Larry Craig: "It Ain't Easy Bein' Hypocritical"

Oops. What IS it with the "moral" and "family value" Republicans who can't keep their zippers up at the same time they insist anyone else engaging in much less heinous behavior deserve to be struck dead by God AND the American system? There is absolutely nothing wrong with being homosexual and by no means is homosexual synonymous with pedophile (most of whom are heterosexual, btw) - unless, of course, you're a gay who insists that other gays deserve to be stoned - but am I the only one who wonders if Craig may have pulled this on one or more unsuspecting males below the age of consent?

From the Buzzflash team:

Well, it looks like Larry "I am Not Gay" Craig -- who has remained a senator despite his initial promise to resign as of September 30 -- has been caught by Idaho's most influential paper, the Idaho Statesman, and left without a stall to stand on, so to speak.

In a December 2nd article, accompanied by graphic audio accounts of gay sexual encounters with Craig, the Idaho Statesman (owned by McClatchy Newspapers) provides the names and stories of four men who appear to undercut Senator Craig's claims that what happened in a Minnesota washroom was due to him being a victim of "profiling."

We're not familiar with older, tall white guys from Idaho being "profiled" a whole lot, and apparently the long-standing rumors about Craig are once again being confirmed. Craig has shunned and ridiculed the Idaho Statesman since it first began exploring Craig's hypocrisy on his sexual preferences (he has been a big anti-gay stalwart). But the newspaper has kept on the beat, so to speak, and documents its article about the post-Minneapolis revelations about Senator Craig with graphic audio clips.

One Thing NOT To Be Thankful For This Week

Karl Rove's new "fair and balanced" column for Newsweek has debuted. Newsweek actually has the nerve to claim it gives balance to political issues. And - wonder of wonders - his first topic is "how to beat Hillary Clinton next November."

Excuse me?

Not even still-Bush-supporting Republicans can possibly believe that line of bull.

Fred Thompson: If Smug, Self Righteous, Sneering, Blimp-Sized Ego Can Win A Presidency, Say Hello to Fred-In-Chief

Did you know that former Tennessee senator and now a former Law & Order cast member (he played Branch, the latest lead D.A. whose character seemed to parallel Thompson's inflated sense of self-worth), not only wants Scooter Libby pardoned for his key role in PlameGate**?

No, Fred's such a pal he helped lead fundraising for the Libby defense fund so that Libby, formerly Cheney's #2 man, already a millionaire many times over, would not have to spend a cent of his own money (considerable fortune) defending the charges.

Apparently Thompson sees nothing improper about loudly defending a man convicted of a quite-near-treasonous act. You can read more about Thompson and Libby here.

[PlameGate refers to the deliberate outing of CIA covert operative Valerie Plame as "payback" because Joe Wilson, her husband, not only found that the documents proclaiming Iraq bought nuclear equipment like tubes were faked, he told the press what he had already told Bush and Cheney. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted of and sentenced for his role in the matter while Bush and Cheney walked.]

Republican Leaders: Pray For Another Terrorist Attack On U.S. So We Can Win

I noticed some people - including at least a few Republicans I spoke with - were quite taken aback when the head of the Arkansas state GOP said the other day that (to paraphrase):

What we need in America is another September 11th, another horrific terrorist attack
on our home soil, because that is what the GOP needs to win all the seats it wants
in the 2008 presidential election.

Excuse me? Really? We need another 9-11-01?

Unbelievably, this Arkansas ass is hardly the first rightwinger to state something like this. There are an endless number of examples, almost all of which come from the far red right.

For example, Newt Gingrich (who remains an undeclared contender for the GOP race for President) said last summer that America needed to do whatever it could to help Israel turn the war they were waging on Lebanon (one often called a proxy war fought by Israel for America to put the fear of God into other Arab/Muslim heavy countries like Iran and Syria.

