LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

Now the fun starts: Judith Miller agrees to testify

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/30/politics/30COURT.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/29/AR2005092901974.html
Miller had refused to testify about information she received from confidential sources. But she said she changed her mind after I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Cheney, assured her in a telephone call last week that a waiver he gave prosecutors authorizing them to question reporters about their conversations with him was not coerced.

[NB: That’s a phone call I’d like to have heard. Coordinating their stories?]

Digby’s (and Swopa’s) smart analyses: did Miller blink, or did Fitzgerald?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_25_digbysblog_archive.html#112805067141698755

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2017

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2018

A good question

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_25_atrios_archive.html#112803895002328019
[Atrios] Assuming Miller is intending to testify, it'll be interesting to see what the new line is from all of those who have spent the last few months writing outraged pieces about her courageous stand against an unjust government action. There certainly were people who thought she shouldn't have to go to jail who made reasonable, if ultimately insufficient, arguments to that effect. What was troublesome was how many of those making the case would, with calculated obtuseness, fail to really acknowledge what the issues were in the case. Fitzgerald was no out of control zealot, having exhausted all other avenues before even attempting to get limited testimony from journalists, and this was a complicated case raising a lot of issues which don't fit nicely into a Journalism 101 lecture on ethics.

Now that Miller has apparently done something she could've done months ago, just what was that principle she was upholding in the first place? And, will the Times ever follow up on this editorial from August:

As of today, Judith Miller has spent more time behind bars to protect privileged information than any other New York Times journalist. Reporters from other news organizations have endured longer jail time in the same important cause over the years, but for us and we hope for others, it should be clear after 41 days in a Virginia jail that Ms. Miller is not going to change her mind. She appears unwavering in her mission to safeguard the freedom of the press to do its job effectively.

If she is not willing to testify after 41 days, then she is not willing to testify. It's time for the judge and the prosecutor to let Ms. Miller go.

Here you go: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001219289

Rough times for the GOP

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/28/AR2005092802388.html
On almost every front, Republicans see trouble. Bush is at the low point of his presidency, with Iraq, hurricane relief, rising gasoline prices and another Supreme Court vacancy all problems to be solved. Congressional Republicans have seen their approval ratings slide throughout the spring and summer; a Washington Post-ABC News poll in August found that just 37 percent of Americans approve of the way Congress is doing its job, the lowest rating in eight years.

On the ethics front, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) is under investigation for selling stock in his family's medical business just before the price fell sharply. The probe of well-connected lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a former close associate of DeLay, threatens to create even more troubles for Republicans. Finally, the special counsel investigation into whether White House senior adviser Karl Rove or others in the administration broke the law by leaking the name of the CIA's Valerie Plame is nearing a conclusion.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/29/opinion/main889472.shtml
[Ari Berman] The [DeLay] indictment sent a shock wave through the GOP establishment, which is already reeling from a swath of criminal and ethics investigations. Three individuals, eight corporations and two political action committees connected to DeLay have been indicted as a result of the probe. In addition, the government's top procurement official, David Safavian, was arrested in September for obstructing a criminal investigation into über-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a close DeLay ally. Abramoff himself is under criminal investigation for defrauding Indian tribes and was indicted for wire fraud in Florida in a separate case. Top White House aides, including Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, have been targeted by a special prosecutor investigating the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Representative Duke Cunningham announced he would not run for re-election after overselling his house for $700,000 to a military industry lobbyist; he too has been indicted. FDA chief Lester Crawford resigned unexpectedly after just two months on the job, possibly because of failure to report his wife's sizable pharmaceutical-industry holdings. And DeLay's Senate counterpart, Bill Frist, is battling possible insider-trading charges for dumping millions in HCA stock, a company founded by his father and run by his brother, weeks before it plunged in value. The U.S. Attorney in Manhattan and the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into Frist and HCA in September.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html
[Dan Froomkin] His second-term agenda is in shambles. His spending plan for Hurricane Katrina has torn his party apart. Support for his increasingly unpopular war is eroding. His political capital is spent. . . And now he's lost his Hammer.

For President Bush, who was already seeing his influence wane in Congress, yesterday's indictment of Rep. Tom DeLay -- forcing the iron-fisted House majority leader to step down from his leadership post -- was an enormous blow. . . Furthermore, DeLay's troubles add to the sense that the Republican Party and the White House are under siege, plagued by missteps and ethics scandals.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/29/politics/29assess.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/29/delay1/index.html

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002717.html

How the Right is defending DeLay

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/29/181822/366
[T]he "indictment" of Tom Delay is entirely bogus - from what I've read, Tom Delay didn't know about the perfectly legal transaction he is accused of conspiring to make. We have now left entirely the field of normal political conflict and entered a twilight world where fantasy is presented as fact and the only standard of conduct is "will it work?". This is not the actions of a political Party engaged in seeking a majority - it is the action of a Party determined to destroy its opponents entirely and sieze all power for itself...it is, in short, the stuff from which civil wars are made...

I really do urge our Democrats to step back from the edge - you are sitting in a lake of gasoline and you are playing with fire. We on our side will only put up with so much before we start to pay back with usury what we have received. If you can't defeat Tom Delay in the electoral field, then you will simply have to accept him as Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives - and you'd better start accepting political reality before things get really bad. . .[read on!]

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/29/frc/index.html
[FRC] "Many Democrats want to turn the indictment of Tom DeLay into an indictment of the ideas he champions. Partisan or ideological exploitation of a matter that is now in the judicial process is wholly irresponsible."

[Tim Grieve] Funny, but we seem to remember that the Family Research Council called for Bill Clinton's resignation even before impeachment proceedings against him began. And we could have sworn that we heard Tom DeLay making political hay out of his indictment just yesterday.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007864
[Ezra Klein] Scandals lashing the Republican Party tend to follow a particular pattern. A day or two of bad press while the media chews up the story is followed by a blistering conservative counterattack that rushes into the void just as reporters begin to need new information to propel the narrative forward. The counterattack, too, tends toward predictability, and in this case, prosecutor Ronnie Earle can look forward to a scorched-earth campaign aimed at crisping his good name. . . Which is why the Washington Post's article on Earle's past history -- or lack thereof -- of partisanship is worth a look. This territory has been well trod, but considering the blitz that the man is soon to get, it's worth walking again. . .

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007863
[Roll Call] DeLay’s allies privately suggested that they would seek retribution against Earle, although DeLay himself will have no role in that effort. Charges of prosecutorial misconduct may be lodged against Earle, and a public-relations effort to discredit Earle personally had already begun on Wednesday, with GOP insiders repeatedly pointing out that Earle unsuccessfully attempted to prosecute Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) in the midst of the 1994 Senate race in Texas. . . “Everything will be in play,” said one high-ranking House Republican aide. “We will throw everything we can at Ronnie Earle.”

http://billmon.org/archives/002204.html
Foreman William Gibson [says] he did his duty and that bound him to look at Tom Delay as just another Texan accused of criminal conspiracy . . . "I like his aggressiveness and everything, and I had nothing against the House majority man, but I felt that we had enough evidence, not only me, but the other grand jury members," Gibson said . . .

The evidence is there to prove Delay was involved in wrongdoing and also prove that he and his fellow grand jurors acted independent of political influence, Gibson said.

"It wasn't Mr. Earle that indicted the man. It was the 12 members of the grand jury," Gibson said.

Gibson is a former sheriff's deputy and a former investigator for what is now the Texas Department of Insurance.

More: http://billmon.org/archives/002202.html

Unfortunately, Delay’s own words convict him

https://www.workingforchange.com/order/index.cfm?OrderFormID=1


http://thinkprogress.org/2005/09/29/delays-case-against-delay
– I have had ethics charges filed starting in 1993
– Again in 1995
– A racketeering suit right after that
– Some more ethics charges right after that
– This has been going on for two years, multiple grand juries, and then they come out with an indictment
– [The grand jury] asked me to come in. … Basically what I showed them was, yes, it was my idea to set up this political action committee
– It was my idea to set up TRMPAC
– I got it all organized
– I and four other elected officials were on an advisory board [of TRMPAC]
– I went to five fundraisers
– They did use my name to raise money
– They told me about it later, and then they would tell me things are going well
– Jim Ellis … also runs my ARMPAC
– Jim Ellis would let me know how things were going because was interested in how things are going and how much money they were raising
– The point here is is Texas deserved a Republican House of Representatives. The way you got change that was to take the majority in the Texas House, and that was my goal. It was successful
– Ronnie Earle let my lawyers know last week that I was going to be indicted
– I have hired Dick DeGuerin, who is my lawyer, who is the same lawyer that taught Ronnie Earle a lesson

And that’s his DEFENSE!

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/corruption_in_washington_/2005/09/delays_injured_innocence.php

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007869

Has DeLay already cut a plea bargain deal?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050928/ap_on_go_co/delay_next_step_1
The next step in the criminal proceedings against Republican leader Tom DeLay is a trip to Austin to be fingerprinted and photographed . . . DeLay's attorneys were working out the details of when the 11-term congressman would return to Texas in hopes of saving him from further embarrassment, they said. . . "What we're trying to avoid is Ronnie Earle having him taken down in handcuffs, and fingerprinted and photographed. That's uncalled for and I don't think that's going to happen," said Dick DeGuerin, DeLay's attorney.

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/29/11568/3496

Will DeLay ever be Majority Leader again? I say no: that’s part of what the substitution of Dreier (a temporary fill) with Blunt (DeLay’s heir apparent) indicates. It isn’t just this indictment in Texas, on top of five ethics rebukes – it’s that the real explosion, the Abramoff link, hasn’t even hit yet

http://mediamatters.org/items/200509290006
[David Brooks] I think it's likely it's the end of his [DeLay's] career in the leadership. For a number of months, and maybe even a couple years, most Republicans in the House have been thinking, you know, "This guy skates close to the edge." The idea that he's the Hammer, that he's this ruthless guy, that's not true. He's a normal guy. He treats his members fairly. But they're tired of him skating close to the edge, and they have been talking for months about getting this guy, Roy Blunt, who's very popular, very well-liked, up in that job just to loosen the baggage on the party. And so I think they will be unhappy to give DeLay back his old job because, you know, he's just one bit of trouble after another.

But does this surprise you: DeLay plans to stay involved as an “advisor” to the House leadership?

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-delay-politics,0,1697524.story

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/28/AR2005092802550_pf.html
[WP] In a sign of DeLay's confidence he will return, he will keep his majority leader office in the Capitol rather than vacate it for Blunt.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/09/29/house_gop_leadership_in_disarray.html
The Wall Street Journal says the new House Republican leadership structure is very fragile. "Because the structure is temporary," and with Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) "widely expected to retire in 2008, the result is an every-man-for-himself atmosphere. Even before the leadership shake-up, Republicans were facing a series of tough votes on the budget and divisive issues such as border security and the treatment of guest workers in the U.S.". . . The leadership decisions "will be revisited as early as next January and there is already competition brewing from unhappy rank-and-file."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/30/politics/30leader.html
Representative Tom DeLay's fall from power under criminal indictment in Texas quickly touched off intense political jockeying among House Republicans on Thursday as they sensed that Mr. DeLay's troubles could create a rare opportunity to win a spot in the party leadership. . .

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007863

Smart move: go after Blunt HARD. He's dirty. If he has to step down too, GOP control of the House will be finished

http://www.citizensforethics.org/press/newsrelease.php?view=84

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006670

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006668

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000983.html

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/09/29/can_the_democrats_take_control_in_2006.html

“Breach of Contract” http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2005/09/breach_of_contr.html

More on David Dreier’s “private” sexual orientation (too “moderate”?)

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007866
[Matt Yglesias] High-minded liberals think we shouldn't mention certain aspects of David Dreier's personal life, so I won't bring them up. But it's clear from Sam's post that something a bit queer odd went on at yesterday's House Republican conference meeting. Let's roll that Roll Call videotape again:

Republican leaders also heard a vocal outcry from outside conservative groups and activists who objected to Dreier’s elevation.

Sadly, the paper doesn't tell us what the outcry was about. Inquiring minds want to know. Dreier has a lifetime 92 rating from the American Conservative Union. Compare that to 96 for Tom DeLay and 94 for Roy Blunt and it's hard to see what the big deal is. I'm open-minded about this. The gang at the Corner seemed genuinely outraged yesterday that anyone would imply that there was anything untoward about Dreier's sex life. Fair enough, as far as it goes. And yet there's clearly something about Dreier that doesn't sit right with conservatives. What is it? That's a legitimate story. It really would be unseemly to have everyone picking through Dreier's personal life, but there's an easily available shortcut here: Somebody on the right can explain to those of us on the left who aren't as plugged in about this stuff why Blunt is so preferable. This isn't trivial stuff.

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/09/bushs_drinking_and_dreiers_sex_life.php
[Mark Kleiman] However, when a politician mixes romance with public business, that's a different problem. And it seems that Rep. Dreier may have such a problem: he has his lover on the public payroll at $156,000 per year, which seems to me like a scandal independent of the sexes of the parties.

More: http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/corruption_in_washington_/2005/09/the_real_dreier_scandal.php

More on Bill Frist’s mounting problems

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/9/29/17158/8488

Iraq: on the edge. Meanwhile, Bush seems to think that the only problem is the domestic unpopularity of his policies – in a Rovean world, it’s ALWAYS about the politics

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/iraq-disintegratingbut-fear-not-bush.html
[WP] The administration has come under growing pressure at home and abroad over the past two weeks, with dire warnings from Arab allies and a prominent international group about the looming disintegration of Iraq. In an unusual public rebuke of U.S. policy, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister called a news conference in Washington last week to predict Iraq's dissolution. He said there is no leadership or momentum to pull Iraq's Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds back together and prevent a civil war. Other countries have expressed similar concerns in private, according to U.S. and Arab diplomats. . . In a push to boost public support for his Iraq policy, Bush will give a speech. . .

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/meanwhile-in-quagmire.html

General breaks two items of bad news. Remember all those promises about troop withdrawals? Probably won’t happen. Remember those three Iraqi battalions ready to fight? Really, there’s only one. . . maybe

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4309

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2013
[AP] "It doesn't feel like progress," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

More bad news for U.S. troops – the Pentagon STILL hasn’t got that body armor problem taken care of (how much longer can Donald “Brown” Rumsfeld keep his job?)

http://www.nbc5.com/news/5035364/detail.html?rss=chi&psp=nationalnews

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000982.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007870
[Mark Leon Goldberg] Sort of funny that the Pentagon isn’t shy about certain other open-ended financial commitments (not excluding an indefinite military presence in a country whose population is hostile to us). But when it comes to providing for the health and welfare of our soldiers that’s simply a bridge too far.

Democracy at work: Sunnis still plan to defeat the Oct 15 referendum – while the US remains neutral on the sidelines (uh-HUH)

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4310
U.S. forces raided the homes of two officials from a prominent Sunni Arab organization Thursday. . . The Conference for Iraq's People and the Iraqi Islamic Party are two leading political organizations representing Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, which has increasingly complained of abuse as U.S. and Iraqi forces pursue insurgents, the bulk of whom are Sunnis. The two groups are also campaigning to defeat a draft constitution in an Oct. 15 referendum.

More: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/BAK947253.htm

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007224.php

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/30/politics/30vote.html
Senior American officials say they are confident that Iraq's draft constitution will be approved in the referendum to be held Oct. 15, even though Sunni Arabs in Iraq are mobilizing in large numbers to defeat it. . . But if the constitution is defeated, several officials said they feared that Iraq would descend into anarchy. . .

[NB: well, we know the "vote" won’t be allowed to fail, first of all. But isn’t it horrific that after all this, the BEST that can be hoped for is a choice between total anarchy and a deeply wounded government with minimal legitimacy and an ongoing civil war?]

DESCENDING into anarchy? I’ve got news for them. . .

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002724.html
[WP] If Iraq slips toward civil war, this town along the Sunni-Shiite fault line will be one of the flash points. Talking to U.S. troops at a base near here, you come away with a idea of what the war looks like out in the killing zone -- and how hard it is to mesh U.S. strategy with the nightmarish reality of the Iraqi insurgency.

A few bad apples? Judge orders release of more horrific Abu Ghraib photos and videos (but the ruling will be appealed)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001218842
Last year a Republican senator conceded that they contained scenes of "rape and murder" and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said they included acts that were "blatantly sadistic.". . .

And how’s that Karen Hughes “good will” tour going? Let me ask it this way: what happens when you bring American-style PR and happy-talk into a cultural context to which they are utterly foreign?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/30/international/middleeast/30hughes.html
"I look forward to shaking each of your hands and having you give me a hug!"

More: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000981.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_25_digbysblog_archive.html#112806134989552833

A terrible Katrina story: reportedly hundreds of prisoners were abandoned, left locked in their cells, and drowned

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/09/nola_prisoners_.html

http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2005/09/22/usdom11773.htm

And the profiteering begins. . .

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12776024.htm
[KR] Across the hurricane ravaged Gulf Coast, thousands upon thousands of blue tarps are being nailed to wind-damaged roofs, a visible sign of government assistance. . . The blue sheeting - a godsend to residents whose homes are threatened by rain - is rapidly becoming the largest roofing project in the nation's history.

It isn't coming cheap. . . Knight Ridder has found that a lack of oversight, generous contracting deals and poor planning mean that government agencies are shelling out as much as 10 times what the temporary fix would normally cost.

Larry Franklin pleads guilty – no sign that he has implicated others in the administration (unfortunately)

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Pentagon-Spy-Probe.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/29/AR2005092901267.html

How Tom Noe stole millions from Ohio retirement fund

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050929/DEVELOPINGNEWS/50929031

In their never-ending effort to minimize the threat of global warming, GOP senators call in Michael Crichton to testify – uh, guys, the last time I looked, Crichton wrote FICTION

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/09/senate_question.html

There are no domestic terrorists: Bush grants presidential pardons (warming up for protecting his pals later, I assume): but it includes a guy convicted of blowing up an energy facility!

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/bush-grants-pardons-to-drug-dealers.html

Bonus item: more on Bill Bennett’s despicable “black baby” scenario, discussed here yesterday

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/bill-bennett-you-could-abort-every.html
[John Aravosis] Or you could just abort Bill Bennett and the racism rate would go down.

http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/05/09/ale05151.html
Conyers Calls on Network to Suspend Bill Bennett's Radio Program

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/29/bennett/index.html
[Tim Grieve] If Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman is serious about wooing African-American voters, he can throw all his energy into speaking to African-American groups and recruiting African-American candidates. Either that, or he could just ask Bill Bennett to shut up.

Bennett won’t apologize

http://makeashorterlink.com/?N3A4525EB
Bennett responded that the comments, made Wednesday on his "Morning in America" show, had been mischaracterized. . .

[NB: No, Bill, you lying sanctimonious fraud. People quoted your words precisely. What part of “aborting black babies” as a way of lowering the crime rate seems like acceptable public discourse to you?]

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:57 AM

 
A GOOD START

DeLay indictment: the first of many, we hope



http://slate.msn.com/id/2127090
[Eric Umansky] The indictment charges that DeLay and two of his associates laundered corporate contributions, sending the dough to the Republican National Committee, which then generously sent a check back for the same amount. The NYT names the RNC guy who received money and wrote the checks; he hasn't been indicted. The effort helped the GOP regain control of the Texas legislature, where they then took to redistricting, a move that ultimately was key in helping Republicans cement control of the House in Washington.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/28/politics/28cnd-delay.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/28/AR2005092800270.html

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/09/28/D8CTE0IO6.html
[AP] DeLay is the first House leader to be indicted while in office in at least a century, according to congressional historians.

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/09/28/12/58/yee-haw/
[Molly Ivins] Tom DeLay found the one law about fundraising in Texas and broke it.

The fine print: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/28/indictment/index.html

How the GOP is spinning this: mean ol’ Mr. Earle

http://slate.msn.com/id/2127090
[Eric Umansky] DeLay. . . denied the charges, describing the prosecutor who lodged them as a "rogue district attorney," a "fanatic" and "an unabashed partisan zealot." As the LAT details, the prosecutor, long-time Austin D.A. Ronnie Earle, is a Democrat with a history of going after politicians on both sides. He has prosecuted three Republicans and 12 Democrats. "Every single person he has indicted, Democrat or Republican, has claimed politics," said one Texas good government-type.

More: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-earle29sep29,0,7086285.story

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/28/135713/851

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/corruption_in_washington_/2005/09/the_delay_indictment.php

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_25_atrios_archive.html#112792803296247509
CNN mentioned about 50 times that Ronnie Earle was a partisan Democrat

http://slate.msn.com/id/2126987
"This is exactly the kind of issue that's going on in America, that attacks against the conservative moment, against me and against many others," [DeLay] told an audience at the Family Research Council.

Hack attack: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007852

Long overdue

http://slate.msn.com/id/2127090
[Eric Umansky] DeLay has earned five rebukes from the House ethics committee and he is still facing an inquiry related to his buddy-buddy ties with indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

More: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-delay29sep29,0,1248986.story

http://houseofscandal.org/main.html

A fascinating chronology

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/28/AR2005092802550.html
What [DeLay] and Hastert wanted was a timeserver, someone to hold the job but with no ambitions to stay in it. And they had someone in mind. This week, an aide to the speaker approached Rep. David Dreier about his role in a post-DeLay caucus. Dreier, a congenial Californian who has loyally served the GOP leadership as Rules Committee chairman, expressed interest in helping Hastert. . .

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007843
[AP] GOP congressional officials said the plan was for DeLay to temporarily relinquish his leadership post and Speaker Dennis Hastert will recommend that Rep. David Dreier of California step into those duties.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006651
[Josh Marshall] Hastert plans to recommend Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) as his replacement. Why Dreier? Because DeLay plans on coming back. If DeLay lets someone into the job who actually has the juice to hold it, he might never get it back. That's why the logical person on the totem pole, Majority Whip Roy Blunt, is staying right where he is.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007846
[Sam Rosenfeld] Josh Marshall very likely has the correct take on why Majority Whip Roy Blunt was passed over in favor of David Dreier to take The Hammer's post -- DeLay wants a placeholder, rather than a potential power rival with his own massive lobbying network, taking the reins temporarily while he's off fighting his indictment. (There's certainly always been talk that Blunt, while remaining publicly steadfast in his support for DeLay, has also served as an unnamed source for negative news coverage of DeLay and his troubles in the last few years, though it's hard to know what truth there is to such talk.)

http://slate.msn.com/id/2127090
[Eric Umansky] DeLay and other House leaders had settled on California congressman David Dreier to replace him. But social conservatives rebelled—Dreier supports stem-cell research and has opposed a ban on same-sex marriage. An afternoon GOP meeting ensued, and Rep. Roy Blunt, was named to the top post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/28/AR2005092802550.html
[T]he GOP caucus immediately erupted in anger over rumors that the selection of Dreier, whom they regard as too moderate, was being presented as a fait accompli.

“Too moderate”? http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/28/14563/8136
Dreier, who is a closet heterosexual and faced a vicious and narrow reelect battle in 2004 (and a top target in 2006), is supposedly Hastert's choice to succeed DeLay.

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/hastert-to-pick-closet-heterosexual.html

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/28/161746/910

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_25_atrios_archive.html#112793940709274464
Dreier, er, out, Blunt in. . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007218.php
[Kevin Drum] Is every single liberal blog in the world planning to post a slobbery, wink-wink-nudge-nudge mention that David Dreier is rumored to be gay? Pardon me while I throw up. . . And spare me the drivel about the "principled" case for outing gay politicians. I'm not buying, and there's nothing principled going on here in any case. It's just childish nonsense that perpetuates the notion that there's something sordid about being gay.

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/09/outing_dreier.php

[NB: I think Kevin and Mark are a bit off base here. The question is whether the GOP rank-and-file blocked Dreier from the leadership position BECAUSE he is gay – that’s fair game, it seems to me: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/dreier-is-out.html and http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000977.html]

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007856
Now that Dennis Hastert has flip-flopped on his initial pick to replace Tom DeLay, announcing Roy Blunt's ascension to majority leader instead of David Dreier's, the obviously juicy remaining question is what was said in the emergency meeting of the House Republican conference today. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006660
[Josh Marshall] Who will bag tomorrow's big story: what happened inside that House GOP caucus meeting this afternoon? Just what issue torpedoed David Dreier after Speaker Hastert had given him the nod? What about the folks outside the meeting? Rove weighed in. What did he say?

“Sharing”? http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006658

Meet Roy Blunt

http://slate.msn.com/id/2127090
[Eric Umansky] The NYT has a soft profile on Blunt, focusing on his quiet style. "You don't hear anybody calling Roy Blunt 'The Hammer'," said one congressman. The Journal and Post focus on substance, reminding that you do hear people calling Blunt a crony capitalist. "Even more than DeLay," says the WP, Blunt "has created a formal alliance with K-Street lobbyists, empowering corporate representatives and trade association executives to assist the House leadership in counting votes and negotiating amendments." Blunt got in a wee bit of trouble two years ago for quietly inserting a provision in a bill that would have helped Phillip Morris, for which his son as well as then girlfriend (now wife) were both lobbyists.

More: http://www.beyonddelay.org/beyond_delay/rep_roy_blunt_r_mo

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/28/231215/836

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/delay-replacement-has-ties-with.html
[AP] The political committee of Rep. Roy Blunt who is temporarily replacing Rep. Tom DeLay as House majority leader, has paid roughly $88,000 in fees since 2003 to a consultant under indictment in Texas with DeLay, according to federal records. . .

Now we see why he wanted the DeLay Rule to pass

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/28/AR2005092802550.html
[C]onservatives such as Steve Buyer (Ind.) rose to say Republicans should have allowed DeLay to remain majority leader even with an indictment. Earlier this year, under pressure from Democrats and a few in his own party, Hastert reversed a rule designed expressly for DeLay that would have allowed indicted leaders to retain their positions.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007850
[Matt Yglesias, Mr. Contrarian] Noam Scheiber recalls Tom DeLay's short-lived effort to get the GOP to adopt a rule that would allow him to retain his leadership post even while under criminal indictment: "Fortunately for the country, that rule change didn't stick." But is it fortunate for the country that the rule change didn't stick?. . . If the DeLay rule had been adopted, by contrast, liberals could make a big stink about it. Conservatives could be forced into an awkward intra-party controversy about whether they really wanted an indicted felon as their leader. Instead, by rejecting the rule, that whole controversy played out when it wasn't on the public radar.

DeLay (on Clinton)

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000979.html
I believe that this nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law. Sometimes hard, sometimes unpleasant, this path relies on truth, justice and the rigorous application of the principle that no man is above the law. . .

Will DeLay get publicly printed and cuffed? Will he get convicted? And who did Earle get to roll over on Big Tom?

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/09/29/06/22/perp-walk/

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_25_atrios_archive.html#112794645502650453

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002712.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007223.php

Finally: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/28/162519/846

More to come in the Boulis murder investigation

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12758163.htm

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002704.html

Frist’s HCA troubles just beginning. . .

http://slate.msn.com/id/2127090
[Eric Umansky] The WSJ says the SEC has upgraded its probe of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's seemingly fishy sale of his family stock. The move gives the SEC subpoena power.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007855
Long before Bill Frist sold his HCA stock, the company's affairs were a scandal. Robert Dreyfuss reminds us that there are billions of dollars of dirty doings in the family industry. . .

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007853
[I]t's still worth recommending Daniel Gross's new piece assessing the actual reasons for the recently flagging profits of HCA, the private hospital chain run by Bill Frist's family. Gross smartly emphasizes the unwillingness of Frist or his party to look for actual remedies to the problems dogging the company. . .

More: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_25_atrios_archive.html#112792700550031317

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_25_atrios_archive.html#112796178986703636

http://slate.msn.com/id/2126984/

The Trifecta (again)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006648
[Josh Marshall] House Majority Leader Indicted for Criminal Conspiracy.

Senate Majority Leader the target of an increasingly serious probe of potential insider trading.

Rumors of October Rove indictment in the Plame case.

Is this a problem yet?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007217.php
[Kevin Drum] . . . the trifecta. Or the pentecta. Or whatever. I can barely keep track of the myriad ethical problems besetting the Republican leadership these days.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/29/politics/29assess.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_25_digbysblog_archive.html#112792981262872239
I am so relieved that the Republicans restored honor and integrity to Washington. There hasn't been even one blow job in that town since they took power.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/28/171344/300
[Ed Kilgore] DeLay doesn't really matter. What really matters is the system which he has served, and what it has done and is doing to our country. . .

[NB: If the Dems can’t make hay out of this next year, they really are in deep trouble]

Rush Limbaugh investigation moves forward

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2005/09/28/s3b_limbaugh_0928.html

ANOTHER brewing scandal you probably haven’t read about: Tim Flanigan (who?)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006645
[Josh Marshall] Timothy Flanigan is set to become Deputy Attorney General of the United States. . . He is directly connected to the Abramoff scandal. . .

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006649

In other news. . .

Pentagon finally does get serious about investigating war porn-for-porn porn exchange scandal

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/28/pictures/index.html

UPDATE: nope, not for long

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/breaking-army-cancels-probe-of-war.html
[AP] The Army Criminal Investigation Command in Iraq conducted the preliminary inquiry within the past week but closed it after concluding no felony crime had been committed and failing to determine whether U.S. soldiers were responsible for the photos and whether they showed actual war dead. . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/wash-post-publishes-weird-story-about.html
DOD pretty much said today the investigation is over because they just can't figure out who these soldiers might be. (If only someone had pictures of the soldiers faces...)

Looks like there won’t be a substantial troop withdrawal in 2006 after all

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/surprise-we-wont-be-substantially.html

Pentagon secret intelligence activities continue to grow – and continue to dodge Congressional oversight (AND the National Director of Intelligence). Even the GOP is angry about it

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/29/politics/29intel.html

More: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002713.html

Karen Hughes gets an earful

www.nytimes.com/2005/09/28/international/middleeast/28hughes.html
The audience - 500 women covered in black at a Saudi university - seemed an ideal place for Karen P. Hughes, a senior Bush administration official charged with spreading the American message in the Muslim world, to make her pitch. . . But the response on Tuesday was not what she and her aides expected. . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/karen-hughes-got-crap-kicked-out-of.html

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4296

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/09/29/hughes_diplomacy/index.html
[Sid Blumenthal] She may be the most parochial person ever to hold a senior State Department appointment, but the president has confidence she can rebrand the United States. . . This week, Hughes embarked on her first trip as undersecretary. Her initial statement resembled an elementary school presentation: "You might want to know why the countries. Egypt is of course the most populous Arab country ... Saudi Arabia is our second stop. It's obviously an important place in Islam and the keeper of its two holiest sites ... Turkey is also a country that encompasses people of many different backgrounds and beliefs, yet has the -- is proud of the saying that 'all are Turks.'". . .

