Port Politics
This week's
big story is just more bad mojo for the Bush administration, and while he doesn't know it
yet, it's a big loser for him and his party. The optics on this one are horrible for the president (and especially for GOP House members facing re-election this fall).
I'm sure Karl Rove is happy to have the whole Cheney shooting is off the front pages, but not under these circumstances. There's a bonus though: it also gets the warrantless wiretaping broo-ha-ha out of the headlines too.
With so much opposition, I think it'll play out like this: kick the can down the road. Rove can advise they delay the decision after a more thorough review (45 days), and then bring it up again when no one's paying attention. Risky, but it could work.
Here's the key, as always: this will go through as long as their is no Republican political price to pay. If there's some other big story dominating the headlines that week, they'll put it into a Friday night news-dump, and for the media, it will become a footnote.
With the amount of pressure that's been building over the last couple of days, given that such force will continue to mount, I can't see Bush handing the Democrats the first veto of his administration on this issue.
Reporters and Editors should mark their calenders. Make sure you know the exact date the review is due, and make sure everyone knows what has been decided.
A presdential veto of a congressional bill blocking this sale is out of play. I would be shocked if that took place. If this White House has demonstrated anything, it's their skill in bullying Congress to bend to their will. Even more shocking would be a congressional vote overturning that veto, but hey, folks in Congress have to save their asses, and if that means forcing Bush into lame-duckiness
before the midterm elections, so be it. As I said, Karl is not going to let that happen.
Despite Bush's
bold pronouncements today, he's already toast on this one. Someone will inform him of that fact sometime this week.
Update: 2/26/06 6:20:00 PM
Wow, that was an
easy call. Kick the can down the road they did. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Flunkie) seems to have brokered a deal with Dubai Ports World and the administation to grant that 45 day review. This really stinks of a face-saving move by the White House, nevermind Frist's complete tumble on the issue.
I also heard that the whole deal is set to close this Thursday, meaning the whole review is nothing more than silly sham. I'll see if I can find out more about that item.
A note to the good citizens of Tennessee: I know in my heart you people are much smarter and more savvy than the Senator that
represents you. That man is a laughingstock. He rolls on you folks like a good dog anytime the White House yells boo. He's a reed in the wind, a mouthpiece, and worst of all, a fraud. (We have one just like him in the state where I live.) Good for us all that the Titmouse from Tennessee leaves us all in January of 2009.
Heavy Buckets
Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) is the chairman of the Intellignce Committee, and he carries so much water for the Bush administration it's staggering. After genuflecting before the Vice President, via the
Daily Kos, we get
this:
WASHINGTON - Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts said he has worked out an agreement with the White House to change U.S. law regarding the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program and provide more information about it to Congress.
"We are trying to get some movement, and we have a clear indication of that movement," Roberts, R-Kan., said.
Without offering specifics, Roberts said the agreement with the White House provides "a fix" to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and offers more briefings to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The deal comes as the committee was set to have a meeting Thursday about whether to open an investigation into the hotly disputed program. Roberts indicated the deal may eliminate the need for such an inquiry. Democrats have been demanding an investigation but some Republicans don't want to tangle the panel in a testy election-year probe.
So, in order to head off an investigation, the White House lobbies Roberts, they come up with some "fix" to the law, and it's a done deal. Presumably we'll find out what this little "fix" is when details about any proposed legislation modifying the FISA law are released, but right now it stinks to the high heavens.
It used to be that the Intelligence Committee was held out as a pillar of non-partisanship; members from both sides of the aisle working together in the nation's best interest. No more. Under Roberts, it has become a rubber stamp shop, a virtual extension of the administartion based in Congress.
If we were able to prosecute this administration using the RICO statutes, laws normally used to nab mobsters, Roberts would go down with them as chief enabler. He's nothing more than a cog in what mounting evidence shows is deeply corrupt, criminal organization.
I hope you Kansans are proud.
Update [2/18/06 09:19:00 PM]: Apparently the pressure on Roberts got to be too much. This from
Kevin Drum:
FISA FLIP FLOP....Today's revealing quote of the day comes from Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. After switching course earlier this afternoon and deciding that he wants full briefings on the NSA's domestic spying program after all, he said this:
"I think it's the function and the oversight responsibility of the committee," he said, adding, "That might sound strange coming from me."
Yes, it does sound a bit strange coming from the Bush administration's biggest water carrier on the Hill. But it's welcome nonetheless. Apparently Roberts now feels not only that his committee should be briefed, but that the program itself should be overseen by the FISA court.
If Roberts follows up on this, then good for him. Better late than never.
That's a pretty big "if", but it does seem Ol' Pat is feeling the appropriate amount of shame over all this.
Sputter and Spin
The Leftest Blogotarians have started this little gem to confront Chris Matthews of MSNBC's Hardball:
Open Letter To Chris Mattews. Pretty sweet, and I admire the effort. Does anyone actually watch that show? Not really. Here's my take on it anyway (as dumped over in Digby's comments section):
This is off-topic, but I'm now convinced that Chris Matthews deliberately has commenters that skew to the right because of Keith Olbermann's show that follows directly after Hardball. Tonight he had on a reporter from the NY Daily News, Byron York from NRO, and Tony Blankley from the Washington Times. That makes one person who's supposed to be objective, and two conservatives who have no qualms about letting everyone what their opinions are. I would score that 2.5 to .05 (conservative v. liberal). This has become par for the course for Matthews. On Fridays he holds his MSNBC All Stars jag-fest and has yet, to my knowledge, had Keith on his show. We can bitch all we want about Tweety being an unplugged, sputtering shitmouth, but this really appears to be by design. As Atrios has pointed out, we can all watch for the moments when Matthews can be good, and they do occur, but his feigned ignorance to everything that goes on in Washington provides him with a ready-made cover for his supposed objectivity. He often asks questions which you, the viewer, know he knows the answers to, but he plays it off as if he's providing you with unvarnished information. This from a man that is totally connected inside the Beltway, and someone I would argue is more popular among the powerful elite than Tim Russert because Tim tends to ask those "gotcha" type questions.
