Pandagon

Bush Administration: Best of the 80's

Just finished my biweekly column and figured, since I'm about to go camping in Big Sur and will be doing no blogging today, that y'all would love to read it. Enjoy.

This week we turn to the story of one Richard Clarke, the bald, aging bureaucrat who’s brought such heartburn to the Bush Administration. He worked for Ronald Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton and George Dubbya. Throughout his time in government he’s obsessed over terrorism with a passion not seen since Ahab’s opined on white whales (how’s that for a literary reference?). So not only is he a nonpartisan civil servant, he’s also been right on terrorism for more decades than most in government have even viewed it as a threat.

All of which makes the criticisms in his newly-released book, Against All Enemies, profoundly dangerous for the Bush Administration. It’s a history of the War on Terror, tying what happened pre-9/11 to what occurred in its aftermath. This is a bit more unprecedented than you might think; the moment the second plane hit its target, the pre-9/11 era got sucked into some sort of impenetrable wormhole and, as any conservative will tell you, we entered “different world” with neither recognition nor study of the past. Clarke’s big contribution to the debate is to turn around and explain to people that Osama Bin Laden did not spring, fully formed, from Saddam Hussein’s forehead in early 2001. He was a longstanding problem and, here’s the crux, one that George W. Bush did not give much thought to in the period before 9/11. Kinda like poverty, only poor people don’t fly themselves into buildings and so they still get no attention.

Ouch. But that’s not all. The real criticism of the Bushistas is deceptively simple; these kids are still trying to fight the Cold War. Instead of facing the asymmetrical (non-state) threats that loomed so dangerously, they obsessed over Iraq. Rather than defending against the delivery systems terrorists employ (putting bombs in a truck, for instance), they were convinced that we needed to resurrect the Star Wars Missile Shield. One can imagine them grooving to Lionel Richie with their High Tops on the table as they discussed exactly how they were going to shoot the nukes out of the sky. This crew was stuck in 80’s.

Then comes 9/11. The terrorism experts are assembled in a room. Rumsfeld says we need to bomb Iraq. Clarke says no, we need to bomb Afghanistan, that’s where Al-Qaeda is. Rumsfeld cunningly mentions the lack of good targets in Afghanistan. Clarke smartly replies that there are lots of good targets in many places, but the people who did this were in Afghanistan. Oooooh. A few days later, President Bush gets Clarke and a few others into a room and demands they find out if Iraq did this. They say Iraq didn’t. Bush demands a report. They write the report. The report comes back saying "Wrong answer…do it again."

The substantive question here is why, exactly, did the Bush Administration want to attack Iraq so badly? There are a couple of possibilities. The first is a conspiracy theorist named Lauren Mylroie who has written a few books implicating Saddam as the driving force behind most anti-American terrorism. She’s got quite a bit of pull with the Neocons, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz both helped with her book. The next comes from The Project for a New American Century, a think tank that has, at various points, employed or partnered with most of this Administration’s high-profile members (including Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle and Jeb Bush). They wrote a paper outlining a “reverse domino theory”. As you’ll remember, domino theory got us into Vietnam, the idea being that if one state fell to Communism, the other states in the region would follow. Reverse domino theory argues that by making one state into a democracy, you’ll set of a chain reaction of democratization in the region. The favored state to transform into the Middle East’s catalyst point was, you guessed it, Iraq.

I ascribe to the latter argument myself, people generally believe they’re doing good and the fight to bring freedom and end tyranny can paper over many an internal doubt. What you’ve got to remember with the Neocons is that their training ground was Vietnam and Communism. After we got humiliated in ‘Nam, the proclamations of an America in decline began coming fast and furious. They disagreed with that, splintering off from both Democrats and conservatives to form their own little cabal dedicated to restoring America to unchallenged prominence. The best way to do so was to pull together an army of awe-inspiring power and achieve military dominance, which is what they’ve done. They then credit that insight with destroying Communism. Though we know that the Soviet Union collapsed from the inside, they’re certain that the sight of our mighty military set Gorbachev’s loins a-quakin’, leading to Perestroika and the end of Communism. This is complete horseshit of course, but whatever makes them feel good.

The bottom line is that this group defined themselves in opposition to powerful state actors. Their intellectual evolution was guided by the humiliation in Vietnam and the triumph over the Soviet Union, their remedies and plans dictated by those formative experiences. That’s why they wanted Star Wars. Now, faced by an enemy claiming no home and suggesting no battlefield, they’ve been forced to create their own bad guys, settling on the so-called “rogue” states of Iran, Iraq and North Korea. While it’s true they pose a danger, their threat isn’t to us but their neighbors and global stability. And though deterrence and even preemption are defensible reactions, they’ve not made the necessary case for either.

That’s what Clarke’s controversy is feeding on; he’s offered confirmation of what many have only suspected, that the Bush Administration made a Herculean effort to do everything but face terrorism. They have placed terror’s face on all their old bogeymen and begged us to believe as well. Now Clarke’s put the lie to the whole thing and they’re running scared. They’ve said he was in the loop and he didn’t do enough, out of the loop so he didn’t know how much they were doing, that he said nice things about George W. Bush while working for him, that he’s just trying to sell books, that he’s contradicted himself in the past, and that he might be a homosexual and/or a racist (I’m serious). But none are sticking and the media is feeding; the criticisms are simply too salient to be shunted aside by such paltry attempts at character assassination. What’s important to realize is that Bush stays afloat solely on the strength of his leadership on the War on Terror. He’s reviled on fiscal matters, disliked on social issues and generally lacking in domestic policy lovin’. Without his war he’s got nothing. And as you watch the Bush Administration go nuclear on Clarke over the coming weeks keep in mind why they’re employing such overkill; he’s trying to rip their electoral lifeboat out of their clenched fists.

Like a Leaf in a Stream

Saletan's got a must-read today

Ain't No Joke

Awww...this is just cute.

Hold on...replace "cute" with "creepy". And "just" with "incredibly". This story would have been a couple-day sensation if the White House hadn't stepped out and pushed three separate nonsensical lies to try and negate its minimal impact. Now, the White House is managing the boy and shopping him out to try and put a nice face on the situation.

This just stepped from silly overreaction to a disturbing effort to crush anything that might make Bush look bad.

"Go on, little boy...tell the nice man how much you love the President and how you were tired because you'd been stumping for him all day long. Tell him. Now. Or you don't get food."

Connect the Dots

I love Krugman's take on the Letterman thing:

They're Not Even Trying

The current defense of Condoleezza Rice's awfully misguided September 11th speech seems to be something on the order of "you can't judge what we were doing and what we were going to do from one speech".

I beg to differ on one minor point, though. The speech was a speech about the Bush team's national security focus. Saying you can't discern their attitude on national security from what they were saying about national security is beyond ridiculous.

"You can't tell what the president thinks about the state of the union from a single speech."

"It was the State of the Union address."

"That's just semantics."

Everything Right Is Wrong Again

When I say flip, you say flop!

Flip!

FLOP!

Some of these, I'm glad Bush flip-flopped on - but damn, he's ended up reversing position in some way, shape or form on every issue of his presidency (the list doesn't even mention his sudden reversal of his economic projections this year).

Proportionality

I don't know if you guys have been following this Letterman thing Atrios has been covering. The story goes like this: Letterman shows a clip of a kid standing behind Bush while the Dear Leader gave a speech. The kid is bored out of his mind and acts accordingly, fidgeting, doing toe-touches, making faces, etc. The piece is funny and CNN replays it the next day. The Bush Administration calls them and says the kid wasn't at the event, Letterman's show added him in. Letterman calls bullshit. Then the Bushies say okay, he was there, but not where Letterman put him. Letterman again calls bullshit. So the Bush Administration had called CNN to try and change their coverage of a Letterman joke that made Bush look like a bad speaker.

Whoa. The story here isn't the that Bush White House has no sense of humor, it's that they have no sense of proportion. They're so terrified of criticism right now that they're lying too keep pictures of a yawning kid off the air. This is defensive like you rarely see and it paints a picture of an administration simply reeling from attacks on so many fronts and utterly unable to distinguish which attacks need to be guarded against. It's self-destructive behavior because they piss off all who have the temerity to make a joke or cover them in an unflattering light, and when you begin pissing of the late nighters, and the reporters, and the writers, and the journalists, and the media, it's not long before they'll have the voters pissed off too. At you.

Update: Via Wonkette, stills of the bored kid.

Apple Juice Will be Provided

Gotta give her credit. When Dowd's on, she's on:

Wolfowitz For Iraq

As for the rumors that Wolfowitz is going to become the new ambassador to Iraq, I have to agree with Kevin Drum. Though it'd be poetic justice to for the guy who painted the rosiest picture of our invasion to be forced into the harsh reality we now inhabit, it's still a monumentally stupid move. Prominent Jews just shouldn't be given powerful posts that demand interference with Islamic powerhouses, the potential for demagoguery on the side of the Shi'ites is too great. That reality might not be what we wish it was, but that makes it no less true. However, I must caution Kevin Drum to refrain from writing off a move like this just because it's blatantly counter-productive. The Bush Administration has proven itself full of surprises on that front.

A Latte And The Plans To Rule The World, Please

It's interesting to see this, not because it reveals anything we didn't know, but it's funny to see the naked politics involved in the Bush folks' scrambling...and how much Clarke has them panicking.

Focused Like A Laserrrr Beam...

Marie Cocco did something that is fairly common sense, but, surprisingly, she seemed to be the first person with the resources to do it who thought of it. To figure out how Bush felt about terrorism prior to September 11th...she looked at what he said about terrorism prior to September 11th. I know, I'm surprised at how much sense this makes, too.

The results aren't good for Bush:

But, of course, he did reference terrorism. He even advanced a major initiative to combat it.

He had a far-ranging vision of the threats that faced us, too. Whether terrorist or tyrants, he had the solution:

Truly focused on the threat from al-Qaeda. Well, at least the Ansar al-Islam Missile Brigade.

It's Not McCarthyism...It's Just McCarthy-Type Ism

If Republicans try to "out" Richard Clarke, besides highlighting once again Andrew Sullivan's increasingly mind-numbing struggle in trying to make the Republican Party like homosexuals ("Embrace queer humanism! I don't!"), it may be the step over the precipice from trying to negate a political opponent's attack to simply trying to destroy him in the most awful and disgusting way possible.