Hughes' simple, sincere and unadorned language is pellucid in revealing the administration's inner mind. Her ideas on terrorism and its solution are straightforward. "Terrorists," she said in Egypt at the start of her trip, "their policies force young people, other people's daughters and sons, to strap on bombs and blow themselves up." Somehow, magically, these evildoers coerce the young to commit suicide. If only they would understand us, the tensions would dissolve. "Many people around the world do not understand the important role that faith plays in Americans' lives," she said. When an Egyptian opposition leader inquired why President Bush mentions God in his speeches, she asked him "whether he was aware that previous American presidents have also cited God, and that our Constitution cites 'one nation under God.' He said, 'Well, never mind.'"

With these well-meaning arguments, Hughes has provided the exact proof for what Osama bin Laden has claimed about American motives. "It is stunning ... the extent [to which] Hughes is helping bin Laden," Robert Pape told me. Pape, a University of Chicago political scientist who has conducted the most extensive research into the backgrounds and motives of suicide terrorists. . . "If you set out to help bin Laden," he said, "you could not have done it better than Hughes."

Tom Friedman (inadvertently) exposes the moral corruption of our Iraq policy

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_25_atrios_archive.html#112791067036701253
"That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won't, then we are wasting our time. We should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind. . ."

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/28/101112/559
[Armando] This is a stupefying statement. You sell this Debacle, stand by it as Bush is Bush and NOW you talk about wasting our time? So if the Sunni do not do what you Tom Friedman wants you suggest washing your hands of the whole affair? Do me a favor folks, never tell me how intelligent Friedman is again. This is simply despicable.

U.S. military blocks reporting out of Iraq

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001217159

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4298
Eason Jordan [CNN] lost his job for saying essentially what Reuters said yesterday.

Another “#2 in Al Qaeda” killed or captured: how many #2’s can there be?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/29/3445/95685

[NB: Yes, yes I know that each time you get a #2, someone else becomes the #2 – but COME ON]

It’s official: global warming IS shrinking the Arctic ice cap

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/28/science/earth/28cnd-ice.html

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007221.php

A serious question: IS Bush drinking again? (and if he is, is it a legitimate story?)

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/gwb_the_beloved_leader_/2005/09/should_we_care_if_bush_is_drinking_again.php

Could THIS be the next SC nominee?

http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002383.html
White House counsel Harriet Miers has never served as a judge before, and while this career "hard-nosed lawyer" (as she is invariably described) from Texas certainly deserves some kudos for a trailblazing career as a female lawyer, she's not a legal scholar, either.

But she does know better than just about anyone else where the bodies are buried (relax, it's a just a metaphor...we hope) in President Bush's National Guard scandal. In fact, Bush's Texas gubenatorial campaign in 1998 (when he was starting to eye the White House) actually paid Miers $19,000 to run an internal pre-emptive probe of the potential scandal. Not long after, a since-settled lawsuit alleged that the Texas Lottery Commission -- while chaired by Bush appointee Miers -- played a role in a multi-million dollar cover-up of the scandal.

. . . The AP is reporting that Miers, who not long ago succeeded Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez (also a possible nominee) as White House counsel, has leaped to near the top of the list to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. . .

Bill Bennett (self-anointed moral arbiter of our culture): for shame

http://mediamatters.org/items/200509280006
[I]f "you wanted to reduce crime ... if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." Bennett conceded that aborting all African-American babies "would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do," then added again, "but the crime rate would go down."

Nancy Pelosi is making a big mistake

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000978.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000980.html

Bonus item: profane, but – or maybe that should be “and” – hilarious (thanks to David Schoeneman for the link)

http://filmstripinternational.com/

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:00 AM

 
A SENSE OF UNREALITY

Michael Brown: a shining example of humanity

http://makeashorterlink.com/?M240161EB
[AP] A combative Michael Brown blamed the Louisiana governor, the New Orleans mayor and even the Bush White House that appointed him for the dismal response to Hurricane Katrina in a fiery appearance Tuesday before Congress. . .

At several points, Brown turned red in the face and slapped the table in front of him. . . . "So I guess you want me to be the superhero, to step in there and take everyone out of New Orleans," Brown said.

"What I wanted you to do is do your job and coordinate," [Christopher] Shays retorted. . .

"My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional," Brown told a special panel set up by House Republican leaders to investigate the catastrophe. Most Democrats, seeking an independent investigation, stayed away to protest what they called an unfair probe of the Republican administration by GOP lawmakers.

"I very strongly personally regret that I was unable to persuade Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin to sit down, get over their differences and work together," Brown said. "I just couldn't pull that off."

Brown also said he warned Bush, White House chief of staff Andrew Card and deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin that "this is going to be a bad one" in e-mails and phone conversations leading up to the storm. Under pointed questioning, he said some needs outlined to the White House, Pentagon and Homeland Security Department were not answered in "the timeline that we requested."

http://slate.msn.com/id/2127042
[Eric Umansky] Eventually, Brown also acknowledged that his agency has been hurting. "I predicted privately for several years that we were going to reach this point [of crisis] because of the lack of resources and the lack of attention being paid to what was [once] a very robust organization," he said, adding, "at one point, we were short 500 people in an organization of about 2,500." The papers all flag those comments, but it's the Post's Dana Milbank who gives a sense of the hearing's arc, pointing out that Brown only began fingering what he dubbed the "emaciation of FEMA" after legislators kept hammering at his incompetence.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/27/national/nationalspecial/27cnd-response.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/27/AR2005092700709.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006638
[Josh Marshall] Boy, would it be nice if someone asked this sorry fool a real question. See our Katrina Timeline for some possibilities.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_25_atrios_archive.html#112783854677713578
[Atrios] What a piece of work. I assume his medal ceremony will happen tomorrow.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007832
[Sam Rosenfeld] As Mike Brown re-established his image as a man of competence and integrity at today’s House inquiry hearing, the Democrats stepped up their call for a serious outside investigation into the government’s response to Katrina, with Louise Slaughter and company announcing the creation of a discharge petition to force an up-or-down House vote on the formation of a September 11–style independent commission. Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi. . . today reiterated her opposition to the House’s sham panel and insisted that “[q]uestioning one Republican crony will not get to the truth of the disastrous federal response to Hurricane Katrina and prevent it from happening again”. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006639
[Josh Marshall] Who's going to get a hold of the transcript of this guy's testimony and give it the fact check it deserves?

Here’s a start: http://thinkprogress.org/2005/09/27/brown-revisionist-history/

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/09/27/brown-false-smear/

No connection?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_25_atrios_archive.html#112782398498529541
[CNN] Brown told congressional investigators Monday that he is being paid as a consultant to help FEMA assess what went wrong in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. . .

[Jane Hamsher] And now I will leave you to guess where this bit of gossip came from, because I promised not to tell. But one of the above-mentioned folks called me this afternoon to say that according to sources within the Enquirer itself, the source for Bush's drinking story is -- an incredibly pissed-off, recently scapegoated head of a federal agency who thinks that BushCo. done him wrong.

A sense of unreality

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_25_digbysblog_archive.html#112784734304883899
[Seattle Times] Facing criticism that he appeared disengaged from the disaster wrought by Hurricane Katrina, President Bush has been looking for opportunities to show his concern. But the White House will take the effort a step further Tuesday, venturing into untested waters by putting the nation's first lady on reality television.

Laura Bush will travel to storm-damaged Biloxi, Miss., to film a spot on the feel-good, wish-granting hit "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." Mrs. Bush sought to be on the program because she shares the "same principles" that the producers hold, her press secretary said. . . It's not clear exactly what Mrs. Bush will do, but Tom Forman, executive producer and creator, said he is hoping that she'll just pitch in and help unload.

Just the headline today, hoping for a whole stream of news by tomorrow

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9507677/
Lawyers for DeLay fear indictment

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/27/222744/283

[Update: Indicted! DeLay to step down as Majority Leader. More to come in the morning: http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/09/28/delay.investigation.ap/index.html]

Abramoff inquiry now probing mob ties, hit men (no joke)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/27/AR2005092700980.html
Fort Lauderdale police said yesterday that they charged three men in the 2001 gangland-style slaying of a Florida businessman who was gunned down in his car months after selling a casino cruise line to a group that included Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis was killed on a Fort Lauderdale street on Feb. 6, 2001. Two of the three men charged had been hired as consultants by Adam Kidan, one of Abramoff's partners in the SunCruz Casinos venture. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006636
Unmentioned in today's AP story are the quarter million dollars in unexplained payments Abramoff business partner Adam Kidan made to Moscatiello, Ferrari and their family members around the time of Boulis' death. . . Kidan earlier explained that the payments were for "catering" and "surveillance".

More: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002695.html

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002699.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/27/161325/227
[Hunter] What is most interesting -- and possibly explosive -- about the Abramoff "bag man" investigation is that Abramoff seems tied to literally every major Republican player and power broker. Through his money connections, he represents the governing force behind the current Republican movement: if you want to play in Washington, you grease Abramoff's wheels, or DeLay's wheels, or those of one of the close "friends" they share between them. . .

Frist’s lies about his blind trust: Think Progress documents the timeline

http://thinkprogress.org/frist-stock-timeline/

In Iraq: a glimpse of the future

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/09/27/MNG99EUI391.DTL
A senior U.S. Marine commander said Monday that insurgents loyal to militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had taken over at least five key western Iraqi towns on the border with Syria and were forcing local residents to flee.

In an interview with The Chronicle, Lt. Col. Julian Alford, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines Regiment stationed outside the western Iraqi town of al Qaim, said insurgents in the area had been distributing flyers they called "death letters," in which they ordered residents of this western corner of volatile Anbar province to leave -- or face death. . . "Basically, the insurgents say if they don't leave they will ... behead them," said Alford. . .

"It appears that al Qaeda in Iraq is kicking out local people from a lot of these towns out there," he said. . . Two weeks ago, Marine spokesmen denied initial reports that insurgents had taken control of the area and were enforcing strict Islamic law, whipping men accused of drinking alcohol, burning a beauty parlor and shops that sold CDs and executing government workers for collaboration with the Iraqi government.

But Alford told The Chronicle that fighters linked to al-Zarqawi had been in complete control of these ancient smuggling communities for at least the past month, and that neither U.S. nor Iraqi forces held any sway over the swath of land that abuts Iraq's desolate, porous 450-mile border with Syria. . . He estimated that between 300 and 400 insurgents were operating in the area . . . "For the time being, they run these towns," Alford said.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N27231955.htm
[Reuters] Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's network of al Qaeda-linked insurgents is emerging as a self-sustaining force, despite repeated blows by U.S. forces and the reported death of his second-in-command, U.S. intelligence officials and other experts say. . .

Inside the Green Zone!

http://slate.msn.com/id/2127042
[Eric Umansky] As the LAT emphasizes inside, the U.S. said it killed the second in command of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terrorist network. Meanwhile, 22 men were found executed near the border with Iran. And a suicide bomber killed seven police recruits in Baquba, just north of Baghdad. The Post is the only paper to highlight news that a car bomb was found—and thankfully disarmed—inside the Green Zone.

Sovereignty?

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007831
[Christian Science Monitor] British Defense Minister John Reid says he is planning to scrap the 25,000-member police force in southern Iraq and "replace it with a new military-style unit capable of maintaining law and order."

[Matt Yglesias] That sure doesn't sound like the sort of thing that would happen in a sovereign, democratic government.

More on the Pat Tillman story (thanks to Matt Youngblood for the link)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/25/MNGD7ETMNM1.DTL&hw=pat+tillman&sn=001&sc=1000

Pentagon more interested in targeting whistleblowers than investigating prisoner abuse

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002700.html

The real Able Danger scandal

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/09/able_danger_mys.html
[Eric Umansky] The Washington Post's Bill Arkin seems to be on his way to unraveling it. He also has a good explanation for why the Pentagon has been so tightlipped: It's not that they ID'd Atta, it's that that they start snooping around on American citizens, which, whoops, is illegal.

More: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002698.html

The weirdest headline you’ll read all month

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/26/AR2005092601410.html
GOP Leaders Try to Soothe Conservatives
Squeezed between a conservative clamor for spending cuts and the rising cost of hurricane relief, Republican congressional leaders will respond this week with a public relations offensive to win over angry conservatives -- but no substantive changes in budget policy.

Republican lawmakers and leadership aides conceded that the wholesale budget cuts envisioned by House conservatives are not being contemplated; the Senate is moving toward approving a temporary expansion of Medicaid for hurricane survivors, estimated to cost $9 billion. Nor are GOP leaders considering tax increases. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006642
[WP] As fiscal hawks surrendered, would-be government contractors were meeting in the Hart Senate Office Building to figure out how to get a share of the money. A "Katrina Reconstruction Summit," hosted by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) and sponsored by Halliburton, among others, brought some 200 lobbyists, corporate representatives and government staffers to a room overlooking the Capitol for a five-hour conference that included time for a "networking break" and advice on "opportunities for private sector involvement.". . . John Clerici, from a law firm that helped sponsor the event, told the group that spending would "probably be larger" than $200 billion. "It's going to be spent in a fast and furious way," Clerici said.

Dangerous rumblings on the state of the economy

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007206.php
[Kevin Drum] Cripes. Did the Consumer Confidence Index really drop nearly 20 points in a single month? Yes it did. . . There was a big drop in new housing sales too. That's a bad combination. . . Maybe the plunge in consumer confidence is strictly a Hurricane Katrina phenomenon and will rebound next month. Maybe not. In any case, keep your hand on your wallet.

Are they serious? GOP wants a promise from the Dems not to block the next SC nominee, before anyone even knows who it is

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050927/ap_on_go_su_co/roberts
[AP] With John Roberts' confirmation as chief justice now assured, Republicans on Tuesday began pressuring the Senate's minority Democrats to promise what they called a fair confirmation hearing and vote for President Bush's next Supreme Court nominee. . . "Because the nominee might be perceived by some to be more conservative in their view than Justice O'Connor, somebody is going to make the argument that this then makes this more extraordinary, and therefore try to put pressure on Democrats who have not seen fit to filibuster judicial nominees to say, 'Well, this is different,'" said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee. . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/gop-wants-dems-to-promise-not.html
[John Aravosis] Why should they promise that? Bush hasn't even told us who it's going to be. . . I have an idea, why don't Dems ask President Bush to "promise" now that he'll appoint someone in the image of Justice O'Connor to fill her slot?

How conservatives view conservation

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/white-house-conservation-plan-by-scott.html
[Dick Cheney 2001] "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it cannot be the basis of a sound energy policy." Also that year, Ari Fleischer, then Mr. Bush's press secretary, responded to a question about reducing American energy consumption by saying "that's a big no."

[Scott McClellan, 2005] “We'll also be sending out notices to staff about -- reminding them to turn off lights and printers and copiers and computers when they leave the office. We'll continue to move forward on more e-government, paperless systems that would reduce the use of faxes and copiers and printers and things of that nature, encouraging all government vehicles to try to consume less.

That would include by people sharing rides in government vehicles, not letting cars idle, which wastes gas. We'll be sending out notices to staff to promote mass transit options, as well, letting them know about Metro stops and encouraging ride sharing, telling them where pick-up and drop-off points are at the White House, or reminding them of that, and just scrutinizing staff travel even more, so that people can videoconference where they can versus actually traveling, and things of that nature.”

http://atcloserange.blogspot.com/2005_09_25_atcloserange_archive.html#112788400429705348
[Maureen Dowd] I can't wait to see what's next. . . Dick Cheney carpooling downtown with Brownie? Rummy Rollerblading down the bike path to the Pentagon? Condi huddling by a Watergate fireplace in a gray cardigan?

Maybe now that our hydrocarbon president is the conservation president, he'll downgrade from Air Force One to a solar-powered Piper Cub as he continues to stalk the Gulf Coast towns and oil rigs like Banquo's ghost.

The once disciplined and swaggering Bush administration has descended into slapstick. . . We've got the clownish Brownie still on FEMA's payroll, giving advice on cleaning up the mess he made. ( Let's hope the White House is paying him only long enough to buy his good will, not to take any of his bad advice.). . .

Is there a dim glow on the horizon?

http://www.thepoorman.net/2005/09/27/damaged-goods/
[The Poorman] Perhaps I’m being overly-optimistic here, but it feels like we are a nation emerging from a very bad period, waking up, in a way, to be more like what we should be - a nation of well-intentioned, capable, and realistic pragmatists, and less like what it has been - a collection of spiteful, fearful, hateful, often deliberately ignorant fools. (Of course, I’ve felt this before - the country may hit the snooze bar a few times after this, too, but we will awake.) There will be a time, I hope, not too far from now, when the insanities which drive us today are no longer operational. I don’t mean to be pollyannaish about this - we may well find new insanities to keep us busy, and we may well continue in this decline forever. But we can do things to give us a chance at a better future, and one of those things is to prevent those people who have a track record of lying and fear mongering from having any influence on the national debate ever again.

How the Dems CAN retake the Senate

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/09/operation_deep6.html
[Charlie Cook] In the Senate, though, Democrats need a net gain of six seats to win the majority, so logically they need to put six GOP seats in play.

They have accomplished that; in fact, seven Republican-held seats are now in play. They are the seats held by Republican Sens. Jon Kyl of Arizona, Jim Talent of Missouri, Conrad Burns of Montana, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee.

Democrats have credible candidates in all but one of those states, Ohio. . . It appears likely that their nominee will be Paul Hackett, the lawyer and Iraq War veteran who came close to picking off a special election in Ohio's 2nd congressional district against now-Rep. Jean Schmidt.

If GOP Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi retires, as many expect he will, that would set up yet another competitive Republican-held Senate seat, bringing the total to eight. . .

Bonus item: you don’t think there’s been a shift in the Zeitgeist?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/27/91836/2754
"Bush is keeping track of Hurricane Rita as it hits his home state of Texas. That's Bush's worst nightmare: an electric chair with no power."
--Jay Leno

"Hurricane Rita is supposed to make landfall in Texas, which is good for Barbara Bush because she can insult survivors closer to home."
--Bill Maher

"Yesterday President Bush made his fifth visit to the area that received the most damage from Hurricane Katrina. In other words, the White House."
--Conan O'Brien

"The president believes the government should be limited not in size, Jon, but in effectiveness. In terms of effectiveness, this is the most limited government we've ever had."
--Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry

"Now here's some sad information coming out of Washington. According to reports, President Bush may be drinking again. And I thought, `Well, why not? He's got everybody else drinking.'"
--David Letterman

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:00 AM

 
“ON OUR MIND”

After presiding over a total capitulation to oil company profiteering and skyrocketing gas prices, Bush huddles with his advisors over how to address this national crisis. After serious consideration of all the options, he speaks

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/26/business/26cnd-gas.html
President Bush called on the Americans today to conserve gasoline and avoid non-essential driving. . .

Oh, and also this proposed “solution”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/26/AR2005092600545.html?nav=rss_nation
President Bush, saying "gas prices are on our mind," today promised that the government is again prepared to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. . .

[NB: “promised” that he is “prepared to”?]

http://billmon.org/archives/002189.html
[Ari Fleischer, 2001] Q Does the President believe that, given the amount of energy Americans consume per capita, how much it exceeds any other citizen in any other country in the world, does the President believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?

MR. FLEISCHER: That's a big no. The President believes that it's an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one. And we have a bounty of resources in this country. What we need to do is make certain that we're able to get those resources in an efficient way. . .

Q So Americans should go on consuming as much more energy than any other citizens in any other countries of the world, as long as they want?

MR. FLEISCHER: Terry, the President believes that the American people are very wise and that, given the right incentives, they will know how and they will make their own right determinations about how much they can conserve . . . But the President also believes that the American people's use of energy is a reflection of the strength of our economy, of the way of life that the American people have come to enjoy. . .

More: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000973.html

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_25_atrios_archive.html#112776388251583622

http://slate.msn.com/id/2126970
[Eric Umansky] It's a bit hard to understand why the LAT and NYT think the president's comments are lead-worthy. As the NYT itself reminds, a few days after Katrina, the president said just about the same thing: "Don't buy gas if you don't need it." And, rhetoric aside, on neither occasion did the president offer specific proposals for lowering oil consumption. . . The Wall Street Journal has a more sensible approach, focusing on that thing called policy. The president is apparently getting behind legislation that the WSJ dubs "Energy Bill II." It would consist largely of, as the Journal gently puts it, "regulatory relief for producers and refiners."

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007205.php
[Kevin Drum] So there you have it. An instinctive aversion to using government power when it's opposed by the industry, even though conservation measures could have a big impact on oil use; an almost palpable eagerness to use any excuse to strip away environmental rules the energy industry dislikes; and a bland ignorance of basic energy policy that would embarrass a high school student. . . This is the Bush administration in a nutshell.

The Carterization of Bush

http://yglesias.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/26/134644/665

http://billmon.org/archives/002189.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/09/26/BL2005092600717_pf.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007202.php

Kristol: Social Security did it

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007806
[WP] "The negative effect of the Social Security [campaign] is underestimated," Kristol said. "Once you make that kind of mistake, people tend to be less deferential to your decisions."

Gloria Borger’s dinner party analogy

http://www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/transcripts/transcript050923.html
Ms. BORGER: . . .I talked to one conservative this week who said to me, `You know, George Bush is like the guy you're sitting next to at the dinner party and you're looking over his shoulder for the more interesting person.'

Unidentified Panelist: Wow.

Unidentified Panelist: Ooh.

Ms. BORGER: Right.

Unidentified Panelist: That's a mean thing.

Ms. BORGER: Right. That is very mean to say, and this is somebody who I will say has been close to this administration. And then he declared, `We are in the post-Bush Republican Party.'

Deeply sick

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/Issues/2005-09-21/news/news.html
For almost a year, American soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan have been taking photographs of dead bodies, many of them horribly mutilated or blown to pieces, and sending them to Web site administrator Chris Wilson. In return for letting him post these images, Wilson gives the soldiers free access to his [porn] site. American soldiers have been using the pictures of disfigured Iraqi corpses as currency to buy pornography.

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/us-soldiers-allegedly-trading-pictures.html

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/hotline-reports-on-militarys-new-do-it.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_25_digbysblog_archive.html#112777061777458150

http://billmon.org/archives/002188.html

The Pentagon responds: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/pentagon-is-aware-of-death-for-porn.html
[The Nation] Centcom spokesman Matt McLaughlin said that, in general, "Centcom recognizes DoD regulations and the Geneva Convention prohibit photographing detainees or mutilating and/or degrading dead bodies." He added, "Centcom has no specific policy on taking pictures of the deceased as long as those pictures do not violate the aforementioned prohibitions."

The fact that US military officials refuse to denounce combat photos posted on a porn site is troubling, since the very act of posting pictures of dead civilians for entertainment value is degrading. In addition, one photograph of detainees sitting on the back of a flatbed truck with burlap sacks on their heads does appear to break even the narrow rules on photographing detainees set forth by the Defense Department.

Iraq pullout: the conflicting messages coming out could indicate disorder or vigorous internal debate – or they could simply be a way of keeping options open for whatever gets decided eventually. So, depending on who you listen to, we are (a) definitely going to stay the course (permanent bases, etc.), (b) definitely going to start pulling out troops in the next few months, (c) definitely going to stay until the Iraq forces are capable of self-defense – which is no time soon – or (d) start pulling out troops IN ORDER to make the Iraqis take their self-defense more seriously. Either our presence is helping to suppress the insurgency, or our presence is actually exacerbating and helping to perpetuate the insurgency. Either our presence is propping up a govt with limited legitimacy, or our presence is undermining its legitimacy. Either our presence is the last bulwark against total chaos and civil war, or our presence is actually making things worse. Got that?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007204.php

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002691.html

http://yglesias.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/23/05834/3560

Sunnis want more changes to the Iraq constitution

http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/sunnis-seek-last-mnute-changes-in.html

In Iraq: after a brief honeymoon for Condi, the Defense Dept continues its drive to take over State Dept functions – and she can’t stop them

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4282

http://slate.msn.com/id/2126970
From the Post: "The Americans had underestimated the problems with Iraq's infrastructure, a U.S. official in Baghdad said on condition of anonymity."

(And while we’re at it, let’s turn over to the Pentagon domestic responsibilities as well – hell, it’s the only govt agency Bush trusts)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006633

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/do-we-really-want-this-administration.html

“Axis of Evil” successes just keep piling up: Iraq, Iran, North Korea. . . and Libya. Libya?!? Well, let’s just add them retroactively to the list, since it’s the only case in which there has actually BEEN success

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007814

Cindy Sheehan arrested outside WH

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/cindy-sheehan-arrested-outside-of.html

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/3119

The Pat Tillman “friendly fire” case takes a new twist

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2000

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_25_digbysblog_archive.html#112778466338732856

As noted yesterday, the WH web site to raise private money for Iraq only yielded $600 – so how do they respond to this embarrassment?

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/26/partnership/index.html

Earlier Abramoff investigation quashed?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/27/politics/27lobby.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006635
[Josh Marshall] Perhaps even more interesting, though, is a possibility that goes unmentioned in Tuesday's Times piece: Karl Rove. . . The Los Angeles Times article on the Guam story from August 7th, 2005. . . notes that Black's replacement, Leonardo Rapadas, apparently came at the behest of none other than Karl Rove. . . . Wrote the Times. . .

His replacement, Leonardo Rapadas, was confirmed in May 2003 without any debate. Rapadas had been recommended for the job by the Guam Republican Party. Fred Radewagen, a lobbyist who had been under contract to the Gutierrez administration, said he carried that recommendation to top Bush aide Karl Rove in early 2003.

It's probably worth mentioning that at the point Black got the ax in November 2002 and was replaced by the party-backed Rapadas, the aforementioned Ralston was working as Rove's executive assistant.

CREW files ethics complaint against Frist

http://www.citizensforethics.org/press/newsrelease.php?view=81

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007820

Frist tries to explain why his “blind trust” wasn’t actually “blind” and, as usual with liars, only makes things worse

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/26/AR2005092601066.html

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012508.html

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_25_atrios_archive.html#112775027034160375

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/09/26/frist_braces_for_dual_probes.html

His full statement (no questions, please): http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Senate_leader_defends_stock_0926.html

SEC chair (and former GOP Senator) recuses himself: http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Breaking_SEC_chairman_recuses_himself_from_investigating_Sena_0926.html

DeLay indictment coming?

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4277

Next SC nominee coming Friday?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/next-supreme-court-nominee-this-week.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/26/supreme/index.html

And could it be The Worst Nominee Ever?



http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn20050912.shtml

[NB: Karl Rove’s pal? http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010717.html]

Or maybe not

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012512.html



Now, an orchestrated strategy to put abortion back on the SC front-burner

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-abort27sep27,1,1219025.story

Dick Cheney, liar

http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002380.html

Why Kerry lost

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/09/26/kerry_staffers_brace_for_new_film.html

Brownie hired back at FEMA. . . no, I’m not making this up!

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/CBS_News_says_Michael_Brown_rehired_as_FEMA_consult_0926.html
CBS News' Bob Schieffer just announced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has rehired ex-FEMA chief Michael Brown-- as a consultant to evaluate the agency's response to the disaster!

80% of the contracts in Katrina reconstruction are no-bid

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007816

Christian charity, subsidized by public funds

http://slate.msn.com/id/2126970/
The WP fronts FEMA's decision to reimburse religious institutions for any emergency aid they've provided to survivors of Katrina and Rita. It's the first time the agency has crossed that line.

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/bush-team-shoveling-cash-over-to.html

Bonus item: WH announces that leadership of FEMA is too much for one person: department to be headed up by new troika (thanks to A.G. Rud for the link)



***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:19 AM

 
HEAVY RESTS THE MANTLE. . .

Abramoff: this is going to become a mega-scandal before it is all over – EVERYONE is implicated

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006629
[Josh Marshall] The Republican machine built by DeLay, Norquist, Abramoff, et al. and pulled into high gear after 2001, is a pay-for-play political machine. This is just another part of the operation, like the diktat for trade associations to hire only Republicans. Big political machines need their soldiers taken care of -- jobs on K Street which also discipline the trade associations under Hill leadership. Just so, they need big sums of money to move around off the books. How does Rove keep the millions moving to Norquist? To Reed? To all the other operatives whose names you don't know about?. . .

Safavian arrest shows that the Justice Dept is serious

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9470786/site/newsweek/
The Feds wanted to know if Safavian would be willing to cooperate in an ongoing corruption probe surrounding his friend, lobbyist Jack Abramoff. According to Safavian's lawyer, no deal was struck. Safavian was then charged with lying to the FBI and obstructing an investigation. . . Safavian's arrest is the most dramatic sign yet that the long-running Justice probe is gathering momentum. Safavian's misfortune, one shared by many in Washington, was his relationship with Abramoff, the brash GOP superlobbyist known for his close ties to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. . .

And Bob Ney (R-OH) – don’t forget Bob Ney

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Newsweek_catches_congressman_in_ano_0925.html

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012499.html

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002685.html

Alan Greenspan: “we have lost control” of the budget

http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article315144.ece
Bitter disagreements over global economic policy broke out into the open yesterday as the French Finance Minister claimed that Alan Greenspan had admitted America had "lost control" of its budget while China warned the US to drop demands for radical economic policy changes.

More:
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/greenspan-we-have-lost-control-of.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9438988/
[Tom Friedman] What we're really debating about Katrina in this bidding of--"I'll give you $50 billion. No, I'll give you $60 billion"--and we should call it by its real name. We are debating how much money we are going to borrow from China--OK?--because we're running a deficit, OK? And we're clearly not going to cut spending to make up that money. So the real debate--we should call this by its real name. It's the, "How much money are we going to borrow from China act to rebuild New Orleans?". . . I think we have--we are now in a position where China has-- they're heading for $1 trillion. . . in reserves that they're going to be holding, basically. And the leverage that is going to give China over the United States in the coming years, God knows where-- how that's going to play out. . .