Specifically, Gingrich said (and I am not engaging in hyperbole) that it was in the very BEST interests of the GOP to help Israel morph the Lebanon situation into World War III SINCE Americans would flock to embrace Bush's war-as-the-answer-to-everything doctine as they did after 9-11. He said this publicly and repeatedly. Virtually none of the press called him on that, or demanded to know why taxpayer money and U.S. soldiers' lives were completely and utterly expendable so long as Republicans not only retained power, but they also got MORE power.

Frank Rich: "Operation Freedom From Iraqis"

As Rich wisely pointed out in his Sunday (May 27th) column, everyone rushes now to blame the Iraqi citizens for a war they did NOT invite us to wage, for which neocon lies were fabricated to provide the excuse. This is another must-read.

When all else fails, those pious Americans who conceived and directed the Iraq war fall back on moral self-congratulation: at least we brought liberty and democracy to an oppressed people. But that last-ditch rationalization has now become America’s sorriest self-delusion in this tragedy.

However wholeheartedly we disposed of their horrific dictator, the Iraqis were always pawns on the geopolitical chessboard rather than actual people in the administration’s reckless bet to “transform” the Middle East. From “Stuff happens!” on, nearly every aspect of Washington policy in Iraq exuded contempt for the beneficiaries of our supposed munificence. Now this animus is completely out of the closet. Without Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to kick around anymore, the war’s dead-enders are pinning the fiasco on the Iraqis themselves. Our government abhors them almost as much as the Lou Dobbs spear carriers loathe those swarming “aliens” from Mexico.

Iraqis are clamoring to get out of Iraq. Two million have fled so far and nearly two million more have been displaced within the country. (That’s a total of some 15 percent of the population.) Save the Children reported this month that Iraq’s child-survival rate is falling faster than any other nation’s. One Iraqi in eight is killed by illness or violence by the age of 5. Yet for all the words President Bush has lavished on Darfur and AIDS in Africa, there has been a deadly silence from him about what’s happening in the country he gave “God’s gift of freedom.”

It’s easy to see why. To admit that Iraqis are voting with their feet is to concede that American policy is in ruins. A “secure” Iraq is a mirage, and, worse, those who can afford to leave are the very professionals who might have helped build one. Thus the president says nothing about Iraq’s humanitarian crisis, the worst in the Middle East since 1948, much as he tried to hide the American death toll in Iraq by keeping the troops’ coffins off-camera and staying away from military funerals.

But his silence about Iraq’s mass exodus is not merely another instance of deceptive White House P.R.; it’s part of a policy with a huge human cost. The easiest way to keep the Iraqi plight out of sight, after all, is to prevent Iraqis from coming to America. And so we do, except for stray Shiites needed to remind us of purple fingers at State of the Union time or to frame the president in Rose Garden photo ops.

Since the 2003 invasion, America has given only 466 Iraqis asylum. Sweden, which was not in the coalition of the willing, plans to admit 25,000 Iraqis this year alone. Our State Department, goaded by January hearings conducted by Ted Kennedy, says it will raise the number for this year to 7,000 (a figure that, small as it is, may be more administration propaganda). A bill passed by Congress this month will add another piddling 500, all interpreters.

In reality, more than 5,000 interpreters worked for the Americans. So did tens of thousands of drivers and security guards who also, in Senator Kennedy’s phrase, have “an assassin’s bull’s-eye on their backs” because they served the occupying government and its contractors over the past four-plus years. How we feel about these Iraqis was made naked by one of the administration’s most fervent hawks, the former United Nations ambassador John Bolton, speaking to The Times Magazine this month. He claimed that the Iraqi refugee problem had “absolutely nothing to do” with Saddam’s overthrow: “Our obligation was to give them new institutions and provide security. We have fulfilled that obligation. I don’t think we have an obligation to compensate for the hardships of war.”

Cold, calculating, cowardly bastards this Washington lot. Read the rest of Rich here.

Leo Iacocca: President Gets Free Pass To Ignore Constitution

I dunno... I don't picture someone who headed one of the country's bigger auto manufacturers as much of a liberal lefty lotus eater. Do you? But I'm sure the rightwing does... at least now.