Chris knows he's got Keith on the backside of his show, and was Matthews ever really interested in keeping us informed? Right, not so much. He's intersted in "staying in the game", keeping his cushy job, and making sure politics can be played at his level, i.e., who got laid at the prom?
Last I checked, Hardball pulled TV ratings that would attract .05% of the poulation. Yes, I used .05 twice in one post. No one cares, so, bite me.
Chew Off My Arm
That's what I would do if I were James Carville and I woke up with my appendage under this:
And not because of her looks and those dirty fingers (as offensive as they may be). Just look at what comes out of her
mouth (regarding the Coretta Scott King funeral):
MATALIN: Well, when you're -- have no facts -- you know, there's no facts, there's no vision. Therefore, there's no hope, it's all hate, and it's all anger. So it's -- I'll say again, it's sad. Look, this -- we're at a time in our nation's history where we need all the best brains involved in the process, and one whole party has taken itself out of the game here.
SEAN HANNITY (co-host): Yeah.
MATALIN: And the reason that -- it's not their face. It's not their message. There's no policy, there's no facts. I mean, the attacks on the president yesterday completely missed the progress that's been made in the African-American community, which can be credited to President Bush. African-American homeownership at an all-time high --
HANNITY: Well --
MATALIN: -- the achievement gap between the white and black students at a high, closing, narrowing. I mean, you know, I think these civil rights leaders are nothing more than racists. And they're keeping constituency, they're keeping their neighborhoods and their African-American brothers enslaved, if you will, by continuing to let them think that they're -- or forced to think that they're victims, that the whole system is against them. Articulate it better, Sean; it's so sad to me.
Is she trying to win the "I'm The Most Vile Person On The Planet" contest? I think America learned all it needed to know about what George W. Bush thinks about the African-American community after the tragedy in New Orleans. Just when I think I've heard the worst thing ever from some GOP shitmouth, someone comes along and lowers the bar even farther. What's really sad is that an Ugly American like this will be with us for decades to come.
(thanks to
Media Matters)
Roadshow
So our President just finished his State of the Onion address last night, and then he hits the road.
Where to? The Grand Ole Opry. That's Nashville, Tennessee to the geographically challenged. And what for? Well, catapultin' for Christ's sake!!!!
Governance and good public policy is for pussies, and Democrats.
Real men get out and CAMPAIGN. America wins when Bush Campaigns...Weeeeee!!!
"Oh George, Not the Livestock"
Someone just asked me if I knew anything about William Kristol. Little did I know I would go all diarrhea on him:
Yeah, I know quite a bit about him. Most notably, he's the Editor of the Weekly Standard, but he's also the Chairman of the Project for a New American Century (the think tank that pushed for the Iraq more than any other). He's the poster-boy pundit for the neoconservative movement, and of course he's a regular panel member on Fox News Sunday.
More importantly, the PNAC was the group that wrote Clinton a letter in 1998 pushing for the removal of Hussein after Saddam kicked out the weapons inspectors, and the whole affair triggered the resolution by Congress stating that regime change in Iraq would be official U.S. policy. Kristol repeatedly cited that resolution to push for war. What you won't find on the PNAC website are two names: Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. The site has been scrubbed of all past members, including the incredibly loathesome Richard Perle. Kristol's influence in the Bush administration is very low-key but also very strong (look who he was alligned with). What I found highly alarming was that after reading the White House's National Security Strategy of 2002, I thought, "I know I've read this before, but where did it come from?" And then it hit me. It came from the PNAC document Rebuilding America's Defenses. In fact, the percentage of Defense Department spending increases that the PNAC recommended are almost identical to what Congress approved.
Kristol heartily advocates regime change in Iran and Syria, although I think he wants to take on those wimps to the west of Iraq first. When asked, "with whose army, Bill?", he says, of Syria anyway, that he wants airstrikes and border incursions. Kristol's vision of American military power seems to be almost limitless; he sees no constraints or shortages, only high minded goals where war obviously leads to peace.
Bill also believes, which for me is a classic, that the road to peace in Jerusalem makes its first stop in Bahgdad. Via American invasion of Iraq that is (um, that's not a joke). He figured that Iran would be awed and cowed by the frightening sight of the American military next door, and that they would kneel appropriately. If you've read the recent headlines about Iran, not so much. They're not impressed.
(Wow, this is getting long, but you asked!)
Above all, Bill has no interest in American security. Bill's main interest is Isreal's security. If that means that America's military has to conquer every country west of Afghanistan (the Afghanis, Iran, Iraq, Syria), then so be it. That would suit Bill just right. Every time he opens his mouth, he needs to make sure that you know that Isreali interests are U.S. interests. The two are one in the same.
Two other bits; his father is Irving Kristol, and his mother is Gertrude Himmelfarb. Irving is seen as the grandfather of the neoconsevrative movement, and to him we're now in "World War IV" (WWIII being the Cold War). I've heard modern conservatives say that when they hear the term "neoconservative" applied to anyone, they think it's anit-semetic slur. Bill's Dad wrote the fucking book on it.
Not that Bill's not handy: he served as Vice President Dan Quayle's Chief of Staff.
I can picture Bill leaving a staff meeting with Dan saying, "Does that guy know what a pumpkin is?"