Does Bush really WANT to be President any more?

http://www.topplebush.com/oped2208.shtml
[Maureen Dowd] What Katrina exposed was a president who - remarkable as this may sound - seemed bored after his re-election. . .

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9470154/site/newsweek/
The president didn't look all that relieved or happy, however. His eyes were puffy. . . and he seemed cranky and fidgety. A group of reporters and photographers had been summoned by White House handlers to capture a photo op of the commander in chief at his post. Bush stared at them balefully. He rocked back and forth in his chair, furiously at times, asked no questions and took no notes. It almost seemed as though he resented having to strike a pose for the press. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/opinion/25sun1.html
The president's recent schedule of nonstop disaster-scene photo-ops is reminiscent of the principal of a failing school who believes he's doing a great job because he makes it a point to drop in on every class play and teacher retirement party. . .

[NB: It was a lot more fun zooming around in jet planes and standing before cheering and adoring (hand-picked) crowds, wasn’t it? But actually BEING President is “hard work”]

Here’s what happens when you don’t want people around you smart and independent enough to challenge you

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1109345,00.html

Brownie to appear before Republicans-only “investigating” committee on Wednesday. Here’s a question he won’t be asked: how the HELL did you get that job?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006628

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/25/11553/8225

Joseph Schmitz, totally useless Inspector General for the Pentagon, earned his keep by doing everything else but his actual job

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007197.php

More: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-schmitz3sep03,1,5852616.story

http://pbd.blogspot.com/2004_06_01_pbd_archive.html#108745481087260156

http://pbd.blogspot.com/2004_07_01_pbd_archive.html#108918167912756985

Extraordinary rendition: a stain on the nation

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002687.html

http://159.54.227.3/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050925/NEWS/509250309

Let’s not forget how bad the Iraq constitution actually is

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/26/14850/7927

Let’s see, anti-war rally: 200,000, give or take 50,000. Pro-war rally: 400

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/what-if-you-threw-war-and-nobody-came.html

Karen Hughes goes touchy-feely with the Arab world

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/karen-hughes-is-going-save-our-image.html
[WP] "Many of the differences and many of the concerns are deep-seated and I'm probably not going to change many minds," Hughes said. "But if I make a connection with a person or two who I can keep following up with after I leave here on my trip, I would consider it a success."

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/25/AR2005092500647.html

It’s bad enough that Bush has mercenaries running around Iraq, with predictable results. But does Bush HAVE to hire them to patrol U.S. streets as well? Or are we just going to outsource EVERYTHING now?

http://wilsonhellie.typepad.com/for_the_record/2005/09/united_states_m.html

Katrina devastation? A good reason to pass school vouchers!

http://www.boston.com/news/weather/articles/2005/09/25/rebuilding_plan_paving_way_for_conservative_goals/

The pros and cons of Dems voting for Roberts: an overview

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/25/1405/25374

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:12 AM

 
THE WIMP FACTOR

Once again we see evidence of the weakness of character that has made George Bush such a malleable instrument of other people’s policy priorities

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/23/AR2005092302182.html
A president who roamed across the national and world stages with an unshakable self-assurance that comforted Republicans and confounded critics since 2001 suddenly finds himself struggling to reclaim his swagger. . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/wapo-bush-trying-to-regain-swagger.html
[Joe in D.C.] Isn't that "swagger" what got us in to most of this trouble in the first place?. . . Some would consider his supreme self-confidence what got us in to a quagmire in Iraq and what got us huge deficits and what got us a complete failure of homeland security. . .

[NB: Joe nails it – the very fact that they think the problem is insufficient “swagger” reveals the limits of Bush’s political character and the governing strategy they’ve tried to build around it. The last thing he needs is more banty-rooster cockiness. Because he has no appetite for ambiguity, difficulty, or learning from error, his only response to failure is stubborn reassertiveness – and when that doesn’t work, he has little else to fall back on]

Here’s how bad it’s gotten: talk about image over substance

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/24/national/nationalspecial/24bush.html
President Bush was supposed to land here on Friday afternoon on the first stop of a tour intended to make clear that he was personally overseeing the federal government's preparations for Hurricane Rita's landfall. But the weather did not cooperate.

It was too sunny.

Just minutes before Mr. Bush was scheduled to leave the White House, his aides in Washington scrubbed the stop in San Antonio. . . In a White House that likes to choreograph the president's appearances days or weeks ahead, it was a reminder that the newest strategy - to put Mr. Bush close to the center of the action - had its risks. . .

Another White House official involved in preparing Mr. Bush's way noted that with the sun shining so brightly in San Antonio, the images of Mr. Bush from here might not have made it clear to viewers that he was dealing with an approaching storm.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush24sep24,1,3332334.story
Bush was all set to fly to the storm area in Texas, where he planned to observe emergency personnel in action at a San Antonio supply depot. But that plan was scrubbed. . . Some obvious options for Bush were ruled out. He wouldn't stay in Washington, where demonstrators were massing for a huge protest against the Iraq war. He probably would avoid his ranch near Crawford, Texas, where he was criticized for spending the first few days of Katrina instead of visiting the disaster scene. . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/texas-trip-cancelled-because-it-wastoo.html
[Joe in D.C.] The White House is desperate.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1109277,00.html
[Time] George Bush has become a hurricane hunter. Like those pilots who fly into the storm, Bush has been criss-crossing the country looking for the best ways to show that he’s offering a competent and compassionate response to Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. Yesterday, he cancelled a trip to Texas at the last minute, flying straight to Colorado where he could visit the military’s Northern Command and follow the progress of Rita from there. . .

Such cowards, they even blame Laura

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/005541.php
[WP] A top Republican close to the White House since the earliest days said the absence of a "reelection target" and pressure from first lady Laura Bush and others to soften his second-term tone conspired to temper Bush's swagger well before Katrina hit. "A reelection campaign was always the driving principle to force them to get things together," said the GOP operative, who would speak candidly about Bush only if his name was not used. He said the "brilliance of this team" was always overstated. . . Since the election, this official said, White House aides reported that Laura Bush was among those counseling Bush to change his cowboy image during the final four years.

More troubles ahead

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/wh-is-worried-about-rove-probe.html
[WP] In a series of private conversations over the past few months, aides began second-guessing how they handled the Social Security debate, managed the public perception of the Iraq war and, most recently, the response to Katrina. The federal CIA leak investigation, which has forced Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove and others to testify before a grand jury, seemed to distract officials and left a general feeling of unease, two aides said. Aides were calling reporters to find out what was happening with Rove and the investigation. "Nobody knows what's going to happen with the probe," one senior aide said.

Here is all you need to know about the depth of Bush’s moral character

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/apps/nl/newsletter2.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=917053
"Human trafficking is one of the worst offenses against human dignity. Our nation is determined to fight that crime abroad and at home."
-- President Bush, 7/16/04

VERSUS

"President Bush decided Wednesday to waive any financial sanctions on Saudi Arabia. . . for failing to do enough to stop the modern-day slave trade in prostitutes, child sex workers and forced laborers."
-- AP, 9/21/05

More: http://crookedtimber.org/2005/09/24/stopping-the-trafficking/

A hilarious photo essay: how much Bush hates actually having to listen and learn (thanks to Buzzflash for the link)

http://www.hoffmania.com/blog/2005/09/class_welcome_o.html

[NB: I’m sure he’s thinking, “Can’t we just watch ESPN or something?” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9287434/]

How big a disaster is Bush? Let us count the ways

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4273

Bill Frist: a stupid liar as well as a stupid cheat

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_18_atrios_archive.html#112757270152758406
[ABC News] Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., was updated several times about his investments in blind trusts during 2002, the last time two weeks before he publicly denied any knowledge of what was in the accounts, documents show. . .

Frist, asked in a television interview in January 2003 whether he should sell his HCA stock, responded: "Well, I think really for our viewers it should be understood that I put this into a blind trust. So as far as I know, I own no HCA stock"

Frist, referring to his trust and those of his family, also said in the interview, "I have no control. It is illegal right now for me to know what the composition of those trusts are. So I have no idea."

Documents filed with the Senate showed that just two weeks before those comments, the trustee of the senator's trust, M. Kirk Scobey Jr., wrote to Frist that HCA stock was contributed to the trust. It was valued at $15,000 and $50,000.

http://makeashorterlink.com/?H5CD22BDB
[AP] Blind trusts are designed to keep an arm's-length distance between federal officials and their investments, to avoid conflicts of interest. But documents show that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist knew quite a bit about his accounts from nearly two dozen letters from the trust administrators. . . Frist, R-Tenn., received regular updates of transfers of assets to his blind trusts and sales of assets. . .

How dumb is this? http://yglesias.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/24/144852/339

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/09/24/frist_knew_about_blind_trust_investments.html
[Taegan Goddard] The Tennessean understates the political impact, saying the stock sale and investigation "might pose a political stumbling block for the Tennessee Republican as he prepares a possible presidential campaign."

[NB: This guy is on the wrong side of an SEC investigation, with copious evidence against him. I would say this deserves something more than “might pose a stumbling block” to his presidential ambitions. People have had their careers ruined over less than this.]

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000970.html
[Steven Clemons] Frist may not only not be running for President any longer, he may be doing a "Trent Lott" soon. . .

More trouble for Frist!

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/09/24/frist-torture/
Time magazine yesterday revealed new allegations of systematic abuse of Iraqi detainees made by a “decorated former Captain in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.”. . . The Captain revealed this abuse to Human Rights Watch in July 2005. He also reported his charges to “three senior Republican senators,” including Majority Leader Bill Frist and Sen. John McCain. . .

On July 27, the same month the Captain came forward, Sen. Frist single-handedly derailed a bipartisan effort — led by Sen. McCain — to clarify rules for the treatment of enemy prisoners at U.S. prison camps. In what news reports at the time described as an “unusual move,” Frist “simply pulled the bill from consideration” before it could be debated.

Bill Frist needs to come clean: Was his office told of the “systematic abuse” in the 82nd Airborne before he torpedoed the new detainee laws?

Another Republican in big, big trouble

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/23/AR2005092301711.html?nav=rss_nation

“The Thirteen Most Corrupt Members of Congress” (11R, 2D)

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ethics25sep25,1,759138.story

More to come

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/09/23/arrest_opens_new_phase_of_lobbyist_probe/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/24/AR2005092401379.html

Paying for Katrina? DeLay says, “don’t look at me”

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/apps/nl/newsletter2.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=917053
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay "scoffed at the suggestion he give up his earmarks," which are thought to total $114.4 million over five years. "My earmarks are pretty important. . . “

“Fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement”

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/12730323.htm
[KR] “There's no doubt, no question, there's going to be fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement -- there already has been,'' Comptroller General David Walker told Knight Ridder. He runs the Government Accountability Office, the watchdog arm of Congress.

The big anti-war protest in Washington (and elsewhere around the world): stories and pictures

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/24/AR2005092401701.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/politics/25protest.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-protest25sep25,0,4892550.story

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/dc-is-actually-exciting-place-today.html

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/it-was-huge-crowd-in-dc-today.html

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4269

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012490.html

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/3093

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001863.htm

Meanwhile. . .

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/09/24/15/37/commandos-in-the-streets/
[William Arkin] Today, somewhere in the DC metropolitan area, the military is conducting a highly classified Granite Shadow “demonstration.”. . . Granite Shadow is yet another new Top Secret and compartmented operation related to the military’s extra-legal powers. . .

And the thousands who couldn’t get there. . .

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012491.html
[WP] In a hitch for some coming to the protest, 13 Amtrak trains running between New York and Washington were delayed for up to three hours Saturday morning for repair of overhead electrical lines. Protest organizers said that held up thousands coming to the rally. . . There were other reports of Metro delays in northern Virginia on the Blue and Yellow lines.

“Why we have to get the troops out of Iraq”

http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/why-we-have-to-get-troops-out-of-iraq.html
[Juan Cole] The issue is not the rights and wrongs of the war. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There was no nuclear program, and the mushroom clouds with which Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice menaced us were figments of their fevered imaginations, no more substantial than the hateful internal voices that afflict schizophrenics.

But that is not a reason to get the ground troops out now.

The issue is not the lack of operational cooperation between the secular, socialist, Arab nationalist Baath Party of Iraq and the religious fanatics of al-Qaeda. There was no such operational involvement. . .

But that is not a reason to get the ground troops out now.

That US soldiers are dying in Iraq, with the number approaching 2,000, is a tragedy. But it is not in and of itself a reason to get the troops out of Iraq. . .

So that is not a reason to get the ground troops out now.

The first reason to get the ground troops out now is that they are being fatally brutalized by their own treatment of Iraqi prisoners. . .

The second reason is that the ground troops are not accomplishing the mission given them, and are making things worse rather than better. . .

Let's get them out, now, before they destroy any more cities, create any more hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons, provoke any more ethnic hatreds by installing Shiite police in Fallujah or Kurdish troops in Turkmen Tal Afar. They are sowing a vast whirlwind, a desert sandstorm of Martian proportions, which future generations of Americans and Iraqis will reap.

The ground troops must come out. Now. For the good of Iraq. For the good of America.

More on the horrific future of Iraq

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050924/ap_on_re_mi_ea/albright_iraq
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright issued a stern warning Saturday about the continuing U.S. role in Iraq, saying "there are no good options at this point and the worst days may be ahead of us."

Albright, secretary of state under President Clinton, said the March 2003 invasion of Iraq has led to a series of misfortunes that should have been anticipated.

"Instead of winning friends for America, it has poisoned our relations with many countries in the Mideast and the Muslim world," Albright told a conference on the role of citizens in shaping the nation's image abroad. . .

Bush’s Iraq dilemma

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2005/09/24/iraq_quandary/
[Joe Conason] So Bush is wrong to claim that continuing warfare in Iraq will defeat terrorism, when we know that terror is expanding there and that terrorist organizations are winning new adherents due to the war. He is also wrong because the Iraqi insurgency is a homegrown nationalist force, not a foreign-directed terrorist conspiracy.

Nevertheless, the war could end in a perceived defeat for the United States -- and a perceived victory for al-Qaida and its allies. Bush is understandably determined to prevent that, and even many of his most implacable critics agree that such an outcome must be avoided. The problem is that neither this arrogant and inept president nor his critics have outlined a plausible plan to escape the disaster he has created. . .

WH web site to attract private donations to supplement the billions already wasted on rebuilding Iraq attracts. . . $600

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1577750,00.html

British develop plan to pull out troops in May

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1577968,00.html
British troops will start a major withdrawal from Iraq next May under detailed plans on military disengagement to be published next month, The Observer can reveal.

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007196.php

The SC nomination to come after Roberts could be World War III (and that’s just among the Republicans)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/24/142043/845
[NYT] "It is going to be different," said Senator Lincoln Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, who is socially liberal and has said he will vote to confirm Judge Roberts.

Mr. Chafee said he would apply a more skeptical standard to the next nominee because of the balance of the court and might even oppose a jurist similar to Judge Roberts. "I will be looking very carefully" at the next nominee's views on privacy rights, "separation of church and state," and the scope of federal power, he said.

Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, a Republican who supports abortion rights and has said she will vote to confirm Judge Roberts, took a similar view. She previously voted to confirm some of Mr. Bush's appeals court nominees who met stiff liberal opposition, like Judge Priscilla R. Owen and Judge Janice Rogers Brown, two people said to be on Mr. Bush's shortlist. But Ms. Snowe said she might not support either one for the Supreme Court. "This is certainly a different level of evaluation," Ms. Snowe said, "especially because of the balance of power on the court."

On the conservative side of the party, Mr. Brownback and Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, another member of the Judiciary Committee, devoted much of their time for questioning Judge Roberts to delivering messages to the White House about the importance of overturning precedents supporting abortion rights.

In an interview last week, Mr. Brownback said he would vote against a nominee who was not "solid and known" on cultural issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and religion in public life. "If the president doesn't nominate a solid nominee, that is going counter to what he campaigned on," Mr. Brownback said. And if such a nominee "involves a contentious battle, then let it be." "I think you are going to see a contentious battle regardless of who is nominated," he added, "even if it is Judge Roberts's twin brother."

The latest news on global warming: not for the faint-hearted

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1988

Bush’s tax-cut “shell game”

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/09/24/09/43/the-shell-game-2/

Theocracy watch: how they are ruining science education in this country

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/24/AR2005092401262.html

A serious abuse of federal education funds

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fipse25sep25,1,2660812.story

Bonus item: George Bush in his own words (thanks to Megan Boler for the link)

http://oregonstate.edu/~murtaugp/bush.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:33 AM

 
THE WHEELS ARE COMING OFF

Frist is screwed (and do you think the Bush gang will raise one finger to defend him?)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/24/politics/24frist.html
A spokesman for Mr. Frist, the Senate majority leader and brother of an HCA chairman emeritus, repeated Friday that the senator ordered the sale to dispel persistent accusations that his holdings created a conflict of interest because of his involvement in shaping health care policy. . .

Mr. Frist's decision to sell represented a departure from his previous position that his lack of control over the blind trusts that held his assets almost eliminated any conflict of interest. The Frist transaction also followed several months of heavy selling by many top executives inside the company as the stock reached its new peak, raising questions about whether Mr. Frist was following their lead.

"Right now, I don't know if I own HCA because it's a qualified blind trust," Mr. Frist told The National Journal two years ago. . .

http://slate.msn.com/id/2126889
Frist says the stock was held in a blind trust so he didn't know about any sales, although the AP has documents that suggest he was told about other stock transactions. . .

Subpeona: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_18.php#006620

“The Trifecta”

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/23/132440/794
[Kos] The trifecta is complete. The Republican leadership in the Senate, House and White House are ALL officially under investigation. . .

A must-read on Abramoff/Rove connections

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_18.php#006619

And more on Safavian . . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_18.php#006618
[Josh Marshall] We know now from the Post that David Safavian had some awkward connections with certain people later accused and/or convicted of ties to Islamic terrorism.

But I hear the Secret Service had serious concerns about Safavian's ties too and did not want to give him a badge to work at the White House. And I hear these concerns came up not just with the OMB job but in the earlier one at GSA as well.

Needless to say they were overruled and Safavian got his clearances. . .

A new prisoner abuse scandal – going on WHILE Abu Ghraib was being publicly disclosed

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/24/politics/24abuse.html
Three former members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division say soldiers in their battalion in Iraq routinely beat and abused prisoners in 2003 and 2004 to help gather intelligence on the insurgency and to amuse themselves. . .

More: http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/09/abuse_ignored_a.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_18_digbysblog_archive.html#112753646633960841

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/torture_/2005/09/a_few_bad_apples.php

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007193.php

Pentagon backs down on “Able Danger” testimony

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/09/23/national/w170153D91.DTL

Some good questions about Iraq

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1984

Why were British special forces troops, dressed as Iraqis, driving through Basra with explosives in their car? (thanks to Jan Pieterse for the link)

http://www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/canon_fodder/0961_fake_terrorism_coalition_best_friend.html

The trillion dollar war

http://crookedtimber.org/2005/09/23/a-trillion-dollar-war/

More: http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/25876/

More evidence that the Bush gang wants out A.S.A.P. and is just looking for a face-saving time and manner for doing it

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007190.php
[The Guardian] Ambitions for Iraq are being drastically scaled down in private. A Foreign Office source said the goal of the US administration to turn Iraq into a beacon of democracy in the Middle East had long ago been shelved. "We will settle for leaving behind an Iraqi democracy that is creaking along," the source said. . .

The "drawdown" of troops would be done in stages, and the US wants to keep four air bases in Iraq. But this is not part of some strategic plan for mastery of the Middle East. . . Like its other ambitions for Iraq, the US has scaled down this plan. . .

Bush’s spending binge: the most fiscally irresponsible administration, ever

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/23/175346/446

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007799

The GAO agrees: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/23/174319/387

A great sum-up from the PBS News Hour (Brooks and Shields, reading from the same page)

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/political_wrap/july-dec05/sb_9-23.html
JIM LEHRER: Let's talk about the cost. You say the conservatives are upset. How upset are they and what are they going to do about it?

DAVID BROOKS: They are upset for a lot of reasons. Some of it is Katrina - anger just with reaction. A lot of it is that. Again Katrina is always the end of a long accumulation of events and for conservatives on spending, you have got a highway bill which was ridiculous, a travesty of pork barrel spending; you had an Ag bill; you had really five years in which George Bush has spent money at a faster clip than Lyndon Johnson.

JIM LEHRER: Say that again.

DAVID BROOKS: Domestic discretionary spending - non-defense spending - non-homeland security spending -- has increased. . . under George W. Bush twice as fast as under Bill Clinton, and faster than under Lyndon Baines Johnson. Conservatives didn't expect that in 2000. I guarantee you that. A lot of it is, frankly, the Republican Congress's fault. If you look back - when we look back on this period, we are going to look at a Congress that came preaching limited government but just has gone hog-wild in spending, and a president who never disciplined members of his own party to restrain themselves.

So there's just a lot of built-up anger and symbolically I think for a lot of conservatives there has to be what they call offsets, which are budget cuts to compensate for the cost. . .

JIM LEHRER: What's your view of this, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: I have seen this movie before, Jim. The first 200 years of the United States, seven wars, Louisiana Purchase, expansion of the continent, the Great Depression; we ran up a total indebtedness of 1 trillion dollars.

In 12 years from 1980 to 1992, under Republican presidents promising to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse, which is the term I heard again this week, we saw that national debt quadruple. It became an issue in the '92 campaign on balanced budgets raised by Ross Perot and the consequence was that Bill Clinton, Democratic president, working with the Republican Congress left George Bush with a budget surplus.

JIM LEHRER: This George Bush.

MARK SHIELDS: This George Bush. In the four and a half years he's been there, the national debt has gone from $5.7 trillion to $7.9 trillion. That has to be paid off. . . The question is: What are we going to do about Katrina? We are going to do exactly what we have done all the way through. We are going to say tax cuts are the holy grail of Republicans. We can never tamper with those because my goodness gracious that's what we are all about as a party. . .Tax cuts this year alone -- George Bush's tax cuts -- $225 billion. That's what they total. Okay.

For the next five years it's going to average $255 billion. This just isn't coming in. But it is being spent, being spent in Iraq, being spent in Katrina. And I just think if you look at it in anyway realistically, they are going to borrow it and they're going to pass it on to our grandchildren.

Right now 46 percent of the national debt is owed. It is owed and held by China and other foreign interests. . .

DAVID BROOKS: . . . But I think the core point about the debt and the deficits -- and this is something conservatives and liberals are upset about -- you have got to make a distinction here. The distinction is between the poor, which it gets people upset - the wasteful spending -- the rise in domestic discretionary spending -- the education budget has gone up 42 percent. That's all serious.

But the really big story, the 90 percent of the story is entitlement spending; it's Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. There are two debts here; there is the year-to-year debt, year-to-year debt, spending on things like Katrina and on these domestic programs. That's a debt but it's not going to kill us.

The entitlement debt is going to kill us. . .

JIM LEHRER: What do you say, let's start with you, Mark, both of you, about the idea whether it is an economic question or not and the deficit and all that stuff, that overwriting all of this a failure of the government, the president, the Congress and everybody and everybody else who is involved in just setting the priorities of the government of the United States?

And then you fit how much money you have into the priorities and that's the way it works and we haven't done that.

MARK SHIELDS: And I think, Jim, I think that's true. And I think the problem that George W. Bush has that his father didn't have is that this is total Republican control.

JIM LEHRER: You can't blame it on anybody.

MARK SHIELDS: You can't say gee, oh my goodness, those Democrats are making me do it. He's never lost a crucial vote on spending - he's never vetoed a single spending bill.

But I think coming back to your question, I think it is a good one and it's a valid one. It's been -- it's been, Jim, a politics that's worked of no choices. You have tax cuts.

JIM LEHRER: You said it a lot better than I did.

MARK SHIELDS: You have tax cuts. We are going to have to do this. Jim, as I said of this point, where David must be tired of it, I mean, we've gone into this war with no sacrifice. There was no price to pay -- no burden to bear. It would be -- the only sacrifice was going to be borne by the families of those who are at and in uniform and at war.

JIM LEHRER: Voluntary.

MARK SHIELDS: And the rest of us - the rest of us -- let the good times roll.

DAVID BROOKS: I would put it a little differently. I think Republicans have in their minds we are the anti-government party. We came to shrink government. So they say that out on the campaign trail. But when you are the majority party actually governing, it doesn't work. People want the problem solved. So instead of having a governing philosophy that will tell them I'm going to spend it here but not there, they have a governing philosophy that is irrelevant to actually governing.

So they take that anti-governing philosophy and they just toss it out the window and when they get here and spend like sailors. So what you have is a governing philosophy that doesn't apply to the real world, so they have no sense of priorities, no sense of what's important and what's not, no sense of restraint and where to direct their effort.

JIM LEHRER: Well, that's the charges made of liberals all the time.

DAVID BROOKS: That's true. . . .being a majority party or minority party matters a lot more than being a Republican or a Democrat. If you are a majority party, you try to use dollars to buy votes regardless of what your official ideology is.

MARK SHIELDS: I know it is not fashionable to defend Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton came here and it was a real issue put on the agenda by Ross Perot, and he did. You say oh gee, there were good times. Well, they were good times and one of the reasons there were good times is that the budget was balanced. And he did do it. They did turn over a surplus. And that was the surplus was going to be, was the rationalization used for the tax cuts. It's your money. We are just giving you back your money.

I mean, all of a sudden what you're looking at is every kid born in this country, every child born in this country is starting life hobbled by part of the national debt that has to be paid off. Do you think the fact that China and these other countries hold 46 percent of it in anyway mutes the United States' criticism of China's trade policies, China's religious persecution, China's abuse --

JIM LEHRER: Do you think it does?

MARK SHIELDS: Of course it does. Of course it does.

In the Katrina reconstruction, an interesting Bush strategy: avoid funding successful programs with a track record of helping people, create new ad hoc programs with little track record of success – but with a high Ideological Correctness factor

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-policy23sep23,0,1182332.story

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_18.php#006624
[Josh Marshall] For all of us who criticize from the sidelines, sometimes it's hard to appreciate the sort of tireless, behind-the-scenes efforts that the White House puts into screwing the middle class and abandoning those displaced and uprooted by Katrina. . .

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007805

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007802

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_18_digbysblog_archive.html#112752381418942283

Head of FDA steps down after only two months: WHY?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/24/politics/24fda.html

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=1153400

WH shake-up in the works?

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/09/23/white_house_shakeup_in_the_works.html
Says one GOP strategist: "He needs a new group of people with energy and ideas around him. They're like a dying cellphone battery."

The Vatican’s vicious anti-gay policy

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007788
Catholic World News, a conservative news agency. . . said the new document would indicate that men with homosexual tendencies shouldn't be ordained even if they are celibate "because their condition suggests a serious personality disorder which detracts from their ability to serve as ministers."

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000962.html
The Vatican's new campaign to bar the ordination of priests based on sexual orientation, as opposed to behavior, violates the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. . .

Start outing some cardinals? http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000960.html

Bonus item: Startin’ 'em young – how the College Republicans sharpen their teeth. . . on each other

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_18_digbysblog_archive.html#112751911732568343

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:46 AM

 
BIG STORM COMING

Frist’s insider trading: a truly stupid, stupid move

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Frist-Shares.html
When Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist asked a trustee to sell all his stock in his family's hospital corporation, a large-scale sell-off by HCA Inc. insiders was under way. . .

That is not how blind trusts normally work, said David Becker, who was general counsel at the SEC from 2000 to 2002. To avoid potential insider-trading conflicts, the beneficiary usually has no knowledge or participation in investment decisions. . .

SEC spokesman John Nester would neither confirm nor deny that Frist or any officer or director of HCA is the subject of an investigation, citing the agency's policy.

OK. . . http://slate.msn.com/id/2126783
The Journal and NYT report that the SEC has opened an investigation into Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's sale of his holdings in his family company just before the stock took a dive. . .

Abramoff’s tentacles reaching Rove?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/22/AR2005092202204.html
Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff bragged two years ago that he was in contact with White House political aide Karl Rove on behalf of a large, Bermuda-based corporation that wanted to avoid incurring some taxes and continue receiving federal contracts, according to a written statement by President Bush's nominee to be deputy attorney general.

Timothy E. Flanigan, general counsel for conglomerate Tyco International Ltd., said in a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that Abramoff's lobbying firm initially boasted that Abramoff could help Tyco fend off a special liability tax because he "had good relationships with members of Congress," including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).

Abramoff later said "he had contact with Mr. Karl Rove" about the issue, according to the statement by Flanigan . .

http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Comment/JoshMarshall/092205.html
[Josh Marshall] Most public attention in the Abramoff case has focused on Reps. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and the small crew of congressional free-mealers who got comped on their meals at Abramoff’s pricey restaurant, Signatures. But it’s time to look more closely at Abramoff’s multiple connections to the Bush White House.

For the moment, let’s set aside the fact that Abramoff, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and conservative activist Grover Norquist have been a GOP power triumvirate going back more than 20 years and continued to work closely together and trade staffers and cash right up until Abramoff’s fall from grace in the middle of last year.

For now, let’s just look at some more specific ties.

On Monday, a recently departed senior Office of Management and Budget official, David Safavian, was arrested on multiple counts of obstruction of justice growing out of the Abramoff case. Safavian is a veteran of Team Abramoff. His alleged crimes involved Abramoff, a lobbyist being investigated for how he handled money from clients, especially Indian tribes, and how organizations he was involved in paid for congressional trips. And they happened while Safavian was serving in another job he was appointed to by President Bush.

A quick look at the criminal complaint strongly suggests that Safavian is a low-level player in the Abramoff scandals and that he’s been indicted in an effort to compel his cooperation against bigger fish — certainly Abramoff, though the feds probably have more than enough on him, possibly Ney and quite probably Norquist, his former business partner in the lobbying firm of Janus-Merritt Strategies. . .

Then there’s Susan Ralston, Karl Rove’s longtime executive assistant and White House gatekeeper. I called the White House yesterday to see if she was still Rove’s executive assistant and was told only that she now worked for Rove “in another capacity.”

There’s been some press discussion of her grand-jury appearances in the Plame case but much less about her likely role in the Abramoff investigation.

Before signing on to work for Rove, she had the same job with Abramoff — overseeing his various escapades and operations at Preston Gates and then later at Greenberg Traurig. She oversaw the distribution of the skyboxes and all the rest. So it’s very hard to see how she hasn’t been pulled into the Justice Department investigation as well.

