Collapsing

It looks like the Bush administration is now collapsing under the weight of the pre-war intelligence. Today, the New York Times runs a lead editorial effectively calls Bush a liar. That's an upgrade in the rhetoric. From the Times:

Yesterday in Alaska, Mr. Bush trotted out the same tedious deflection on Iraq that he usually attempts when his back is against the wall: he claims that questioning his actions three years ago is a betrayal of the troops in battle today.

It all amounts to one energetic effort at avoidance. But like the W.M.D. reports that started the whole thing, the only problem is that none of it has been true.

EJ Dionne piles on in the Washington Post noting that "the president clearly needs to tend to his credibility problems. But his partisan attacks on the administration's critics, in a Veterans Day speech last week and in Alaska yesterday, will only add to his troubles."

As for my two cents, in the two speeches mentioned by Dionne, the Bush administration is starting to sound like a small child who blames the dog for coloring on the walls.

Sorry For The Light Output

It's Michigan Week, what do you want?

Sinking In

Doug Forrester, the recently defeated GOP candidate for governor in New Jersey, has admitted what I talked about here earlier. Hurricane Katrina was the Democrats 9/11, at least politically. After Katrina, everything changed. From The Star Ledger:

Doug Forrester, in his first postelection interview, laid the blame for his loss in the governor's race last week directly at the feet of President Bush. He said the public's growing disaffection with Bush, especially after Hurricane Katrina, made it impossible for his campaign to overcome the built-in advantage Democrats have in a blue state like New Jersey.

"If Bush's numbers were where they were a year ago, or even six months ago, I think we would have won on Tuesday," Forrester said. "Katrina was the tipping point."

Yep, get used to it.

Audio Bullys

I just got an advanced copy of the new Audio Bullys CD titled Generation due out on January 26. After a couple of listens it sounds mellower than their previous releases. Fave tracks are I'm In Love, This Road, and the only really hard driving track on the album, Shot You Down. There are seventeen tracks in all. It's probably worth buying, but not necessarily a must have.

Deeply Irresponsible?

The one trick pony that is the Bush administration is using that one trick on critics who claim that Bush lied about prewar intel to get us into the Iraq War. Attack. Attack. Attack. Today in Tobyhanna, PA Bush gave a speech in which he said the following:

“While it’s perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began,”

Irresponsible? If you change the first r in that word to an m and throw in an apostrophe, you get a lot closer to the truth at hand. I'm-responsible. That is what the president can't tell you, but I will. He's responsible for the prewar intel that was given to Congress. He's responsible for the 2,062 American deaths to date in this war that was made possible by those cooked books. He's responsible for the 200 billion dollars this war has cost to date.

But of course, the Bush administration is woefully unable to own up to any of the facts in its many screw-ups, so they resort to the one trick they know. Unfortunately for Bush, he no longer has the credibility to back up those attacks.

Why Bother

I don't really know why anyone bothers paying any attention to election law. Actually, the republicans don't. The case involving ads ran against Alice Resnick in 2000 by Citizens for a Strong Ohio, a front group for the Ohio Chamber of Commerce has been resolved. It took five years, five fucking years. And for what? Citizens for a Strong Ohio will be fined $1,100. They ran seven million dollars worth of illegal ads and they only get fined $1,100. What a fucking joke.

Of course that's not all. They also will receive a written reprimand. That's right boys and girls, not an oral reprimand, but a written one. I'm beside myself wondering why they even fought this. They should have shook some fucking nickles out of their pocket, gave the Ohio Election Commission the finger, and walked away.

If you want some real campaign reform, you might want to start by putting some fucking teeth in existing campaign law.

Lott Backpedals

Trent Lott has backed off the remarks he made about the lunch leak, saying he was referring to another story in the Post. I still want to know however, which other Senators are secret torture meeting club?

Legal Defense Fund

Bob Ney has joined the swelling ranks of republicans with a legal defense fund. After all, you don't expect these assholes to pay a lawyer out of their own pocket for their criminal dalliances. It's actually starting to be a crowded field so I'm proposing the GOP as a whole hold a telethon for all of their legal defense funds. Two weeks from today sounds good, maybe name it the Thanks For Giving Pay For Play Day Telethon. Remember, this is the gift that gives back, if you know what I mean. (Assuming acquittal)

Ah, I can see it now. For only a dollar a day...You can give a republican in distress a much needed gift, a billable hour.

Judy Miller Unemployed

Judy Miller's severance package is now a done deal and she is retiring from the New York Times. Tomorrow's Times will feature a letter from Judy explaining her side of the story. She will not be missed.

Parsing Trent Lott

Yesterday, when speaking to reporters about the secret prison story in the November 3rd edition of the Washington Post written by Dana Priest, Trent Lott mentioned a luncheon for republican Senators attended by Dick Cheney held on the 2nd where information similar to the Post story was disseminated by Cheney to those in attendence and suspected that the leak about those prisons came from that luncheon. From Democracy Now:

"Information that was said in there, given out in there, did get into the newspaper. I don't know where else it came from…. It looked to me that at least one of those reports came right out of that room."

That doesn't make sense to me, at least on the surface. I don't think that Priest received the leak on Tuesday afternoon, wrote her article, fact checked it, and then confirmed it with other sources in time to make deadline for Wednesday's paper. I could be wrong, I'm not privy to the inner workings of the Post, but it seems difficult.