If a story like this *ever* makes it to press, I honestly don't see how any GLBT person can vote for Bush in good conscience. I can't really see it now, but there is an argument, however unconvincing, that you may like Bush on other issues. However, if his response to Clarke's allegation is "he's a big gay", this is Bush turning a fight over terrorism and national security into a personal attack on someone's sexual orientation. There is no gay or straight when it comes to protecting our nation...unless you don't agree with Bush.

Admission Of Not-Rightness

Kevin asks why the Bush team won't just step up and admit that they didn't take terrorism very seriously before September 11th, but that they did afterwards.

The pathology behind it is quintessential politics - not just Bush, not just Republicans. Bush's supposed competence on terrorism cannot just come in an absolute respect; it must come in contrast to an opponent's incompetence. If the Bush line is that they did everything possible to stop terrorism before and after September 11th, which it was before Clarke ever stepped up, for them to admit the truth isn't to admit reality, it's to admit failure by their own standards.

Obviously, they're hurt by this, but they're hurt more by admitting that they trafficked in a false impression for so long. It's not the lie that hurts - it's the getting found out.

The Best and the Brightest

Tom Schaller breaks it down:

Don't Mess With Success

Unfortunately coming as Condi Rice was on Tech TV, guiding the hosts of the series Robot Wars through the Bush administration's pre-September 11th anti-terror plans between last round's Young Gun vs. Mecha Destroyer 6000 matchup and the highly anticipated Oratorio Robogram vs. Sassy Tassy showdown, legal scholars have weighed in over Condi Rice's refusal to appear publicly or under oath in front of the 9/11 Commission...and it brings something to mind that I hadn't put together before.

Between the fact that Condi Rice has all but shown her home movies of the entire 8 months prior to September 11th (not to be missed is the early June meeting where Rod Paige and Gail Veneman bring snacks to the session, and as Condi's asking Elaine Chao to wave hi to her kitty cat, you can hear Paige yelling "You got parfait on my weiner!"), and that Clarke has laid out virtually everything of note that Condoleezza will be talking about in her return to the committee, if Condoleezza's testimony is at all relevant to what both she and Clarke have said...she could virtually give transcripts of every morning show she's been on and call *that* her testimony.

What I don't get is that Rice has never pulled out any justification that what she's going to be saying should be classified, just that it should be classified on principle. She's created the summary impression that she won't be saying anything new or revelatory, just that she doesn't want it on anyone's public record or to be responsible in a legal sense for it. None of which creates the impression that what she's saying is, you know...true.

Private/Public

The White House is literally the most adept cadre of politicians I've ever seen at coming up with the exact wrong solution to a problem.

The plan now is to have Rice testify privately, not under oath, and then release the transcript. Still not under oath, and this seems to just add a second layer of transmission designed to give the Bush folks cover while making the testimony less accessible (a shot of Condi screwing up will get a lot more play than an extended quote read by Wolf Blitzer). Also, it seems like they'll be picking and choosing what they release, which is really going to boost their credibility into the stratosphere.

Something I didn't know about her first round of testimony:

From the sounds of people defending her testimony the first time, didn't it sound like she had gone into a chamber on a normal day testifying in front of the full commission? Funny how this was so rarely brought up.

Contramadictions

Last week, the Bush administration said that Bush never asked Clarke to find information on Iraq on September 12, 2001 in relation to the previous day's terrorist attacks. Yesterday, they admitted that the conversation happened (which was pretty damn stupid to deny in the first place, given that Clarke had two independent witnesses to confirm his story).

Regardless of the particulars of Clarke's story, which at this point are more subject to snide remarks than substantive factual criticisms, does it strike anyone else that maybe Rice won't go under oath because she still doesn't know what she's going to say?

Let's You And Me And Irony Have A Talk

After embarassing themselves last week by having a functionary openly contradict himself in accusing a man of a federal crime then admitting he had no idea if his charges were true (clever!), the Bush team is now inviting in Karen Hughes to defend the White House while simultaneously going on a book tour hawking a book that's a defense of the White House.

Really, is there anything you can add to this? The only thing left for them to do is to get Bill Janklow to accuse him of gross disregard for human life.

Enter The Grand Guignol

The Washington Post has a story with a remarkably fitting quote from John McCain.

Something that the Clarke fiasco is quickly making clear is that whenever attacked on their credibility, the administration's first response is to ramp up the political horror show and subsequently parade ever-escalating charges past the public's ever-less credulous eyes and ears.

There's almost no defense of Bush's policy in light of Clarke's charges - halfhearted efforts at reclaiming his manufactured legacy eventually peter out in a flurry of that fact stuff they never seem able to get a grasp on. It starts as an indignant denial of the charges so vague and/or factless as to deny all but the most partisan of defenders an actual explanation. Soon after that was dropped, we moved on to the utterly illogical, but somehow entirely enervating efforts to impugn Clarke's motive.

Richard Clarke is equal parts money-hungry shark, partisan opportunist, grandstander, credit-grabber, attention-grabber, insane, lying, racist, bitter, and, I think, a Shriner. We've seen varied facets ofthis advanced by virtually every person who's stepped in the White House in the past three years, including deputy assistant secretaries, spokespeople, and Mrs. Henning's third-grade class from Norfolk, VA.

"All together now...Richard Clarke caused September 11th!!!! That's great kids - everyone can have a cookie, and the black kids can go take a picture with the President."

Any defense of the Bush record happens either through the telepathy of partisanship or through the dark insinuation that anyone who actually believes these critiques is simply abetting the dissolution of a sacred bond between Republicans and the presidency. Sacrilege, I say.

What Richard Clarke has shown more than anything else is the man behind the curtain (or, more accurately, the well-coordinated group with the really, really bad ideas). The mechanisms of Bushism (not the jumbled utterances of the man, but the refined practice of maintaining power for George W. Bush) are on full, naked and gory display here. It's said that at times of crisis, true character shines through. It's the biggest point of crisis in the Bush Presidency, the point at which the legitimacy and credibility of this administration's ideas are most imperiled and we're seeing their character. Condoleezza Rice wants to use the 9/11 Commission to repair her image, away from the prying eyes of the American public or the American legal system. Bill Frist alleges a federal crime on the floor of the Senate, then remembers to mention afterward that he has no idea if what he said is actually true or not. The White House is pushing for the declassification of testimony for the sole purpose of silencing a domestic political critic.

This is freakish, at best. The focus of the executive branch of government is not on fulfilling its duties - it's on covering its own ass against an attack it swears has no validity whatsoever, a contention it's found itself utterly incapable of addressing in any serious or convincing fashion. You can enter into a realm of the bizarre and the macabre, a phantasmagorical flagellation of the intellect and the heart...or you can just watch CNN tomorrow and watch the latest Bush defense, which is quickly approaching the revelation of heretofore secret documents that Richard Clarke changed his name to Nassaar al-Islam in 1994.

Them Nigrahs

Josh Marshall makes a good catch: the next line of defense against Clarke is to accuse him of being racist, as Bob Novak (the ivory-toothed cabana boy of the Bush Adminstration) and Ann Coulter (Skeletor) have made readily apparent.

Next up: misogyny!

Actually, I think they'll be more original than that. Let's play a game: What Will Richard Clarke Be Accused Of Doing?

My bet is either sexual harassment or embezzlement.

Tee-Hee

Guess who lied? It rhymes with Tush Badministration.

Remember, the Bush Administration was supposed to have approached terrorism with more energy than the Clinton Administration ever did. I mind that they're lying sacks...but more than that, I mind that they're lying sacks who are attempting to shut down legitimate debate about their response to terrorism by making up complete horseshit.

Who Rules the Roost?

I want to talk a bit about the picture of Dick Cheney that emerges from Rise of the Vulcans. Cheney started out as an aide to Rumsfeld and spent, as far as anyone can tell, the next 25 years of his life following in Rummy's footsteps. When Rumsfeld became Ford's Chief of Staff, Cheney became the Deputy Chief of Staff. During those years, the CIA gave him "perhaps the most apt code name it had ever designed". The code name?

Backseat.

Cheney's power comes not from flash or glitz, but from steadily working behind the scenes, grinding away in advocacy of his chosen objectives. The dangerous thing is he permits little oversight; he works in the shadows and shuns the light. What's more important is that Cheney isn't just working to help those above him, he's got a distinct and steady ideological agenda. Keep in mind that the following quote has no analogue among what's said about Powell, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz or even Bush. Cheney is alone in his ideological extremity:

It's worth thinking about what role Cheney actually plays in this Administration. I've spoken to a lot of Texans on both sides of the aisle who are firm in their shock and outrage over what Bush has done in the White House. He simply didn't govern so far to the Right in Texas and he never seemed so intent on sparking ideological wars. They had no idea he would act in the way he has.

Now I don't want to accuse Bush of being a puppet nor a stupid man; he is, in my estimation, neither. But he surrounded himself with advisors who have over a century of combined government experience. People like Rumsfeld, a vicious bureaucratic warrior who pretty much took down Kissinger and harbored presidential ambitions for most of his life (the folk wisdom among Republicans for decades has been "Don Rumsfeld does not lose"). You've got Cheney; an absolute ideologue who works tirelessly to achieve his agenda from behind the scenes. Then add in the other members of the cabinet and I think you get a very distinct conclusion.

Bush is in over his head. The people around him have so much more experience, knowledge, and know-how that he simply can't maintain strong control over this group. From where I sit, it looks like Bush is only the nominal leader; he's the public face of the Administration, but his record and resume both point to his power within the group being slight.

An Ode To Ari

You know, I'm always a little bit amazed that the party of Ari Fleischer ever has the audacity to accuse anyone else of dishonesty or double talk.

Tim Noah details Ari's latest baldfaced lie here. But Ari is more than any one lie, any one dishonest appraisal of reality in the face of overwhelming facts to the contrary. Ari was one of the greats, because he understood that lying wasn't about timing or content. Lying was a performance to him.

A good lie requires two components: the ability to deny anything that contradicts it, and the ability to deny that you've ever contradicted yourself. A bad liar will lie and get caught when the facts contradict them. A mediocre liar will lie and then lie about the correction to the lie, in order to maintain the original lie. A liar par excellence, like Ari will:

• Lie.
• Lie about the correction to the lie.
• Lie about the content of the original lie.
• Lie about the original subject, contradicting or altering the original lie.
• Lie that the original lie was ever told.
• Lie about the fact that they're lying at all the whole time.

It doesn't really matter what the lie is. It's about the perseverance of the lie. Ari maintains to all factual evidence that not only wasn't he talking about silencing people when he said people "need to watch what they say", but that he wasn't even talking about Bill Maher...despite blatantly doing so.

