Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Resigns

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales finally resigned today. The NY Times, CNN, MSNBC and Yahoo News are already reporting it and floating that the Bush Administration's first choice to replace him is "Gut Feeling of a Terrorist Attack" Michael Chertoff.

Yep, the hack in charge of the Department of Homeland Security who hasn't really done a very good job. DHS jobs remain unfilled and DHS employees rank the department as the very worst to work for. Just what we need after how the Department of Justice under Gonzales treated career prosecutors who worked hard for their country but weren't blind Bush loyalists.

It's one Bush crony after another in this Administration.

According to Yahoo, the interim replacement will be another Bush Appointee, Solicitor General Paul Clement. The sad thing there is, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a request to Clement to charge Gonzales with perjury for the lies he told on Capitol Hill under oath. Clement didn't bother to respond.

Gonzales and Bush seemed to not care about the heat from Congress, media and the public before. Why resign now? What changed?

Good question. One can only guess but I doubt it's a fit of conscience. They don't have those.

Let's just hope that the Chertoff speculation is just that. We can all recall his crisis experience with Katrina. He'll be just another Bushbot who will follow the Bush/Cheney doctrine of fucking the Constitution and rule of law at every turn. And remember the AG just got the rights to oversee the wiretapping program.

They want nothing but complete and utter elimination of the Constitution and other branches of government and will not stop until Bush is the unitary executive with full control of everything. Anything less is treason to them. All hail the new Hitler.

-Rp

Sunday Morning Toonage

Fun with Cartoons

So much for Turdblossom's Legacy

When Karl Rove resigned last week, the media went back into full Bush ass kissing mode and made the guy out to be some sort of incredible genius. A martyr for the cause. They practically anointed the guy a Saint. It was rather nauseating to watch.

But finally after the Right Wing tidal wave of lies about Rove, people are starting to get to the truth. Who knows if there will be enough of these truth telling articles to overcome the Neo-Con Media Manipulation. Once they decide to deify a Right Wing God, they seem to pretty much get away with all of their spin.

Look at Ronald Reagan. His economic policies set us on a course for immense debt and deep recession. He had very little to do with the fall of Communism, or at least certainly less than the softening of Communist policies by Mikhail Gorbachev and the introduction of American commercialism did but he gets credit almost singlehandedly for the fall of the Soviet Union.

After his death many Americans were treated to a funeral that was presented as the passing of one of the greatest Presidents ever. If this was not a complete stretch of the truth, there never has been one.

Still the media has been an absolute tool for Bush in getting through just about every failed policy he has attempted to launch so when some outlets actually buck up and challenge the Administration, it is noteworthy.

So I wanted to include snippets of an article from the Washington Post and a great commentary by one of our few bastions of honest journalism that remains in our propagandizing media, Bill Moyers. Enjoy.

From WaPo's "Permanent Republican Majority? Think Again." column:

Karl Rove dreamed of creating a "permanent Republican majority." But as President Bush's longtime adviser exits the Washington scene, the political landscape he helped chart is already shifting beneath his feet: The era of conservative values -- a tight-fisted approach toward government aid to the poor, traditional positions on social issues and a belief in a muscular foreign policy -- that emerged in the 1990s is coming to a close.

Disenchanted by the failures of the Bush administration, the public is moving away from its policies, values and ideology. This shift is an echo of the late 1960s, when weariness with the Vietnam War and discord at home resulted in a backlash against Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society, and the late 1970s, when growing discontent over the stumbling performance of Jimmy Carter's administration opened the door to the Reagan revolution.

This time, though, it appears to be the Democrats' turn to reap the benefits.

-snip-

Leading this nationwide left turn are independents, who've always been the pivotal voting bloc. Rove largely de-emphasized those voters while concentrating on the care and feeding of the GOP base.

Didn't work.

Today, independents are much more in sync with Democrats than with Republicans on both domestic and international issues. One example: We see a striking increase in independents' support for more government help for the needy, even if it means going deeper into debt. Fully 57 percent of independents endorse this idea today; in 1994, just 39 percent did.

And Bill Moyers' commentary is below:



More fun:

-"If he's so smart, why did you lose Congress?" - CBS Reporter Bill Plante to Rove at his resignation announcement.

-"Demythologizing Karl Rove" by The DCeiver

-"Post-Rovian Thinking" by Dan Froomkin of The Washington Post

All fun reads and a nice way to finally cut through the media's orgasm over the greatness of Karl Rove.