Let’s not forget either that Ralston herself reportedly had a special arrangement with Norquist, who gave her directions on who should access to Rove — in many cases clients of Abramoff also working with Norquist got the nod. . .

But eventually the prosecutors working this case are going to move higher on the totem pole — high-level staffers at the White House, top advisers to the White House, members of Congress the White House relies on to move its agenda on Capitol Hill. What happens then? Those indictments will need sign off Al Gonzales, the attorney general, himself. What will he do? Do we really believe folks at the White House won’t get any sort of heads up?

Gonzales isn’t just any attorney general. He is not only the president’s former White House counsel. He is a Bush loyalist who owes his entire career to Bush and Rove. To say he has an appearance of a conflict in judging the Abramoff case is a laughable understatement. His conflict is real. And someone should start talking about it.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=IN7A1S0UQVI9
The widening investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff is moving beyond the confines of tawdry influence-peddling to threaten leading figures in the Republican hierarchy that dominates Washington.

This week's arrest of David Safavian, the former head of procurement at the Office of Management and Budget, in connection with a land deal involving Abramoff brings the probe to the White House for the first time.

Safavian once worked with Abramoff at one lobbying firm and was a partner of Grover Norquist, a national Republican strategist with close ties to the White House, at another. Safavian traveled to Scotland in 2002 with Abramoff, Representative Robert Ney of Ohio and another top Republican organizer, Ralph Reed, southeast regional head of President George W. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who once called Abramoff ``one of my closest and dearest friends,'' already figures prominently in the investigation of the lobbyist's links to Republicans. The probe may singe other lawmakers with ties to Abramoff, such as Republican Senator Conrad Burns of Montana, as well as Ney. . .

Some Republicans acknowledge they are nervous. . .

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007774
[Sam Rosenfeld] Today’s statements from David Safavian’s lawyer leave little doubt that the investigators who arrested him on Monday are trying to flip him in order to get at higher-up targets of the sprawling federal probe into Jack Abramoff’s various scandals. . .

Gee, we haven’t been treated to any of Rumsfeld’s flights of fantasy lately

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4249

Tell it to the Saudis (who know better)

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007187.php
[NYT, Prince Saud] "There is no dynamic now pulling the nation together," he said in a meeting with reporters at the Saudi Embassy here. "All the dynamics are pulling the country apart." He said he was so concerned that he was carrying this message "to everyone who will listen" in the Bush administration. . .

[NB: So, I guess he had a pretty short appointment list, then]

Read carefully

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/22/international/middleeast/22cnd-bush.html
President Bush said today that even though Hurricanes Rita and Katrina had dominated national attention and resources in the last few weeks, "our focus on defending our country remains undiminished" and that he had no intention of heeding critics' calls to withdraw American troops from Iraq anytime soon. . .

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007771

[NB: In other words, there isn’t any question of pulling out troops “before the job is done” – because the job in Iraq will NEVER be “done.” Therefore the only question is HOW SOON troops will be pulled, and how it can get spun as Bush’s decision, not as something he was forced to do either by domestic opposition (Sheehan et al.) or by the relentless insurgency that his policies have given impetus to]

It’s great to see how the Bush gang’s thinking on Iraq has evolved

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/22/AR2005092201201.html
President Bush today warned Americans to "be prepared for more violence" in Iraq as insurgents seek to disrupt an upcoming referendum on a new constitution, and he declared that there is "no middle ground" in the U.S. war on terrorism.

Man, I know that the Rovean strategy is to bring EVERYTHING back to 9-11 and terrorism, but even for them this is pretty ham-fisted

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/22/blowing/index.html

More: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1980

Gasoline price-gouging? Don’t worry, Bush Co. is looking into it – in that typical way that they like to “investigate” things

http://www.workingforchange.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=7A079CED-A552-6200-CF4C39A76CD5A5E4
[David Sirota] Good news: Democratic governors have embarrassed the federal government into acknowledging the oil price gouging issue, as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today announced a formal probe. Bad news: President Bush made sure to preempt any real investigation into price gouging by his financial backers in the oil/gas industry when last year he appointed a former ChevronTexaco lawyer, Deborah Majoras, to head the FTC. . .

How the Republicans plan to use the excuse of Katrina as a cover for brutal cuts they’ve been itching to make for a long time now

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_18.php#006610
[Josh Marshall] I knew the House Republicans couldn't be trusted managing the federal budget. But I had no idea it was this bad. . . [read on!]

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_18.php#006609
[Josh Marshall] I was looking over the list of budget cuts proposed by House Republicans to save the president's tax cuts. And the big thing that sticks out is just how much comes out of Medicare. . .

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007776

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007773

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007184.php

How the Dems could retake the Senate (but probably won’t)

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/09/22/how_democrats_could_take_control_of_the_senate.html
Two Republican senators -- Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) -- "are in deep trouble, and may be ripe for the plucking." To get the other four seats, "there appear to be only five possibilities in the nation: the Tennessee open seat of retiring Senator Bill Frist (R), plus defeats of incumbent GOP senators Conrad Burns (MT), Mike DeWine (OH), Jon Kyl (AZ), and Jim Talent (MO). All of these are possible, none at the moment is likely."

Growing opposition to Bush’s wage-cut for Katrina reconstruction workers (this is a winner, guys – don’t let it go)

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/09/22/12/13/good-2/

Ha ha ha: http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/22/12845/2761
Q Scott, Representative LoBiondo from New Jersey, Republican, is circulating a letter calling on the President to rescind the tax cut, which he signed into effect for the people who are going to be rebuilding the Gulf Coast. In light of that, and in light of the need that people have to be working and to be earning decent money down there, is the President reconsidering this wage cut?

MR. McCLELLAN: Which tax cut?

Q The wage cut.

MR. McCLELLAN: In terms of tax cuts --

Q No, I'm sorry. I meant the wage cuts, didn't mean to say, tax cuts --

MR. McCLELLAN: What do you mean, wage cuts?

Q The Davis-Bacon.

MR. McCLELLAN: The Davis-Bacon. Well, what --

Q Which is a wage cut.

MR. McCLELLAN: We suspended that act for the reasons that we stated previously. . .

Q But how does lowering people's wages help with rebuilding the economy?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I disagree with your characterization. . .

Bush’s Social Security “reform” (phase-out) plan: deader than a doornail

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/22/112052/105

Jimmy Carter: Gore won

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Carter_says_Gore_won_2000_el_0922.html

Bush’s guitar-playing photo-op: how Scotty tries to explain it (and why it’s a lie)

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/scotty-on-bushs-guitar-playing-while.html
Q But it sounds like a bit of a photo op. . .

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, first of all, let's correct the record on that. There was a reporter from your news organization that was backstage during that event. That was an event to go and thank our troops and talk about the war on terrorism. And it was not an event, as you may have portrayed to some people that are watching this out there by this simple statement. It was --

Q He didn't pick up the guitar while the hurricane was rolling into Louisiana?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- much more than that. The person that was entertaining our troops there presented a gift to the President. . . [T]hat picture was taken by some people way out of context. And it was portrayed that the President was simply doing that, and that's not the case, as you and I know. . .

[Joe in D.C.] C'mon Scotty. It was a pre-planned photo op. That's why the guitar had the Presidential Seal on it. You had to approve it.

Presidential press conference funnies. . .

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4255
THE PRESIDENT: Bianca. Nobody named Bianca? Well, sorry Bianca's not here. I'll be glad to answer her question.

Q I'll follow up.

THE PRESIDENT: No, that's fine. (Laughter.) Thank you though, appreciate it. Just trying to spread around the joy of asking a question . . .

THE PRESIDENT: Are you Bianca?

Q No, I'm not. Anita -- Fox News.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay.

Q Just a quick question . . .

THE PRESIDENT: Okay. I was looking for Bianca. I'm sorry.

[NB: Seriously, you think the Rove/Bartlett gang doesn’t plant questions with friendly reporters? Here you have proof. He’s calling on her from a prepared list – and she’s not even there!]

This Bianca?

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4254

This Bianca?

http://billmon.org/archives/002183.html

Bonus item: Billmon imagines Scotty’s NEXT press conference

http://billmon.org/archives/002181.html

Extra bonus item: O’Reilly smack-down

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/wow-this-donohue-vs-oreilly-video.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:56 AM

 
THE WIND IS SHIFTING

Can you feel it?

Ooooh, ouch! GWB = LBJ

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1975
[AP] President Bush's own words echo those of President Johnson in 1967, a pivotal year for the U.S. in Vietnam.

"America is committed to the defense of South Vietnam until an honorable peace can be negotiated," Johnson told the Tennessee Legislature on March 15, 1967. Despite the obstacles to victory, the president said, "We shall stay the course."

After 14 Marines died in a roadside bombing on Aug. 3, Bush declared: "We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq. And the job is this: We'll help the Iraqis develop a democracy."

. . . South Vietnam, politically unstable because of internal violence and corruption, stumbled toward elections to adopt a constitution and to select officials — not unlike the process Iraq is undergoing.

"Our nation was not born easily. There were times in those years of the 18th century when it seemed as if we might not be born at all," Johnson said in a speech on Aug. 16, 1967.

. . . In his radio address on Aug. 27, Bush said: "Like our own nation's founders over two centuries ago, the Iraqis are grappling with difficult issues, such as the role of the federal government. What is important is that Iraqis are now addressing these issues through debate and discussion — not at the barrel of a gun."

Bush has often linked the security and freedom of the United States to the war in Iraq. On Aug. 4 he told reporters: "We're laying the foundation of peace for generations to come. We're defeating the terrorists in a place like Iraq so we don't have to face them here at home. And, as well, we're spreading democracy and freedom to parts of the world that are desperate for democracy and freedom."

A secure and free America was tied to the fight in Southeast Asia, Johnson maintained. "What happens in Vietnam is extremely important to the nation's freedom and it is extremely important to the United States' security," he said from the South Lawn of the White House on Sept. 15, 1967.

. . . "Be assured that the death of your son will have meaning," Johnson told the parents of a posthumous recipient of the Medal of Honor during a Rose Garden ceremony on April 6, 1967. "For I give you also my solemn pledge that our country will persist —- and will prevail —- in the cause for which your boy died."

Speaking to military families in Idaho on Aug. 24, Bush said: "These brave men and women gave their lives for a cause that is just and necessary for the security of our country, and now we will honor their sacrifice by completing their mission."

The National Enquirer says that Bush has started drinking again. Certainly it is a dubious source on the fact of the matter: but what is important about it is that they think their readers are ready to hear something like this, and believe it. Bush’s rosy glow is fading fast. . .

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_18_digbysblog_archive.html#112735985636820668

Bush-bashing from the Right

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007181.php

How much is the Pentagon spending in Iraq and how is it spending it? Like the cost of Citizen Kane’s Xanadu, “no man can say”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/21/AR2005092102105.html
The Pentagon has no accurate knowledge of the cost of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan or the fight against terrorism, limiting Congress's ability to oversee spending, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report released yesterday.

Whoa – Scotty blurts out an awkward truth

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4243
Q Well, Scott, continuing with what Steve said, how is what you're doing for Rita different from what you did from Katrina?

MR. McCLELLAN: Sure. A couple of things -- one, the President is focused on making sure we have the strongest possible coordination with state and local governments in the path of Hurricane Rita. . . Coordination at all levels needs to be seamless, or as seamless as possible, and that's what we're working to do. . .

Q Well, can you distinguish what you're doing differently?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, I just talked to you about where the President's focus is and what we are doing. We want to make sure that we're --

Q And these are things you didn't do in Katrina?

MR. McCLELLAN: We want to make sure that we are better prepared and better positioned to respond to Hurricane Rita and that's what we're doing. That's why I outlined the several steps that we are taking. And that's why I just told you that the President is focused on making sure that we have the strongest possible coordination with state and local officials, and that we have --

Q Which you didn't have before, right?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- as seamless as possible coordination with state and local officials.

Q In other words, better than the last time?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think I just answered that question, Bill.

Q No, not really.

MR. McCLELLAN: I just said -- I just said the very words that you're bringing up. . .

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/did-scott-mcclellan-just-admit-that.html

Here's one thing Bush probably wishes he'd done differently: why his orders never got through to New Orleans (thanks to Morwenna Griffiths for the link)














Dems step up pressure for an independent inquiry into Katrina failures – and they just might get it

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/democrats-demanding-independent.html

How to pay for Katrina damage? The GOP is going through contortions trying to work out their position(s)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/21/19506/7890

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/21/1923/99905

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/21/21526/3945

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007761

Christ: tax breaks for casinos?

http://slate.msn.com/id/2126733
[Eric Umansky] The Washington Post says that in a break with tradition, the gambling industry will be allowed to take part in the tax breaks to be offered in the "Gulf Opportunity Zone." "The casinos don't need this," said one local economist. "If they are [eligible], that would be a complete waste of money." The WP actually has a better story buried—and barely mentioned—within its story: So-called opportunity zones have been tried before in the region, with questionable results. Western Mississippi has had one since 1994, and one economist said it has "had zero impact." Follow-up, anyone?

Wow. Arlen Specter must have a special thing for Sandra Day O’Connor – now he has persuaded her to stay on the Supreme Court rather than have the Bush gang nominate a Neanderthal to replace her

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/senator-specter-tells-bush-to-hold-off.html

[NB: No, of course Bush won’t listen]

More from Arlen!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050921/pl_nm/security_attacks_dc
The Republican chairman of the Senate judiciary committee accused the Pentagon on Wednesday of stonewalling an inquiry into claims that the U.S. military identified four September 11 hijackers more than a year before the 2001 attacks. . . The Defense Department barred several witnesses from testifying at a judiciary committee hearing and instead sent a top-level official who could provide little information on al Qaeda-related intelligence uncovered by a secret military team code-named Able Danger.

"That looks to me like it may be obstruction of the committee's activities, something we will have to determine," said the panel's chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter. . .

Chapter 84 in the continuing saga of “If It Were a Democrat. . ."

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_18_atrios_archive.html#112733009260483783
[Atrios] The number of deep connections between prominent Republican players and individuals and groups who have since been connected with terrorism-related activities is one of the underexplored and underdiscussed topics of the last few years.

More: http://blog.dccc.org/mt/archives/003580.html

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/corruption_in_washington_/2005/09/not_just_crooked_but_disloyal.php

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002668.html

How you know Bill Frist is running for President

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/21/frist/index.html
George W. Bush and Bill Frist share an interest in kowtowing to the lesser angels of the religious right, but we're learning today that they've got something else in common, too: Both men have profited from highly questionable business dealings. . .

The stench worsens. . . (and I don’t mean in New Orleans)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_18.php#006600

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_18.php#006603

GOP Governor of Ohio in more hot water

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/09/21/taft_investigated_for_more_gifts.html

Porter Goss: we knew he was a partisan hack promoted to be CIA Director because he would be pliant with Bush Co. expectations, not because he was really qualified. Now those chickens are coming to roost. . .

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002669.html

Don’t read this if you’re easily depressed

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_18_digbysblog_archive.html#112735527199148161

Yes, there is a Religious Left! (thanks to Buzzflash for the link)

http://www.streetprophets.com/

Bonus item: where does the buck stop in the Bush White House?

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1969


***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:45 AM

 
PROGRESS REPORT

Full speed ahead

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/20/225052/979
American citizens - and the military - have been offered a false choice between "staying the course" in Iraq and precipitous withdrawal. The historian James Chace compared the former to a sailor who, having been blown off course in a storm, continues to sail straight ahead, but in the wrong direction.

Closing in on 2000

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/iraq-deaths-exceed-1900.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/20/iraq_news/index.html

More on the chaotic mess in Basra

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article313847.ece

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/international/middleeast/20iraq.html

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1967

More: http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/british-storm-basra-jail-with-tanks.html

http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/iranian-television-on-basra-tensions.html

http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/muqtada-al-sadrs-response-to-basra.html

http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/9-americans-dead-sadrs-popularity.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007173.php
[The Guardian] Plans to withdraw substantial numbers of British troops from Iraq next month have been abandoned after the explosion of violence in Basra on Monday night. The decision has dismayed military commanders, who are concerned about growing pressure on their soldiers. . . Senior defence officials admitted yesterday that far from improving, the security situation in southern Iraq might well get worse over the next few months. They referred in particular to the Mahdi army, a militia headed by the radical Shia cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr. . .

In July, the then commander of British forces in southern Iraq, Major General Jonathan Riley, predicted that Britain would hand over "two provinces, Maysan and al-Muthanna, this year and [the] other two [Dhi Qar and Basra] next year.". . . That hope was reflected in a secret memo sent by John Reid, the defence secretary, in July to cabinet colleagues. However, this is now regarded by military commanders and diplomats as hopelessly optimistic.

[Kevin Drum] Hopelessly optimistic indeed.

Coming soon: the Iraqification of Afghanistan

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1972
[Newsweek] At sundown, the most-wanted man in Ghazni province comes roaring down a country road astride his motorcycle. Mohammed Daud, 35, commands the biggest Taliban force in this area roughly 100 miles southwest of Kabul. . . . Climbing off his machine, Daud launches into a glowing account of where he spent the first few months of this year and what he's done since his return. "I'm explaining to my fighters every day the lessons I learned and my experience in Iraq," he tells a NEWSWEEK correspondent. "I want to copy in Afghanistan the tactics and spirit of the glorious Iraqi resistance.". . .

Daud and other Taliban leaders tell NEWSWEEK that the Afghan conflict is entering a new phase, with help from Iraq. According to them, Osama bin Laden has opened an underground railroad to and from jihadist training camps in the Sunni Triangle. Self-described graduates of the program say they've come home to Afghanistan with more-effective killing techniques and renewed enthusiasm for the war against the West. . .

http://makeashorterlink.com/?H2DF125DB
President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday challenged the need for major foreign military operations in Afghanistan, saying airstrikes are no longer effective. . .

Nothing to hide? Pentagon refuses to testify at Senate hearing

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/politics/20cnd-intel.html
The Pentagon said today that it had blocked a group of military officers and intelligence analysts from testifying at an open Congressional hearing about a highly classified military intelligence program that, the officers have said, identified a ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks as a potential terrorist more than a year before the attacks. . . The announcement came a day before the officers and intelligence analysts had been scheduled to testify about the program, known as Able Danger, at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Bill Frist adds to the “Republican corruption” meme (it’s really becoming quite a list, isn’t it?)

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/did-bill-frist-have-insider.html
Surprise, surprise. Bill Frist sold all of his stock in the hospital chain that they own just a few weeks before the stock dropped 15%. What are the odds of that happening? How convenient for the Frist family and get this, it was purely by chance that he sold all of his stock just before the value took a hit. I mean, wow. Is this guy the luckiest person on the planet, or what?

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/20/AR2005092001767.html

And remember this “huge” scandal?
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n3_v47/ai_16709018

Abramoff: the gift that keeps on giving

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/09/20/BL2005092000753.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007752

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007747

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Email_from_arrested_White_House_official_suggests_powerful_congressman_lied_about_0920.html

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/20/161729/839

The Moustache’d One

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/plamegate-the-john-bolto_b_7648.html
[Arianna] I'm now hearing that the [Plame] investigation may be inching closer to never-confirmed UN Ambassador John Bolton.

According to two sources, Bolton's former chief of staff, Fred Fleitz, was at least one of the sources of the classified information about Valerie Plame that flowed through the Bush administration and eventually made its way into Bob Novak's now infamous column.

After delving into Fleitz, I can safely report that he is, at a minimum, a very interesting character. . . He is a career CIA agent who Bolton handpicked to join him at Foggy Bottom. . . While working as Bolton's top aide, Fleitz also continued his work in the CIA's WINPAC division, the group responsible for some of the worst prewar intelligence on Iraq (for instance, they were, among other things, big fans of Curveball and had "high confidence" in the presence of WMD in Iraq).

"I perform liaison function for the [CIA] and Mr. Bolton," Fleitz told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 2005 [pdf]. What he would have said if he'd been given truth serum is: "I've kept my CIA portfolio, which made it easier to become an intel-gathering machine for Bolton, who in turn was Cheney's spear-carrier in the State Department -- working tirelessly to undermine Powell and Armitage while, at the same time, feeding the intel to Miller and the New York Times."

Over the years, Fleitz earned a reputation as Bolton's chief enforcer, a swashbuckler willing to go the extra mile to make the intel fit the desired policy -- even if it meant knocking a few heads. And his dual role (serving what he called his "two bosses") put him in the position to pick up -- and deliver to Bolton -- all kinds of information… including, perhaps, the spousal standing of a certain CIA analyst named Valerie. Even though Plame was in operations and Fleitz was in WINPAC, he obviously was in a position to know. . .

So here is what we know: We know that Fleitz was the connection to the CIA, and that Bolton was close to Scooter Libby (and the rest of the neocons, of course) and Judy Miller (for whom he was an important source, although the last time she quoted him by name was in 1999 when he was at the American Enterprise Institute). And here is what we don't know: we don't know the pathway through which Plame's identity got into Novak's column. Did Miller learn about Plame from her old chum Bolton? Did she pass that info on to Libby? Or had Bolton already told Libby? And Rove? Or was it all just passed around and around in a cozy game of neocon phone tag? It makes one wonder more than ever before what Bolton and Miller talked about when he visited her in jail. . .

Roberts: worse than you think (thanks to Walter Feinberg for some of the links)

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18291

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/20/132643/398
Should Democratic Senators Vote to Confirm Roberts?

Will they? http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/09/21/democratic_senators_weigh_roberts_vote.html

WH gearing up for long, bloody fight over their next Supreme Court nominee: they pretty clearly aren’t interested in putting forward a consensus candidate

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/politics/politicsspecial1/20confirm.html
The White House is reshuffling its short list of potential Supreme Court nominees with a new emphasis on finding someone who will hold up under the pressure of what is expected to be fierce confirmation battle, several Republican allies close to the process said on Monday. . .

81% want independent review of Katrina

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/cnnusa-today-poll-81-of-americans-want.html

The fight over Bush’s outrageous proposal to remove minimum wage requirements in Katrina reconstruction: will any Repubs oppose him?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_18.php#006589

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_18.php#006591

That damn liberal media

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_18_atrios_archive.html#112727425637665583
Tom Coburn. . . says that DeLay told him that the Washington Times [!!] made up quotes.

DOBBS: Wait a minute. Senator, you can't say that. Congressman Tom DeLay says that this is the most efficient government he can imagine, that there's no fat in this government.

COBURN: Well, I talked with him today about that quote and that was not his quote. And you know. . .

DOBBS: Whose was it? Whose was it, Senator?

COBURN: I'm worried -- I'm very -- well, I think -- it might have been manufactured. I'm not sure. . .

Quack quack

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/09/lame_duck_watch.html
[WP] The resistance suggests that Bush's second term could turn out far rockier and more contentious than his first. One indicator many Republicans are watching to gauge whether Bush is becoming a liability for the party is in Pennsylvania, where Rick Santorum, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, is trailing state treasurer Bob Casey Jr. by double digits.

"My caucus would do anything for Senator Santorum," Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R-R.I.) said of his colleague. Chafee, who himself faces a tough reelection battle next year, predicted Republicans will increasingly be faced with the choice of propping up Bush or protecting their own. "I think they're going to collide," Chafee said of the two options.

Asked whether Bush's problems were a factor in his slump, Santorum responded, "That may be."

Quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack. . .

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4232
Q Well, what does the President have to say to members of his own party, other conservatives, activists, pundits, who criticize him for wanting to have it all? He wants to have guns and butter, he wants to fund Iraq, he wants to have tax cuts, and now he wants to put together the largest reconstruction effort the world has ever seen.

MR. McCLELLAN: I disagree with the characterization. . .

Q But how can we afford it?

MR. McCLELLAN: And we are going to -- well, first of all --

Q How can we afford it?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- first of all, we are going to meet the needs of the people in the region. The President was adamant about that. We are going to do what it takes. . .

Q But --

MR. McCLELLAN: . . .And as we move forward to address the needs in the region, we also need to look at our budget and where there's unnecessary spending happening, we need to make cuts. The President has made that very clear.

Q Where? Where?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, there are savings that we proposed in our budget, like I said, that Congress has yet to act on. That's a starting point. Other members are talking about various ideas. We are --

Q You're not coming up with any ideas. Congressman Mike Pense suggested delaying the prescription drug implementation to '07, that would save $40 billion, and Josh Bolten wouldn't even entertain it. I mean, isn't part of the problem is that it's kind of a sham to tell the American people that your federal government will do it all, but yet again, we won't ask for any sacrifice --

MR. McCLELLAN: I disagree with your characterization, because this President --

Q Well, where are the cuts?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- from day one has worked to cut non-security discretionary spending. And he's also worked to address other priorities, like entitlements, which drive a lot of costs, as well, and to implement important reforms. We reformed Medicare and put in some cost controls to start that process of addressing some of those issues.

Q You're conveniently not addressing members of the President's own party that say that --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, we're --

Q -- this guy spends like a Democrat, and they're -- that he's trying to create the New Deal again. I mean, what about criticism from your own party, that it's, hey, big spender, when are you -- how are you going to do the math?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, look at our budgets, David. You seem to conveniently ignore the facts. Our budgets have --

Q I looked at the budgets. I'm looking at the deficit. I'm just wondering what you're going to do about it.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- have put forward significant savings on a number of programs. Congress has yet to act on those. We encourage Congress to move forward and act on those. There's tens of billions of dollars of savings in some of those proposals, and that's a good starting point. But we're going to work with Congress to offset the cost by focusing on unnecessary spending. . .

Q And no sacrifice --

MR. McCLELLAN: [T]he President made it clear that we also have got to find cuts elsewhere in the budget where that spending is not essential.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2126673
The WP off-leads the latest signs of GOP friction. The White House had fiscal conservatives over for tea or some-such, trying to placate their concerns about paying for Katrina. The congressmen weren't impressed by the generalities offered. "At least give us some idea" of how to cover the cost, said Republican Senator Conrad Burns.

A big step backward to the days of John Ashcroft: Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Dept now decides that a top priority is. . . porn

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091901570.html
The FBI is joining the Bush administration's War on Porn. And it's looking for a few good agents.

Early last month, the bureau's Washington Field Office began recruiting for a new anti-obscenity squad. . . The new squad will divert eight agents, a supervisor and assorted support staff to gather evidence against "manufacturers and purveyors" of pornography -- not the kind exploiting children, but the kind that depicts, and is marketed to, consenting adults.

"I guess this means we've won the war on terror," said one exasperated FBI agent, speaking on the condition of anonymity because poking fun at headquarters is not regarded as career-enhancing. "We must not need any more resources for espionage.". . . Among friends and trusted colleagues, an experienced national security analyst said, "it's a running joke for us.". . .

Yeah, and cover up that damn statue again! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1788845.stm

Another classic Bush nominee

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091901930.html
The Bush administration is seeking to appoint a lawyer with little immigration or customs experience to head the troubled law enforcement agency that handles those issues, prompting sharp criticism from some employee groups, immigration advocates and homeland security experts.

The push to appoint Julie Myers to head the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, comes in the midst of intense debate over the qualifications of department political appointees involved in the sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina.

Concerns over Myers, 36, were acute enough at a Senate hearing last week that lawmakers asked the nominee to detail during her testimony her postings and to account for her management experience. Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) went so far as to tell Myers that her résumé indicates she is not qualified for the job. . .

Myers worked briefly as chief of staff to Michael Chertoff when he led the Justice Department's criminal division before he became Homeland Security secretary. . . Myers also was an associate under independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr for about 16 months. . .

Her uncle is Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She married Chertoff's current chief of staff, John F. Wood, on Saturday.

But wait! We can top that one: a veterinarian to oversee women’s health

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/20/fda/index.html
[Tim Grieve] We're learning a little more this morning -- but only a little -- about the mystery surrounding the Office of Women's Health at the Food and Drug Administration. As we've noted, the office has been in the news lately because its director, Susan Wood, resigned last month to protest the FDA's dithering on the morning-after pill. The FDA issued a press release last week in which it said that Norris Alderson, an expert in veterinary science, would take over as acting director of the office. But as soon as that press release appeared -- as soon as Planned Parenthood and others raised concerns about Alderson's qualifications for the job -- it disappeared again, replaced by one that said that Theresa Toigo will serve as the acting director. . .

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007168.php

Raise a toast to Helen Thomas

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4232
MR. McCLELLAN: The policies that this President has pursued are bold ones and they are ones that are achieving real results for all Americans. The President, from day one, has been acting to move forward on bold initiatives to produce real results that are helping all Americans. . .

Q If he was so bold, why do we have 37 million people living below the poverty line?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, do you want me to go back and talk about the economy?

Q I mean, if his policies are so great.

MR. McCLELLAN: I'll be glad to go -- more Americans are working than ever before, Helen. We've --

Q Thirty-seven million below the poverty --

Those damn uneducated, lazy white people. . .

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_18_atrios_archive.html#112724410301053309
[Atrios on Hurricane Rita] Key West: There was a mandatory evacuation order. Only half the people left. Discuss.

Bonus item: can’t we go any sooner? And can we nominate who to send?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091901574.html
NASA Unveils $104 Billion Plan To Return to the Moon by 2018

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:19 AM

 
COMEDY OF ERRORS

OK, you’ll all be happy to know that I’m over my gloom and doom attitude of the weekend. The Bush gang still can, and will, try to wreak terrible damage on our economy, our international relations, and our democratic polity (so what’s the good news, you ask?). But even though they control all the branches of govt, they are going to have a very difficult time going “all the way” with their plans, and are encountering some serious roadblocks, including a decline in public legitimacy that shows no signs of reversing, an increasingly skeptical and aggressive media, a series of surprisingly inept and ham-handed strategies, and a growing number of impending scandals

The latest Bush Co. scandal: former Abramoff and Norquist associate, now working at OMB, arrested – and may be negotiating to give up others. Stay tuned!