Scott McClelland is a simple-minded amateur next to Ari. His lies may be of a slightly higher pedigree, but he lacks the work ethic, the clear mind of the pure prevaricator that allows them to spin a mere lie into a self-sustaining narrative that ultimately only relies on its own dishonest assessments to survive and flourish.

I'm glad he's gone, but I'd love to see him lying in a venue that didn't have any real impact on issue of importance, just to admire him. Like the Barry Sanders of liars, gone before his time.

Skills In The Management

You know, I would have never thought that the best way to address criticisms about not testifying about one's actions prior to, on and after September 11th publicly is to turn around and not testify about your actions publicly...again.

That she's only going in to specifically flail against Clarke's accusations is icing on the cake. Which is itself made of crap.

The Origins of Powell and Armitage

I've been reading James Mann's excellent Rise of the Vulcans to get a better feel for what motivates the NeoCons running this Administration's foreign policy. Why the obsessive focus on Iraq? What led them to mistrust alliances so deeply?

The book is excellent and I'll probably post quite a few of its more illuminating passages, but for now, chew on this one:

The Keystone Kops Are Actually In Charge

Traditionally, the President makes some sort of comedic presentation at the yearly Correspondents' Dinner. You go, you poke fun at yourself and your administration, the correspondents laugh, by the end of the night everyone's so flush with either recognition or alcohol that nobody really remembers what the President said.

Apparently, Bush has been taking comedy lessons from Dennis Miller.

No, really. He joked about not being able to find WMD.

I was watching American Morning today, and Bush's few defenders kept harping on the same point - everyone else gets to make jokes about it...why not Bush?

Well, because Bush did the thing the jokes are about. Bill Buckner doesn't get to joke about the 1986 World Series (at least, among a lot of Bostonians). O.J. Simpson doesn't get to joke about Ron and Nicole. Bush doesn't get to joke about the lack of WMD in Iraq.

It's not funny when the person who did the bad thing jokes about the bad thing. Bush was the one who got us into Iraq over the WMDs, Bush is the one who can't find the WMDs. Much like the use of September 11th images in his ads, a small mention has a much larger hurt than it could have ever possibly intended. The worst part is that he hasn't ever seriously addressed such a major issue, except to change the subject. Even the conservative George Will agrees.

Tee-hee! Next time, he'll go to a soldier's funeral without his pants on! And fun will be had by none.

Liars Run On Preemption

Fred Kaplan lays out rather convincingly why to believe Richard Clarke - the most important reason, I believe, is that Clarke has little reason to destroy his amassed credibility and/or his position on terrorism by leaping out and making charges that he can't stand behind.

What's also strange is that in an election year (which we've been reminded it is constantly by Bush hacks) the Bush team doesn't have a preset script to specifically lay out its version of Bush's anti-terror agenda and activities during his tenure. For all the talk of what Bush's done and when he did it, it seems like the people he has around him still aren't sure in any significant fashion what's actually included in those categories, even after two and a half years.

Isn't it a wee bit strange that the narrative of September 11th is still being written 30 months later?

Batter Up

You can almost hear the desperation dripping off of this - Richard Clarke's resignation letter has been made public. Here's the supposed "gotcha" line:

Actually, as far as I can tell, they managed to quote Clarke praising Bush on the one day where he's lodged no significant criticism of him. In all the talk over Clarke's book, I don't remember a single criticism of Bush's activities on September 11th - he's basically criticized Bush over the periods 1/20/01-9/10/01 and 9/12/01-present. But if anyone can point me to Clarke's criticism of Bush's handling of the day itself, I'd love to see it.

ADDENDUM: And wouldn't you write a nice letter to your employer anyway? I mean, even if you don't like what the President is doing, you maintain civility in your communications with him. Would even the most ardent critic of a president write him a "fuck you and the horse you rode in on" resignation letter? (Pointed out in comments, forgotten in the original post.)

Attacks

There'd almost be something ironic about the "uniter not a divider" sending out his attack dogs to try and discredit Richard Clarke because he's friends with a Democrat, as if after 30 years under two Democratic and five Republican presidents, he'd never make nice with someone on the other side of the partisan divide.

Another one of the Bush accusations has bothered me repeatedly - the idea that Clarke was/is fundamentally incompetent and was basically responsible for September 11th.

Can someone explain to me why the Bush Administration would not only keep Clarke on up until September 11th, "demote" him to merely a high-level, specific counterterror position (cybersecurity), and still keep him in the loop in the war on terror (despite Cheney's strange assertions to the contrary)?

And if Clarke was so bitter over his demotion to cyberterrorism czar, why was he so frequently criticized for his overzealousness? He spent most of his tenure after September 11th, and his move to cybersecurity, being the number one apostle of the dangers of cyberterror. While partisan critics may try to point out that the criticism Clarke received was somehow endemic of his entire tenure as a counterterror expert, the Bush Administration not only did a good enough job to keep him on and wish that he hadn't left when he did - if Clarke was truly incompetent on terror, the Bush administration was doubly incompetent not only for keeping him after September 11th, but also creating a new position for him and approving of his performance - up until it was more convenient not to, that is.

What's also odd is that it isn't the first time in Clarke's career that he's been transferred or even demoted - somehow, when he was switched out of the State Department in 1992, he managed to handle that without flying off the handle like a supposed loon. I'm just surprised that a man who has himself been threatened with terrorist attacks, and who has always been an emphatic, forceful advocate for his anti-terror position, regardless of who's in charge and regardless of who's opposing him is now Public Enemy #1 in the supposed "serious on terror" Bush Administration.

Or maybe I'm not, all things considered.

Veto'd

Ed Feulner raises a common point among conservatives - why hasn't Bush used his veto power? Ever?

The main reason I think Bush won't veto is that he doesn't want to deal with the political headache of having to give a direct rebuke to his party - and at this point, he's summarily failed to do it for so long (note that for much of his presidency through 2003 or so, he essentially dictated the legislative agenda to a willing Congress) that any veto would be a huge news event. And that news event would centrally focus around him rebuking his party, since they're the only people who can give him something to veto.

Bush has worked himself into a position where any time he exercises a relatively unremarkable veto power, it's going to become a huge news story. Bush rebukes his party for the first time! Party passes bill over Bush's veto! Is there a rift between Congressional Republicans and the White House?

Whatever headaches Bush gets from small-government conservatives over relatively obscure spending bills (who cares about a highway bill that's going to pass regardless of what Bush does?) is going to be overshadowed by the reality of his first veto - it's not going to be a policy tool, it's going to be a political tool. As it is now, he gets to rail loudly about how awful it is that Congress does these things while quietly letting the bills slide through (or fail, depending). He gets to take a stance against spending while not actually taking any action against it - he's not going to lose the conservatives bitter with him over it, nor is he going to make news by turning those words into action.

He's worked himself into a position where he can't veto, for the sake of his own political skin. For a man who's seen as the center, the leader of his party, he's being led around by the nose by the legislature, and at this point, there's really nothing he can do about it. If he wins again, it's honestly the best argument for a Democratic Congress possible - he will only work to restrain the legislature (and vice versa) when there's a long-term benefit in it for him.

Bartlett's Quotations

Dan Bartlett is trying to gin up the "it's just politics" defense against Richard Clarke, but it doesn't make much sense:

Well, he stayed on the team until he quit. I would assume that he was under the impression, however misguided, that he might be able to affect the direction of the war on terror using his three decades-plus experience in intelligence and government. Imagine that - a public servant imagining he could affect public policy.

Bartlett's quote about political timing raises an interesting point. We have major elections every two years, presidential ones every four. Is there a point during this (relatively) compacted schedule where one could release something potentially politically damaging to someone without the accusation of politicization popping up?

(And if this was meant to truly be politically damaging, why not push the release of the book back to coincide with the Democratic convention in July? The release schedule of the book shows that Clarke tried to get it out as soon as possible after he left the White House - he left in February of 2003, and assuming that he started writing this book after he left, its release date was going to fall sometime during the campaign cycle. It's a ridiculous statement by Bartlett.)

Flip-Flop

We've had a healthy debate the past few years over weapons of mass destruction. Some of us want to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and others want to proliferate nuclear weapons. And that's just one ex-governor from Texas.

Of course, we need not worry about any message this sends to the world around us. Why?

BECAUSE. Now shut up and focus on John Kerry - he fell over while snowboarding!

New Meme?

Nathan Newman's got your damn meme right here:

Bush 04: Follow Through Like Nobody's Bidness. We Mean It, Look Away.

Liveblogging Bush's Address

Basically - the whole world's in his hands, he's got the whole world in his hands. It's either his way or the terrorists' way, and any way that's not his is the terrorist way. Or appeasement, which is worse, because it creates Hitlers.

Shorter Bush: I did something, and something is better than nothing. And it's all good in my 'hood, bay-bay. War on terror, war on terror (Iraq), war on TERROR!

I'm Sorry, Miss Cheney

I only caught part of Dick Cheney's speech today, but did anyone else think that it was wildly inappropriate and even offensive for him to be attacking John Kerry at that point, capping off his stirring rendition of "God Hates Kerry" with the reminded that we successfully liberated 50 million people, only a small number of which were standing by the Hotel Lebanon watching Iraqis and Americans working together to dig out the wounded and dead from the rubble?

Dick Cheney - pure class.

(Full text here.)

Where Have Colin's Opinions Gone?

Colin Powell has fallen pretty far during his time in this Administration. Many have wondered from where his loyalty stems; we now have our answer, Colin's got a terrible memory. After attacking John Kerry for awhile in an interview, he asked us to "Name a specific issue, where it looks like I have been marginalized."

I'm taking foreign policy for $500 Alex.

Oh, specific issues?

How about North Korea, where he promised to continue Clinton's policy of engagement before Cheney reprimanded him and he had to retract the statement?

How about the invasion of Iraq, where Powell's doctrine of overwhelming force fell before Rumsfeld's fetish for smaller, lighter fighting units?

How about birth control, where Powell came out for sex education while the Administration has championed abstinence-only education?

C'mon guys, let's help him remember.

Hahahahahaha...

Ha!

This Thursday on FOX! When Spin Points Go Wild 4: Imminent Threat.

Well

Yes, yes they should:

Here was a public servant who was threatened with the loss of his job if he had the audacity to carry out his task truthfully and revise the untruthful numbers of the Bush Administration. George W. Bush appears to have saved one job in his entire presidency, and it was as a reward for not doing the job.

Pretty telling, huh? Go Daschle; make them feel the hurt on this one. Read it on the floor of the Senate and watch every honest legislator in there squirm in their seat. This isn't how things should be done...this isn't how the President should be acting.