What I believe actually happened is this. Someone leaked to Cheney that Priest was working on the story and Cheney used the luncheon to prepare a response. After all, Cheney wasn't talking about these prisons with the full intelligence committee, just select republicans. Why else would he be discussing these prisons at all?

So, that brings us around to motive for revealing that the luncheon happened at all. Lott has been at odds with the White House for some time now, and I believe that Lott is really making this statement to cut Dick Cheney's throat. In other words, he is laying the prisons directly at the Vice President's feet. Unfortunately, the media took Lott's statement that a fellow Senator may have been the leak at face value.

Whatever the truth is, I have to think that Lott has now had his secret torture meeting club card revoked.

Oops!

Ah, there must not be anything like waking up on yet another rainy election day in Ohio only to see your office's $90,000 screw-up on the front page of The Dispatch. That's the position Mike Pirik is in today as the Municipal Clerks office released Eric Shipley on felony drug possession for $10,000 instead of $100,000 as ordered by the court. From the Dispatch:

Shipley’s bail bondsman called it the "biggest goof-up" he’s seen while working with the courts.

"I’ve never run across this before. I’ve been in this business for 10 years and I’ve never heard of this happening," bondsman Conrad Meyers said last night.

Ouch, happy voting.

Ohio Senate Poll

Today's US Senate poll in The Dispatch appears to have over-sampled Democrats based on previous Ohio polls. I would have to guess both Paul Hackett and Sherrod Brown trail Mike Dewine by a slight bit. Still, with Dewine's numbers as low as they are for an incumbent, next year is looking like a gold watch year for Dewine. Brown and Hackett should both push ahead of Dewine as the primary season heats up.

It's looks like the over-sample happened due to a lack of response from Southwest Ohio. It could be because of zeal on the side that seems to have the momentum, or just a general malaise among republican voters in the aftermath of the Noe scandals, the Katrina debacle, and continued lack of visible progress in the Iraq war.

I'd have to call the poll an outlier for now.

Paging The IRS

The La Times has a story today about All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena getting a letter from the IRS concerning their tax exempt status due to a sermon given last year that criticized George Bush and the Iraq war.

The sermon reportedly was more about helping the poor and being against the war than last year's presidential election. I think the IRS ought to drag itself to Ohio to check out World Harvest Church and the way more political Rob Parsley.

Subpeonaed

Bob Ney's office has been subpeonaed in the Abramoff case. Like Josh Marshall, I find it amusing that in a 206 word statement, Ney's spokesperson failed to mention the word subpoenaed. Ney has claimed he was "duped" by Abramoff. That's par for the course for Ney, although I doubt he went that low at St. Andrews. How many times can you be duped before the voters realize your a dope?

Jerry Kilgore And The Chimp

Jerry Kilgore is hoping a Monday night rally with president Bush will put him over the top in the Virginia gubernatorial race. It's a risky play to bring in Mr. 35% so Kilgore must believe he is somewhat behind.

What is really telling about this rally is that it is at the airport. President Bush is such damaged goods that the only place he can rally the voters from is the airport. This is going to hurt many republicans in the mid-term elections. When you have to distance yourself from the top dog in your party during an election, you usually end up walking a knife's edge between pissing off the base and losing the middle. It is a fine line that makes success difficult.

I think Kaine wins this race but it is going to be extremely tight.

51%

Zogby has finally been forced by the Downing Street crew to put the impeachment question back into his polling. 51% now favor impeachment if George Bush lied on Iraq. This poll just dropped and I don't have a link yet.

PR Fiasco

I didn't catch this in last Sunday's Washington Post, but Magorn over at Kos did. The short of it is that last Thursday, George Bush paid a visit to the traditionally African-American Howard University for a youth summit. The summit was held at the Blackburn Center, which holds the university's dining hall thus shutting the dining hall down. Angry students were told they would have to come back later and go around to the service entrance in the rear to get their food.

How do you fuck up a PR event this badly? This think this line from WAPO sums it up:

To set off a student protest at this school, you'd have to be politically tone-deaf in the extreme, out of touch and flying blind. And yet, Bush did it.

Do You Believe Me Now?

Last month I wrote this about the Christian Right:

You guys are considered to be backwoods snake-handling goat fuckers by the pro-business part of the republican party.

Yesterday, a memo from Mike Scanlan, an aide for Tom Delay, was revealed to say this:

"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them."

Cronies

Cronyism is alive and well at the White House post Katrina. Last week, George Bush filled nine of the sixteen positions on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board which oversees national intelligence with fundraisers from his re-election campaign. Yes, these extremely important national security positions were filled with hacks by our "security president." Feel safer yet?

Somebody should tell Bush that the French and Indian War is over. We don't need any pioneers being our first line of defense. Of course, if Al-Queda decides to attack us with bundled checks, these guys will sniff it out well in advance.

Unlikely Backer

Arnold Schwarzenegger has endorsed the Reform Ohio Now inititives despite pleas from Denis Hastert. I don't know why Schwarzenegger thought he had to involve himself in the Ohio effort. Yes, he does have Proposition 77 on the California ballot this year which basically does the same thing as Issue 4, but he could have simply dodged taking a position on the Ohio inititvies. He could have answered that how should he know what's right for the people of Ohio, or simply said that he hadn't seen the wording of the Ohio proposal. Instead Schwarzenegger seems to have actively pursued giving an endorsement as if he needed to get some sort of street cred for Prop 77.

Ohio republicans are certainly peeved and were the ones who enlisted Hastert to lean on Schwarzenegger.

I also endorse the Reform Ohio inititives.

Found via Kos