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Back in the pool after a break!
OF WHORES.
As if Gonzales weren't embarrassment enough to the Bush administration, AP brings us news ("Bush Official Linked to Call-Girl Probe") that Randall Tobias, acting administrator of the Agency for International Development, resigned abruptly 'for personal reasons' one day after he was interviewed by ABC News for a program on the so-called 'DC Madam' to be aired May 4. If you think it's ironic that his agency has a mission to reduce prostitution in the developing world, keep in mind that ABC's May 4 air date comes during 'sweeps' -- the period when audiences are measured to set the rates for lucrative advertising contracts. More viewers = higher ad rates. Who do you think is more whorish in this story?
AND WARS.
Retired Army Gen. William Odom is reported in the Houston Chronicle ("Retired general: Bush should sign Iraq bill") as saying Bush should sign the funding bill Congress has sent up to him.
"The challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is how to recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the first place," [Odom] said. "The president has let (the Iraq war) proceed on automatic pilot, making no corrections in the face of accumulating evidence that his strategy is failing and cannot be rescued. He lets the United States fly further and further into trouble, squandering its influence, money and blood, facilitating the gains of our enemies."
A State Department report due out this week ("Terror attacks up nearly 30%, report says") will show a growth in worldwide terror attacks to more than 14,000, almost all due to growing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan. And who do we have to thank for that? Word is that Condi had considered delaying the report but wiser heads prevailed.
If you missed Bill Moyers' 'Buying the War' broadcast last Sunday on PBS, it's now online. Streaming video is HERE and a full transcript is HERE. It details how the Administration sold the mainstream media a bill of goods. The only heroes are the McClatchy (Knight-Ridder) wire services reporters.
OF SPIES.
George Tenet, disgraced former CIA director is trying to get his revenge. His new book "At the Center of the Storm" takes aim at Cheney et al for the embarrassment he has suffered over being dubbed the 'slam dunk' boy. Specifically, as Jason Leopold and Matt Renner point out ("Tenet Book Blames White House for '16 Words'"), he is determined to pin the falsehoods in Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech on his tormenters. This part we have NOT heard before, so you will want to check it out. But Tenet's peers are not prepared to let him off the hook. Ray McGovern, former chair of National Intelligence Estimates (in charge of preparing the President's daily briefs) and 27-year veteran of the CIA blasts him in an article ( "Poor George Tenet; He Still Doesn't Get It") at Truthout. Along with five other former intelligence officers, he has also written an open letter to Tenet ("Letter to George Tenet") which will no doubt be turning up on OpEd pages across the country over the next few days. You saw it here first.
AND LIES.
News of the Army's misleading the Tillman family and the public has gradually seeped into the mainstream media, but with Rep. Waxman's request for documents from the White House and the Pentagon ("Panel Requests Tillman Documents"), we are sure to learn more that will embarrass the White House -- and Bush personally, since it appears he was made aware of the truth of the matter before his televised comments on Pat Tillman's death. The Tillman family has charged the Administration with a coverup of the affair.
DOGGIE DIAMONDS**
...VOTER DISENFRANCHISEMENT. Greg Palast, an American who reports for the BBC takes a swipe in the Los Angeles Times at the US media for losing the will to dig deeply for news. He cites two cases of stories he broke that were ignored by the mainstream media when they originally surfaced -- both involving voter disenfranchisement. One concerns Katherine Harris' purge of African-Americans from Florida voting rolls in 2000 by falsely felonizing tens of thousands. In the other, Tim Griffin (Rove's buddy, newly appointed US Attorney in Arkansas) gloated in an email that surfaced last month as part of the US Attorney firings (hence a 'doggie diamond') "no [U.S.] national press picked up" a BBC Television story reporting that the Rove team had developed an elaborate scheme to challenge the votes of thousands of African Americans in the 2004 election." Palast points out Griffin got a few things wrong...
... GONZALES AIDE TIED TO ABRAMOFF. What?! You didn't know that Robert E. Coughlin II, the DOJ's deputy chief of staff for the criminal division, resigned abruptly on April 6 -- days before Gonzales went up to the Capitol for his waterboarding session? And that he has been linked to the Abramoff corruption probe? He says he left voluntarily to relocate to Texas. When asked where in Texas, he declined to answer and referred reporters to Michael Horowitz, a friend and defense attorney. Horowitz also declined to comment or to confirm he was hired to represent Coughlin. McClatchy Newswire scores again ("Justice Department official resigns as Abramoff probe heats up").
**Doggie Diamonds: A friend who grew up in Pennsylvania's anthracite coal fields once told me that her family gathered 'doggie diamonds' -- dried dog droppings -- during the Great Depression of the 1930s. These were sold in bulk to agents of the Armstrong Cork Company, which used them in manufacturing linoleum. A case of little things, which might be thought to have no value whatsoever, contributing to larger things whose value is self-evident.