Big Ups

Now we know why Bush proposed his amnesty plan: crowd control.

Keep in mind that this was a cheering, well-received speech that many of these people couldn't understand.

I don't have a problem with the immigrants - but it says something when your custom crowd is not only constituted of largely nonvoters, but also people who can't understand what you say.

Let me rephrase that...people who can't understand what you say because they don't speak the language, not because it's a bunch of crackpot nonsense conservative platitudes masquerading as ideas about how to run a country. Precision here is key.

Unbelievable

I'm speechless:

Bush: Beta Release

This is interesting:

What To Say?

Josh Marshall gets it right: "Spokeman's a tough job when you don't have a lot of good stuff to spoke."

Magical Mystery Tour

An opinion piece in the Washington Times says that Bush's Mars proposal (you know, the one he hasn't said word one about since it failed to make him the new JFK) is a progressive cause for young people to believe in.

Here's the problem - if this was supposed to be a cause that inspired anyone from space geeks (and even many of them aren't particularly excited), then Bush completely botched this one.

The mission to the moon was a part of an overall fight against the Soviet Union and worldwide communism. It was a triumph of American democracy over Soviet communism. It wasn't us stating that the moon belongs to us, it was us stating that progress belongs to freedom and democracy. There's a reason you've heard almost none of what's in the Times article from the Bush team - it's because the entire point was to paint Bush as a visionary mixture of JFK and FDR, but without the actual sacrifice...or point.

If this was supposed to be an inspirational, unifying, progressive proposal...Bush forget roughly every facet of that. You can't simply shoehorn in all of the good things Bush forgot to attach to the plan and declare that your conception of the Mars trip is why we're actually going to Mars.

Reach For The Stars

Tim Graham wishes that the scandal which never ended (and actually never started) had gotten a "half-teaspoon" of the coverage that Martha Stewart's scandals did.

Exsqueeze me, but was Graham in a coma from 1993-2001? Under what circumstances did Whitewater, the vast scandal in which the Clintons invested money, lost it, and are guilty because the person they invested it with was crooked even though they didn't know it, not get covered?

Scandal!

Josh Marshall theorizes that scandals might be Bush's undoing, although he says this with a note of caution about incumbent campaigns in 1984 and 1996, where similar hopes rested on potential scandals whose impacts failed to materialize.

The main reason that scandals didn't work in '84 and '96 is that other indicators, particularly economic ones, were so much better than they were in '80 and '92, respectively. The scandals Marshall mentions actually won't work in '04, but for a different reason - two, actually.

The first is Clinton fatigue. People still haven't regained their appetite for scandals, such as it ever was, and if '04 is a replay of '96, it's simply bad news for us. A lot of Republican/Democratic interaction is still operating under the political rubric of Bill Clinton, and I fear that any attempt to brand Bush with scandals will simply be seen as payback for Clinton administration woes.

The second and more substantive objection is that the scandals in question are both diffuse in nature and in terms of responsibility. Bush is ultimately responsible for them, true, but it's still possible to put the blame on other people - and if there's anything this group is willing to do, it's scapegoat. In terms of the nature of the scandals themselves, what actually happened in many of them is so removed from Bush that he might get a bit of stench by loose association, but in a campaign where he is running as a man unto himself (note that there is no mention of Cheney at all in the ads he's running now), unless there's something to place directly on his shoulders, it's going to be difficult, and even counterproductive to try and focus on various scandals.

My message here is that we shouldn't depend on scandals even if someone's in cuffs, in bed, or on film. Let the legal system take care of it. Let the media cover it (with our encouragement, of course). Let the court of public opinion convict them rather than the court of partisanship. And don't get so sidetracked hoping that someone goes down that you forget how to lift people up.

(Note that I'm not saying we shouldn't focus on scandals at all - I think in Congressional races, it could work very well. But against Bush? Probably not.)

Science is Hard President

Reason #4,782 why we really need to limit the Executive Branch's ability to politically futz with things:

This is going to be great.

Edited because it's "Principal", not "Principle".

Are You Ready For Some NASCAR?

The Bush team really, really believes in the NASCAR dad.

As Josh Marshall pointed out, the pandering is beyond obvious. Now, I'm not sure why Bush believes that running towards white males in the South (the predominant viewing group of NASCAR), considering that he won white males 60/36 and Southerners 55/43. I don't understand why he would run towards a cultural cohort that strongly leans towards him, when the issues plaguing his reelection campaign have more to do with specific issues (namely the economy and terrorism) that aren't particularly endemic to white Southern males already predisposed towards Bush.

What is going on in Marc Racicot's head?

Your Taxes, Your Pocket, My Hand

Bush is backing off of his "renew mah tax cuts NOW, before I call my mommaaaaa..." cant, and instead saying that we should just make all the tax cuts that would expire next year permanent.

Now, there's something about the hypocrisy of battling over a highway bill to save $10 billion a year while simultaneously battling for a tax cuts that would add billions more to the deficit each year even if the highway bill was passed the way Bush wanted it that just sticks in my craw, but anymore, I've got 75% of what Bush does stuck there at any time, and it's getting a little bit clogged.

Anyway, this change in Bush's strategy, I hope, marks a sea change in the legislative thinking on tax cuts. It's been a lot of blather, a lot of hype, and a lot of deficits for very little in the way of real change, especially the promised ones. I'm hoping that tax cuts have ceased to be the free ice cream of politics and that George W. Bush has finally exhausted the political tolerance for overlooking the actual economic and fiscal effects of tax cuts. He's pushing for the soon-to-expire tax cuts to be passed because he (and, more importantly, congressional Republicans) realize that another massive tax-cut package won't pass electoral muster.

Of course, they have no plan to rectify the effects of the other tax cuts, either...but small steps, people. Small steps.

*Oberon points out, rightly, that this is basically a ploy to delay making the other tax cuts permanent until after the election. But, at the same time, they realize that cutting taxes right now is a liability rather than a boon.

The Muddy Constitution

If anyone doesn't understand why liberals seem so enraged at this President, Kevin Drum has a good starting point:

One Huge Dick Dump

Even though the relationship between Bush and Cheney isn't that of a typical president to his vice president, would getting rid of Cheney actually help Bush?

I mean, people generally don't look at the Vice President as indicative of the actual leadership of the administration, and no matter how successful anyone is at painting Cheney as the mastermind behind the Bush administration's worst decisions, all getting rid of him could do is staunch the bleeding from any wounds that he's opened. Generally, all a VP candidate can do is not hurt you - even the poll boost garnered by adding someone popular (like Giuliani) is short-term and temporary, as you're still, for better or worse, voting on the chief executive rather than his second in command.

Something that's nagged at me about Cheney's purported stepping down for the '04 campaign is that unless he was in the middle of a major ethical breach, there's no real reason to - his transgressions, so far, are political...and Bush is standing behind them. It might make sense to the wonks among us, but to most voters, Bush would only get a few-days shakeup bounce ("Something new is happening! I'm paying attention to them!"), but the Presidency is viewed from the top of the ticket down.

Plus, the Bush team will never admit they're wrong unless they can also disavow having had anything to do with the actual wrong part (see: budget projections for this year). If they try to disavow having had anything to do with Cheney over the past four years...well, they'll step from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Abstinence-Only Driving School

Abstinence education annoys me because it presumes that we can teach sex unlike we'd teach...well, anything else. Imagine if you received driver's education like this:

Correct answer? None. A seat belt isn't designed to handle 85-90% of the things on this list, and the ones it is designed to handle, it won't absolutely prevent.

Now, you can avoid every single thing on this list if you never get into a car. However, any driver's ed program that taught that seat belts were useless because they didn't work 100% of the time and told you to abstain from driving until such point as you felt you were ready to drive, and then to use no safety precautions whatsoever would be a terrible fucking driver's ed program that would end up endangering every driver on the road. Why is it okay to teach sex like this?

Chicken And Waffles

Bush is accusing Kerry of waffling.

I mean, other than his own drug and alcohol use, nation-building, stem-cell research, affirmative action, tarrifs, trade, the deficit, his tax cuts, the 9/11 and Iraq commissions, campaign finance reform, the international doctrine that he and his administration created, abortion, government spending, government intervention, and any question asked to him, directly or indirectly, Bush has a consistent history that's waffle-free.

Me Invade Iraq? Uncredible!

I'm sure as Bush's credibility gap gets more pronounced, we're going to be hearing the phrase "the American people trust this president on the issues that matter" only slightly more than a superlative out of Bill Walton's mouth in the upcoming months.

Think about everything in this administration (and in the party) that's under investigation. September 11th. Iraq. Valerie Plame. The Senate Judiciary files. The Texas GOP's fundraising.

It's long been my opinion that running on whether or not you trust the Bush administration with your national security is an incredibly effective strategy. Not in the realm of who's got the biggest antiterror grapefruits (because it's a schoolyard battle best fought by the moistened pants crowd on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal amongst themselves), but in the realm of who's actually going to be the most credible, competent, honest broker of America's safety over the next four years. Who's going to do the right thing, the right way? Not the right wing.

Colin Powell

I have no doubt that one of the books out of this Administration will be on the fall of Colin Powell. Whether the man himself writes a tell-all or some enterprising underling from State publishes a memoir, Powell's plummet from internationally respected statesman to muzzled tool has been extraordinary. Definitely check out Kaplan's Slate article on the whole thing, it's fascinating stuff. I think the only thing saving the Administration from Powell's rage is that the Left has treated him terribly as well, he doesn't want to be on either side and so is just stuck in this weird loop, playing the good soldier to a leader who destroys his credibility and frustrates his efforts.

Cut That Mess

This article points out something I'd noticed, but had never thought to put out there: even for all the talk of how much the Democratic primary is dampening Bush's numbers, the fact still remains that he's done an awful job all on his own since the new year began.

Regardless of Democratic attacks on him, his response has been, at best, underwhelming. Bush has obviously planned for the attention on Democrats - it's just that he planned a lot of very unpopular, poorly thought-out counters.

Bush and Matches

Bush is claiming Democrats can't be trusted with money. Josh Marshall comes back with the best line, well, ever:

Bush Releases Records

Apparently, Bush has ordered the release of his Vietnam era military records. I say apparently because I'm still slightly unclear on which records are needed, and if they are contained in this file dump. Hopefully Kevin Drum will enlighten us as to what this actually means.