My final thought on Karl is this. What Karl did best was politicize everything and divide everybody. He appealed to bigots in attacking John McCain in 2000. Appealed to Christians to abandon actual Christian principles and attack gays and liberals. Used Terrorism as a wedge. Helped steal two Presidential elections thanks to faulty machines set up in his favor and electronic ballot machine makers being politically connected to him. He used every office of Government as tools for the Republican party and conceived much of the President's policies in which the Constitution and Bill of Rights were nothing more than 225 year old toilet paper. He leaked a CIA operative's name to Time's Matt Cooper for political revenge.

Most of all because of his election thefts for his guy, our country has never been less respected worldwide, never been in deeper debt, never seen a larger disparity between the rich and the poor, never had more outsourcing of jobs, never seen the housing market collapse this badly, never had less health care and never been less secure. After all we're in a quagmire over there and Bush has had several chances to get Osama Bin Laden and passed.

To say Rove, Bush and Cheney have been an unmitigated disaster the likes our country has never seen before would be a drastic understatement. And yet here we are. With the media in full compliance with the White House spin on a criminal.

Shame on anyone who doesn't think the only place this man should be retiring to should be a prison cell.

-Rp

Miserable Failure: Exhibit B - Rampant Cronyism

The second exhibit in my two part series of why Bush has helped ruin America is his rampant cronyism.

Oh by now, everybody remembers "heckuva job" Mike Brown from the whole Katrina disaster debacle at FEMA.

As it turns out actually this was the tip of the iceberg. Time Magazine reported a fairly extensive list of inexperienced cronies being appointed for political reasons over experience that is beneficial to the post they ended up in. In fact it seems most either had the wrong experience or the worst possible experience for the position they were taking. In other words many worked for the industry giants that these positions were supposed to provide oversight for.

The cronies were part of the Karl Rove political plan to turn every department into another political arm for the GOP and Bush Administration. Every decision was made in a way that would benefit Bushco and their benefactors and the good of the country was never taken into account.

Rove got into some hot water when it was revealed he and Lurita Doan, the head of the General Services Administration, were giving powerpoint presentations to employees on how they could help the GOP politically in 2008. The presentations, illegal to give directly to non-partisan Government employees, detailed targeted races of 2008 and where they would need the most help. He had done so apparently in 2003 right before the Presidential election as well.

The Time link above shows cronyism at some of the most critical positions in government. Sure the positions are not as sexy as Senator or President but they have as much or more impact on our daily lives and someone with high integrity and concern for the public well being needs to be in those positions. High level positions at the Food and Drug Administration, FEMA, Homeland Security, Inspectors General and more were affected.

A new one came to light though. With the Utah mine collapse (and after the West Virginia mine collapse last year) the media seems to have very slowly started to latch onto the real issue here, Mine Safety.

It shows how pathetic the media is that it took this long for this to be the focus of the issue but it finally has.

Kudos must go out to Crooks & Liars, whom I think has taken the lead on covering how this has played out and the ridiculous comments made by an owner of the mine, Robert Murray of Murray Electric Co.

Murray attacked Congress for possible Global Warming legislation somehow hindering his company. Sounds like a brilliant gameplan to me. Miners get trapped, people are incredibly worried about them. Let's talk about Global Warming Legislation is the reason why they are trapped there. Or something of that sort. WTF?!?!

Anyway the big issue is Mine Safety. After the West Virginia mine collapse, Bush sent a nomination to Congress for a new head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Even with GOP control, they sent the nomination back to Bush rejected twice.

So what did Bush do? What he usually does. Sidesteps the process and goes around Congress for a Recess Appointment.

Congress was quite unhappy about this. Some of Bush's most ardent, lap dog supporters like Rick Santorum expressed public disappointment with the move.

Why was Congress so upset about this Crony appointment?

Meet Richard Stickler, new head of MSHA and former longtime Coal executive.

Just like every other appointment Bush makes, he puts industry insiders in charge of oversight.

This administration is Corporate rule run amok. They are proof of the worst cases of Capitalism gone bad. While nobody thinks Communism is a better alternative (especially any government made of authoritarian rule), and Socialism needs a lot of work, these people are proof of the pitfalls of the form of financial system we have become too reliant on to police itself.

Corporations should not be trusted with policing themselves and CEOs should not be trusted to do what's best for anyone but themselves.

Maybe that's the problem with Bush and his friends. They are all former CEOs who don't care about the health of the country as much as they really didn't give a shit about the health of the companies they ran. They cared about short term profitability so they could take home gigantic salaries and bonuses. When the company was on the verge of collapse, they cash in their chips and get out leaving the workers and common investors to die a financial death.

