the war was that it was a battleground in the larger Cold War struggle, one against the Soviets (who certainly had the ability and arguably had the intent to attack us), the Chinese (though that's much more complicated) and international communism generally.
In any case, the arguments for staying in Vietnam and staying in Iraq are actually quite similar -- and the arguments for leaving actually have a degree of parallelism too.
Of course, if we're worried about armed jihadism, which we certainly should be, it's really difficult to think of a better way to exacerbate the problem than to permanently occupy a country at the literal and figurative heart of the Muslim and Arab worlds.
As reported everywhere today:
President Bush offered two-year-old information about Osama bin Laden's connections to al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq on Wednesday, as he used a commencement address at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy to try to bolster his long-held contention that Iraq is a central front in the "war on terror." (from the Washington Post)
I just don't know...
Yes, it will be better for the country.
Yes, it will make the Democrats happy.
But, he provides a great shield to the President. Who will Bush hide behind next if Gonzales goes?