My feeling is there's a scandal here that's not about where he was. Records from that era would reveal it, and by withholding all records they keep reporters off the scent. The Press and Democrats think it's about the Guard when it's really about drug use or something similar. I just can't understand why they'd make such a big deal out of this otherwise.

We Need A National Condom For Bad Ideas

It's a small thing, but the abstinence-only position of the Bush Administration demonstrates the kind of thinking that turns me off to them completely.

Yes, and the only certain way to avoid getting in a car crash is not to drive. The only certain way to avoid getting a divorce is never to get married. The only certain way to avoid massive deficits is to not elect Republicans.

But we need prevention and safety, too. It's why we have seat belts and marriage counseling and elections. In case Bush hadn't learned from the past, oh, few thousand years of human civilization, you aren't going to scare people into not having premarital sex (granted, we don't have Census records for the Hittites, but I'm willing to bet against the house on this one).

Incidentally, has anyone ever heard of a contraceptive-only program? It's not like contraceptive programs say that abstinence doesn't work.

Pulling Out The Big Boy Pen

Bush is set to open up the My First Veto package he was given back in 2001, against a bill that passed with a veto-proof majority.

Apparently, he's trying to prove to his base that he'll stop spending through bill-veto-related program activities.

"See, we found evidence that I had both the intent and was trying to develop the capacity to deliver a veto to a Congressional bill. It is obvious, then, that I am a low-spender in a low-spending administration."

Testify!

The 9/11 Commission is going to ask Bush to testify . Not visit, not share knowledge, not give a recommendation. Testify. And that's what we're going to call it.

I Might Coulda Been There

Bush had a dentist's appointment in Alabama in 1973.

Therefore, no more records need be released, because the man wouldn't be tartar free if he didn't love his country.

(Seriously, though. This not only contradicts reports that he was in Houston at the time, but going to the dentist's office in a state he wasn't supposed to be in explains nothing about his service. Not to mention that he would have had to return to Houston in November, go back to Alabama for a dentist's appointment on January 6th, and then head back to Houston to work for Project P.U.L.L. Possible, but very strange. Why is Bush drawing this out for so long?)

He's A Real Man, Full Of Water And Tendons

We did absolutely nothing wrong, which is why we'll capitulate to all of your complaints.

I wonder, are the Bush folks concerned about his rhetorical errancy?

William Campenni

Today, a letter from Col. William Campenni appears in the Washington Times, concerning George Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard.

What's curious is that he openly admits that the Guard was a place people went to avoid service:

He then goes on to say that it wasn't a place of refuge for pilots, because even though there was a serious glut of them, they could still get called up - even though the period of service involved, by the time Bush was done, would have virtually guaranteed that he wasn't going anywhere.

Mr. Campenni also has a past with this sort of thing, as far back as last May. What I find curious about this whole thing is that he essentially argues by anecdote, demagogy, and misleading statements - Bush's service was dangerous because Campenni knew other people who died. There's no problem with Bush's service because the incomplete records don't bear that out.

I'm still looking for more on Campenni, who appears to have only popped up last May, writing what's roughly this letter twice (the first, much more partisan than the second).

On The Ropes

What a beating. I almost feel bad for Scott McLellan. Almost.

Analogies

Richard Cohen:

Bush's National Guard Service : "Honorable Discharge" :: Your Blind Date : "A Really Nice Person".

I'm also glad that Cohen makes it very clear that the National Guard of 1968 and the National Guard of 2004 are two very different organizations in which membership has very different meanings.

Line-Item Lovin'

The Bush Administration is trying to dust off the line-item veto. Only this time, it'll be constitutional!

The question still remains exactly why a Republican president needs such drastic measures to restrain his own party, since that's apparently who's at fault here. How big is the divide between Bush and the rest of his party if he needs to revive a fairly drastic executive measure to "control" them?

I suppose the honest question here is how far will Bush take the continuing charade that if not for the spendthrift Republicans in Congress, the budget picture would be starshine and twinklecakes.

More AWOL

Tim Russert was on MSNBC (Hardball) tonight, saying that reporters and investigators can't find the pay stubs and other records relating to Bush's military service. You know, the ones he said had been scoured and that everyone else could scour, too.

Interesting...

Incapability

Walter Shapiro makes an assertion in his latest column that's both wrong and, I think, inattentive to what's going on in the national campaign:

I didn't get that Bush came off as "likable and presidential". I got that he came off as repetitive and defensive. Differences of interpretation aside, Shapiro says that Democrats have been speaking to largely partisan audiences. Bush, by contrast...hasn't? As Peggy Noonan pointed out breathlessly yesterday, his candidacy is predicated on giving speeches to receptive audiences - whether neutral or partisan. When, if ever, has Bush put himself in front of hostile or nonsupportive audiences other than the State of the Union?

Shapiro also misconstrues the "low expectations of his partisan critics". I've seen little or no evidence to say that Democratic candidates are saying he can't defend his policies - simply that the defenses he gives aren't persausive. Yesterday, we hadn't seen anything that we hadn't heard before, which doesn't speak well of Bush against this criticism.

I'm curious, also, as to why Bush is getting so much credit for a single interview with Russert when the Democratic candidates have undergone a battery of interviews over the past few months from sources ranging from Fox News to NPR, in a variety of media, and from a variety of hosts - most of them live. Giving Bush so much credit for this one interview seems to be setting fairly low standards in the first place.

All that from three sentences.

Shorter Bush

Missed yesterday's interview? Wonkette hooks you up with the condensed version.

ARF?

Kevin Drum has what could be a big break in the George W. Bush AWOL story...except that I don't think it is.

The "ARF" in question much more likely refers to the Air Reserve Force, which includes the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard. It's much less likely that he was disciplined by the Army Reserve Force than that he was issued a document under the combined auspices of the Air Reserve Force.

UPDATE: I was shown this document, but all it shows is that Bush's records were transferred to the Air Reserve Personnel Center after his service with the TANG was done.

ANOTHER ONE: ORS refers to Obligated Reserve Service, but it's a common term for the period of time that Reserves (military and NG) are, well, obligated to serve.

I think that there's a definite issue of whether or not Bush showed up, what he did if and when he showed up, and whether or not we've been given all the valid documents. But I think this is barking up the wrong tree. If I'm wrong, I'll happily be proven so.

SOME MORE: There's this, which actually makes the ORS reference clear - if Bush was unable to participate in the ANG, he would be put in the Obligated Reserve Section, which might or might not call him up for active duty. If Bush couldn't or wouldn't serve (which, since he asked to be discharged from ANG duty, he couldn't), he would be placed in this section. As far as I can tell, the ORS isn't necessarily a punishment - it's the agreed result of Bush's requested early discharge.

I'm really, really not seeing this.

The Platonic President

You have to read Saletan's analysis of Bush's interview, it's brilliant. And I'm not usually one to think well of those who group Bush with Ancient Greek Philosophers.

A Clarification on Plame and Cheney

The comments in my previous post on the Plame Affair lead me to believe that quite a few people misunderstood my point quite drastically. Of course I want justice done, of course I want the guilty caught. But I don't believe that Scooter Libby and a buddy in Cheney's office acted alone. It's too risky for them to have done without the approval of the political department (Rove). So now, with the Administration in damage control mode and a full-bore effort underway to make this scandal end as quickly as possible, what's the Administrations' likeliest move?

Admit that some did wrong and throw them to the wolves, hopefully containing the damage and making the President and those close to him look blameless. It happened to Condi and Tenet when the Niger Scandal hit and it was done well. To keep the President from (much) damage in this situation the best thing to do is blame the Vice-President's people, that's as many degrees of separation as you can get from George and still be in the "senior official" pantheon. The worst thing we can possibly do is make the sacrifice of Libby look like our ultimate triumph. If we cry victory then, to most, the scandal will be over and the DoJ will quietly wind down their investigation.

Next, from a political standpoint, it's stupid tosupport things that hurt Cheney. I don't like the guy, but he's one of our top political assets coming into the election. With approval numbers in the 20's and ties to every special interest in the book, he's a huge, easy target for the Democratic nominee. Cheney also has a very easy way to leave the ticket. With 4 heart attacks under his belt, bowing out due to health reasons (citing the stress of the job) is very possible and very understandable. Cheney is not Bush's brain, he's his advisor. Bush is a capable, thought not extraordinary man, and he will be able to replace the unpopular guy from Wyoming. The important thing for George will be winning the next election, not governing after it. If Cheney is more of a liability than an asset, he'll be off the ticket in seconds. These calculations don't require a secret decoder ring to follow, you can be damn sure Rove and Co. are making them. If he can put Plame on Cheney, keep the damage away from Bush, and then Cheney leaves the ticket well...damn. Triple play.

The reasons I keep referring to Guiliani are twofold. First, of course, the constant rumors that he'll do so mean some on the Right are pushing the idea. Secondly, if Bush is looking weak Rove will not try and shore up the conservatives, they have nowhere to go. He'll try and grab independents and do it by highlighting 9/11. Guiliani fulfills both requirements and would love to be the heir apparent in 2008. Rove can pacify the Right no matter who the VP is, to think otherwise is to fool ourselves. If he's confident going into the election, he won't try and rock the boat with a VP switch. But if things look bad, well, Guiliani makes a heap of electoral sense. When a switch is so obviously beneficial and Bush so obviously embattled, the last thing we should do is get overconfident in Bush's inflexibility. I want to keep Cheney on the ticket, but a damaged Vice-President and a low polling President might make the unveiling of Rudy Guiliani, at the Republican convention in New York, electorally irresistible.

Nothing Really Matters...To Me...

The current reaction in the blogosphere to the Iraq intelligence panel seems to be focused on the very likely ineptitude of its co-chairmen, former Sen. Chuck Robb and incompetent jurist Laurence Silberman. It assumes, however, that they're going to have the opportunity to botch an investigation into something important.

Here's the relevant portion of the executive order governing this investigation:

In short, it's a very thorough investigation into the figurative rectum of the CIA in particular, to figure out where the Bush Administration could have gotten those nasty WMD ideas from. It's assuming that the interpretation and usage of the intelligence was flawless - by its very nature, the investigation into the intel used in the Iraq War assumes that the use of intel by various departments is governed solely by the intelligence's quality rather than any agency on the part of the interpreters.

The outrage here isn't that we've got two incompetent/avaricious chairmen of an important investigative committee. It's that the committee is designed to be irrelevant in and of itself. What Democrats in particular should be focusing on isn't that the Congress didn't get to determine the members - it's that they had no input on the mission.