-- Dan Damon
Like Clinton before him, George W. Bush may find that his Monica just won't go away.
The Dems want to hear from Monica Goodling, and they will if they want to -- her pre-emptive refusal notwithstanding. Stories are in today's WashPost and NYTimes.
The pre-emptive refusal is just so ballsy!
TBM is old enough to recall the height of the McCarthy and HUAC terrors. No one ever refused to come before the Congress then, so who does she think she is.
Goodling needs to haul her ass in and sit down, under oath, on the record, and let the American people see just what sort of questions she feels answering which might incriminate her.
And if she is offered immunity, it could get real interesting.
Meanwhile, this little hotshot has fast-tracked her way from Pat Robertson's Regents University Law School to a White House apparatchick pretty fast, huh! As Rich Miles (of Logical Negativism) wrote me, this calls for a little looking into.
US Attorney Firings - NYT: "Democrats Seek to Interview Gonzales Aide"
..... - WP: "House Dems Seek to Question Gonzales Aide About Fired Prosecutors"
and the buzz on my original post: "The Monica in Bush's Future"
BuzzFlash: "Goodling Hunting"
Kassandra Williams (in the Texas Hill Country): "Interesting Information"
Marco Garcia (Chicago): "On Bush's Monica"
Sex & Politics & Screeds & Attitude: "A wonderful post that just tracks everything so read that."
-- Dan Damon
(Photo, PoliticsNJ)
Gov. Jon Corzine and a bevy of the Dem power structure endorsed Hillary Clinton's candidacy for President yesterday in Elizabeth, the seat of Union County.
While the mainstream media were busy ticking off this 'coup', more thoughtful observers saw a few blemishes that the airbrush missed.
Wally Edge, the anonymous pundit on the PoliticsNJ website, pointed out that Clinton raked in nowhere close to the haul that Jim McGreevey delivered to John Kerry in 2004 or that Christy Whitman gave George Bush in 2000.
In fact, counties representing about HALF the state's Dem vote did NOT line up behind Hillary. Some have already thrown their lot with Obama and some are 'in play'.
TBM is struck that while State Sen. Ray Lesniak endorsed her -- he IS from Elizabeth, for Pete's sake! -- there is no mention anywhere of Union County Dem boss Charlotte DeFilippo.
Now that is a truly BIG oversight.
Nor is Plainfield Assemblyman Jerry Green mentioned as supporting Hillary.
In fact, TBM ran into him last night and he told me he wasn't even in Elizabeth, as I had predicted elsewhere that he might be.
Guess I owe him a cuppa java.
Here are the details from the PoliticsNJ website --
Corzine endorsements:
Governor Jon Corzine
Congressman Rob Andrews
Congressman Frank Pallone Jr.
Former Governor Brendan Byrne
Former Governor Jim Florio
State Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts
State Assembly Majority Leader Bonnie Watson Coleman
State Democratic Party Chairman and Assemblyman Joe Cryan
State Senator and Bayonne Mayor Joe Doria
State Senator Barbara Buono
State Senator Nia Gill
State Senator Ray Lesniak
State Assemblyman Tom Giblin
Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes
Elizabeth Mayor J. Christian Bollwage
Former Cherry Hill Mayor Susan Bass Levin
Atlantic County Democratic Chairman Ron Ruff
Burlington County Democratic Chairman Richard Perr
Hudson County Democratic Chairman Bernie Kenny
Hunterdon County Democratic Chairman David Del Vecchio
Monmouth County Democratic Chairman Vic Scudiery
Warren County Chairman David DeGerolamo
Editor's Note: Later this evening, the Clinton campaign deleted Kenny in Hudson, but added five other County Chairs: Phil Thigpen in Essex, Elia Pelios in Somerset, Wyatt Earp in Ocean, Megan Ward in Sussex and Lewis Candura in Morris.
Links on Corzine's Clinton Endorsement
-- Dan Damon
You know you're in trouble when your mental energy channels to the New York Times editorial staff.
That was TBM's fate. Upon opening Sunday's Times to the editorial pages, he found the editors also had concluded that Rove and his POLITICAL machinations are at the heart of all things Bush. As well as the BRAIN of all things Bush. And it wasn't an April Fool's joke.
Here is the full text:
Turn over a scandal in Washington these days and the chances are you’ll find Karl Rove. His tracks are everywhere: whether it’s helping to purge United States attorneys, coaching bureaucrats on how to spend taxpayers’ money to promote Republican candidates, hijacking the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for partisan politics, or helping to organize a hit on the character of one of the first people to publicly reveal the twisting of intelligence reports on Iraq.
Whatever the immediate objective, Mr. Rove seems focused on one overarching goal: creating a permanent Republican majority, even if that means politicizing every aspect of the White House and subverting the governmental functions of the executive branch. This is not the Clinton administration’s permanent campaign. The Clinton people had difficulty distinguishing between the spin cycle of a campaign and the tone of governing. That seems quaint compared with the Bush administration’s far more menacing failure to distinguish the Republican Party from the government, or the state itself.