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-lobbyist20sep20,1,4871855.story
A top federal procurement appointee of President Bush was arrested Monday on charges that he made false statements and obstructed a federal probe when he was questioned about a Scotland golfing junket arranged by lobbyist Jack Abramoff. . . .In a three-count criminal complaint made public Monday, David H. Safavian was accused of lying to an ethics officer in the General Services Administration regarding his dealings with the lobbyist, who flew him to Scotland in August 2002. . . Safavian, former chief of staff of the GSA, also is accused of obstructing an inspector general's investigation into whether he improperly accepted favors from the lobbyist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/politics/20lobby.html
The arrest of the official, David H. Safavian, head of procurement policy at the Office of Management and Budget, was the first to result from the wide-ranging corruption investigation of Mr. Abramoff, once among the most powerful and best-paid lobbyists in Washington and a close friend of Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091901859.html
Abramoff's allegedly improper dealings with Indian tribes -- which netted him and an associate at least $82 million in fees -- prompted the federal probe. But investigators have found that his documents and e-mails contain a trove of information about his aggressive efforts to seek favors for clients from members of Congress and senior bureaucrats.

Accompanying Safavian and Abramoff on the 2002 trip to Scotland, for example, were Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Administration Committee, lobbyist and former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed and Neil Volz, a lobbyist with Abramoff at the Washington office of Greenburg Traurig.

Like Abramoff, Safavian is a veteran Washington player. He is a former lobbying partner of anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist and previously worked with Abramoff at another firm. Both he and Abramoff have represented gambling clients and Indian tribes with gambling interests. . .

http://slate.msn.com/id/2126631
The Post and NYT front the indictment of the White House's just-resigned top procurement official, David Safavian, for allegedly giving under-the-table help to uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and then lying to investigators about it. Safavian as Post puts it, "set purchasing policy for the entire government," he resigned last week, with the indictments were written up. According to a piece in Government Executive magazine last year, he came to the gig with little procurement experience. Before his time in the administration, he worked as a lobbyist with Jack Abramoff. (And final bit of fun: Safavian's wife is the top lawyer on the House committee that oversees government procurement.)

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_18_atrios_archive.html#112717410691516492
Mr. Safavian's wife? Oh, that's Jennifer Safavian. Her job? Chief counsel on oversight and investigations on the House Government Reform Committee. . . Their latest job? Heading up the sham Katrina investigation. . .

More fun: http://billmon.org/archives/002171.html
[Billmon] I could go on, but to tell you the truth, now that I've run down what everyone else has reported about Safavian and the the slime trail linking him to Davis, Norquist and Abramoff, I don't have anything original to add -- other than my deeply held suspicion that God has subcontracted the fashioning of reality to the spirits of Mark Twain and Franz Kafka, who are sitting around in heaven like a couple of coked up screenwriters, dreaming up ever more ridiculous characters and swapping increasingly absurd story lines.

Josh Marshall (of course): http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_18.php#006577

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_18.php#006580
Yep, it was already pretty obvious. But if you want any more evidence that the feds are trying to flip David Safavian, check out this new AP story.

A nice overview of some of the other current GOP scandals brewing

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/19/6368/32083

That North Korea nuclear deal: the inside story

http://slate.msn.com/id/2126631
[Eric Umansky] The Los Angeles Times leads with North Korea's announcing that they won't scrap any friggin' nukes until the U.S. hands over the light-water nuclear reactor that's mentioned in the recently announced deal. The U.S., in turn, has said it won't even discuss the reactor until North Korea scraps its nukes. It's possible, of course, that one or both sides are—don't tell anyone—bluffing. . .

The "agreement" with North Korea is less a deal than an outline for one. It has no timelines and is full of mushy references such as: The parties will "discuss" North Korea getting a light-water reactor "at an appropriate time." Now would be an appropriate time for the reactor, says Pyongyang. As if, said, Secretary of State Rice: "At an appropriate time we are prepared to discuss—discuss responding." The outline doesn't even mention uranium enrichment. North Korea swears it had no such program, but the U.S. says that's B.S

The NYT says the U.S. at first turned its nose up at the deal, but China pressured the U.S. to get on board, reportedly giving the U.S. a few hours to sign on or face a news leak that it blocked a deal. As Slate's Fred Kaplan notes, the deal's outlines have been around for a few years, but the White House wasn't interested.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007732
[Matt Yglesias] Some time ago the Bush administration, having loudly denounced John Kerry's North Korea policy, began implementing it. Today, that policy seems to have borne fruit as the DPRK agrees to drop its nuclear program in exchange for a variety of measures that one might term "appeasement." The resulting deal, if it sticks, isn't going to be really great for the United States, but we'd reached a juncture where a really great deal wasn't a realistic possibility. It's worth pointing out that we almost certainly could have done better if we'd shifted into appeasement mode earlier, but better late than never as far as that goes. It'll be interesting to see what reaction, if any, this garners from the conservative press, which would have loudly denounced it if Kerry did it. So far I'm not seeing anything.

Allawi’s Defense Minister now wanted for arrest

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_18_atrios_archive.html#112718939474431587

Regular PBD readers know that Larry Di Rita is an unbelievable liar – but even for him this takes the cake

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/pentagon-voices-optimism-on-iraq.html
[Reuters] Chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita urged people not to gauge the war based on the volume of rebel bombings. "That's not a good way to determine how good or bad things are going -- by (counting) how many things are exploding," Di Rita said.

The reality: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050919/ts_nm/iraq_pentagon_dc
“It really does seem to me the war is stalemated in that the enemy, which has shown great resilience, cannot defeat us militarily, but neither do we have the capacity to eliminate the insurgency through military means," said retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich, a Boston University international relations professor.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007167.php
None of the intelligence officers who spoke with Time or their ranking superiors could provide a plausible road map toward stability in Iraq

http://www.time.com/time/press_releases/printout/0,8816,1106259,00.html

The Pentagon says they aren’t doing body counts in Iraq (but of course they are)

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002639.html
[WP] After generally rejecting body counts as standards of success in the Iraq war, the U.S. military last week embraced them -- just as it did during the Vietnam War. As the carnage grew in Baghdad, U.S. officials produced charts showing the number of suspects killed or detained in offensives in the west. . .

More: http://billmon.org/archives/002166.html

Dems show some backbone, kill phony GOP-controlled Congressional investigation of Katrina screw-ups. (Now let’s start pressing for a REAL inquiry)

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-probe20sep20,1,4037059.story
Congressional Republicans signaled Monday that they had abandoned their plan to conduct a joint House-Senate probe of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina. . . In announcing a joint inquiry earlier this month, the Republican leadership said it would be the most efficient way to investigate the administration's much-criticized hurricane relief effort. But on Monday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) conceded that he had been unable to overcome Democratic opposition to a joint investigation.

Democratic leaders have refused to appoint members to a joint committee, citing the lack of equal representation for their party. Democrats say that would make it possible for Republicans to control the investigation. . . Democrats have insisted on an independent inquiry, saying the Republican-controlled Congress cannot be trusted to aggressively investigate the Republican administration.

With the joint congressional investigation apparently off the table, Republicans are planning separate House and Senate inquiries. . . But it was far from clear Monday whether the Democrats would cooperate with those efforts. . .

Democrats seemed determined to keep pressure on the Republican leadership and the White House to appoint an independent panel modeled on the commission President Bush named to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. . .

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/biased-partisan-joint-gop.html

http://billmon.org/archives/002172.html

Bush’s version of a tough, independent inquiry

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/national/nationalspecial/20cong.html
President Bush has named Frances Fragos Townsend, his domestic security adviser, to lead an internal White House inquiry into the administration's performance in handling Hurricane Katrina, Scott McClellan, Mr. Bush's spokesman, said Monday. . . Mr. McClellan said Ms. Townsend's job would be "to follow through on the president's commitment to determine what went wrong, what went right and lessons learned."

Katrina: Bush’s no-win dilemma

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/09/19/katrina_pushes_bush_down_further.html
A new Survey USA tracking poll suggests a "can't win" dynamic is unfolding for President Bush as he struggles to deal with the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. . . Key point: "The more cash President Bush throws on the fire, as compensation for what some see as an inadequate initial response, the more it antagonizes his core supporters."


http://billmon.org/archives/002163.html
[Billmon] A new poll from Rasmussen Reports puts at least a little factual flesh on the bones of my theory that Bush's rhetorical embrace of bleeding heart conservatism isn't going to go down well with a sizable chunk of the conservative base. . .

More bad polls: http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/19/bush.poll/index.html

http://mydd.com/story/2005/9/19/10533/3579

Republican hurricanes and Democratic hurricanes

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1963

This is a significant story: anyone who has been paying attention in the second term has seen a pattern of Bush appointments, recycling familiar (and loyal) personnel rather than bring in new blood with new ideas – and a modicum of independence. Competence and relevant experience are less important than loyalty and obedience. Anyone who works in any kind of complex organization knows that this is a sign of a defensive and overcautious leadership, and a sure formula for ineffectiveness. This has clearly played a role in the failed Katrina response, the inability to adapt to changing circumstances in Iraq, and policy paralysis on the domestic front

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007161.php
[Kevin Drum] Mike Brown had no emergency management qualifications aside from being a friend of a friend of George Bush, but he was made deputy director and then director of FEMA anyway. That didn't work out so well.

Karl Rove has, if anything, negative qualifications for the job of overseeing Katrina reconstruction. It's not just that he's never done anything like this before, it's the fact that a reputation as the most ruthless partisan operative of his generation is precisely the qualification you most want to avoid. "Squeaky clean" is what you should be looking for here.

And as Al Kamen reported a few days ago, the "on-again, off-again rumor that White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card is moving to be secretary of the treasury to replace John Snow appears to be on again." Card, of course, has no relevant experience in finance, taxation or any of Treasury’s other responsibilities. As a conservative reader pointed out in email, "If an international financial crisis should hit on his watch, God help us."

Has it really gotten to the point where it's impossible for Bush to find solid, conservative appointees for these positions who have actual experience in the relevant fields? Aren't there any left who are still willing to work for him? Or does he feel so besieged by life that he literally feels he can't trust anyone with a big job unless they've spent a couple of years working within a few feet of him?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/bush-insiders-were-sunk.html
[American Spectator] "You run down the list of things we thought we could accomplish and you have to wonder what we thought we were thinking," says a Bush Administration member who joined on in 2001. "You get the impression that we're more than listless. We're sunk.". . . "Social Security is dead as far as my chairman is concerned. So are the tax cuts," says a Ways and Means staffer of Chairman Bill Thomas.

Plame: Fitzgerald may request an extension of the Grand Jury, increasing pressure on Judith Miller to cut a deal

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001138944

How the Repubs are planning to exploit the immigration issue

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4227

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Immigration_memo_intended_for_Rove_arrives_on_Demo_0919.html

Read this

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/19/134911/458
Would you trust James Baker to reform the nation's election system? . . .

Angry about the NYT blocking access to Krugman? Check this out

http://amygdalagf.blogspot.com/2005/09/ny-times-select-turns-out-to-make.html

Peter Daou on the role of progressive blogging

http://daoureport.salon.com/synopsis.aspx?synopsisId=147a2536-4de0-4716-9cc0-6c681e095ffd
Bloggers can exert disproportionate pressure on the media and on politicians. Reporters, pundits, and politicians read blogs, and, more importantly, they care what bloggers say about them because they know other reporters, pundits, and politicians are reading the same blogs. It’s a virtuous circle for the netroots and a source of political power. The netroots can also bring the force of sheer numbers to bear on a non-compliant politician, reporter, or media outlet. Nobody wants a flood of complaints from thousands of angry activists. And further, bloggers can raise money, fact-check, and help break stories and/or keep them in circulation long enough for the media and political establishment to pick them up. . .

Whereas rightwing bloggers can rely on their leadership and the rightwing noise machine to build the triangle, left-leaning bloggers face the challenge of a mass media consumed by the shop-worn narrative of Bush the popular, plain-spoken leader, and a Democratic Party incapacitated (for the most part) by the focus-grouped fear of turning off "swing voters" by attacking Bush. For the progressive netroots, the past half-decade has been a Sisyphean loop of scandal after scandal melting away as the media and party establishment remain disengaged.

It would seem reasonable to conclude, then, that the best strategy for the progressive netroots is to go after the media and Democratic Party leaders and spend less time and energy attacking the Bush administration. If the netroots alone can’t change the political landscape without the participation of the media and Democratic establishment, then there’s no point wasting precious online space blasting away at Republicans while the other sides of the triangle stand idly by. Indeed, blog powerhouses like Kos and Josh Marshall have taken an aggressive stance toward Democratic politicians they see as selling out core Democratic Party principles. Kos’s willingness to attack the DLC is mocked on the right, but it is precisely the right’s fear that Kos will “close the triangle” that causes them to protest so loudly. Similarly, when Atrios, Digby, Oliver Willis, and so many other progressive bloggers attack the media, they are leveraging whatever power they have to compel the media to assume a role as the third side of their triangle. . .

For progressive bloggers who see a president presiding over the collapse of America's credibility, the urgent work ahead is to cement the post-Katrina impression of Bush as a failed president. Whether or not they succeed depends to a large extent on their ability to compel the media and Democratic establishment to stand with them and speak the truth.

More: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1962

Bonus item: Oooh, bad Onion! Bad, bad, very bad! (thanks to Mark Kleiman for the link)

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/40525
Halliburton Gets Contract To Pry Gold Fillings From New Orleans Corpses' Teeth

HOUSTON—On Tuesday, Halliburton received a $110 million no-bid government contract to pry the gold fillings from the mouths of deceased disaster victims in the New Orleans-Gulf Coast area. "We are proud to serve the government in this time of crisis by recovering valuable resources from the wreckage of this deadly storm," said David J. Lesar, Halliburton's president. "The gold we recover from the human rubble of Katrina can be used to make fighter-jet electronics, supercomputer chips, inflation-proof A-grade investments, and luxury yachting watches."

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:15 AM

 
THROWING GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD

Iraq: FUBAR

http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/security-situation-in-baghdad-sinking.html
Security Situation in Baghdad Sinking like the Titanic

http://www.d-n-i.net/grossman/iraqi_army_will_disintegrate.htm
Officers Worry Iraqi Army Will Disintegrate After U.S. Draws Down

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/international/middleeast/18najaf.html
Poor Planning and Corruption Hobble Reconstruction of Iraq

More: http://billmon.org/archives/002162.html

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050919/ts_afp/britainiraqdefencecash_050919041124
[AFP] A billion dollars has been plundered from the coffers of Iraq's defence ministry, seriously affecting the government's ability to combat the insurgency, the Independent newspaper here reported, citing the Iraqi finance minister. . . "It is possibly one of the largest thefts in history," the centre-left paper quoted finance minister Ali Allawi as saying. . . Most of the money was "siphoned abroad in cash and has disappeared". . .

http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/one-to-two-billion-dollars-missing-at.html
[Juan Cole] Patrick Cockburn of the Independent now confirms that report based on his own sources, saying that actually between one and two billion dollars were embezzled. . .

And so, perfect timing for this brilliant idea (thanks to Fazal Rizvi for the link). Yes, you read it right – they haven’t squandered enough taxpayer money in the corrupt and mismanaged Iraq reconstruction effort: now they’re asking for private doinations too

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509180280sep18,1,4734651.story
[A]mid pleas for aid after Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration has launched an unusual effort to raise charitable contributions for another cause: the government's attempt to rebuild Iraq.

Although more than $30 billion in taxpayer funds have been appropriated for Iraqi reconstruction, the administration earlier this month launched an Internet-based fundraising effort that it says is aimed at giving Americans "a further stake in building a free and prosperous Iraq."

Contributors have no way of knowing who's getting the money or precisely where it's headed because the government says it must keep the details secret for security reasons. . . [O]fficials say any contributions they receive will increase the scope of those efforts rather than relieve existing taxpayer burdens. . .

The effort is just the newest twist in the administration's struggle to rebuild Iraq. Andrew Natsios, head of USAID, first predicted it would cost taxpayers no more than $1.7 billion. The tab has since risen to more than $30 billion, with congressional Republicans and Democrats sharply critical of the high cost and slow pace of progress.

In addition, the new campaign comes amid increasing concerns that some of the administration's major projects in Iraq will be scrapped or only partially completed because of rising costs, especially for security. Some officials fear money may run out before key projects are completed. . .

FEMA: more of the same

http://slate.msn.com/id/2126556
The WSJ teases news that months before Katrina hit, local, state, and federal officials received a partially-completed strategic plan "to respond to a Katrina-like hurricane," based on a mock disaster exercise funded by FEMA. Two hundred pages of preliminary recommendations were delivered to FEMA and other agencies, including the warning that tens of thousands of people would require bus and air evacuation. The report also advised that since available transportation would limit the number who could evacuate, "delivery of water and possibly food to victims. . . will be crucial to minimize deaths" among those remaining. . .

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/17/katrina.response/index.html
As Hurricane Katrina bore down on the Gulf Coast three weeks ago, veteran workers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency braced for an epic disaster.

But their bosses, political appointees with almost no emergency management experience, didn't seem to share the sense of urgency, a FEMA veteran said. . .

More: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1959

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1954

January 2005 letter to Dennis Hastert: FEMA in trouble (thanks to Buzzflash for the link)

http://www.floods.org/PDF/ASFPM_Letter_FEMAinDHS_House_Jan05.pdf

How to “pay for” Katrina reconstruction? Cut Medicaid (which the GOP was just itching to do anyway). Wonderful how they care for the poor, isn’t it?

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/9/19/04742/5792

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/19/02422/7246

Even Clinton breaks tradition to criticize Bush

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050918/wl_afp/usweatheriraqeconomy_050918200308
[AFP] Former US president Bill Clinton sharply criticised George W. Bush for the Iraq War and the handling of Hurricane Katrina, and voiced alarm at the swelling US budget deficit.

Breaking with tradition under which US presidents mute criticisms of their successors, Clinton said the Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq "virtually alone and before UN inspections were completed, with no real urgency, no evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction." . . .

More Bush-bashing

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9379241/
[Fareed Zakaria] "Adversity builds character," goes the old adage. Except that in America today we seem to be following the opposite principle. The worse things get, the more frivolous our response. President Bush explains that he will spend hundreds of billions of dollars rebuilding the Gulf Coast without raising any new revenues. Republican leader Tom DeLay declines any spending cuts because "there is no fat left to cut in the federal budget."

This would be funny if it weren't so depressing. What is happening in Washington today is business as usual in the face of a national catastrophe. The scariest part is that we've been here before. After 9/11 we have created a new government agency, massively increased domestic spending and fought two wars. And the president did all this without rolling back any of his tax cuts—in fact, he expanded them—and refused to veto a single congressional spending bill. This was possible because Bush inherited a huge budget surplus in 2000. But that's all gone. The cupboard is now bare.

Whatever his other accomplishments, Bush will go down in history as the most fiscally irresponsible chief executive in American history. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/opinion/18rich.html
[Frank Rich] The worst storm in our history proved perfect for exposing this president because in one big blast it illuminated all his failings: the rampant cronyism, the empty sloganeering of "compassionate conservatism," the lack of concern for the "underprivileged" his mother condescended to at the Astrodome, the reckless lack of planning for all government operations except tax cuts, the use of spin and photo-ops to camouflage failure and to substitute for action. . . . In the chaos unleashed by Katrina, these plot strands coalesced into a single tragic epic played out in real time on television. . .

Nor can the president's acceptance of "responsibility" for the disaster dislodge what came before. Mr. Bush didn't cough up his modified-limited mea culpa until he'd seen his whole administration flash before his eyes. His admission that some of the buck may stop with him (about a dime's worth, in Truman dollars) came two weeks after the levees burst and five years after he promised to usher in a new post-Clinton "culture of responsibility." It came only after the plan to heap all the blame on the indeed blameworthy local Democrats failed to lift Mr. Bush's own record-low poll numbers. It came only after America's highest-rated TV news anchor, Brian Williams, started talking about Katrina the way Walter Cronkite once did about Vietnam.

Taking responsibility, as opposed to paying lip service to doing so, is not in this administration's gene pool. . .

Perfect. Bush’s ratings went DOWN after his Recovery Speech

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/09/18/katrina-ratings-drop/

CIA: release 9-11 report

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012398.html

The only good thing about the fact that John Roberts is going to glide into confirmation with overwhelming Democratic (not democratic) support is that he’s now replacing Rehnquist. Here’s hoping that his “high standard of qualifications” and Dem willingness to back him gives them leverage to filibuster the next wacko Bush is likely to put forward to replace swing vote Sandra Day O’Connor. There’s some indication that this may already be working

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/09/18/08/45/its-clobberin-time/

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012421.html

[NB: Though, no, I’m not happy about Alberto Gonzales being a potential nominee either]

Rove has another of those “off the record” sessions, where he anonymously dumps poison into the well of public opinion. This time, somebody outs him

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2005/09/17/rove-off-the-record-on-ka_n_7513.html
Karl Rove, President Bush's top political advisor and deputy White House chief of staff, spoke at businessman Teddy Forstmann's annual off the record gathering in Aspen, Colorado this weekend. Here is what Rove had to say that the press wasn't allowed to report on.

On Katrina: The only mistake we made with Katrina was not overriding the local government...

On The Anti-War Movement: Cindy Sheehan is a clown. There is no real anti-war movement. No serious politician, with anything to do with anything, would show his face at an anti-war rally...

On Bush's Low Poll Numbers: We have not been good at explaining the success in Iraq. Polls go up and down and don't mean anything...

On Iraq: There has been a big difference in the region. Iraq will transform the Middle East...

On Judy Miller And Plamegate: Judy Miller is in jail for reasons I don't really understand...

On Joe Wilson: Joe Wilson and I attend the same church but Joe goes to the wacky mass...

Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R-KY) on the brink

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/17/22310/4298

More: http://www.bluegrassreport.org/bluegrass_politics/2005/09/gop_leaders_ign.html

Our corporate media

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/18/204715/935

Bonus item: Just in case you haven't already seen this


***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 5:58 AM

 
APOCALYPSE NOW

I don’t like to take a gloom-and-doom attitude here, but. . . we’re screwed. The Worst President Ever is going to bring all of the efficiency and careful long-range planning of the Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority into the management of Katrina reconstruction, with a limitless price tag and an open feeding trough for his corporate pals.

Meanwhile, he now proposes to use this deficit spending as an excuse to cut other govt programs AND to cut taxes even further. The Reagan program of intentionally creating deficits in order to force reductions in social programs is about to reach its apotheosis.


First, a reminder of what Tom DeLay said just a few days ago

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4189
[Washington Times] House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an "ongoing victory," and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/16/234036/570
"There has never been a time where there is more total spending and more wasteful spending in Washington than we have today," said Pat Toomey, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania and the head of the conservative Club for Growth.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/16/AR2005091601488.html
One day after pledging to undertake one of history's largest reconstruction efforts, President Bush served notice yesterday that rebuilding the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast will require spending cuts elsewhere in the federal budget.

Amid growing concern among congressional Republicans about the huge cost of the planned reconstruction effort, Bush said the federal government can foot the bill without resorting to a tax increase. "You bet it's going to cost money. But I'm confident we can handle it," Bush said. "It's going to mean that we're going to have to cut unnecessary spending."

Bush has refused to put a price tag on the reconstruction plan, which he outlined in a prime-time speech Thursday night, although members of Congress and others have predicted that it could cost as much as $200 billion.

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/katrina_/2005/09/waste_fraud_abuse_and_katrina.php
[Mark Kleiman] Mr. Bush has been President for four and a half years now, and his party has had complete control of Congress for two and a half of them. So why have he, and they, left $200 billion in cuttable waste in the budget?

How irresponsible is this policy?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/bush-pits-katrina-rebuilding-against.html
[Joe] We do know this. First, Bush and Rove will screw up the rebuilding and it will be unbelievably corrupt. Second, they'll use this as an opportunity to eviscerate every other social program. Third, we won't be any safer.

http://crookedtimber.org/2005/09/16/tax-and-spend-or-just-spend/
After the President’s speech yesterday, it’s clear that while the moon is no more (so to speak), the payment plan for Katrina-cleanup is the same. “You bet it’s going to cost money,” the President said, “… It’s going to cost whatever it costs.” Reported estimates are that it’s going to cost at least as much as the War in Iraq has so far.

Meanwhile, White House economic adviser Allan Hubbard said the administration still plans to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, while at the same time cutting the deficit in half by 2009. The White House Press Corps laughed roundly at this statement. No, of course they didn’t. The President also proposed to create a Gulf Opportunity Zone, which would provide subsidies to business, because he said, “It is entrepreneurship that creates jobs and opportunity … and we will take the side of entrepreneurs as they lead the economic revival of the Gulf region.”

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000953.html
[Steven Clemons] I heard a figure that I wish I had a hard time believing -- but it probably is true. According to some economists that I heard last week, George W. Bush has [added] $3 trillion to the national debt in only four years.

Looking for cuts? Here’s a place to start

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007140.php
[Kevin Drum] By the time it finished wending its way through our tough minded, fiscally conservative Republican congress, the highway bill recently signed by President Bush included over 6,000 "earmarks." Translated from DC-ese, this means pork, money that's targeted for specific projects in specific districts. The most famous of the bill's earmarks is the "Bridge to Nowhere," a $223 million boondoggle that will connnect the Alaskan city of Ketchikan, population 8,900, to the island of Gravina, population 50. Why? Because Gravina and Ketchikan are represented by Republican Rep. Don Young, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Ronald Utt of the Heritage Foundation estimates that the bill's earmarks are worth $25 billion, and he has a suggestion: give it back and use it for Katrina reconstruction instead. Utt reports that although his plan has gotten some support, "the response from Members of Congress has been mostly silence." (Young, not surprisingly, called it "moronic.")

Bush was in such a hurry to force a cut in the minimum wage for relief workers (thereby increasing profits for the companies and contractors who hire them) – he broke the law doing it!

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/09/president_bushs.html

Meet Joe Allbaugh (I think it’s love)

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/09/16/allbaugh/index.html












Bush’s speech: less about rebuilding New Orleans, more about rebuilding his own flagging reputation. But it might not work. . .

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/9/16/134246/919
[Jerome Armstrong] I heard that President Bush gave a speech last night. I, like the vast majority of the nation no longer listen or watch what Bush says. Watch what he does.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/09/16/BL2005091601005.html
[Dan Froomkin] [T]he guts of the speech -- in which Bush unfurled his administration's grand plans for the biggest government-funded reconstruction effort in history -- has led to considerable skepticism, if not outright puzzlement, on both sides of the political divide.

Consider two of the more extreme possibilities:

* Either Bush is being entirely forthright, in which case he's talking about something reminiscent of the biggest liberal government programs of the 20th century. That scares some conservatives, certainly fiscal conservatives, to death.

* Or maybe it's just a plan to transform the Gulf Coast into a big test bed for conservative social policy, where tax breaks flow to big business and tax money flows to Halliburton, churches and private schools. That utterly terrifies liberals.

. . . But there is nothing remotely reminiscent of Bush's traditional small-government rhetoric about a plan estimated to cost taxpayers at least $200 billion.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007713
[Michael Tomasky] Two observations about last night’s speech, and where things go from here.

First, each major political party has its core philosophy; each has it strength set; and by extension, voters instinctively know to trust each on certain issues and not trust it on others. . .

You see where I’m going with this. There is no grow-the-government constituency within the Republican Party. The thousands of political appointees who went into the bureaucracy when George W. Bush took office were not people who wanted to use the EPA (or whatever) toward the ends the EPA was created to achieve; they want to change the nature of the EPA, make it less like what it was conceived to be. And the thousands of conservative advocacy and nonprofit people all around Washington have not been spending 20 years studying how to make the government bigger.

This is an iron rule of governance: Parties can’t suddenly become good at an idea they’re not built to defend or a job they’re not created to do. . . [T]here’s no constituency in Congress for a conservative big-government crash program, whatever -- it won’t succeed, or at least won’t succeed well enough to change any fundamental political dynamics.

Second observation: Boy, does he miss Michael Gerson. The language of the speech was pedestrian; the metaphors earthbound where Gerson’s would have flown into the stratosphere. The theatrics were rather bad, too. On television, the façade of the St. Louis Cathedral looks as if it could have been made of gypsum-board; it looks like a Disneyland simulacrum of a real building. And his shirt matched the color tone of the façade, bleeding into it, making his chest look small and his head look too big for its own body. I guess whoever was thinking about these things during the first term is off making $400,000 somewhere, too.

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/analysis-its-about-politics-for-bush.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007138.php

Well, at least there will be watchdogs to prevent corruption and waste, right?

http://billmon.org/archives/002158.html
[Bush] Our goal is to get the work done quickly. And taxpayers expect this work to be done honestly and wisely -- so we'll have a team of inspectors general reviewing all expenditures.

[House committee report] In total, 64% of the IGs appointed by President Bush held some sort of political position, such as a political appointment in a Republican administration or a position with a Republican member of Congress, before their appointments as IGs . . . .Only 18% of the IGs appointed by President Bush had previous audit experience, such as experience in an IG’s office, at the Government Accountability Office, or at a private accounting firm. . . [read on!]

A little detail about Bush’s road show (thanks to A.G Rud for the link)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9314188/#050916
[Brian Williams] I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it. . . jump to certain conclusions.

FEMA: still screwing up

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/17/national/nationalspecial/17fema.html

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/back-to-future-in-fema-city-florida.html

Brown first, Chertoff soon to follow?

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1951
[K-R] Chertoff's decision to fly to Georgia for a business-as-usual briefing even as residents in New Orleans fought for their lives in rising floodwaters raises new questions about how much top officials knew about what was happening on the Gulf Coast and how focused they were on the unfolding tragedy.

. . . With the spotlight now on Chertoff, officials at the Department of Homeland Security this week have begun issuing new versions of events surrounding his role in the botched federal response to Katrina.

What they are saying this week contradicts many of their previous statements and actions.

[Homeland Security spokesman Russ] Knocke said Thursday that Chertoff's Aug. 30 memo, first obtained by Knight Ridder, created "an administrative paper trail" for an incident of national significance. He said that the department had been acting "under the auspices of an incident of national significance" since President Bush issued an emergency declaration on Aug. 27, the Saturday before the storm.

But the National Response Plan says that it's the Secretary of Homeland Security who designates an event an incident of national significance. When asked if Chertoff had made the designation earlier than Aug. 30, Knocke refused to answer the question directly.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4849706
In the days before Hurricane Katrina hit land, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, FEMA Director Michael Brown and other top Homeland Security officials received e-mails on their blackberries warning that Katrina posed a dire threat to New Orleans and other areas. Yet one FEMA official tells NPR little was done.