This headline from Buzzflash about the piece here says it all:

An outraged Lee Iacocca spells out Bush's personal shortcomings: Curiosity, Creativity, Communication skills, Character, Courage, Conviction, Charisma, Competence, Common Sense, and Crisis response skills. That's a good list, Lee, but what about the other 25 letters of the alphabet?

This discusses former auto czar Lee Iacocca's book, "Where Have All The Leaders Gone?"

My favorite quote? This:

You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged.

[Note: I passed outrage six years and six months ago.]

Would Everyone Who Is NOT Corrupt, Please Disqualify Yourselves?"

OK, I don't believe for a minute that every Republican or even every Republican politician is corrupt or in favor of corruption. So why is it that in Bush and Karl Rove's GOP America, only corrupt Republican politicians stand a chance of succeeding?

From Talking Points Memo:

lWhen it comes to the GOP's culture of corruption, even the loyal GOP base has a breaking point.

When Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) was forced to give up his seat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee due to an acute case of Abramoff-itis, the GOP leadership had a chance to set things right by replacing him with a respected lawmaker of unimpeachable integrity. Instead the leadership tapped Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), who was himself recently named one of Congress' most corrupt lawmakers.

Calvert, of course, is the subject on an ongoing FBI probe of his own. As CREW's Melanie Sloan asked, "Why would the minority choose to replace one member under federal investigation with another member also under federal investigation?"
Some conservatives are starting to ask the same question. RedState, one of the leading far-right blogs, ran an item yesterday under the headline, "An Open Declaration of War Against The House Republican Leadership." RedState recounts Calvert's many alleged misdeeds, concluding that the "House Republican Leadership just does not get it." A variety of conservative blogs endorsed the challenge.

Paul Krugman: "Way Off Base"

Belatedly, here's Krugman's April 16th Op/Ed from The New York Times (read the entire thing at Casa Rozius):

Normally, politicians face a difficult tradeoff between taking positions that satisfy their party’s base and appealing to the broader public. You can see that happening right now to the Republicans: to have a chance of winning the party’s nomination, Republican presidential hopefuls have to take far-right positions on Iraq and social issues that will cost them a lot of votes in the general election.

But a funny thing has happened on the Democratic side: the party’s base seems to be more in touch with the mood of the country than many of the party’s leaders. And the result is peculiar: on key issues, reluctant Democratic politicians are being dragged by their base into taking highly popular positions.

Iraq is the most dramatic example. Strange as it may seem, Democratic strategists were initially reluctant to make Iraq a central issue in the midterm election. Even after their stunning victory, which demonstrated that the G.O.P.’s smear-and-fear tactics have stopped working, they were afraid that any attempt to rein in the Bush administration’s expansion of the war would be successfully portrayed as a betrayal of the troops and/or a treasonous undermining of the commander in chief.

Beltway insiders, who still don’t seem to realize how overwhelmingly the public has turned against President Bush, fed that fear. For example, as Democrats began, nervously, to confront the administration over Iraq war funding, David Broder declared that Mr. Bush was “poised for a political comeback.”

It took an angry base to push the Democrats into taking a tough line in the midterm election. And it took further prodding from that base — which was infuriated when Barack Obama seemed to say that he would support a funding bill without a timeline — to push them into confronting Mr. Bush over war funding. (Mr. Obama says that he didn’t mean to suggest that the president be given “carte blanche.”)

But the public hates this war, no longer has any trust in Mr. Bush’s leadership and doesn’t believe anything the administration says. Iraq was a big factor in the Democrats’ midterm victory. And far from being a risky political move, the confrontation over funding has overwhelming popular support: according to a new CBS News poll, only 29 percent of voters believe Congress should allow war funding without a time limit, while 67 percent either want to cut off funding or impose a time limit.

Health care is another example of the base being more in touch with what the country wants than the politicians. Except for John Edwards, who has explicitly called for a universal health insurance system financed with a rollback of high-income tax cuts, most leading Democratic politicians, still intimidated by the failure of the Clinton health care plan, have been cautious and cagey about presenting plans to cover the uninsured.