What are we going to find out a year from now? Nothing particularly important. Why aren't we going to find out what we need to know? Well, Bush is going to impanel a commission on that very question that'll find out whether or not the intelligence community made Bush impanel this irrelevant commission, and those answers will be available in December.

He's Innocent, I Tell You!

There's a bit of celebration among the Left now that people close to Cheney are being fingered in the Plame Affair. Stop. This is the worst possible outcome. The last thing we want is for Cheney to become an election year liability, making a Bush/Guiliani ticket all the more likely. Any sort of ticket shake up will give Bush publicity, the media a new face to report on, a new person to interview, and time that they won't have to spend covering the Democrat. Cheney could take the blame before dropping out, shielding Bush from the brunt of the investigation's impact. This is bad.

Update: To answer some of the comments:

Let's not get out of control here. I certainly want whomever did this to be brought to justice. But if you were the Bush Administration and you knew this search had to turn up some bodies, who would you put into the line of fire? I'm not saying Libby didn't do it, but he might not have been the only one. The last thing we want to do is make his departure seem like the ultimate triumph, this issue needs to go beyond a sacrificial resignation. If Cheney's going to self-destruct, so be it. But it is not in our interest to help that along. When your oppnent is shooting themselves in the foot, the best thing to do is step back and watch. The worst thing to do is get involved. We need to keep the pressure on, but not get involved. This isn't our dream resolution and we don't want to hype it up as all we need or it's all we're going to get. Your dealing with an opaque presidential administration here, the likelihood of real justice is quite slim. It shocks me that those who think the Bush Administration regularly steals elections think they aren't going to try and manufacture a politically-controllable outcome to this. They will and the easiest way to keep it from the President is to put it on the vice-president.

And to those who think Bush can't survive without Cheney, please, don't begin believing your own mockery. Bush is a capable, if not extraordinary man who can live without one of his advisors. Rove will get a bigger role, someone new will come on, whatever. Rudy has been floated a number of times for that job, and it's a pairing that makes a heap of electoral sense. I know he's more moderate and less acceptable to the far-right than Bush. That doesn't really matter. Evangelicals have nowhere to go, not if they want to prevent gay marriage and fund faith-based charities. As long as Bush appearsw to support their initiatives, they'll be part of the coalition and they'll like it.

Bipartisanship

Looks like the President is readying the intelligence commission:

Bush/Cheney 2004: Or Else You'll Never Know.

Reduce Me Like You Mean It

Bush governance is the best kind of governance - doing something to say you did it without actually doing anything.

Bush is playing the most dangerous kind of election-year politics, attempting to address one of the base's problems by doing something which provides a rhetorical negation of the complaints he's receiving by taking a drastic and foolish measure that he's going to "fix" after he hopefully gets reelected. The presidency is full of these tricks, from various fiscal and monetary tricks released shortly before an election to dashing off do-nothing (or, worse yet, do-something) proposals that allow him to say he addressed a various issue with some random bit of legislation.

Rarely, however, are they this blatant or this pointless. Bush isn't actually proposing that anything be cut, restructured, streamlined, etc. He's proposing that we simply defer spending until the fiscal year after his hypothetical second term begins, at which point we'll have made the tax cuts permanent, and the deficits won't matter again until the presidential campaign rears its head starting in 2007, and more "deficit reduction" measures are needed for his Republican successor to be viable. It's the most cynical kind of "small government" conservatism possible.

He's Got More Handle Than Huffy

From the press gaggle with the President, live on CNN (paraphrased):

Q: Do you still think we'll find WMD?

A: Well, I'm going to tell you a bunch of stuff that doesn't relate to the question, and talk about "facts" a lot without referencing what they say. By the way, Saddam was a bad man, and so we had to take care of the threat that appears not to exist.

Q: What about the WMD and the intelligence relating to it?

A: I have no doubt Saddam was a grave and gathering threat. Granted, he was gathering up lice medicine, but still. Tell you what - I'm going to continually say this without proof SEPTEMBER 11TH! SHUT UP!

Evil Biology

When will Ashcroft comment about the Sword of Damnation (+4)?

Consider Me Convinced

This is encouraging:

Iceman

The next fiscal year budget is apparently going to include an election-year push to satisfy fiscal conservatives: a virtual spending freeze.

My thought is that one of two things will happen.

First, Bush will submit this budget, and the Congress will revolt against a lot of the proposals (understandable, since many folks can't take back what are essentially cuts in many programs to a lot of supporters), at which point he passes an amended budget which includes near-normal spending increases, and spends the rest of the year running for reelection on the platform that the Congress made him do it.

Second, Bush will submit this budget, and it will get passed. He'll press for permanent tax cuts on the idea that he's shown that he can be a responsible steward of spending. If he's reelected, he simply turns up the cash flow to eleven for the next FY budget, refunds everything he likes, and he has three years and permanent tax cuts to make up for it. If he's defeated, his Democratic challenger is left with passing a big "liberal" budget that provides a big juicy target for conservatives who will conveniently ignore every single complaint they ever had about Bush.

This is, of course, if he actually follows through on this and doesn't contend that he has an out through the nonsensical four-percent barrier he's thrown out in the past couple of SotU addresses.

Ribs

President Bush, unedited:

Nukular

Who cares if Bush prononunces it wrong? many words in our language are pronounced differently than they're spelled, and many are simply pronounced incorrectly by vast swathes of the country. Attacking Bush on that just makes people sound like elitists first, and nitpickers besides. Let it go, certainly between the deficit, the wars, the spending, the special interest giveaways and the bigotry we can think of better things to critique.

WMDRPA

I'm baaaaack...

I'll be back to full blogging strength soon, but I just wanted to say this: Bush was tremendously well-prepared to give a shitty, tone-deaf political declaration of arrogance on Tuesday, and he succeeded overwhelmingly. The keys were simple, and he was off. Like, raw cut of a Britney Spears album off-key.

There are a few hard notes that Bush has to hit from now until the election: justifying Iraq as a war that made America safer from actual threats, a commitment to revitalizing the economy and actually creating jobs on a serious timetable, and an agenda of soft, fuzzy, good-stuff initiatives that show his committment to getting rid of Bad Things like death, pain, and the tears of children.

Instead, we get Weapons of Mass Destruction-Related Program Activities, the Magically Booming Economy Single Quarter, and the bold "keeping gay people from gay people and athletes from steroids, because both are ultimately damaging to their God-ordained birthright of mass impregnation and backne-free living" initiative.

Tomorrow, I talk about the people I meet at parties and why it can be annoying to discuss politics with true believers, even if you're inclined to agree with them.

Live State of the Union Coverage

I'll be commenting on it live as I watch. Newer remarks will be at the top. Use the comments to give your own ideas or witty remarks. I will stop when I get bored. Let's kick some ass. We start under this disclaimer.
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Screw this, I'm done. Enjoy the SOTU.

He's going to send Congress a budget that does everything we want and only increases spending by 4 percent. It does this by selling our children to China for labor pruposes.

Now we're privatizing social security.

Bush wants the tax cuts to be permanent. Surprise surprise.

Jobs for the 21st century is now being proposed. This is a clearly Democratic program. It is larger government, more money for public education, and general progressivism wrapped up in a republican package. Sounds good, though.

Apparently No Child Left Behind is being undermined by defenders of the status quo and not, y'know, by those who won't fund it.

The economy is strong and growing stronger. Congress is wetting itself with excitement. He's touting the Child Tax Credit, y'know, the one that doesn't help most poor people.

We're now talking about God and the desire for freedom. What about thosr Russians who wish for a return to Communism? Those Muslims who think God implanted a desire for Shari'a?

I am zoning in and out. I think we just thanked El Salvador. Coalition of the willing indeed.

Had we not gone into Iraq we would have weakened the UN. Yeah, we'd never want to do that.

We're apparently not into giving evil dictators WMD's. Good for us. Whoops, now we're invoking 9/1 and Bush's sentimental recollection of a fallen officer's police shield.

I really screwed up by not having beer onhand for this. And deciding to cover it live. I'm a moron.

Apparently they're drafting an Iraqi Bill of Rights. Sounds good to me, though seems like a Democratic government that wants Islamic law could invalidate it quite easily.

Afghanistan is apparently all better. Good to hear.

Bush just demanded renewal of the PATRIOT Act. A year before it needs to be renewed. Rove clearly thinks this is a winning issue.

Heh. People just started clapping when he said "Key provisions [of the PATRIOT Act] are set to expire next year. Cute.

Wow, Bush is launching into a defense of the PATRIOT Act. I'm all for making this a campaign issue.

I hate how much clapping there is. "Useless platitude! Everybody up!"

The speech is good but really bad. Nice rhetoric, but this is all fear mongering. Short Bush: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Bush appears to have abducted a black child. Nope, he gave her back. That's compassionate conservatism.

"The President is getting ready to leave the holding room". Who's holding him? Alternately, well shouldn't someone stop him. Thanks folks, I'll be here all week.

Apparently Bush's 2003 State of the Union last 67 minutes. Shit.

Elliot Abrams is so evil looking. Like he'd eat your children.

People on CNN are talking. This is not a good start to the evening.

Decisions, Decisions...

The Philosoraptor writes:

Melting...Melting...

Lowest approval ratings of the Bush presidency, on the eve of perhaps his most important State of the Union address.

Quantitatively proving, once again, that George Bush is unelectable.

P.S. - A New York Times graph showing approval and disapproval in January of a reelection year:

Prediction

Predictions for the State of the Union address on Tuesday go here.

Personally?

1.) As President, Bush functions only for the American people, and not for his own political benefit.

2.) If this quote is not in the speech in some way, shape, or form, I will drink some beer: "Some have said the cost of freedom in Iraq was too high. I contend that the cost of tyranny was even higher."

3.) Jesus calls him to do something that's decidedly not in the Bible, such national missile defense, spending 1.5 billion dollars on marriage promotion, or letting Pepsi be the official sponsor of the 109th Congress.

4.) Some would say that the tax cuts have almost nothing to show for themselves in the overall economy. This next tax cut is for them, not for you - he's going to keep cutting taxes until these fiscally irresponsible douchebags admit that he is a golden god.

5.) He didn't mean that "golden god" remark.

Bad Writing Strikes Again

Michael Kinsley has a really strange criticism of Paul O'Neill - he includes self-congratulatory anecdotes in his book, and he can't make sense of O'Neill's signature quote (blind man, deaf people, you know the one), therefore, according to the graphic on the front page, his assertions are of dubious quality. Or something, I'm not really sure.

But Paul O'Neill is an idiot, Kinsley opines. Or something, I'm not really sure.