This was, perhaps, the inevitable result of taking the chief operative of a presidential campaign, one famous for his scorched-earth style, and ensconcing him in the White House — not in a political role, but as a key player in the formation of policy. Mr. Rove never had to submit to Senate confirmation hearings. Yet, from the very start, photographs of cabinet meetings showed him in the background, keeping an enforcer’s eye on the proceedings. After his re-election in 2004, President Bush formally put Mr. Rove in charge of all domestic policy.
In that position, as David Kirkpatrick and Jim Rutenberg reported in The Times, Mr. Rove took a lead role in selecting federal judges and the hiring — and firing — of United States attorneys. Mr. Rove’s staff maneuvered to fire the prosecutor in Arkansas and replace him with a Rove protégé, and also seems to have been involved in the firing of a United States attorney in New Mexico who refused to file what he considered to be baseless charges of election fraud against Democrats.
Mr. Rove’s efforts to maintain one-party rule go deep into the government. Last week, we learned about a meeting set up by Mr. Rove’s staff with officials of the General Services Administration that was wildly inappropriate and perhaps illegal. The aim, as outlined by Mr. Rove’s deputy, Scott Jennings, seems to have been to take advantage of the billions of dollars in contracts put out by the agency every year to return Republicans to the majority in Congress in 2008. It included PowerPoint slides on vulnerable House and Senate seats.
This sort of behavior should not be all that surprising. It was not that long ago that the Bush White House embraced the priorities of the Republican governor of Mississippi and virtually ignored the far greater needs of Louisiana’s Democratic governor after Hurricane Katrina.
Mr. Rove retreated a bit from the public eye in the heat of the Lewis Libby trial, but after avoiding indictment, he seems to have regained his confidence. Take a look at YouTube to see his bizarre, humor-challenged gyrations as “MC Rove” at an annual media dinner in Washington the other night.
The investigation of the firings of the United States attorneys seems to be closing in on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who should have been fired weeks ago. But Congress should bring equal scrutiny to the more powerful Mr. Rove. If it does, especially by forcing him to testify in public, it will find that he has been at the vortex of many of the biggest issues they are now investigating.
Editorial, NYT, Sunday 4/1/2007: "The Rovian Era"
-- Dan Damon
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Bull Moose, Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are The Bull Moose, Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
Here we are, a year from the earliest Presidential primaries -- of which New Jersey's will now be one -- and the candidates are in a full court press to line up our support -- and our money.
Was invited to one of the Obama campaign's living-room Internet hookup conference calls yesterday (March 31st) and looked forward to it eagerly.
Obama has brought fresh air to the contest for President.
And Hillary is certainly taking him seriously.
But should TBM, and the thirty-five or so people who he was with yesterday afternoon?
These living-room events can be very good, but the devil is in the details.
When TBM responded to the email invitation, he was whisked away to the Obama campaign's servers where he had to create an account. Fine. They captured email address and ZIP code. All well and good.
The response said the program would start at a certain time and last an hour. So TBM banked on it.
Like millions of other suburbanites, Saturday is chore day. Add to that a general crankiness at being pushed to decide on a candidate THIS early, and you know that I was expecting performance as promised.
Didn't happen.
After nearly half an hour of schmoozing, the show finally got under way.
An hour and a quarter later, with no indication of an end in sight, I bailed.
So, for the Obama campaign, here are some observations from a tire-kicker:
- If you make a promise (one hour), keep it. Or don't make it in the first place.
- Start on time. Or if you can't, let people know what's going on. (Take a cue from Jet Blue.)
- Put someone in charge, and make sure the local contact people are briefed on what they are to do.
- Know what you are doing with this event. Are you rallying the troops? Introducing the candidate to a broader public? Soliciting volunteers? Raising money? "If you don't know which road you're taking, any road will get you there."
- The candidate should...ummm...have another...ummm...tactic for...ummm...gaining 'brain time' for answering a question...than saying...ummm. It is always good to restate the question, both to make sure it is understood and to make sure that everyone has heard it -- and to get a few seconds to frame an answer if you don't have one ready. But...ummm?...ummm doesn't hack it.
- Short answer? Long answer? There are different schools of thought, but TBM comes from the 'power of threes' school. That is, no more than three points delivered as follows: tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em. Tell 'em. Tell 'em what you told 'em. Move on. Learn from Al Gore 2000: windy wonkishness glazes eyes.
TBM wishes the campaign well, but these living-room thingies don't seem to be quite ready for prime time.
Meanwhile, Hillary will be in Jersey Monday, picking up the Governor's endorsement, along with those of some of the county chairs and legislative heavyweights.
You can't win without building grassroots support, but it can't look like a Children's Crusade. Remember McGovern '72.
-- Dan Damon