But the Democratic presidential candidates — Mr. Obama in particular — have been facing a lot of pressure from the base to get specific about what they’re proposing. And the base is doing them a favor.

The fact is that a long time has passed since the defeat of the Clinton plan, and the public is now demanding that something be done. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed overwhelming support for a government guarantee of health insurance for all, even if that guarantee required higher taxes. Even self-identified Republicans were almost evenly split on the question!

Read the rest!

Paul Krugman: "Distract and Disenfranchise"

Rozius brings us Monday's missive from Professor Krugman; read it all here or accept my big snip-snip-snip:

I have a theory about the Bush administration abuses of power that are now, finally, coming to light. Ultimately, I believe, they were driven by rising income inequality.

Let me explain.

In 1980, when Ronald Reagan won the White House, conservative ideas appealed to many, even most, Americans. At the time, we were truly a middle-class nation. To white voters, at least, the vast inequalities and social injustices of the past, which were what originally gave liberalism its appeal, seemed like ancient history. It was easy, in that nation, to convince many voters that Big Government was their enemy, that they were being taxed to provide social programs for other people.

Since then, however, we have once again become a deeply unequal society. Median income has risen only 17 percent since 1980, while the income of the richest 0.1 percent of the population has quadrupled. The gap between the rich and the middle class is as wide now as it was in the 1920s, when the political coalition that would eventually become the New Deal was taking shape.

And voters realize that society has changed. They may not pore over income distribution tables, but they do know that today’s rich are building themselves mansions bigger than those of the robber barons. They may not read labor statistics, but they know that wages aren’t going anywhere: according to the Pew Research Center, 59 percent of workers believe that it’s harder to earn a decent living today than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

You know that perceptions of rising inequality have become a political issue when even President Bush admits, as he did in January, that “some of our citizens worry about the fact that our dynamic economy is leaving working people behind.”

But today’s Republicans can’t respond in any meaningful way to rising inequality, because their activists won’t let them. You could see the dilemma just this past Friday and Saturday, when almost all the G.O.P. presidential hopefuls traveled to Palm Beach to make obeisance to the Club for Growth, a supply-side pressure group dedicated to tax cuts and privatization.

The Republican Party’s adherence to an outdated ideology leaves it with big problems. It can’t offer domestic policies that respond to the public’s real needs. So how can it win elections?

The answer, for a while, was a combination of distraction and disenfranchisement.

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 were themselves a massive, providential distraction; until then the public, realizing that Mr. Bush wasn’t the moderate he played in the 2000 election, was growing increasingly unhappy with his administration. And they offered many opportunities for further distractions. Rather than debating Democrats on the issues, the G.O.P. could denounce them as soft on terror. And do you remember the terror alert, based on old and questionable information, that was declared right after the 2004 Democratic National Convention?

But distraction can only go so far. So the other tool was disenfranchisement: finding ways to keep poor people, who tend to vote for the party that might actually do something about inequality, out of the voting booth.

Remember that disenfranchisement in the form of the 2000 Florida “felon purge,” which struck many legitimate voters from the rolls, put Mr. Bush in the White House in the first place. And disenfranchisement seems to be what much of the politicization of the Justice Department was about.

Several of the fired U.S. attorneys were under pressure to pursue allegations of voter fraud — a phrase that has become almost synonymous with “voting while black.” Former staff members of the Justice Department’s civil rights division say that they were repeatedly overruled when they objected to Republican actions, ranging from Georgia’s voter ID law to Tom DeLay’s Texas redistricting, that they believed would effectively disenfranchise African-American voters.

The rest is here.