Lies And The Lying Goldbergs Who Don't Understand Them

Jonah Goldberg pretends not to know exactly what a lie is, the irony of which is enough to choke a horse.

Goldberg's dictionary appears to be on the fritz (or buried under a pile of those "3 for $1" books that NRO is trying to foist off on readers), because he has no idea what a lie actually is.

One may also lie if one speaks without regards for what the actual truth of a situation is. For instance, suppose that someone asks me how a GPS (Global Positioning System) works. I have no idea how it works. So I completely make up an explanation, without knowing whether or not what I'm saying in any way corresponds with reality.

By Jonah's definition, even though I fabricated an explanation without regard for the truth, I didn't actually lie, because I don't actually know how a GPS system works, therefore I can't *know* that the falsehood I'm telling isn't true. Or something like that. It's a "mistake".

It's a fairly common definition of "lie" that includes the creation of a false impression (i.e., that Iraq had active nuclear programs, that Iraq was a threat to its neighbors, that Iraq was involved in global terrorism), and that if you say something is true without knowing it's true...it's a lie!

Odd that Jonah's copying Sully on this stupidity.

Silly Science

The Bush Administration is proposing new regulations on scientific research which would demand that all research used be peer-reviewed by a White House directed process. However, I think their eyes are bigger than their stomach, so to speak. After all, they have perfectly good science that they're not using already, why do they need to go for new science?

This is, of course, nasty, duplicitous, dangerous, upsetting, and lots of other unpleasant adjectives. To know that new system:

Were You There When They Crucified My Bush?

Perhaps the most overlooked facet of George Bush's faith-based initiative is the racial aspect of it.

It's an interesting political play, if only because it seeks to negate a serious Bush weakness (black voters) by approaching it as a completely different issue (faith-based public services). I'm not entirely sure why he chose this issue, other than the perceived cultural conservatism of black voters.

I hate to be trite, but trying to appeal to black voters on cultural issues is moot when you ignore the overriding cultural/social/economic issue - race. Republicans try to court minority voters while at the same time divorcing their appeal from the nexus of race - you gather up all the black people you can find and then talk about tax cuts, ignoring the one common quality that led you to seek them out.

The faith-based programs have problems all their own, but it's really not a smart political play for Bush to head into minority communities and simply try to bypass the Republican problem with race by playing on a Constitutionally wonky and politically shaky idea like this.

O'Neill Went Postal

Cal Thomas, over at Townhall, writes:

On another note, Cal Thomas looks kind of like Saddam Hussein:

Creepy.

Be It Ever So Random

A preview of the State of the Union address and Bush's spending priorities:

There's a key phrase missing from that last line, which is, "than they might be". Bush is simply hoping on a wing and a prayer that decreasing government revenues and increasing government expenditures will eventually result in enough economic and tax-revenue growth to offset the deficits created by the activity. The most supply-side economics has been able to show for itself is that it doesn't fuck things up at a 1:1 ratio.

I'm also a fan of the "spending restraint" idea - don't cut spending, and don't legitimately plan for sustained revenues. Instead, propose arbitrary spending "suggestions" that are going to get ignored anyway. Following the ongoing evidence that revenue is not going to increase faster than or concurrent with expenditures under the Bush tax regime, the idea is to essentially mash the buttons on the Tax Cut Control Panel until they either find the tax cuts that spur growth, or the whole thing blows up.

Chickenscientist

Wes Clark has a pretty good quote about the Bush Administration's attitude towards science, which is a little bit like Mike Tyson's attitude towards sanity - fuck it:

Part of me wonders if this can't become a campaign issue, and the other part of me wonders exactly how funny it'll be to see Republicans defending Bush's consistent attitudes towards nonpartisan scientific reports, which is that no matter the outcome, whatever's good for Bush is what the study was actually focused on, to the exclusion of all other information.

Shorter Trip To Mars

At no additional cost to you, and no money down, you, yes, you, can go to Mars!

Now, I just need you to sign here...and here...and get rid of that global imaging satellite...and here...do you really need that beepy thing? Can I have it? Okay, and here...and here.

Thank you, that'll be it, and you'll have your trip to Mars within three decades. Oh, and there'snoglobalwarmingornonMartianresearchanymore...is that the door? Thanks, I'll show myself out. Lovely home you have here...

All My Money Are Belong To Bush

Okay, I took down this rant because I think I commented on something that John Derbyshire wasn't actually saying, which makes it pointless. Instead, let me comment on what I think he was talking about: Bush's plan to spend 1.5 billion dollars promoting marriage.

Please do. PLEASE promote this idea, and make the first part of 2004 about a costly boondoggle to force government into people's private lives.

I will also donate to the first Democratic candidate who says that the leading cause of marital strife is economic issues, so maybe that $1.5 billion would be better spent creating jobs than financing the right-wing view of the family.

Oh, You Dirty Bastards

Their report card may have all Fs, but at least they never skipped school.

Angry, Shoot-From-The-Hip Guy Shoots Off

Donald Rumsfeld says that he contacted Paul O'Neill when he heard that O'Neill was writing a 'sour grapes' book.

I only include this because it's fairly obvious that the Hackulous One, along with his realm of Those Who Actually Do The Work And The Thought, will hop on this as America's patron tough-daddy, Rumsfeld, has laid down the final word on this issue and made all the ladies quiver.

None of which has to do with the actual point, which is that Rumsfeld is lending his massive faux-integrity (which actually seems to boil down to how many crags you can see on his face each day) to the belittling of the book as the "sour grapes" of a disaffected former official without actually addressing anything he says.

Free Advice

When you're in the middle of spin control, and furiously trying to discredit the guy who just criticized the way you run your administration, don't admit that you did exactly what your critic is accusing you of.

Follow The Leader

Quick! Name any other policy that George Bush adopted from Bill Clinton!

O'Neil's Woes

The fight over O'Neils' new book is the most important story going on today. It's more important than the Iowa Caucuses, more important than Plame, more important than poll numbers. The base of the story is that an ex-Administration official attacked the White House in a new book and rather than deal with the charges (their rebuttals are very strange -- either O'Neil's disgruntled or they had other ideas about what to do with Iraq along with the invasion plan) the White House is going after him viciously.

Normally, that's all fine and expected, but here, they're opening a probe into something that, by any account, is minor and potentially nothing (notice that no news report will call the document classified, only say it may have been). No probe was launched on the Weekly Standard's Doug Feith after he got reports on Al-Quaeda and Iraq, the White House isn't aggressively pursuing the Plame leak, but they are prosecuting O'Neil all over the front pages. They've gone beyond painting their critics as merely angry, now they're trying to paint them as criminals.

This is a warning strike, a shot across the bow to warn those who might come after the Administration that attacks will not be tolerated and all possible means will be applied in fighting back. I remember when conservatives cried foul because Paula Jones received an audit, I remember when the newspapers insinuated that Clinton was bombing Iraq (or was it Sudan?) to take the focus off the Lewinsky scandal. This is the same situation and I'm still waiting for the outrage.

O'Neill - Not...Wrong

Man, is the O'Neill spinning fast and furious.

Power Line (you remember when they were attacked by al-Qaeda?) relays an e-mail from noted conspiracy theorist Laurie Mylroie. Instapundit is, well...himself. As pointed out below, John Fund says that he looked into Paul O'Neill's soul and saw that he was just old and tired, and Scott McClellan announces that the President doesn't deal with criticisms of thing he did, he just looks towards compounding the same mistakes he made previously.

Amen.

More and More

I've decided to take a break from the phrase "this needs more attention", because it's used so much that I can never give enough attention to the things that need more attention, let alone the stuff that I'm already paying enough attention to. Anyway, this is something that I'm waiting for conservative privacy advocates (particularly the NRA) to jump on.

No, really. Massive bureaucracy, mandatory background checks, and a federal database that tracks the air-related movements of every citizen of the United States. Makes me want to just pick up and tootle on down to the airport right now.

He Right, But A Jerk

Larry makes a good point, the Bush Administration is viciously assaulting Paul O'Neil's character and motives, but they've not said he's wrong yet. In fact, given the number of ferocity of the denials, that ommission is very suspicious...

Bush in 30 Seconds

Check out the finalists in MoveOn.Org's "Bush in 30 Seconds" contest. They're absolutely hilarious. Of particular notr are "Greatest Hits", "If the Bush Administration Was Your Roommate", "Al Keyda", "Brother Can You Spare a Job", "What I've Been up To" and "School Yard Politics". The professionalism and insight of the videos is just through the roof, so go check them out.

Whiny

Bush comes off as such a whiny little child in this story from last Summer. The leader of the free world needs to be coaxed into meeting Germany's Chancellor? What type of shit is that?

Imposter Progressives

This is my latest column focusing on the Republican's liberal rhetoric. You know you want to read it...

Imposter Progressives

Progressives have seen better days. The 40-odd years of Democrats controlling the House of Reps, which ended in 1994 ; the 8 years of Clinton outfoxing and sidestepping his tormentors, eventually detonating Newt Gingrich’s career in a virtuoso political performance; FDR. Good times. These days are not as fun. Republicans control the Presidency, the Senate, the House, the Courts, the California governorship, parts of Jupiter, and, if you listen to Pat Robertson (which I highly suggest you do not do), God.

But you’ve all seen this movie, it is only once Baron Von Killpuppy has world domination in his grasp that Bond actually gets close enough to foil his plans, destroy his organization, and let loose with a barrage of witty remarks. Enter the Bush Administration. For a radical right wing group with an incoherent governing philosophy, incompetent policy-making, and an inarticulate spokesman, they do pretty damn well. Why they do so well has long been a secret, but I’m here to blow the doors off it for you. They do so well they’re a bunch of progressives.

“But Ezra, Bush cuts down trees! He snorts oil and eats Iraqi children and wears fur and comes from Texas! How can you say he’s a progressive!?” Put your dreds back in your beanie, I’m not seriously suggesting Bush is liberal, but I am straight up telling you that he puts on his best liberal face whenever the American people might be watching. Lets go through the Bush record, and compare it to Republican orthodoxy.