The Bush gang hates the “blame game” (when they’re the ones being blamed): but you WON’T BELIEVE who they are going after to lay the blame for Katrina’s flooding

http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/12663495.htm
The federal government is trying to find evidence of any past efforts by environmental groups to block work on New Orleans' levees. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/16/122531/774
[Kos] Katrina was the fault of. . . environmentalists?. . . Maybe it was the trial lawyers? Check it out! No? How about labor? No? Abortion clinics? Gay marriage? Come on people, work with me! . . . Brown people? Oh, already used that one.

It must suck that the levees were defunded by none other than Bush and the Republican Congress. Really, this round of the blame game isn't much of a contest at all. . .

[NB: And who’s doing this? Alberto Gonzales, the Chief Hack of this administration, a man who will truly do anything he is told to do: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/16/enviro/index.html and http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_11.php#006552]

And at the other end of Pennsylvania avenue. . .

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_11_digbysblog_archive.html#112691980618279831
[WSJ] Congressional Republicans, backed by the White House, say they are using relief measures for the hurricane-ravaged Gulf coast to achieve a broad range of conservative economic and social policies, both in the storm zone and beyond.

Some new measures are already taking shape. In the past week, the Bush administration has suspended some union-friendly rules that require federal contractors pay prevailing wages, moved to ease tariffs on Canadian lumber, and allowed more foreign sugar imports to calm rising sugar prices. Just yesterday, it waived some affirmative-action rules for employers with federal contracts in the Gulf region.

Now, Republicans are working on legislation that would limit victims' right to sue, offer vouchers for displaced school children, lift some environment restrictions on new refineries and create tax-advantaged enterprise zones to maximize private-sector participation in recovery and reconstruction. Yesterday, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill that would offer sweeping protection against lawsuits to any person or organization that helps Katrina victims without compensation.

"The desire to bring conservative, free-market ideas to the Gulf Coast is white hot," says Rep. Mike Pence, the Indiana Republican who leads the Republican Study Group, an influential caucus of conservative House members. "We want to turn the Gulf Coast into a magnet for free enterprise. . .”

Many of the ideas under consideration have been pushed by the 40-member study group, which is circulating a list of "free-market solutions," including proposals to eliminate regulatory barriers to awarding federal funds to religious groups housing hurricane victims, waiving the estate tax for deaths in the storm-affected states; and making the entire region a "flat-tax free-enterprise zone.". . .

I’m sorry – I’m sure you’re already upset, but. . . (thanks – “yeah, thanks” – to John Aravosis for the link)

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article312997.ece
Global warming 'past the point of no return'
A record loss of sea ice in the Arctic this summer has convinced scientists that the northern hemisphere may have crossed a critical threshold beyond which the climate may never recover. Scientists fear that the Arctic has now entered an irreversible phase of warming which will accelerate the loss of the polar sea ice that has helped to keep the climate stable for thousands of years. . . They believe global warming is melting Arctic ice so rapidly that the region is beginning to absorb more heat from the sun, causing the ice to melt still further and so reinforcing a vicious cycle of melting and heating. . . The greatest fear is that the Arctic has reached a "tipping point" beyond which nothing can reverse the continual loss of sea ice. . .

Shut up, John

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/good-news-we-all-may-be-dead-anyway.html
We all may be dead anyway.

From ABC News:
It could kill a billion people worldwide, make ghost towns out of parts of major cities, and there is not enough medicine to fight it. It is called the avian flu. . .

According to Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, Bush's call to remain on the offensive has come too late.

"If we had a significant worldwide epidemic of this particular avian flu, the H5N1 virus, and it hit the United States and the world, because it would be everywhere at once, I think we would see outcomes that would be virtually impossible to imagine," he warns. . .

Well, at least we have the Next Generation to give us hope. . .

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/09/talk_about_bury.html

Paragraph 1:
More than half of American teens ages 15 to 19 have engaged in oral sex, increasing to nearly 70% for those who are 18 and 19, according to the largest federal study of the nation's sexual practices.

Paragraph 27:
One of the most shocking statistics now is that the incidence of teen gonorrhea in the United States is 70 times that in the Netherlands and France," he said. "We are paying a big price for shutting down discussion.”

Civil war in Iraq is inevitable now, thanks to the way that we’ve manipulated tensions among the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites to advance our aims – the only question is, how bad it will be

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1952

Feeling better? Well, at least we know that a single anthrax terrorist, using the public mail system to deliver death to govt officials, has been tracked down with the full resources of state and federal investigative agencies. . . hasn’t he?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/17/politics/17anthrax.html
Richard L. Lambert, the F.B.I. inspector in charge of the investigation of the deadly anthrax letters of 2001, testified under oath for five hours last month about the case. . . But Mr. Lambert was not testifying in a criminal trial. He and his teams of F.B.I. agents and postal inspectors have not found the culprit. Instead, he and six other F.B.I. and Justice Department officials have been forced to give depositions in a suit over news media leaks filed by Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, the former Army biodefense expert who was under intensive scrutiny for months.

Four years after an unknown bioterrorist dropped letters containing a couple of teaspoons of powder in a mailbox in Princeton, N.J., what began as the largest criminal investigation in American history appears to be stalled. . .

The thin prospects for a Dem takeover of the House or the Senate in 2006

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/9/16/22850/5508

Karl Rove: a little touchy where questions of illegality are concerned

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_11.php#006562
[Josh Marshall] We mentioned a few days ago a woman named Elizabeth Reyes who was an attorney in the elections division of the Texas Secretary of state. She answered a press question about a law that Karl Rove had broken -- though she wasn't told that Rove was the person involved. She was immediately fired.

Now it turns out that Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams decided to fire the woman after getting a call from Rove himself.

But for the morons among us, Williams would like to make clear that Rove's call had nothing to do with it.

Why does the Defense Dept want the hearings on “Able Danger” closed to the public?

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002624.html

Bonus item: the Bushes aren’t any better at managing their families than they are at running the country – another clan member with a serious substance abuse problem

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/09/16/bushs_nephew_arrested.html

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012389.html

Extra bonus item: I have to leave you with something humorous today (thanks to A.G. Rud for the link)

http://www.haloscan.com/comments/digby/112645667314579130/
[Bill Maher] "Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you any more. There's no more money to spend--you used up all of that. You can't start another war because you used up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people. Listen to your Mom. The cupboard's bare, the credit cards maxed out. No one's speaking to you. Mission accomplished.

Now it's time to do what you've always done best: lose interest and walk away. Like you did with your military service and the oil company and the baseball team. It's time. Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or space man? Now I know what you're saying: there's so many other things that you as President could involve yourself in. Please don't. I know, I know. There's a lot left to do. There's a war with Venezuela. Eliminating the sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program over to the church. And Social Security to Fannie Mae. Giving embryos the vote.

But, Sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You've performed so poorly I'm surprised that you haven't given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire city to rising water and snakes.

On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky. I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side.

So, yes, God does speak to you. What he is saying is: “Take a hint.”"

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 4:34 AM

 
ALL-IN

Bush tries desperately to show he cares about Katrina victims in the only way he knows how – by spending tons of money he doesn’t have, throwing the economy into an even bigger deficit, most of it going into the pockets of loyal corporate backers, AND LETTING KARL ROVE CONTROL IT ALL

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/16/national/nationalspecial/16bush.html

Analyses: http://slate.msn.com/id/2126384
[John Dickerson] We've become accustomed to these fraught addresses from President Bush: the cadences of loss and resolve, the biblical echoes, and the strain of a voice trying to whip up hope. . .

http://billmon.org/archives/002155.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html

Reactions?

http://makeashorterlink.com/?V29031FCB
[AP] Americans watched Bush's speech Thursday with mixed expectations. Some were glad the president acknowledged again the government's failure in its initial response to Hurricane Katrina; others were angry, saying the speech was too little, too late.

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002617.html
Tim Russert reaction - The president demonstrated he understands the magnitude of this crisis. But we are three weeks into this. One speech alone will not solve his political problems. Three out of four Americans do not believe their government is prepared to protect them in a time of crisis. This is not a quick fix. . .

http://slate.msn.com/id/2126460/
Most of the papers make a nod to what the president left unsaid, mostly obviously, any kind of a price tag. Also, an early version of the NYT noted, there was "nothing about Mr. Lott's house in Pascagoula." (The line disappeared by the final edition.)

Another massive job for an overextended military

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_11.php#006548
[Bush] "It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces - the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice."

Here they are, the GOP talking points in advance of Bush’s speech

http://thinkprogress.org/katrina-speech-tps/
[Including. . . ] This is going to require difficult decisions in Washington. It’s going to be important that we don’t have the same ol’ same ol’ that we see in Washington. Tough choices will be to have made and President Bush is willing to do that.

Scotty utters an inadvertent truth

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4204
MR. McCLELLAN: He will be -- I'm not going to get into the precise location right now. He'll be in New Orleans. There will not be an audience, if that's what your question is. I expect the remarks will probably be a little under 30 minutes. I think we're going to start at 9:02 p.m., to accommodate the networks -- 9:02 p.m. eastern, that is. And we'll keep you posted if there are any other officials that may be present. But there won't be an audience that he'll be speaking to.

Maureen Dowd: tell it, sister

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/opinion/14dowd.html
President Bush continued to try to spin his own inaction yesterday, but he may finally have reached a patch of reality beyond spin. Now he's the one drowning, unable to rescue himself by patting small black children on the head during photo-ops and making scripted attempts to appear engaged. He can keep going back down there. . . but he can never compensate for his tragic inattention during days when so many lives could have been saved. . .

Even though we know W. likes to be in his bubble with his feather pillow, the stories this week are breathtaking about the lengths the White House staff had to go to in order to capture Incurious George's attention.

Newsweek reported that the reality of Katrina did not sink in for the president until days after the levees broke, turning New Orleans into a watery grave. It took a virtual intervention of his top aides to make W. watch the news about the worst natural disaster in a century. Dan Bartlett made a DVD of newscasts on the hurricane to show the president on Friday morning as he flew down to the Gulf Coast.

The aides were scared to tell the isolated president that he should cut short his vacation by a couple of days, Newsweek said, because he can be "cold and snappish in private." Mike Allen wrote in Time about one "youngish aide" who was so terrified about telling Mr. Bush he was wrong about something during the first term, he "had dry heaves" afterward. . .

W. has said he prefers to get his information straight up from aides, rather than filtered through newspapers or newscasts. But he surrounds himself with weak sisters who don't have the nerve to break bad news to him, or ideologues with agendas that require warping reality or chuckleheaded cronies like Brownie. . .

Hurry up, Fitzgerald! The horrible implications of putting Karl Rove in charge of Katrina reconstruction (or is this intended as an excuse for later when Bush refuses to fire him if/when he is indicted – “we can’t afford to lose his leadership in this crucial area…”?)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/09/15/BL2005091501098.html
[Dan Froomkin] All you really need to know about the White House's post-Katrina strategy -- and Bush's carefully choreographed address on national television tonight -- is this little tidbit from the ninth paragraph of Elisabeth Bumiller and Richard W. Stevenson's story in the New York Times this morning:

"Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort."

Rove's leadership role suggests quite strikingly that any and all White House decisions and pronouncements regarding the recovery from the storm are being made with their political consequences as the primary consideration. More specifically: With an eye toward increasing the likelihood of Republican political victories in the future, pursuing long-cherished conservative goals, and bolstering Bush's image. . .

More: http://billmon.org/archives/002154.html

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1946

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_11.php#006550

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_11.php#006549

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_11.php#006547

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/16/04431/6570

Even some GOP members are worried about the profligate pork-fest Bush is proposing

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/16/politics/16cong.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007137.php

Look, folks: there IS a bulge (and always has been). One of the biggest failures of the press has been refusing to run this story to ground. OF COURSE Bush is wired for sound whenever he is debating or speaking in public – do you think Karl Rove would leave him to his own stupid ad libs?

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1949













The Republican-controlled Congressional investigation into Katrina failures: I hold to my view that the Democrats should simply withdraw and refuse to give it the cover of bipartisanship. Here’s how bad it is – not only do the Republicans control the numbers and leadership: the minority won’t even have subpoena power!

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007698

Oh-oh

http://slate.msn.com/id/2126460/
Everybody mentions, but the Post goes into the most detail on, the latest study concluding that hurricanes are becoming more severe. The number of Category 4 and 5 storms has doubled over the past 35 years. "There is increasing confidence, as the result of our study, that there's some level of greenhouse warming in what we're seeing," said one researcher.

Thank god we’ve overthrown the repressive regime of Saddam Hussein. . . now the US military is detaining Iraqi journalists (many working for US media) who dare to report inconvenient news

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002613.html
On Wednesday, Iraq's justice minister, Abdul Hussein Shandal, criticized the detentions of Iraqi journalists in an interview with Reuters, saying he wanted to change a United Nations resolution that gives American troops immunity from Iraqi law. He said journalists were not free to report on all sides of the conflict.

John Roberts sounds suspiciously reasonable and open-minded, so now conservative groups are all up in arms about it (OR: pretending to be so, as cover for the fact that they are secretly delighted to get the stealth hard-liner confirmed)

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/09/14/pressed_on_roe_roberts_cites_respect_for_precedent/

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/16/politics/politicsspecial1/16roberts.html

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/09/15/robertss_testimony_alarms_conservatives/

Here it comes: the big fight over including “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/14/AR2005091401521.html

This is ugly. Have a problem with child-molesting priests? The Catholic church says, purge all gays

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/15/national/15seminary.html
In a possible indication of the ruling's contents, the American archbishop who is supervising the seminary review said last week that "anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity or has strong homosexual inclinations," should not be admitted to a seminary.

Edwin O'Brien, archbishop for the United States military, told The National Catholic Register that the restriction should apply even to those who have not been sexually active for a decade or more.

Another good sign for 2006? The GOP’s “malaise”

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-southbay15sep15,1,2980279.story

GOP running like hell away from Social Security (at least until the elections are over)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_11.php#006543

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/16/34812/1336

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/15/social/index.html

Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) goes all-in with his Mohamed Atta conspiracy theory: says someone at the Pentagon ordered the evidence destroyed. Either this will turn out to be another mega-scandal, or he will become a target of ridicule

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/holy-crap.html

“Freedom Walk” web site disappears -- why?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_11_atrios_archive.html#112684491670121787

Bonus item: heh, heh, heh – that Dubya, such a fine, delicate sense of humor

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050915/od_nm/bolton_annan_dc_1
John Bolton's reputation as a difficult diplomat gave his boss, U.S. President George W. Bush, an opportunity to tease the new American ambassador to the United Nations.

"How's he doing? Has the place blown up?" Bush asked U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan as the president and Bolton arrived at U.N. headquarters on Tuesday for a world summit.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***

- posted by Nick Burbules @ 4:37 AM

 
PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE

Suddenly, Bush wants to make nice with the U.N.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/14/AR2005091400229.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/15/international/15prexy.html

Bush's hypocrisy on tariffs and subsidies: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/bush-gives-comedy-routine-at-un-talks.html

Job-sharing: Senate blocks independent Katrina investigation, House blocks Plame inquiry

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/14/16957/3403

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012349.html

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/big-day-for-gop-cover-ups.html

The Bush-at-the-airplane window out-take they DIDN’T show you (thanks to Digby for the link)

http://bagnewsnotes.typepad.com/bagnews/2005/09/the_week_americ_2.html











A tale of two governors

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/14/133346/616
Bush with Blanco, Louisiana governor:

[Blanco] says that two days after Katrina, desperate for help, she couldn't get through to Bush and didn't get a callback; hours later, she tried again, and they talked.

Bush with Barbour, Mississippi governor:

Barbour hasn't had to wait hours to talk to Bush. In fact, Barbour said in an interview with USA TODAY, the president called him three to four times in the wake of Katrina. "I never called him. He always called me," he said.

Surprise! Blanco is a Democrat and Barbour is a Republican. . .

Did the wrong guy quit?

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4187
[K-R] Chertoff - not Brown - was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan. . .

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/14/chertoff/index.html

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007128.php

Turns out, Cheney WAS actively involved during Katrina. . .

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/14/cheney3/index.html
[Tim Grieve] Wait, wait we take it all back. We mocked Dick Cheney earlier today for getting snippy about how he had to cut short his vacation to deal with Hurricane Katrina. But it turns out that we were maligning the vice president unfairly. It turns out that he -- or at least his office -- was working all along.

According to a report in the Hattiesburg American, Cheney's office placed calls to the Southern Pines Electric Power Association on Aug. 30 and Aug. 31, insisting that the agency immediately repair two electrical substations that supply power to Atlanta-based Colonial Pipeline Co., a company that pumps gasoline and diesel from the Gulf Coast to the Northeast.

Southern Pines complied with the order from Cheney's office, the paper says -- taking a risk that the repair work would knock out power throughout its system and delaying by at least a day efforts to restore power to two rural hospitals and a number of water systems in Mississippi.

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_11.php#006533

Support for Bush continues its steady decline. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/15/politics/15poll.html

So, he plans another Big Speech

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/14/AR2005091402654.html
President Bush will call tonight for an unprecedented federal commitment to rebuild New Orleans and other areas obliterated by Hurricane Katrina, putting the United States on pace to spend more in the next year on the storm's aftermath than it has over three years on the Iraq war. . .

The president will call on Washington to resist spending money unwisely, but some in his own party are already starting to recoil at a price tag expected to exceed $200 billion -- about the cost of the Iraq war and reconstruction efforts. As emergency expenditures soar -- with new commitments as high as $2 billion a day -- some budget analysts and conservative groups are warning that the Katrina spending has combined with earlier fiscal decisions in ways that will wreak havoc on the government's finances for years to come. . .

Bush and Republican congressional leaders, by contrast, are calculating that the U.S. economy can safely absorb a sharp spike in spending and budget deficits, and that the only way to regain public confidence after the stumbling early response to the disaster is to spend whatever it takes to rebuild the region and help Katrina's victims get back on their feet. . .

Administration officials concede that the hurricane and its aftermath could push the budget deficit back above $400 billion next year, or about 3 percent of the country's gross domestic product, just as the tide of federal red ink that rolled over Washington during Bush's first term had begun to recede. . .

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_11.php#006541

This tells you everything you need to know: heading up the REAL relief effort, Karl Rove

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_11.php#006539

More on accountability

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007679

The weirdest quote of the week: Tom DeLay announces that the GOP has succeeded in squeezing every last penny of waste from the government. This is not only a howler of a falsehood – belied by the barrels of pork spending he and his cronies have been shoveling to their corporate backers. It is also a strange rationale for why Katrina spending, war spending, and other “emergency” measures will need to run us further into the red (i.e. there is nowhere else to get the money)

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4189
[Washington Times] House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an "ongoing victory," and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget.

Mr. DeLay was defending Republicans' choice to borrow money and add to this year's expected $331 billion deficit to pay for Hurricane Katrina relief. Some Republicans have said Congress should make cuts in other areas, but Mr. DeLay said that doesn't seem possible.

"My answer to those that want to offset the spending is sure, bring me the offsets, I'll be glad to do it. But nobody has been able to come up with any yet," the Texas Republican told reporters at his weekly briefing.

Asked if that meant the government was running at peak efficiency, Mr. DeLay said, "Yes, after 11 years of Republican majority we've pared it down pretty good.". . .

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_11_atrios_archive.html#112670931487167987
[F]ederal expenditures as a percentage of GDP were higher in 2002,2003, and 2004 than they were in 1997,1998, and 1999.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007680

http://billmon.org/archives/002153.html

Rope-a-dope: how John Roberts is gaming the system (and winning)

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2126131&entry/2126220/nav=tap1/

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2126312&nav=tap2/

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007683

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/14/91456/7593

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/15/12239/9374

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/14/10280/5738

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/14/12197/4557

Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher (the guy who pardoned all his co-conspirators, then took the Fifth himself) – not out of the woods yet

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/14/182340/865

The 9-11 commission tries to put an end to the Curt Weldon conspiracy, that the govt knew about Mohamed Atta and did nothing about it

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/09/911_commission_.html
[Eric Umansky] I have no idea why they're now sure it didn't happen. In fact, I'm not even sure what "it" is: The purported Atta fingering by Able Danger or that Shaffer once told commission staffers about it? Obviously, the AP writer thinks it's the former. Maybe.

Iraq's new constitution

http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/necklace-of-bombs-for-baghdad-us.html
[Juan Cole] The Iraqi constitution was finally sent to the United Nations for printing on Wednesday. Deputy speaker of the house Husain Shahristani said that it had been slightly amended to meet Sunni concerns. But the Sunnis, it seems, reject it anyway. The procedure of the thing seems to most of us highly irregular. It is not clear who exactly amended the constitution (it wasn't parliament) or by what authority. It is not clear by whom it has been adopted (not the whole parliament, which never voted on it, despite a UN demand that it do so). The UN is still demanding that it be "read" in parliament before they agree to print it. . .

An insider’s guide to UN reform

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/14/142349/085

Bonus item: another photo you won’t see on the front page (unclear whether this is a note from Bush to Condi, or vice-versa – but it IS real, from Reuters)

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1944

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 4:59 AM

 
LYING AS A WAY OF LIFE

Bush lies

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1931
Question: Did they misinform you when you said that no one anticipated the breach of the levees?

President Bush: No, what I was referring to is this. When that storm came by, a lot of people said we dodged a bullet. When that storm came through at first, people said, whew. There was a sense of relaxation, and that's what I was referring to. And I, myself, thought we had dodged a bullet. You know why? Because I was listening to people, probably over the airways, say, the bullet has been dodged. And that was what I was referring to. Of course, there were plans in case the levee had been breached. There was a sense of relaxation in the moment, a critical moment. And thank you for giving me a chance to clarify that. . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/bush-just-lied-about-hurricane.html
[John] The problem? Bush is a little slow - that talking point got blown out of the water, oh, about a week ago. You see, the levees broke Monday morning within hours of the storm hitting, so there was no sigh of relaxation that the levees had been saved. . .

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007668
Yet some government officials certainly appeared aware of a breach and said so on network television. At 7:33 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 29, Gov. Kathleen B. Blanco said on NBC, "I believe the water has breached the levee system, and is -- is coming in."

More: http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/09/factchecking_bush.html

No blame game (except when they want to play it). And it all had nothing to do with race (except when they want to play the race card)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_11.php#006507
QUESTION: Mr. President, there is a belief that we've been hearing for two weeks now on the ground that FEMA let the people here on the ground down. And perhaps, in turn, if you look at the evidence of what it's done to your popularity, FEMA let you down. Do you think that your management style of sort of relying on the advice that you got in this particular scenario let you down? And do you think that plays at all ...

PRESIDENT BUSH: Look, there will be plenty of time to play the blame game. That's what you're trying to do. . . You're trying to say somebody is at fault. Look -- and I want to know. I want to know exactly what went on and how it went on.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_11.php#006507
QUESTION: Sir, what do you make of some of the comments that have been made by quite a number of people that there was a racial component to some of the people that were left behind and left without help?

PRESIDENT BUSH: My attitude is this: The storm didn't discriminate, and neither will the recovery effort. . .

http://www.alternet.org/katrina/25267/
[Molly Ivins] According to The New York Times, Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett, White House communications director, began a campaign this weekend to blame local and state officials. The "woefully inadequate response," said "sources close to the White House," was the fault of "bureaucratic obstacles from state and local officials.". . . The bottom line is they're playing the race card. . .

An example of race-bating (thanks to Mary Atkinson for the link)

http://www.chronwatch.com/site.asp?id=16666&catcode=35

What went wrong? Go ask Congress

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_11.php#006507
QUESTION: Mr. President, does the federal government need the authority to come in earlier, or even in advance of a storm that threatening?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I think that's one of the interesting issues that Congress needs to take a look at. . .

QUESTION: Do you recommend that Congress consider allowing the federal government to act more quickly?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I think it's very important for Congress to take a good, close look at what went on, what didn't go on, and come up with a series of recommendations. . .

QUESTION: This is two weeks in. You must have developed a clear image at this point of one critical thing that failed, one thing that went wrong in the first five days.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Oh, I think there will be plenty of time to analyze, particularly the structure of the relationship between government levels. But, again, there's -- what I think Congress needs to do -- I know Congress needs to do -- and we're doing this internally, as well -- is to take a sober look at the decision-making that went on. . .

http://slate.msn.com/id/2126222/
The NYT notes that when Bush was asked about Brown's resignation, he did not offer an expansive answer. "Maybe you know something we don't know," he said. (An aide later said the president didn't know the news was public.) Asked about the government's response to Katrina, Bush declined to respond, adding, "Don't ask me again."

Bush promises to get to the bottom of what everybody else did wrong

http://www.alternet.org/katrina/25267/
[Molly Ivins] George W. Bush has come up with his worst idea since he decided to have the military investigate torture by the military at Abu Ghraib prison. He, George W. personally, plans to investigate to "find out what went right and what went wrong" in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. . .

The Big News of the Day is that Bush “accepts responsibility” for Katrina failures. This seems to be getting a lot of attention, but don’t you believe it – his carefully worded statement alludes to possible ill-defined federal failures that of course he is technically “responsible” for. I will wake up and take notice when he mentions ONE THING that he personally could or should have done differently. THAT will be “taking responsibility”

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/national/nationalspecial/14bush.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/13/AR2005091300588.html

More: http://billmon.org/archives/002150.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_11.php#006522

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007118.php

The ACTUAL Big News of the Day

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/did-bush-just-refuse-to-answer-whether.html
[AP] The president was asked whether people should be worried about the government's ability to handle another terrorist attack given failures in responding to Katrina.

"Are we capable of dealing with a severe attack? That's a very important question and it's in the national interest that we find out. . .”

“What does accountability look like?”

http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2005/09/accountabilty_m.html

Why FEMA isn’t equipped to manage the kind of money Bush is throwing at Katrina reconstruction

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/12/AR2005091202039.html

Brownie out, Mr. Duct Tape in at FEMA

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/bush-puts-duct-tape-idiot-in-charge-of.html
[CNN, 2003] Americans have apparently heeded the U.S. government's advice to prepare for terror attacks, emptying hardware store shelves of duct tape.

On Tuesday, less than 24 hours after U.S. Fire Administrator David Paulison described a list of useful items, stores in the greater Washington, D.C. area reported a surge in sales of plastic sheeting, duct tape, and other emergency items.

Will Brownie now go work for his pal Joe Allbaugh? He’ll need help shoveling all that loot to their buddies

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/9/12/162226/812

How the GOP plans to try to take advantage of Katrina to push forward on other agenda items

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/the-gop-finds-the-silver-_b_7241.html

I like Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) – he gets it

http://blog.dccc.org/mt/archives/003503.html
“The name calling … these things have gone too far,” said Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), referring to comments by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who said Bush was oblivious to what was happening in New Orleans.

Reynolds began the interview lashing out at his counterpart, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and has attacked Republicans for their ties to GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was indicted last month by a Florida grand jury. . . “I’m tired of having Rahm calling up you guys” to discuss allegations of wrongdoing by Republicans, said Reynolds, calling Emanuel “Mr. Righteous.”

Reynolds added, “While he wants to play this game, he’s got exposure. If the Democratic leadership thinks the Republican leadership will be silent on ethics, the Democrats got another thing coming. . . I intend to have the NRCC come back.”

Emanuel discounted the allegations, saying, “I feel for Tom. He’s got a tough reelection again. He’s got a horrible political environment. More of his colleagues are seeking other office or talking about retirement. More races are in play.”. . . “He’s under a lot of pressure. I have nothing but empathy for him. My recommendation: work out. It helps you deal with stress,” added Emanuel.

In Iraq: civil war

http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/tal-afar-as-ethnic-civil-war-much-of.html

http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/at-least-90-dead-162-injured-in.html

As intended, Bolton demolishes UN reform

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007669
[Mark Leon Goldberg] So far, John Bolton is all smiles as he wanders the hall from meeting to meeting. A European diplomat I met remarked that during the negotiations, Bolton has been polite to the point of creepy. But I can't help to think that unlike the ambassadors who only feign optimism, Bolton's cheerfulness is genuine: He may have succeeded in derailing the most ambitious set of UN reforms in the organization's history.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/international/14nations.html
"There were governments that were not willing to make the concessions necessary," Mr. Annan said. "There were spoilers also in the group, let's be quite honest about that."

Watered-down document may pass: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007678

Annan: document “a real disgrace” http://us.rediff.com/news/2005/sep/14pmun2.htm

At that Sept 11 “Freedom March”

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/09/it_cant_happen_here.html
One man who registered for the walk was detained by a Pentagon police officer after he slipped a black hood over his head and produced a sign that read, "Freedom?". . . The man was removed from the Pentagon registration area, handcuffed and taken away in a police car. It was not clear whether he was charged or simply detained and the police did not respond to messages requesting more information.

“A bust” http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/12/walk/index.html

As on 9-11, EPA withholds information on Katrina environmental hazards

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/09/the_epa_withhol.html

I doubt this, but: Priscilla Owen for the Supreme Court??!!

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/12/owen/index.html

Michael Froomkin says, maybe so: http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/09/the_strategy_how_the_gop_will_relaunch_the_culture_war_with_its_next_supreme_court_appointment.html

New poll numbers

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/12/AR2005091200668.html
Bush aides privately view the latest poll numbers with gloomy realism. . . "We're facing some stiff political headwinds," said one senior official who asked not to be named in order to speak candidly. . . "The most frightening thing for the White House might be that his numbers on the economy are worse than his numbers on Katrina," said Joel P. Johnson, a former senior adviser in the Clinton White House.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html
[Dan Froomkin] Amid a slew of stories this weekend about the embattled presidency and the blundering government response to the drowning of New Orleans, some journalists who are long-time observers of the White House are suddenly sharing scathing observations about President Bush that may be new to many of their readers.

Is Bush the commanding, decisive, jovial president you've been hearing about for years in so much of the mainstream press?. . . Maybe not so much.

Judging from the blistering analyses in Time, Newsweek, and elsewhere these past few days, it turns out that Bush is in fact fidgety, cold and snappish in private. He yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants. He is slow to comprehend concepts that don't emerge from his gut. He is uncomprehending of the speeches that he is given to read. And oh yes, one of his most significant legacies -- the immense post-Sept. 11 reorganization of the federal government which created the Homeland Security Department -- has failed a big test.

Maybe it's Bush's sinking poll numbers -- he is, after all, undeniably an unpopular president now. Maybe it's the way that the federal response to the flood has cut so deeply against Bush's most compelling claim to greatness: His resoluteness when it comes to protecting Americans. . . But for whatever reason, critical observations and insights that for so long have been zealously guarded by mainstream journalists, and only doled out in teaspoons if at all, now seem to be flooding into the public sphere.