That seems to be what they are doing with America. They put themselves in positions of power where their private investments can increase exponentially in value. Then as they have milked the US Budget and every available means to fatten their personal portfolio's worth, they bail on the country leaving Democrats and any other sucker who really cares about the country to clean up the mess.

When it comes to any form of safety nets for workers, seniors, the poor, the middle class, residents of places hit by natural disasters, veterans, tax payers, etc. they don't care about anything other than how they can profit. Profit by dismantling those safety nets. Profit off how they can screw those people over.

Then they have the gall to turn around, cut taxes for the rich and propose even deeper corporate tax rate cuts.

They profit while we suffer. What wonderful people they are.

-Rp

Miserable Failure: Exhibit A - The Economy/Housing Market Collapse

I could come up with more exhibits than the alphabet but I figure two will be good enough for the weekend. So Exhibit A will revolve around the housing market bubble bursting causing the economy to hint towards a collapse...

In fact you can easily provide proof enough to blame him for ignoring prominent investment firm heads and with a few links, as we will provide here, their credibility in the whole, "Nobody ever saw it coming" defense that they used after 9/11, their claims of WMDs in Iraq and the levees collapsing during Katrina all exploded in their face.

Truth was they were warned on each if those impending disasters and just like in every one of those other cases they chose to ignore critics of their economic policies because after all they knew better didn't they?

So way back in 2004 when the head of Morgan Stanley and Fidelity Stephen Roach came out and said we have a "one-in-10 chance of avoiding economic Armageddon", that should have sounded an alarm. He later wrote what would need to happen to avoid such an economic collapse in the NY Times but it was clear that we were on the verge of a major economy crash if no changes were made. Of course with this 'stay the course' administration, none were.

The above information was discussed in an interesting take by Patrick Doherty on TomPaine.com from April 19, 2004:

In the 1980s, Reagan’s chief budget adviser, David Stockman, admitted that it was White House policy to expand the federal deficits in order to squeeze out social entitlement spending. The Bush administration has taken that tactic one step further, explained by the pre-eminent Republican operative Grover Norquist’s famous goal, “to get government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

And they have already declared their intentions to do just that. The Bush administration has identified its top three legislative priorities in the next term, and none of them involves reducing American consumption and increasing American savings. Instead, their priorities represent the final operations of the battle started in 1964: tort reform, Social Security reform and tax reform. Tort reform to curtail consumer protections. Social Security reform to force every working American to buy risk-filled investment accounts. Tax reform to make taxation fully regressive, placing the highest burden on the lowest earners through either a flat tax or a value-added tax.

Given our severe account imbalances, this second-term agenda of the Bush administration will signal to our global creditors that we are not serious about our debts. That will make dollar-denominated securities worthless and the dollar will cease to be the global currency, as America will no longer be the mass market of last resort. At some point, OPEC will have to switch to a new currency—probably Euros—and the price of oil for Americans will rise significantly as the dollar continues to fall. As Roach’s collapsing stock market ushers in a recession, the inevitable job losses will pop the housing bubble across the country. Americans, with trillions of dollars of consumer debt leveraged on the value of their homes, will find that their futures will have disappeared. Hard-earned home equity will be gutted and stock values will have crashed. Unemployment will be widespread.

Sound familiar? The warning signs were out there at least that far back but there was no correction made by the White House, no change once soever. They plowed forward with their agenda.

Many felt that the 2004 election was won, in part, due to the false sense of security many Americans felt with the economy. An economy built around the housing market. While people were losing their manufacturing jobs but getting back lesser paying substitute jobs through temp agencies/staffing companies, the Bush Administration was trying to tout how their economy actually created jobs. The lesser paying jobs meant a shrinking middle class.

Americans now were relying on credit more than ever before and doing so they were buying homes based on creative mortgage arrangements, mostly gimmicked loans with adjustable mortgage rates. Those mortgage rates were tied to the federal interest rates which were very low during the early part of the decade. People overspent their means, hoping that the rates would remain low as this economy stayed strong, or so the Bush Administration kept telling them.

I did discuss this before but I want to point it out again because our economy is on the verge of tanking and when Democrats were decrying the policies of this Administration before the 2004 election, they were ignored and dismissed. The economy seemed to upturn before the election, or at least unemployment rates did. This made the election hedge on the Iraq War, which already a quagmire, was still early enough for many to want to give Bush another chance at correction.