Rudy Giuliani Clarifies His Promises If Elected As President

While some Americans were appalled at the news tendered up this week from GOP Presidential hopeful in 2008, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, where he announced his wife would be allowed to sit in on all major policy meetings, Prudy Rudy expanded on his post election win plans:

• Giuliani's third wife, Judy Nathan, will not ONLY sit in on policy meetings, she will lead an effort to turn all women into submissive spouses willing to do anything for their men in power (Rudy states this is most necessary because he needs Nathan to be busy so she won't notice when he starts letting his new mistress follow him around to all public appearances as she did when Ms. Nathan was the floozy following him about Manhattan like an ardent cocker spaniel while he was still married to Donna Hanover)
• Giuliani will appoint his former top cop, Bernard Kerik, to be the Minister of Truth; instead of feeling like Kerik, in light of many lies and corruption and kickbacks and evidence that Kerik like Rudy himself has strong ties to organized crime (what we used to call "the mob" or "mafia", Rudy thinks this actually makes Kerik a stronger candidate
• Any attempts by the Vatican to punish Rudy for his multiple marriages and menages a trois will be met by Rudy sending the Pope to Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) as an enemy combatant
• If his children continue to refuse to campaign for Rudy, Giuliani will simply draft them and send one to Afghanistan and the other to Iraq

The Injustice of a U.S. Attorney General Who Cannot Tell The Truth, Any Truth

Former Bush Administration U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, a man with no qualifications for the job but his prissy self-righteousness (something the Bushies prefer to actual good, honest, and competent people, quite obviously) seems so atrocious for his title that it was hard to imagine a worse human being to lead the Justice Department. Yet, somehow, Bush found worse to replace Ashcroft: his buddy, a man who has never tried or prosecuted a single case as lawyer, the disgraceful, imcompetent, and perjuring Alberto Gonzales.

Responding to Congressional testimony yesterday by a former senior aide, Gonzales met the statements with yet more perjurous lies to Congress today regarding the Karl Rove-Bush Administration purging of federal prosecutors who would not act solely as partisan water carriers for the Bush-led GOP.

Today, there is this Times editorial on the matter of Kyle Sampson's testimony:

It is no wonder that the White House is trying to stop Congress from questioning Mr. Rove, Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, and other top officials in public, under oath and with a transcript. The more the administration tries to spin the prosecutor purge, the worse it looks.

Conservative Or Not, It's Hard To Be Compassionate For Alberto Gonzales

Last week, with more and more people calling for U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales - a man who has never worked FOR anyone BUT George W. Bush (and certainly, despite that we pay him, he absolutley DOES NOT work on behalf of the American people as he should) - Bush got outright nasty with anyone who might question Gonzales and the White House officials behind the purging of at least eight federal prosecutors known as AttorneyGate or GonzalesGate.

At the same time, the doesn't-seem-too-bright Gonzales first insisted he was "staying to protect the children" (what children?) and then, using our tax dollars, went off on a public relations whirlwind tour of the country trying to find supporters who did not want him to be Going-Going-Going-Gone-zales. Apparently, he's been having a harder time finding people who want him to stay on the job.

For example, Steve posting at one of my fave blogs, The Carpetbagger Report, notes that conservative bloggers have largely given up on Bush's "token Hispanic".

If you happened to catch "Saturday Night Live" Saturday night, you saw an all-too-realistic skit with Bush and Gonzales (played, I believe, by Jason Sudeikis and Fred Armisen, respectively), where Bush kept saying, "If I found any truth to what's being said about Al, I'd fire Gonzales myself" with Gonzales disappearing from the president's side every time his guilt cropped up.

While I do believe Gonzales can and should resign, I think it is more appropriate for him to be dismissed and then a thorough investigation of him, Bush, Cheney, and the others commended. I still say Treason charges are more appropriate than impeachment.

Too Much GonzalesGate?

JurassicPork of Welcome to Pottersville raises a good point in a post entitled, "Stonewall Jackass Rides Again": why is it the story of the purging of U.S. Attorneys (federal prosecutors) is getting all the media attention when there are so many different scandals, scofflaws, and scary stuff that never sees the light of day?

As I've posted here and at All Things Democrat, I do feel like the GonzalesGate story is a big deal within context. It is NOT, however, an isolated scandal with the GOP which has been about little more than blind ambition, unchecked power and abuse of that power, as well as partisan palaver.

Yet I do see JP's point of view (we Yankees have to stick together).

I will also say that I grow weary of the media only being able to handle one story at a time (and then, none too thoroughly), often leaving out any context of wrong-doing throughout.