An emperor-has-no-clothes moment seems upon us.

Washington Post acknowledges that it was lied to by a WH source hiding behind anonymity, but doesn’t seem very concerned about it

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002592.html

Similarly, David Brooks acknowledges the Bush gang’s policy of lying, but still carries their water for them

http://mediamatters.org/items/200509120003
On the September 11 edition of NBC's syndicated The Chris Matthews Show, New York Times columnist David Brooks revealed that he has learned from private conversations with Bush officials who "represent" what "Bush believes" that from its earliest days, the Bush administration adopted a policy of shielding itself from political damage by never publicly admitting any mistake -- even if it meant lying to the media and the American public. . . Moreover, on the Matthews Show, Brooks disclosed that "from Day One," the Bush White House "decided our public relations is not going to be honest”. . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 4:16 AM

 
[NB: Still traveling - trying to keep up daily postings but I may miss a day now and then.]

HOW BUSH BLEW IT

I could just link to this Newsweek article and take off the rest of the day – you won’t find a more devastating account of how thoroughly irresponsible Bush and his people were in coming to grips with the Katrina catastrophe

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9287434/site/newsweek/
It's a standing joke among the president's top aides: who gets to deliver the bad news? Warm and hearty in public, Bush can be cold and snappish in private, and aides sometimes cringe before the displeasure of the president of the United States, or, as he is known in West Wing jargon, POTUS. . .

The reality, say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night. Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One.

How this could be—how the president of the United States could have even less "situational awareness," as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century—is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace. . .

But it is not clear what President Bush does read or watch, aside from the occasional biography and an hour or two of ESPN here and there. Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him. . .

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/newsweek-bush-didnt-know-hurricane.html

Time magazine’s equally damaging account

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/09/bush_was_awol_w.html
The day Hurricane Katrina hit, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco asked President Bush for “everything you’ve got.” But almost nothing arrived, and she couldn’t wait any longer. So she called the White House and demanded to speak to the President. George Bush could not be located, two Louisiana officials told TIME, so she asked for chief of staff Andrew Card, who was also unavailable. . .

More: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1920

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1103525,00.html

Here’s the GOP plan for deflecting attention away from their failures: “don’t look back”

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_11_digbysblog_archive.html#112645667314579130
[Time] By late last week, Administration aides were describing a three-part comeback plan. The first: Spend freely, and worry about the tab and the consequences later. . . The second tactic could be summed up as, Don't look back. The White House has sent delegates to meetings in Washington of outside Republican groups who have plans to blame the Democrats and state and local officials.

. . .The third move:. . . Advisers are proceeding with plans to gin up base-conservative voters...focused around tax reform. . . no plans to delay tax cuts. . . veto anticipated congressional approval of increased federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research.

More: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1103581,00.html

Military planners still shaping intelligence to suit the Bush Policy Preference of the Day

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_11.php#006502
[Newsweek] Analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency have begun war-gaming scenarios for what might happen in Iraq if U.S. force levels were cut back or eliminated, say counterterrorism and defense sources. The officials, who asked not to be named because of the sensitive subject matter, declined to discuss specifics of the DIA analyses, which they indicate are in the preliminary stages. Some officials say that people in the intelligence community are leery about engaging in speculative exercises for fear of being accused by conservatives of undermining George W. Bush's administration policy. However, others say that this analysis could support staying the course in Iraq if a U.S. pullout would result in greater insurgent violence or a religious civil war.

[Josh Marshall] Don't do intel work; it may undermine President Bush's policies. On the other hand, it might reinforce his policies. And that's okay.

New “nucular doctrine” puts unprecedented powers into the hands of the President – and isn’t Dubya just the fellow you want to entrust with such powers?

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1921

More: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/11/MNGBFELRFI1.DTL&hw=nuclear&sn=001&sc=1000

Amazingly, the Iraq constitution is STILL not finished and ready to distribute

http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/no-constitution-yet-waters-of-battle.html

Kirkuk still unresolved: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/international/middleeast/11iraqx.html

How they let Bin Laden escape from Tora Bora

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/magazine/11TORABORA.html

Where has Cheney been (and is there a Plame connection)?

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012290.html
[Jeralyn Merritt] A few months ago, I heard of a lunch conversation that Cheney had with a political type in Wyoming. I have no idea if it's true or not, but it makes some sense. Here's the tale:

Cheney has been getting tired of being called upon to fix Bush's mistakes. Cheney said Bush is almost incapable of making any decision. He waffles and waffles. Then, once he makes a decision, he refuses to change it. Because of his born-again faith, he says "It's in the hands of G-d now" and washes his hands of it. Then Cheney is called in to repair the damage.

If this story is even remotely true, this may have been the final straw for Cheney, and he decided to let Bush try to wiggle his way out of his Katrina inaction on his own. Cheney's re-emergence this week may be the result of his fellow Republicans begging him to return to save Bush for the sake of the party.

But I also don't discount that Cheney may be in deep doo-doo of his own over RoveGate. Now, that would be something.

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nora-ephron/the-curious-incident-of-t_b_7189.html

Bonus item: Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), at the oh-so-important Judge Roberts confirmation hearings (thanks to Atrios for the link)

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_11_atrios_archive.html#112655897970155734


***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 5:54 AM

 
FOUR MORE YEARS

9/11: the all-purpose explanation for everything

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/10/145051/190
[AP] Bush plans to mark Sunday's fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks by remembering the victims of that tragedy and Hurricane Katrina.

"Our greatest resource in such times is the compassionate character of the American people, because even the most destructive storm cannot weaken the heart and soul of our nation," the president said in his weekly radio address. "America will overcome this ordeal, and we will be stronger for it.". . .

Bush often talks about Sept. 11 when he is under public scrutiny, and Sunday's anniversary was a natural occasion to reminisce about the attacks as he faces criticism for a slow government response to the hurricane and subsequent flooding. In his radio address, he drew similarities to the two catastrophes that hit the United States four years apart.

Juan Cole gives an anniversary assessment of where we stand: not in a good place

http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/911-77-and-830-on-fourth-year.html
The US military is bogged down in an intractable guerrilla war in Iraq, which most Muslims view as an aggressive neo-imperialism. Afghanistan is still unstable. The major al-Qaeda leaders are still at large, and recently struck London. Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans on 8/30 have demonstrated that the US government is unprepared to deal with major disasters, and that Bush administration priorities have often been capricious. . .

The “reassignment” of Michael Brown – a friendly NYT piece (by Elisabeth Bumiller, of course), but actually quite devastating when you think about it

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/national/nationalspecial/10crisis.html
To Democrats, Republicans, local officials and Hurricane Katrina's victims, the question was not why, but what took so long?

Republicans had been pressing the White House for days to fire "Brownie," Michael D. Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who had stunned many television viewers in admitting that he did not know until 24 hours after the first news reports that there was a swelling crowd of 25,000 people desperate for food and water at the New Orleans convention center. . . With Democrats and Republicans caustically criticizing the performance of his agency, and with the White House under increasing attack for populating FEMA's top ranks with politically connected officials who lack disaster relief experience, Mr. Brown had become a symbol of President Bush's own hesitant response.

The president, long reluctant to fire subordinates, came to a belated recognition that his administration was in trouble for the way it had dealt with the disaster, many of his supporters say. One moment of realization occurred on Thursday of last week when an aide carried a news agency report from New Orleans into the Oval Office for him to see.

The report was about the evacuees at the convention center, some dying and some already dead. Mr. Bush had been briefed that morning by his homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, who was getting much of his information from Mr. Brown and was not aware of what was occurring there. The news account was the first that the president and his top advisers had heard not only of the conditions at the convention center but even that there were people there at all. . .

One prominent African-American supporter of Mr. Bush who is close to Karl Rove, the White House political chief, said the president did not go into the heart of New Orleans and meet with black victims on his first trip there, last Friday, because he knew that White House officials were "scared to death" of the reaction.

"If I'm Karl, do I want the visual of black people hollering at the president as if we're living in Rwanda?" said the supporter, who spoke only anonymously because he did not want to antagonize Mr. Rove.

http://blogs.salon.com/0000014/2005/09/10.html#a917
[Scott Rosenberg] But pause a minute and ponder this line and you realize that the administration's difficulty "getting truth" here is simply a case of chickens coming home to roost. If you run a government where you reward people who tell you what you want to hear and fire people when they tell you unpleasant truths, you should not be surprised when truth becomes a scarce commodity. The Bush administration's "tell me no truths" stance was at work in its economic policy long before 9/11; after that calamity, it became the central modus operandi for the Executive Branch, which picked its policies first -- invade Iraq while continuing to cut taxes -- and then retroactively doctored its information and intelligence (either overtly, or simply by promoting those with the "right" message and firing or silencing dissenters) to fit the policy.

It's one thing to spin, to present a doctored version of reality to the public in order to sell an agenda. But it became clear long ago that, in the Bush administration's advanced case of delusional megalomania, the doctored version of reality has become gospel on the inside as well.

So of course Michael Brown, and all the other Michael Browns in the Bush administration, didn't tell Bush the truth about what was happening. "Everything's fine, sir! Carry on with your vacation!" Even if they actually knew, which seems unlikely, they understood -- as you can bet every commander in Iraq knows -- that to do so was to ask to be fired. Mr. Bush is to hear only what Mr. Bush (and Messrs. Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rove) wants to hear. Anything else is disloyalty -- a firing offence.

Any organization run on such principles is, of course, a juggernaut of dysfunction, headed for the ditch.

Bush admin still struggling to get control of the message machine

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1917

Susan Madrak: Boo effing hoo

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/09/10/16/03/sacrifice/
[AP] Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown sent a candid e-mail to family and friends this week as he was becoming the center of criticism of the handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

“I don’t mind the negative press (well, actually, I do, but I try to ignore it) but it is really wearing out the family,” Brown wrote. “No wonder people don’t go into public service. This country is devouring itself, the 24-hour news cycle is numbing our ability to think for ourselves,” the Rocky Mountain News reported Saturday. . .

[St Petersburg Times] Brown was pleasant enough, if a bit opportunistic, Jones said, but he did not put enough time and energy into his job. “He would have been better suited to be a small city or county lawyer,” he said. Jones was surprised Brown was being considered for job at FEMA but figured it wasn’t impossible he could have risen high enough in local and state government to be considered for a job directing FEMA operations in Oklahoma.

The agents quickly corrected him. This was a national post in Washington, deputy director of FEMA, the arm of the federal government that prepares for and responds to disasters around the United States. . . Jones looked at the agents, “You’re surely kidding?”

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/poor-drownie-getting-picked-on-and-all.html

So why does Michael Brown still have his job? This might help explain

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_04_digbysblog_archive.html#112638811308578386
Now that President Bush has won Florida in his 2004 re-election bid, he may want to draft a letter of appreciation to Michael Brown, chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Seldom has any federal agency had the opportunity to so directly and uniquely alter the course of a presidential election, and seldom has any agency delivered for a president as FEMA did in Florida this fall. . .

Pray harder

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/09/bush_king_of_th.html

The gruesome realities of collecting the dead bodies in New Orleans

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/09/fema_spinning_d.html

Yeah, why didn’t those poor black people get out of New Orleans when they had the chance?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/national/nationalspecial/10emt.html
Police agencies to the south of New Orleans were so fearful of the crowds trying to leave the city after Hurricane Katrina that they sealed a crucial bridge over the Mississippi River and turned back hundreds of desperate evacuees, two paramedics who were in the crowd said.

The paramedics and two other witnesses said officers sometimes shot guns over the heads of fleeing people, who, instead of complying immediately with orders to leave the bridge, pleaded to be let through, the paramedics and two other witnesses said. . . Instead, a suburban police officer angrily ordered about 200 people to abandon an encampment between the highways near the bridge. The officer then confiscated their food and water, the four witnesses said. . .

What went wrong: an epic NYT report

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/national/nationalspecial/11response.html

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007096.php

Belly up to the trough, boys

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/national/nationalspecial/10contracts.html
Private contractors, guided by two former directors of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other well-connected lobbyists and consultants, are rushing to cash in on the unprecedented sums to be spent on Hurricane Katrina relief and reconstruction.

From global engineering and construction firms like the Fluor Corporation and Halliburton to local trash removal and road-building concerns, the private sector is poised to reap a windfall of business in the largest domestic rebuilding effort ever undertaken.

Normal federal contracting rules are largely suspended in the rush to help people displaced by the storm and reopen New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Hundreds of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts have already been let and billions more are to flow to the private sector in the weeks and months to come. Congress has already appropriated more than $62 billion for an effort that is projected to cost well over $100 billion.

Some experts warn that the crisis atmosphere and the open federal purse are a bonanza for lobbyists and private companies and are likely to lead to the contract abuses, cronyism and waste that numerous investigations have uncovered in post-war Iraq.

"They are throwing money out, they are shoveling it out the door," said James Albertine, a Washington lobbyist and past president of the American League of Lobbyists. "I'm sure every lobbyist's phone in Washington is ringing off the hook from his clients. Sixty-two billion dollars is a lot of money - and it's only a down payment."

Joe M. Allbaugh, a close friend of President Bush, the president's 2000 campaign manager and the FEMA director from 2001 to 2003, and James Lee Witt, an Arkansan close to former President Bill Clinton and a former FEMA director, are now high-priced consultants, and they have been offering their services to companies seeking or holding federal contracts in the post-hurricane gold rush.

Mr. Allbaugh said that he was helping private companies, including his clients, cut through federal red tape to speed provision of services and supplies to the storm-wracked region. Two of his major clients, Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, and The Shaw Group, already are at work on disaster response efforts. . .

More details: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_04.php#006496

Even CNN gets it: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/cnn-picks-up-white-house-cronyism-and.html

Bush: now at 38% approval, and still falling

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9280375/site/newsweek/site/newsweek/

More from the Newsweek poll

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_04_digbysblog_archive.html#112639329214414897
Reflecting the tarnished view of the administration, only 38 percent of registered voters say they would vote for a Republican for Congress if the Congressional elections were held today, while 50 say they would vote for a Democrat.

A reminder of who’s really in charge in Iraq: private mercenary contractor, upset with the govt for late payments, shuts down the Baghdad airport

http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/private-company-shuts-down-baghdad.html

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1918
The Iraqis don't want to pay the overblown bill for Global Strategies' mercs that guard it's airport; the deal was cut by their (appointed and corrupt) predecessors, and the new interim gov would like to renegotiate terms. . . But in a Pied-Piper moment, Global told the Iraqis to sod-off, and shut down the airport.

(Learning from mistakes: mercenaries from some of the same companies now on duty in New Orleans. Is this how they avoid “posse comitatus” restrictions?)

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/09/mercs_on_the_st.html

Annotated copy of the “final” Iraqi constitution – very useful (thanks to Juan Cole for the link)

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/FinalDraftIraqiConstitution.pdf

Good lord: “ethnic cleansing” in Iraq

http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/tal-afar-stormed-threat-of-ethnic.html

John Roberts, the stealth candidate: a picture begins to emerge

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/09/10/09/03/the-nominee/
[NYRB] During this period, Roberts played an important part in the [Reagan] administration’s efforts to curtail the rights of African-Americans, to deny assistance to children with disabilities, and to prevent redress for women and girls who had suffered sex discrimination. He also justified attempts by the state of Texas to cut off opportunities for the children of poor Latino aliens to obtain an education. Roberts was in favor of limiting the progress of African-Americans in participating in the political process and of making far-reaching changes in the constitutional role of the courts in protecting rights.

In all of these efforts, which halted temporarily when Roberts left government for private practice in 1986, he was no mere functionary. Indeed, he often was prepared to go beyond his conservative superiors in the Reagan administration in mounting a counter-revolution in civil rights, expressing frustration with his conservative superior at the Justice Department, Theodore Olson. . .

More: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18291

Looks like Roberts hasn’t spent his life doing anything BUT auditioning for a SC position

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/10/AR2005091000807.html
John G. Roberts Jr. built a golden reputation as a "lawyer's lawyer" without doing most of the things that lawyers do. He never filed a lawsuit, addressed a jury, cross-examined a witness, took a deposition or negotiated a deal. He never advised a client on a tax return, a plea bargain, a restraining order, a will or a divorce. . . That is because Roberts has spent most of his career as a star -- by all accounts, a superstar -- in the most rarified constellation of the legal galaxy, the exclusive club of Supreme Court appellate specialists. . .

Roberts hearings: what to expect

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/10/195126/929

Is Alberto Gonzales Bush’s next nominee?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/is-white-house-scheming-to-put.html

Head of Bush’s bioethics council steps down: a case study of what happens to good academics who become water-carriers for the powers that be

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/08/AR2005090801921.html
Leon R. Kass, the University of Chicago medical ethicist who four years ago today was named by President Bush to head the newly created President's Council on Bioethics, will step down as chairman Oct. 1. . . Although widely respected for his intellect, Kass's history of opposition to some reproductive technologies and his general wariness of other biomedical trends, such as efforts to forestall aging, made him a thorn in the side of many researchers and liberal thinkers. In February 2004, he came under intense fire for his role in the dismissal of two council members with liberal views on embryonic stem cell research.

Kass repeatedly denied that the ejections were politically motivated, but the image was difficult to shake, especially given his occasional open involvement in political frays. . . "I think Leon went too far to engage himself in the politics of the topics the council considered, writing newspaper op-eds and going on the think-tank circuit," said Arthur Caplan, chairman of the department of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. In several cases, Caplan said, Kass seemed to be pushing for a consensus that would be in line with the White House's preordained views on a topic.

"I think that may have damaged some of what he tried to accomplish," Caplan said. . .

"It's been a very productive council, and I think that's largely attributable to Leon," said O. Carter Snead, an associate professor of law at the University of Notre Dame. . . As for politics, Snead said, "It was totally inconsistent with [Kass's] vision to be a post-hoc think tank to help the White House justify its policies."

How the media thinks

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/10/94312/6917

Govt backs off on press restrictions

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_04.php#006495

What happened to the guy who said, “Go F--- Yourself” to Dick Cheney?

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/09/first_amendment_anyone.html
[T]wo military police waving M-16's showed up and said they were looking for someone who fit Marble's description who had cursed at Cheney.

"I told them I was probably the person they were looking for, and so they put me in handcuffs and 'detained' me for about 20 minutes or so," Marble wrote. "My right thumb went numb because the cuffs were on so tight, but they were fairly courteous and eventually released me after getting all my contact info. They said I had NOT broken any laws so I was free to go."

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 2:27 AM

 
“A HECK OF A JOB”

“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job. . . now get out of here.” Bush can’t actually “fire” him because that would suggest that someone made a mistake: so instead he is “reassigned”

(Hey, George: when you don't do something you ought to do because you're afraid it will make you look weak. . . it makes you look weak!)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/09/AR2005090900795.html
A week after President Bush praised him for "a heck of a job," Brown was stripped of duties overseeing the relief efforts. . .

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/9/9/14250/08481
[Chris Bowers] In fact, that Bush even went this far shows how weak he has become. . . That Bush still refuses to fire Brown reinforces the degree to which the unqualified Brown received the job out of patronage. Further, its not just Brown, it is also the #2 and #3 guys at FEMA. If Bush wants to actually get down the business of governing and improving our relief capability, he needs to root out all of the patronage jobs at FEMA.

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/katrina_/2005/09/semifiring_helluva_job_brownie.php
[Mark Kleiman] I simply can't construct a plausible justification for leaving Michael "Helluva Job Brownie" Brown as the head of FEMA while virtually admitting that he's not actually capable of coordinating the federal response to Katrina by putting one of his subordinates in charge. What is the job of the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency if not to manage emergencies?. . . Of course, Brown should lose his job, because losing your job is what's supposed to happen when (1) you weren't competent to have the job in the first place; (2) you lie about your qualifications; and (3) you utterly and completely screw up a major assignment. That's called "accountability." (If we truly had a President with the sensibility of a CEO rather than that of lazy, spoiled, party-hardy frat boy, he'd know that without needing to be told.)

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007651
John Dickerson at Slate makes an important point that needs underscoring. Moving Brown back to D.C., rather than firing him, serves a useful function for the administration:

The only functional responsibility Brown retains is that of chief punching bag: Editorial writers and politicians continue to call for his head, and petitions on the Internet advocating his resignation or dismissal flourish. . . If Brown hasn't yet packed up his "me" wall, it may be because of his political utility as a scapegoat. As a focal point of public rage, Brown remains useful to Bush as a fall guy. . .

More: http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/09/browns_recall_t.html

Scotty DOES NOT want to talk about it

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4155
MR. McCLELLAN: Look, accountability has been a priority in this administration. . .

Q The White House takes no responsibility?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, we took responsibility by acting to fix any problems that were there, and we will do so in this instance, as well. . .

Q Has Mike Brown resigned?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sorry?

Q Has Mike Brown resigned?

MR. McCLELLAN: No. [Note: this exchange took place less than an hour before Brown was shuffled back to Buffalo DC.]

Q Has the President asked for his resignation today?

MR. McCLELLAN: No.

Q Does the President have full faith and confidence in Mike Brown?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, what we are continuing to do is to support those in the region who are carrying out the operational activities. We continue to appreciate the work of all those who have been working round-the-clock. . .

Q But you're not answering the question, which is, does the President have confidence in Mike Brown?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I think that's the way to address the overall question. We appreciate all those who are working round-the-clock, and that's the way I would answer it.

Here’s how stupid Michael Brown really is

http://makeashorterlink.com/?B657135CB
A beleaguered Michael Brown said Friday he doesn't know why he was removed from his onsite command of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. . .

Appointing a Katrina relief “czar” (maybe Giuliani?) – here’s why they’re afraid to do it

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_04_atrios_archive.html#112627892750473397
[NY Daily News] But some top Bush aides think a brand-name disaster boss like Giuliani, dubbed "America's Mayor" for his leadership after 9/11, or former secretary of state Colin Powell would remind Americans of the administration's sluggish initial response to the hurricane. . . "You don't want someone overshadowing the President," said an official. . . "That leaves him looking weak."

More: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1914

More compassionate conservatives

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/9/9/16502/46302
Rep. Richard Baker:
"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

Rep. Tom DeLay:
U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's visit to Reliant Park this morning offered him a glimpse of what it's like to be living in shelter.

While on the tour with top administration officials from Washington, including U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao and U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, DeLay stopped to chat with three young boys resting on cots.

The congressman likened their stay to being at camp and asked, "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?"

CNN fights press restrictions

http://slate.msn.com/id/2126076
Press access to the city is being restricted as the dead are collected and identified. "You wouldn't want to have pictures of people who are deceased shown on any media," says a National Guard general. But CNN got a restraining order claiming the restriction violated free speech, scoops the LAT.

Bush UNDER 40% approval, still dropping

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/9/124345/8137

Growing opposition to Bush within the GOP

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-spend10sep10,1,4364739.story
President Bush, who came to office pledging to complete the Reagan revolution against big government, is set to preside over one of the biggest government undertakings in recent U.S. history — the reconstruction of the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast.

In doing so, the president is turning to many of the New Deal and Great Society programs that he long criticized as too costly and a threat to Americans' sense of self-reliance.

The size of the administration's relief and recovery plan alone threatens to swamp much of what had been Bush's second-term agenda — making previously approved tax cuts permanent, introducing personal investments to Social Security and advancing other "ownership society" programs.

The top-down nature of the relief plan and the White House's seemingly open-ended commitment to spend on reconstruction has left many of the president's conservative allies rattled.

"It's a great time for the president to stand up and … make priorities" by advocating cuts elsewhere in the federal budget to pay for relief efforts, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said. "That's my disappointment. We don't have that leadership."

Some conservatives complain that, if anything, the president is expanding Washington's responsibilities for disaster relief and the costs it must bear.

"The president's plan is a big change from what has been the traditional federal role in disasters," said William Niskanen, chairman of the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank that advocates small government.

"The effect is going to be to indefinitely defer things he's wanted to do, like Social Security [restructuring]," Niskanen said. "And I don't think there's any possibility of eliminating the estate tax" — another Bush priority before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29.

Colin Powell gets even

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/09/AR2005090900729.html

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012249.html

[NB: Try this on – Clark/Powell in 2008? Would that be a Democratic landslide, or what?]

White House preparing for Plame indictments?

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4146

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/valerie_plame_/2005/09/plame_curtain_going_up_for_the_last_act.php

UK fights against Bolton’s sabotaging of UN reform effort

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1566848,00.html

Karen Hughes: her true role begins to emerge

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007082.php
[WP] As if preparing troops for combat, she described her plans for improving world opinion of the United States: a "rapid-response unit," a plan to "forward-deploy regional SWAT teams" and create "a dual-headed DAS for public diplomacy."

One of her underlings rose to ask how this effort squared with the administration's famously tight control over its message. "Recently, we've had tremendous amount of difficulty in some cases getting clearance for our ambassadors to speak," he said.

Hughes replied that ambassadors are free to talk — if they use the talking points she sends them. "If they make statements based on something I sent them," she said, "they're not going to be called on the carpet."

Michael Luttig, short-listed for the Supreme Court

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/9/235253/7258
"The exceedingly important question before us is whether the president of the United States possesses the authority to detain militarily a citizen of this country who is closely associated with Al Qaeda, an entity with which the United States is at war," Judge Luttig wrote. "We conclude that the president does possess such authority," citing the Congressional authorization.

[David] Of course, the problem here is that there is no fact-finding involved - under this jurisprudence, the president simply has to assert that a citizen is involved with Al Qaeda (or perhaps some other terrorist organization, or maybe even none at all) and bam! he can toss `em in jail.

9-11 “Freedom” march tomorrow

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_04_atrios_archive.html#112627182023197398
Organizers of the Pentagon's 9/11 memorial Freedom Walk on Sunday are taking extraordinary measures to control participation in the march and concert, with the route fenced off and lined with police and the event closed to anyone who does not register online by 4:30 p.m. today. . . One restricted group will be the media. . .

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007642

http://billmon.org/archives/002148.html

Tom DeLay, dancing on the brink. . .

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4143

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/09/tom_delay/index.html

Kyra Phillips (CNN): brainless hack

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/who-is-that-idiot-woman-on-cnn.html
“And in all fairness to the Dept of Homeland Security right now, I mean this is a brand new Department that was formed after 9/11. In many ways this is a "learn by our mistakes and figure out what to do better" type of scenario.”

Her interview with Nancy Pelosi yesterday:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/8/163755/2370
PHILLIPS: But I want to ask you, as you stand here and continue to criticize the administration, and criticize the director of FEMA, I do want to tell you, the White House coming forward today, Scott McClellan coming forward today, and basically disputing your accounts of your meeting with the president.

And I'm looking at it here, saying that, you said you urged the president to replace the embattled FEMA director because of the poor emergency response to Hurricane Katrina. However, McClellan saying that this is -- that that's not what you discussed with the president, that you were discussing other things with the president, and that things are being twisted here in a bit.

PELOSI: Oh, that's absolutely not true. Mr. McClellan wasn't there, so he couldn't possibly know.

What happened was, I said to the president, Mr. President, we can begin to help these victims of Katrina become whole again. First thing you can do is to replace Michael Brown as the head of FEMA. To which the president said, Why would I do that? And I said, Because of what happened last week and the failure of FEMA to be the real link between the federal government and the people in need in our country, the social compact. To which the president said, What didn't go right last week?

That's what happened in the meeting. I stand by that. If the president thinks everything went right last week, and he wants to keep Michael Brown there, then I think that's going to be a cost to the American people and lives and livelihood.

PHILLIPS: Well, I'm not (INAUDIBLE)...

PELOSI: But if he does -- but if he wants to then say that it didn't go right last week, then he should replace Michael Brown.

PHILLIPS: But if you, if we go back, I mean, we can go back year after year after year, and we can talk about FEMA and what went wrong within FEMA and should FEMA be under the Department of Homeland Security.

But if we want to be historical here, and we want to go back in time, I mean, we can go back to "The Times Picayune" and the investigation that it -- when it -- when reporters revealed that time after time, monies were asked for from all types of various politicians, of the politicians you worked side by side with, laws that you yourself vote on, and monies that should have gone to Louisiana to take care of the problems with regard to the flood control systems.

And I think it's unfair that FEMA is just singled out. There are so many people responsible for what has happened in the state of Louisiana.

PELOSI: Well, that's true. That is true. And I'm sorry that you think it's unfair. But I don't. I think it's unfair to the people who lost their family members, their lives, their livelihoods, their homes, their opportunity.

And FEMA has done a poor job. It had no chance. It was (INAUDIBLE)...

PHILLIPS: But what about all those warnings...

PELOSI: ... may I please respond?

PHILLIPS: What about all the warnings from the Army Corps of Engineers...

PELOSI: But the Army Corps of Engineers...

PHILLIPS: ... years ago, saying there's a problem with these levees, there's a problem with this city.

PELOSI: Kyra, Kyra, Kyra...

PHILLIPS: It's Kyra. It's Kyra.

PELOSI: ... if you want to make a case for the White House, you should go on their payroll. . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:19 AM

 
MISPLACED PRIORITIES

Bush urgently calls Michael Chertoff on August 29th. The topic?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/8/114058/0176
[Bush] I also want to talk about immigration here in this state [Arizona]...I spoke to Mike Chertoff today -- he's the head of the Department of Homeland Security. I knew people would want me to discuss this issue [immigration], so we got us an airplane on -- a telephone on Air Force One, so I called him. I said, are you working with the governor? He said, you bet we are.

Katrina timeline (thanks to AG Rud for the link)

http://www.thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline

Bush job approval: 40% and falling. On Katrina, 36%

http://pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm

http://pollingreport.com/disasters.htm

Bush’s DIS-approval skyrockets: 58% in one poll, 59% in another (figures that high are starting to cut into his base)

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4132

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/09/08/bush_losing_support_among_republicans.html
"Uncharacteristically, the president's ratings have slipped the most among his core constituents Republicans and conservatives."

More: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aRkZB.b60HiY&refer=u

The Bush gang is pulling out all the stops now to stem Katrina’s damage to Bush and to hide the consequences of their own (in)actions

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/08/press/index.html
[Tim Grieve] It's a time-honored tactic of the Bush administration: If you don't like the news, find some way to hide it. The administration has buried unhappy employment statistics, canceled an unhelpful report on federal funding and deep-sixed discouraging numbers on global terrorism. Last month, the administration demoted a Justice Department official who refused to remove data on racial disparities in police stops from a news release about a study on ... racial disparities in police stops.