The Environment – Bush is responsible for the Clean Air act and the Healthy Forests initiative. He mandated a 1.5 mpg increase for the auto industry to complete over the next couple of years. Forget for a moment that the Clean Air act rolled back environmental protections, the Healthy Forests initiative is a giveaway to the logging industry, and the fuel standards were a reluctant compromise because the Senate was going to force a stricter standard down Bush’s throat. If you just scan the headlines, Bush looks like a fucking Green! Neither the Republican Party nor the Bush Administration actually wants to save the whales, but they are being forced to pretend that they do. Chew on that while we move on to:

Entitlement Programs – The bane of every conservative, programs like Medicare and Social Security are the ultimate example of the Government overstepping its bounds and skipping down that slippery slope to Communism. The Right hates these programs, and has wanted to do away with them for quite awhile. So what does Bush do? Starts out trying to privatize Social Security by saying he wasn’t going to privatize it and he just wanted to protect and strengthen it, then goes ahead and gives Medicare its largest expansion in decades through a huge prescription drug benefit with a limited privatization test affecting only certain cities (that doesn’t happen till 2010!) that will, in all likelihood, never take place at all. In fact, it’s so bad that both the Right and the Left have disowned the bill, the Left says it’s not liberal enough, the Right says it’s an affront to all they hold dear. True.

Education – Screw Charter Schools, let’s put forth a huge bill to help public schools (No Child Left Behind) and not fund its mandates like we promised (No School Board Left Standing). The Right is not pleased. The Left is not pleased. George is warily eyeing the pretzels.

War – What is it good for? Not protecting US interests. Instead, if you listen to the words slowly and haltingly escaping the President’s teleprompter, you’ll hear of some pretty incredible humanitarian interventions we’re trying to do. Screw WMD’s or why we actually went to war, Saddam had rape rooms. Rape rooms! For those of you who remember the Kosovo intervention, the GOP did not support using American force to achieve humanitarian goals. Bush must have changed their minds. Or something.

Terrorism – Y’know that Department of Homeland Security thing? Yeah, Democratic idea that Bush fought for seven months and eventually took on as his own, eliminating labor protections so Democrats resisted it and Bush could use it as a club in the elections. Add another Cabinet-level position, that’s how to restrict the scope of government.

So you know Bush isn’t a very good liberal and you know he isn’t a very good Republican. In fact, he’s a bad Republican pretending to be a liberal for the cameras. So what does that mean? Well, since he has the full support of his party on all his initiatives it means that the Republicans have ceded the ground on virtually every important issue that the US Government deals with. Let that sink in for a moment. Republicans are getting elected by promising to protect the environment, strengthen entitlement programs, conduct humanitarian interventions, back Democratic security initiatives, and support public schools. They are getting elected by pretending to be Democrats, albeit Democrats who wear cowboy boots. They have nothing left.

Sure, they can drag their feet and do bad jobs of making liberal bills, but they have lost all the arguments. Once a Democrat gets into the Presidency the public is not only used to, but thinks there’s a bipartisan consensus on, environmental protection, entitlement programs, and pretty much everything else liberals want to do. That clears the way for an exceedingly powerful and unexpectedly sweeping progressive agenda once a Democrat gets into office. And Republican intransigence on these issues could very well lead to an electoral route, as the public punishes Congressional Republicans for blocking the nationally agreed upon agenda. The election strategy the Republicans are using is leaving them a hollowed out shell, supporting the other side’s agenda and losing on all the guns they stick to (the public doesn’t support tax cuts that bust the budget, drilling in Alaska, or unilateralism abroad; remember, tolerance is different than support). So mourn our forests, stamp your foot at pollution, but don’t fret too much – the Republicans are sitting atop a house of cards and the wind is beginning to blow.

I Have Been Commissioned Into The Brigade Of The Obvious

DUH.

Of course, everyone knows this is a super-duper secret investigation into Joe Wilson buying a "I Left My Heart And My Secret Uranium Shipments In Niger" shirt with government money, a penalty that could carry with it up to a $14.95 penalty from the Department of Fashion.

So Accurate

Here's a logical disconnect: the factually accurate statement in the State of the Union address about the uranium from Iraq is the "fault" of the SotU fact checkers.

Scott McClellan, on Monday: "We fully admit that the error we didn't make was the result of a poor fact checking process, and so promise in the future to vet all future Presidential statements for full and precise accuracy, even though there was nothing wrong with what I said. And there are people who think I'm a sexual dynamo. Seriously, folks...technically accurate!"

Airbrushing

Other things the Bush Administration will sweep from history through the awesome power of the InterWeb:

- The "Axis of Evil" bit from Bush's State of the Union address now includes the New York Times.

- The "No Child Left Behind Act" will now be the Ebags.com No Child Left Behind Act.

- The Secretary of the Treasury before John Snow was the "Million Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase.

- Bill Clinton's addresses from 1997-2000 all now end with the phrase "I likes tig ol' bitties."

Poll Numbers - Bad News For Bush

Now this is interesting. ABC/Washington Post took a poll today, after Saddam's capture, asking respondents to rate the President's performance. Keep in mind that this is directly after the capture, when his bounce should be highest.

General approval went up 4 points from the last poll week (the poll is biweekly) to 57%, matching the approval from two weeks ago of 57%. It is well within the general range that Bush has been in. That basically means that this did little to nothing for Bush's approval ratings, which is a terrible blow to the president. It also demonstrates that the nation is divided right at that 57% line, after that, you get people who just won't like the President. That's mere conjecture, but there you have it.

Approval of his job in Iraq jumped 10 points, to 58%. Opinions on the War on Terror (going very well, well, not well, very not well) only moved up 3%, to 65%. People clearly don't see this as very important.

Those who see the war as worth fighting moved up 1 point, to 53% (That's really, really important). 90% think big challenges in Iraq lay ahead and people favor a UN Tribunal versus an Iraqi trial 52% to 39% (UN irrelevant my ass).

Saddam didn't make Bush invincible, in fact, it barely did anything for him at all. People seem quite locked in their opinions, tired of the war over there, and resistant to being swayed by every piece of good news. Contrast that with a couple months ago, when all good things that happened through Bush back into stratospheric levels, and the bad barely hurt him. I don't care what the Right says, 2004 is wide-fucking-open.

Update: I forgot to mention that 95% of poll respondents were aware of Hussein's capture.

Deficit Dreamin'

President Bush's next budget proposal will be aimed at halving the deficit in 5 years. They've got a few tools in their utility belt (including the Busharang and Cheney's Grappling Hook of malevolence) but the first, and potentially most powerful, is Bush's "determined gaze", complete with chin wrinkling:

After that, they're going to do some economic stuff to try and salvage things. I'll let them explain:

This is a blatantly political move, something that the article admits in its first paragraph:

And to add one last thing, Bush here is talking about merely halving the deficit caused by his spending. Clinton eliminated the deficit and turned it into a surplus. And we all had jobs, as well. If Democrats lets Bush win on this record, its our own damn fault.

Honest To A Drunk-Ass Fault

David Brooks says that the Bush Administration is drunk on honesty.

"Honesty" is apparently Brooksian for "doing what I want". He keeps saying Bush is honest...yet his proof is that Bush did stuff that Brooks liked, not that anyone else lied about what they did.

Republicans: not understanding the meanings of words since Lincoln died.

They Lift And Separate

The Bush team defended its policy on awarding Iraq contracts by deciding the following:

To an extent, I understand. Playing the Diplomatic Massage game (Home Version) you have to communicate to your allies that there is a benefit in supporting Bush's plans. But that "political supporters" line is a wee bit sketchy.

What I also wonder, and what is potentially a more important story, is how we're treating Iraqi contractors. If we leave out nations that didn't support this invasion and occupation from the contracts, we're at the very least not directly threatening the sanctity of the Iraqi enterprise (in that those contracts will at the very least go filled). However, if the reconstruction is seen as the playground for other nations to come in and make money without enriching the Iraqis, there's going to be a hotbed of resentment, to put it lightly.

We've already heard numerous tales of the mismanagement of Iraq, and wasting money on the too-expensive methods of "political supporters" rather than doing what's best for Iraq. How do you think it makes an Iraqi entrepreneur, potentially one of the futures of Iraq's economy, to look at Halliburton or Brown & Root wasting millions of dollars repairing something that his or her company could do for far cheaper, and then to realize that this is going to be how things are for the foreseeable future?

And how do you feel, now that our tax dollars are being alloted on the basis of a carrot-and-stick reward system rather than efficiency and cost?

Red Cheeked And Downy-Haired

You know, it's gotta be embarassing to be a part of a party and administration so entirely driven by ideological purity that it makes doing your job not only difficult, but downright shameful.

I can't help but think that modern Republican policy is driven totally by the deus ex machina of American valor. Everything we do is right, even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff. It's like the Bible, except with no-bid contracts.

Questions So Hard Ted Koppel Won't Ask Them

What happens when an administration, beset by other world crises (one of its own making) is faced with a choice between the hard road towards the goal they say they want to promote all over the world and the harsh reality that traveling that road will result in a conflict that it simply can't handle.

They give up the ghost, that's what.

The reality of the Bush Doctrine is coming to light - it's nice and fine to say that we'll expend American lives and fortunes in a "fight for our very survival" when that isn't actually at stake. When push comes to shove, neoconservative fantasy meets with liberal reality - we have a limited number of resources, many of which are being used in the Iraqi theater, to bring, promote, or reinforce democracy around the world. Because the first item on the neocon wishlist was granted (Iraq as a precursor war to the series of client wars that are supposed to democratize the region, by hook or by crook), our ability to effectively provide military force anywhere else in the world is diminished. Any subsequent Excellent Adventure is hampered by the fact that we don't have an infinite army.

Once again, the appeasement charge.

How do Kristol, Kagan and Schmitt (LLC?) propose that we fight a war with mainland China at half-strength (or less)? Land? Air? Naval? Nuclear? And how do they propose restoring stability to East Asia when the largest army in the region has declared war on a state they believe is theirs and the country that is supporting them? China is not Iraq. Even though China would be in the wrong, it doesn't make fighting what would likely be the bloodiest and costliest war since World War II necessary if it is preventable in the short-term.

Bush's decision was, sadly, the best of a horrible hand that he played himself into. Regardless of the implications for democracy in Taiwan, the implications for democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Korea, Iran, Israel, Palestine, and any number of other areas around the world must far outweigh them. The current pseudo-sanctity of the Taiwanese state must remain acceptable for the time being, particularly when the cost of the next Taiwanese step at the present moment would involve a war that we aren't prepared to fight, and we most certainly aren't prepared to lose.

Bush's Whitehall rhetoric was a promise that any serious observer knew we couldn't keep unless we kept fighting ragtag states like Iraq and Afghanistan, and our expeditions to those states also wrapped up rather quickly and cleanly. The grandiosity of the Bush Promise is incompatible with the scope of the Bush Reality - and the latter is always going to win out.