But can you hide an entire city?. . .

It’s not working: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007627

Hiding behind the ladies

http://makeashorterlink.com/?Q31E523CB
[Laura Bush] "I think all of those remarks are disgusting, to be perfectly frank, because of course President Bush cares about everyone in our country," the first lady said Thursday in an interview with American Urban Radio Networks.

"And I know that. I mean, I'm the person who lives with him," she said. "I know what he's like and I know what he thinks and I know how he cares about people."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200509/s1456902.htm
[Karen Hughes] "I think the President's heart breaks when anyone would ever think that he wouldn't want to do everything humanly possible to get help quickly to those who need it," she said.

"He's the President of all the people that we saw who so desperately needed help.

"He's their President as well as all of our President and he is a wonderfully compassionate human being."

[NB: See, here’s the problem with all this: when you have to CONVINCE people that the President is caring and compassionate, it’s because they don’t think he is. An openly caring and compassionate person wouldn’t have this problem. People know what they’ve seen on t.v.]

Desperate? Need help? George Bush is here to help: just use this handy, simple multi-step web form over at FEMA. . . if you have a computer. . . if you have web access. . . and if you use Internet Explorer 6.0 or later. . . (thanks to Ron Goodenow for the link)

http://www.fema.gov/register.shtm

50 billion in aid to run through the cronies at FEMA, and another 50 to come. Paging Joe Allbaugh, paging Joe Allbaugh. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/national/nationalspecial/09costs.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_04.php#006462

Allbaugh: http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/09/08/former_fema_chief_seeks_to_profit_from_katrina.html

More: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1912

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/katrina_/2005/09/100_billion_for_katrina_policy_analysis_and_politics.php

[NB: I take this to indicate that Bush Co. feels they have nothing to fear from an investigation of FEMA (either their own or Congress's) -- since they would be savaged for running this kind of money through an agency later found to be incompetent and/or corrupt]

FEMA’s useless leadership

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/08/AR2005090802165.html

FEMA head Brown apparently lied on his resume

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/09/breaking_browns.html

http://slate.msn.com/id/2125983
A Time magazine piece posted last night finds evidence that FEMA chief (as of 5 a.m.) Mike Brown serially fibbed on his résumé (or, perhaps, had it massaged by others). There is, for instance, a reference to a college professorship of which there's no record. And then there was the time he was an "an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight." One city official clarified that the job Brown had was not as a manager but "more like an intern." The New Republic adds that Brown got his law degree from an unaccredited university. . . For the record, Brown's confirmation hearing was apparently a grueling 42 minutes long.

Do you think it’s an accident that so many Bush/Cheney campaign people are over at FEMA? Turns out it isn’t just patronage: FEMA is becoming an active part of the Bush/Cheney perpetual campaign

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002552.html

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002560.html

Here’s one group who WON’T be making out like bandits during reconstruction: the people actually doing the work (guaranteeing even bigger profits for the favored companies and contractors who get the bids)

http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/08/news/economy/katrina_wages.reut/

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007081.php

Bush, the CEO President: yeah, points out Kevin Drum, a FAILED CEO

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_05/003829.php

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/09/08/limited_government/index.html
[Sidney Blumenthal] The Bush administration's mishandling of Hurricane Katrina stands as the pluperfect case study of the Republican Party's theory and practice of government. For decades conservatives have funded think tanks, filled libraries and conducted political campaigns to promote the idea of limited government. Now, in New Orleans, the theory has been tested. The floodwaters have rolled over the rhetoric. . .

Scotty now has only one role, it seems: to find as many ways to avoid answering ANY questions as possible

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/scotty-gets-hammered-day-two.html

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4137

A new meaning of “bipartisan inquiry”

http://slate.msn.com/id/2125807
Everybody notes that Republican House and Senate leaders announced a joint investigation into the government's response. It will be the first joint investigation since the Iran-Contra probe of the 1980s. The NYT headlines, "BIPARTISAN INQUIRY PROPOSED AS BUSH SEEKS $51.8 MORE FOR KATRINA." Which is technically correct and plenty misleading. As the paper mentions 15 paragraphs in, Democrats "were not involved in putting the joint inquiry together." Democrats called instead for an independent 9/11-type commission. In other words, headlines aside, what was proposed yesterday was a "bipartisan" panel largely opposed by one party.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/8/122829/2605
[Kos] The right wing bloggers are running with claims by the Red Cross that state officials kept them from going in too soon. The geniuses at Powerline conclude:

The Democrats may need to re-think their calls for an investigation.

See, that's the difference between us and them. They put their party above the country, and would rather stifle a real investigation than be forced to shoulder any blame.

We say, "investigate away", and let the chips fall where they may. If any Democrats share the blame, then so be it. We need to know what went wrong, who f'd up, and how we can prevent this sort of thing from happening again. If Blanco or another Democrats gets fingered in this epic screwup, that's okay.

But the wingers don't see it that way. "Rethink their calls for an investigation"... Jeez. Talk about projection, as though our motivations are the same as theirs. As though we look at the Gulf Coast and think, "hmmm, how can we best protect Democrats who may have had a hand in this mess..."

Unlike them, we place country first, party second.

Armando is right -- one party is calling for an independent investigation, willing to get to the truth irrespective of which party's at fault. The other party wants a whitewash. We all know which is which.

http://billmon.org/archives/002142.html
[Billmon, brilliant as usual] Republican leaders moved to try to contain the political fallout from Katrina, forming a joint House-Senate review committee of senior lawmakers who will investigate the federal government's response to the catastrophe.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Denny Hastert said the inquiry -- which was cooked up by senior GOP officials in a closed door meeting yesterday -- will move quickly to obscure the lack of the planning that took place before the hurricane struck the Gulf Coast, and to redirect as much blame as possible on state and local officials.

To ensure these goals are met, the GOP leaders explained, the panel will be co-chaired by two Republicans, will be controlled by a solid Republican voting majority, and will carefully coordinate its investigation with senior White House officials in order to avoid unwittingly revealing any embarrassing information.

"Americans deserve answers," Frist said. "Our job is to make sure they get the ones we want.". . . [read on!]

More: http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/09/the_foxes_inves.html

Interesting development: Reid and Pelosi say “count us out” – won’t give bipartisan cover to the sham

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007639

Be careful what you ask for

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/09/08/tancredo_wants_aid_stopped_to_louisiana_officials.html
Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), a possible presidential candidate in 2008, asked House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) "not to send federal disaster aid to officials in Louisiana, calling state and local government there incompetent and corrupt," the Rocky Mountain News reports.

Instead, Tancredo urged the speaker to create a "bipartisan select committee" of members of Congress to oversee federal disaster spending in Louisiana because of the state's history of political corruption.

[NB: Okay, let’s start with the Halliburton contract]

Oooh, I think someone called the media bosses

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007629
[Sam Rosenfeld] Reading the major dailies today only reconfirms Matt’s point that the media is now clearly reshackling its Katrina coverage to the hideous he-said, she-said strictures of mainstream "partisan food-fight" political reporting. The piece he cited was typically bad, but it’s been a while since I’ve read newspaper articles as simultaneously wearying and infuriating as this Washington Post story on the “controversy” surrounding Hillary Clinton’s vocal criticisms of the disaster response (is she just positioning herself for ’08? is she overplaying her hand?) or this New York Times write-up of congressional Republicans’ proposed investigation, which, under the headline “Bipartisan Inquiry Proposed,” waits until the fifteenth paragraph to merely note Democrats’ “skepticism” about the panel's bipartisan nature. It's back to business as usual.

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002563.html
[Nikki Finke] Now comes the real test of pathos vs. profit: whether the TV newscasters will spend the fresh reservoir of truth and trust earned with the public to challenge FEMA’s attempt to perpetrate a campaign of mass deception. That’s the only way to describe what Reuters says is the agency’s attempt to block the news media from photographing the dead — maybe 10,000 corpses — as they are recovered from flooded New Orleans. Yet again, as it did with the coffins coming home from the Iraqi War and its violent aftermath, the Bush administration wants to hide from the public the lethal consequences of its flawed programs and policies. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/09/08/BL2005090801146.html
[Dan Froomkin] White House officials must be breathing a sigh of relief about the news coverage this morning that increasingly depicts the controversy over the government's response to the Gulf Coast disaster as a largely -- or even purely -- partisan issue.

If the initial sense of public outrage really becomes just another red vs. blue battle, then President Bush is likely to emerge no better or worse off than he was before.

By contrast, the nightmare scenario for the White House is if it becomes generally agreed upon that the public sense of horror -- from red states and blue states alike -- requires an immediate accounting of what went wrong. Because there is plenty of blame to go around and some -- if not a lot -- will inevitably land at Bush's feet.

Other threats

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8045532/#050907c
[Brian Williams] We are just back from the French Quarter. . . checking up on the condition of some old haunts. . . An interesting dynamic is taking shape in this city, not altogether positive: after days of rampant lawlessness (making for what I think most would agree was an impossible job for the New Orleans Police Department during those first few crucial days of rising water, pitch-black nights and looting of stores) the city has now reached a near-saturation level of military and law enforcement. In the areas we visited, the red berets of the 82nd Airborne are visible on just about every block. National Guard soldiers are ubiquitous. At one fire scene. . . we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won't be any pictures of this particular group of Guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.

At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media. . . obvious members of the media. . . armed only with notepads.

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_04_digbysblog_archive.html#112620139554594732

You won’t believe it (yes you will). Thanks to Atrios for the link

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2005/09/every_crisis_an.html
[Congress Daily] "[White House spokesman Trent] Duffy asserted that the vast spending that would be required to address the hurricane's impact adds to the need to change Social Security, which threatens to strain the budget in coming years."

[NB: I hope the reporters there had the good sense to just laugh in his face]

More foolish mismanagement in Iraq

http://slate.msn.com/id/2125807
[T]he U.S. has stopped work on many water- and power-reconstruction projects in Iraq. "We have scaled back our projects in many areas," one U.S. adviser said in congressional testimony. "We do not have the money." Much of the money has been rerouted for security. The LAT adds, without explanation, that "less than half of U.S. reconstruction money has been spent."

Another very bad week for US casualties (11). What? You hadn’t heard anything about it? (thanks to Atrios for the link)

http://icasualties.org/oif/prdDetails.aspx?hndRef=9-2005

How we’re winning the “war on terror”

http://www.raisingkaine.com/blog/?p=798

Plame: is Judith Miller getting ready to cut a deal? (it’s a blockbuster if she does)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/the-judy-file-is-miller-_b_7057.html

Civil rights: John Roberts’ Achilles heel? And whatever DID happen to that mysteriously “disappeared” affirmative action file?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090702394.html

Noose tightening around Tom DeLay?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-delay9sep09,1,5092655.story

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_04.php#006467

Yahoo helps Chinese authorities identify and convict a Chinese journalist

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002562.html

Bonus item: Cheney’s words (to Sen. Pat Leahy) come back to haunt him

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/09/08.html#a4856

Extra bonus item: this will make your day (thanks to Jim Ladwig for the link)













***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***

- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:34 AM

 
BLAME-GAMING

Bush gets serious, will investigate everyone’s failures in dealing with Katrina – everyone’s of course, but his own

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_04.php#006427
[AP] Buffeted by criticism over the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, President Bush said Tuesday he will oversee an investigation into what went wrong and why — in part to be sure the country could withstand more storms or attack.

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/bush-says-today-he-will-investigate.html
[John] That's nice. Will he be investigating why he remained on vacation until the 3d day AFTER the hurricane destroyed New Orleans? Will he be investigating why Condi Rice went on vacation to NYC for most of the week? Why Dick Cheney and Andy Card STAYED on vacation even after the hurricane struck? Why it took Bush until Wednesday to chair a meeting at the White House with his cabinet to address the catastrophe?

http://www.boston.com/news/weather/articles/2005/09/07/bush_vows_probe_of_what_went_wrong
[Boston Globe] President Bush, under fire about whether he acted aggressively to help tens of thousands of desperate people left homeless, destitute, and starving by Hurricane Katrina, promised yesterday that he would lead an investigation into ''what went wrong" with the government's response. . . But two hours later, Scott McClellan, Bush's press secretary, told reporters the president would simply ''lead an effort" in the escalating catastrophe. McClellan was unclear about whether Bush would look into his own actions and vague about when and how the investigation would start, and rejected questions about whether the president should fire anyone responsible for the problems.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2125806
Asked about the government's response, President Bush stuck by the playbook and gently suggested that state and local officials should share the blame. But what the papers focus on is his promise to "lead an investigation to find out what went right and what went wrong." Presumably riffing off that, the NYT's lead headline reads in part: "U.S. INQUIRY IS SET."

The only problem: Nothing was "set." As the Los Angeles Times points out up high, the president avoided putting a time frame on the "investigation." And as the NYT itself notes, the White House even backed away from the I word, preferring to call the eventual inquiry an "analysis." "There will be a time to do a thorough analysis," said spokesman Scott McClellan. "Now is not the time to do that."

Though the news pages don't seem to touch it, the president's insistence that he'll "lead" the inquiry fits a pattern. The last "investigation" the president set up was the WMD commission. It was endowed with a limited mandate that excluded one of the central questions.

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/06/AR2005090600498.html

Here is an advance copy of Bush’s investigation results, obtained by Nancy Pelosi

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/09/07.html#a4839
[Nancy Pelosi] She related that she had urged Bush at the White House on Tuesday to fire Michael Brown. . . ''He said 'Why would I do that?''' Pelosi said.

'''I said because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right last week.' And he said 'What didn't go right?'''

''Oblivious, in denial, dangerous,'' she added."

Looks like Congress’s “investigation” will be carefully constrained and controlled too. . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/gop-to-announce-fake-rubber-stamp.html
Sources on the Hill are hearing that the Republicans are going to announce a "bipartisan" bicameral Katrina commission, except, while they are saying its bipartisan and bicameral, they've not told the Senate Democratic Leadership anything about it, the Democratic Leadership will not be invited to the announcement of the commission. . . They don't know yet if there will be equal representation on the committee, who will decide who's on it, or even if the committee will have subpoena power or real congressional authority.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/07/katrina.congress/index.html
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, said in a written statement the joint committee would report its findings to Congress no later than February 15 next year. . . Frist told reporters during a brief appearance that the new committee will be composed of senior members of Congress, with Republicans in the majority.

A high-ranking House Democratic aide said lawmakers from his party had not been contacted yet.

It's uncertain when the joint hearings would begin, but GOP leaders have said repeatedly they don't want to pull officials out of the disaster area to testify.

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007604

Democracy at work (and a great photo)



http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Republicans_block_efforts_to_amendment_relief_bill_vote_without_c_0907.html
In the wake of what the Wall Street Journal projected may be the most expensive natural disaster in American history, the Republican Leadership in the House of Representatives limited floor consideration of the $52 billion Katrina relief bill proposed by President Bush and voted to reject any Democratic efforts to amend the bill to include a wider array of relief measures, RAW STORY has learned. . . Democrats said no one had even seen a copy of the legislation.

The Rove machine. . . lies

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html
In the wake of a mortifyingly slow government response to the Gulf Coast disaster, the press is demanding answers from the White House with unprecedented vigor.

President Bush and his aides are refusing to provide them -- saying this is no time to play the "blame game."

But as a frustrated Terry Moran of ABC News put it yesterday, during the stonewalling marathon that passed for Scott McClellan's mid-day press briefing: "It's not a blame game. It's accountability! It's accountability!"

The White House press corps is sensing a political sea change caused by Katrina. Bush and his aides are finding it impossible to wave off the incontrovertible facts and heart-rending images emerging from the lake that was once a great American city. They're finding it harder to set the news agenda. And the scathing criticism is becoming increasingly bipartisan. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/7/184919/3112
There's one particular conservative talking point that made the blastfax today that's been absolutely omnipresent: the entirely false premise that George W. Bush, man of the people, begged and pleaded with reluctant state officials to evacuate in front of the coming storm. . .

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007598

The Rove machine. . . control the press

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/7/151343/4581
We are in Jefferson Parish, just outside of New Orleans. At the National Guard checkpoint, they are under orders to turn away all media. All of the reporters are turning they're TV trucks around. Things are so bad, Bush is now censoring all reporting from NOLA. The First Amendment sank with the city.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/7/3443/44582
The U.S. government agency leading the rescue efforts after Hurricane Katrina said on Tuesday it does not want the news media to take photographs of the dead as they are recovered from the flooded New Orleans area. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, heavily criticized for its slow response to the devastation caused by the hurricane, rejected requests from journalists to accompany rescue boats as they went out to search for storm victims.

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_04.php#006449

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007071.php

The Rove machine. . . everything is a photo op

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_04.php#006430
As specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/6/233139/2154

[NB: Notice the careful cropping. Notice the careful staging of Bush “rolling up his sleeves,” as if he is about to dive in next to these weary firefighters. What a load. . .]

More: http://billmon.org/archives/002138.html

http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/operation_cover_our_asses_goes_into_overdrive/

Notice the. . . whoops!

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/7/1337/27686
On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency. . . Federal officials are unapologetic. . . "I would go back and ask the firefighter to revisit his commitment to FEMA, to firefighting and to the citizens of this country," said FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak.

[NB: . . . as if those were necessarily one and the same]

Press push-back?

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4112
Damn lengthy gaggle today, in which Little Scottie confuses his talking points and invents a new term: blame-gaming.

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4126

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4125

As Josh predicted, Joe Allbaugh, former FEMA head, hurries back to get his snout in the trough of Katrina clean-up and rebuilding funds

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_04.php#006448

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_04.php#006438

Democrats starting to get organized

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/08/national/nationalspecial/08democrats.html
From Democratic leaders on the floor of Congress, to a speech by the Democratic National Committee chairman at a meeting of the National Baptist Convention in Miami, to four morning television interviews by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrats offered what was shaping up as the most concerted attack that they had mounted on the White House in the five years of the Bush presidency.

More: http://makeashorterlink.com/?R4B9211CB

The “Blame Game”

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_04_atrios_archive.html#112610644796296098
[Atrios] Lovely phrase has been inserted into the mouth of every conservative. Apparently they believe no one should ever be held accountable for their mistakes. . . Strange lot, conservatives.

Scotty: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/white-house-cant-explain-how-its-going.html

Hey, it’s no game

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_04_atrios_archive.html#112603800489765818
[Jack Cafferty] Why are we talking about the "blame game" - there are thousands of people dead because government officials failed to do what they're supposed to be doing. That's criminal behavior. I mean, that's no game. There are people dead in the city of New Orleans and up and down the gulf coast because people charged with seeing to their welfare failed to do that. I don't understand this reluctance to say, Mr. Brown, you failed in your assignment. You're out of here. Go away. Go back to Colorado and go back to working for the Arabian Horse Association that we got you from.

http://blogs.salon.com/0000014/2005/09/07.html#a916
[Scott Rosenberg] The Bush administration's new tactic for dealing with criticism over its handling of Katrina is to say that criticism equals a "blame game." They're saying this over and over, like a broken record. Somebody took a poll and discovered that the word "blame" has a lot of negatives, so they're trying to plaster it on their critics.

It's all about the angle of language attack. If you say "Stop playing the blame game," you sound like you're being grown-up -- "blame" is what kids do when somebody's spilled the milk. But take a few steps to the side and look at this from a different angle. The people who are being charged as "blamers" are really telling the president, "Take responsibility. Be a grown-up!"

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007608
[Matt Yglesias] A brief comment on the subject of this game, which, apparently, it's a bad idea to play. First off -- it's not a game. Assigning blame is a deadly serious matter. It's also integral to any sort of viable social practice. The criminal justice system relies on assigning blame to various people and punishing them. So does the civil tort system, and so does the non-criminal regulatory system. So, for that matter, does any kind of coherent business or non-profit enterprise -- when mistakes are made, you need to decide who's to blame for them, and ensure that the culpable are sanctioned. If you don't identify and punish the blameworthy, then people will have no reason to try to do their jobs correctly.

Politics is the same way. There's a very serious principle-agent problem associated with public policy -- the interests of government officials tend to diverge quite sharply from those of the citizens they're supposed to be serving. This is why dictatorships tend, in practice, to ill-serve their citizens and be beset by corruption, malgovernment, and all kinds of other problems. In democracies we try, through elections and the ability of elected officials to fire their subordinates, to align those incentives. The way that works is that when bad things happen, people are supposed to blame someone, and then elect someone else to replace him. For that to do any good, you need to "play the blame game," which is to say find out who's actually responsible.

Michael Brown, FEMA Director, is in way over his head

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/05/AR2005090501590.html

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/09/07/documents_prove_brown_delayed_relief_effort.html
FEMA director Mike Brown "waited a mind-boggling five hours after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf before even contacting his boss about sending personnel to the area -- then suggested workers be allowed two days to get to the ravaged region," the New York Post reports.

Is Brown being moved aside?

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002526.html

http://slate.msn.com/id/2125806/
The Post points out inside that FEMA chief Mike Brown is getting some extra help. The Coast Guard's chief of staff was brought on board to, as the WP puts it, "take over operational control" of the federal response.

Brown isn’t the only crony at the top of FEMA

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_04_atrios_archive.html#112603498834757346

Bush’s porch-buddy Trent Lott joins the chorus of critics

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/09/05/katrina.lott/

Daddy comes out firmly against anyone criticizing his boy

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/ghwb-stop-picking-on-my-kid.html
[GHWB] "But you know the media has a fascination, Larry, and you know this, I'm not saying you but the media has a fascination with the blame game and instead of looking for what can we do to help now there's a lot of why didn't we do something different?"

As predicted, Katrina will be used as the all-purpose excuse for bad unemployment numbers, Bush’s growing deficit, a slowing economy, and the need for even more tax cuts

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/national/nationalspecial/06cnd-deficit.html

Democrats threaten filibuster, force Frist into delaying estate tax (“death tax”) repeal. Unfortunately, they’ll eventually go along with it

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007595

In other news. . .

In Iraq, constitutional process finally beaks down completely – current version of the document to go forward for a vote over Sunni objections

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-09-06T161956Z_01_MOL652801_RTRUKOC_0_UK-IRAQ.xml
"We are ... very sad that they took this decision even though they know what will happen to this country if they pass it in this form," Saleh al-Mutlak, a senior negotiator for Sunni Arabs, told Reuters.

"If the constitution gets a 'Yes' then Iraqis who reject it will say that the results were falsified. The situation will be bad politically and the security situation might get out of control. If the constitution gets the two thirds 'No' in three provinces, sectarian tension will increase."

"They were really unwise to take this decision."

If two thirds of voters in three of Iraq's 18 provinces cast a ballot against the constitution it will be vetoed and the drafting process will start again under a new interim Assembly to be elected in December.

Sunnis are the majority in at least three provinces.

Permanent bases in Iraq: a bad idea that just won’t go away

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/09/index.html#007614

Custer Battles update

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/corruption_in_washington_/2005/09/no_loophole_for_custer_battles.php

Plame update

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/7/145551/7998

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/6/113925/6344

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/06/AR2005090601582.html

Bush, by the numbers

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/7/12153/03504

Bonus item: FEMA and Pat Robertson’s “Operation Blessing.” Read it – you won’t believe it

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002529.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 1:50 AM

 
NOBLESSE OBLIGE

Sometimes complicated stories can be reduced to simple facts

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/what-went-wrong-bush-played-hooky.html
[Michael] George Bush stayed on vacation. He didn't get back to work. When the worst natural disaster in our nation's history attacked us, George Bush STAYED ON VACATION. Why did the federal government stumble so badly on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday? Because on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, George Bush stayed on vacation in Crawford, Texas. On Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday, vice president Dick Cheney STAYED ON VACATION in Jackson, Wyoming. On Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, Sec. of State Condi Rice WENT ON VACATION in New York City and went to a splashy Broadway musical and bought obscenely expensive shoes. She went shopping. . . How much simpler can it be for people to understand?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/white-house-rove-bashing-local.html
White House (Rove) bashing local officials who were working while Bush vacationed
[Joe] Let's not forget, Blanco and Nagin were on the front lines of Katrina while Bush STAYED ON VACATION.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_04_atrios_archive.html#112593539791344017
I find this new line, that "state red tape" prevented poor George Bush from taking action as obscene as the rest of the bullshit from the last few days. Aside from the fact that it's entirely bullshit, a real leader would've made sure things got done. . . All of this is a procedural sideshow - Bush was on vacation while things were going to hell.

Bush poll numbers DROPPING as Katrina story unfolds

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007053.php

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/new-katrina-poll-is-bad-news-for-bush.html

Now we know where he gets it from

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/5/20932/75590
Barbara Bush. . . the woman who didn't want to trouble her "beautiful mind" with thoughts of "body bags and deaths" - has now offered us yet another gem. After visting refugees staying at the Houston Astrodome, she had this to say:

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this (she chuckled slightly)--this is working very well for them."

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/09/the_modern_let_them_eat_cake_moment.html
E&P actually ameliorated the quote from la Bush. What she said on the tape about New Orleans' newly destitute is: "What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is that they want to stay" in Texas.”

More: http://billmon.org/archives/002129.html
“Noblesse oblige”

Michael Chertoff caught in another little fib (thanks to Atrios for the link)

http://www.wonkette.com/politics//chertoffs-reading-habits-123841.php
On Sunday, DHS chief Michael Chertoff told "Meet the Press's" Tim Russert that one reason for the delay in getting federal aid to Katrina victims was that "everyone" thought the crisis had passed when the storm left: "I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, 'New Orleans Dodged The Bullet.'" We're wondering what papers the Chertoff household gets, because these are the headlines that greeted most people Tuesday morning. . .

On those planted lies in the Washington Post and Newsweek that Gov. Blanco hadn’t declared an emergency (when she had) – a nice line

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/5/14510/32902
[Hunter] Once is an accident. Twice is a plan.

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/katrina_/2005/09/coulda_guessed_this_one.php
[Mark Kleiman] Like me, Josh Marshall wonders whether someone is going to do some original reporting on who told that whopper -- also repeated, unsourced, in Newsweek. . .

The help that FEMA turned away

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/5/16455/30830

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/5/105538/7048

Pray harder

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_04_digbysblog_archive.html#112593859042764608
[Joe Allbaugh, at his FEMA confirmation, 2001] If I am confirmed, I will pay special attention to volunteers and non-governmental organizations responding to disasters. . . Faith-based groups like the Salvation Army play critical roles in disaster relief. . .

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/09/05/17/55/summing-up/
[LAT] This deplorable performance has deep roots. Joe M. Allbaugh, a Bush campaign hack without any crisis management experience who was named director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, disparaged federal disaster assistance as “an oversized entitlement program” before Congress in 2001. The public’s expectations of government in a disaster situation, he said, “may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level.” He advised stricken communities to rely for help on “faith-based organizations … like the Salvation Army and the Mennonite Disaster Service.”

Michael Brown, needs to pray

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002517.html
[Mary Landrieu, D-LA] "I have been with Michael Brown since the minute he landed in this center," Ms. Landrieu said Friday in Baton Rouge, referring to the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, "and I have been telling him from the moment he arrived about the urgency of the situation. . . I just have to tell you that he had a difficult time understanding the enormity of the task before us."

By Wednesday, with little visible response from the federal government, Ms. Landrieu said that she talked to FEMA officials. "I started to sense they were thinking I was a little overwrought, that maybe I was exaggerating a little bit," she said. When she pressed Mr. Brown on when he was going to finally get buses to pick up the people who had been trapped at the Superdome, "he just mumbled," she said. . .

[Michael Brown, FEMA Director] "I was here on Saturday and Sunday, it was my belief, I'm trying to think of a better word than typical -- that minimizes, any hurricane is bad -- but we had the standard hurricane coming in here, that we could move in immediately on Monday and start doing our kind of response-recovery effort," he said. "Then the levees broke, and the levees went, you've seen it by the television coverage. That hampered our ability, made it even more complex."

FEMA, den of patronage

http://www.fema.gov/about/allbaugh/index.shtm
Prior to his appointment, Mr. Allbaugh served as Chief of Staff to then-Governor George W. Bush. . . Mr. Allbaugh served as the National Campaign Manager for Bush-Cheney 2000. . . He had previously served as Campaign Manager for President Bush's first run for Texas governor.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_04.php#006419
Small world. The Times and the Post note that one possible reason for the White House's slow response to Katrina was that so many key appointees were on vacation. A number, for instance, were in Greece for the wedding of White House communications advisor Nicolle Devenish.

It so happens Devenish is marrying Mark Wallace, who, it turns out, took over from the esteemed Michael Brown as General Counsel of FEMA when Brown ascended from General Counsel to Deputy Director.

Wallace was General Counsel at FEMA as the agency was being transitioned into the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 and 2003. After that he took a different job at DHS before becoming Deputy Campaign Manager of the Bush-Cheney 2004.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_04.php#006422
[Josh Marshall] There's going to be so much money flowing that Joe Allbaugh might even be convinced to bring his influence-peddling operation stateside again. In fact, if you were ever planning to become a Republican or give money to Republicans, by all means, do it now. Because all of the GOP patronage and pay-for-play operation that we've seen up till this point was probably just a prelude to what's coming. . .

FEMA Director Michael Brown got his job as a political patronage position, with no relevant experience and the last item on his resume getting fired from a job as a manager of horse shows. Last year he was caught giving out FEMA money as political pork with an eye to the 2004 elections. But that shouldn't surprise since people who get hired as part of patronage operations do their jobs as part of the patronage operation. That's the idea.

Now, look at this article from Tuesday's Times about the boom town atmosphere in Houston as people and business from New Orleans flood into the city. . .

Oil services companies based here are racing to carry out repairs to damaged offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico; the promise of plenty of work to do sent shares in two large companies, Halliburton and Baker Hughes, soaring to 52-week highs last week. The Port of Houston is preparing for an increase in traffic as shippers divert cargoes away from the damaged ports of Pascagoula, Miss., and New Orleans.

Some of this is just the grim irony of politics and geography. Houston is a nearby port town deep into the oil business. It's also the capital of Bushland.

But see where we're going here. We have a thoroughly politicized FEMA, encased within an administration that ran the Iraqi reconstruction in such a way that they managed to give graft and cronyism a bad name. $10.5 billion is just a small down payment on the money that's going to