Certainly there is a ton of blame to go around. Blame the lenders who irresponsibly pushed loans that had "default" written all over them. Blame the Media for not covering the issue truthfully or the Chairmen at the Fed for not acknowledging the certain collapse responsibly.

I blame Bush. The saying goes, the buck stops here. Even with every warning in the world, he has never foreseen anything correctly. I don't expect the President to be a psychic but they need to at least have some idea of what is coming on something. This guy was wrong by ignoring 9/11 intelligence, wrong on the consequences of invading Iraq, wrong on how to deal with Katrina and now he was warned and is very wrong on the economy.

The Democrats, finally in some sort of position to do something about this mess, are trying to present correction options. Bush will have none of that.

From the US News & World Report:

The Washington Post notes that "despite mounting concern over the downturn in the housing market," Bush "dismissed proposals advanced by prominent Democrats to grant government-chartered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac more freedom to buy mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. And he ruled out any taxpayer bailout of lenders threatened by the subprime home-loan crisis." The Wall Street Journal says the President "shrugged off concerns about stock-market turmoil, saying Wall Street is adjusting to a flood of liquidity and is beginning to 'readjust its assessment of risk.'" He also "dismissed recent polls showing that US citizens are feeling sour about the economy. ... He said he understands 'there's disquiet out there' but attributed much of the economic anxiety to concerns about the war in Iraq. '"I happen to believe the war has clouded a lot of peoples' sense of optimism.'"

Yeah your fuckup in Iraq is why people are scared out of their minds about losing their homes and a market collapse. It's all pessimism, see?

Oh wait, the fucking Federal Reserve admitted there is market turmoil. Better give them the memo asshole...

From the Washington Post:

The Federal Reserve cut a key interest rate yesterday, trying to ease a worldwide credit crunch, and said for the first time that it viewed turmoil in financial markets as a major risk to the U.S. economy.

Once again, Bush's policies have screwed things up and he has found yet another way to possibly ruin America. Although that's what they wanted didn't they?

They're not just drowning government in a bathtub, they're drowning the American people with them.

-Rp

The War Time President

Bush has often declared himself a "Wartime President". He seemed to do it with glee in a private interview with Tim Russert for Meet the Press a few years back. As ironic as it is for someone who went AWOL from their National Guard duty to now be Commander in Chief and declaring wars, he seems eager to not only continue his current wars but start new ones before he leaves.

General Petraeus is getting ready to give Congress that September report on Iraq as we have reported here several times. The media is gearing up for it by discussing how it might involve troop withdrawals from Iraq. It will be, as expected, positive media for Bush who will look like he's pulling some troops out and not being the complete stubborn prick he has been otherwise. The problem with this is the media again has no idea what they are talking about as troop rotations would require that some troops be redeployed or withdrawn anyway.

As I have said before, anything Petraeus says should be immediately dismissed. Republicans and Neo-Cons (like the World's Biggest Idiot, William Kristol on this The Daily Show appearance this week) try to play him off as some independent, non-partisan voice. As we know from my previous postings that is simply not true.

Not to mention everyone is waiting on his report to Congress as if whatever he says is what we need to act on. This would be a foolish decision for any Democrat in Congress to make especially now knowing that the White House is actually writing his report.

Yes, they've now admitted what I have been saying all along!

From the LA Times:

Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report's data.

Well that pretty much sums up how truthful that report will be. Petraeus himself earlier this year slipped up and said the surge didn't stem the violence in Baghdad. Must have been a fleeting bout of conscience I guess.

As if that were not enough for Mr. Wartime President, his Vice-President Dick Cheney is urging for strikes on Iran. These people are unbelievable.

What I'd like to note here is that their flawed (as usual) premise is that the upswing in violence during the surge is somehow all Iran's fault and that all the Shiites that are fighting US forces in the surge are connected to Iran in some way.

Strange how they were surpressing the actual numbers of casualties by excluding deaths by bombing originally in this surge but are now using those numbers to justify a war with Iran.

The worst part is the lack of logic that goes into this explanation. Our surge, by it's very nature, is meant to induce more violence. We're going in and forcing more conflict with al-Sadr's Shiite sect and thus the violence between US Forces and Shiites has risen. It likely has little to do with Iranian influence as much as it does with Iraqi Shiites just wanting to force us out of their homeland.

From the Asia Times:

When a top US commander in Iraq reported last week that attacks by Shi'ite militias with links to Iran had risen to 73% of all July attacks that had killed or wounded US forces in Baghdad, he claimed it was because of an effort by Iran to oust the United States from Iraq, referring to "intelligence reports" of a "surge" in Iranian assistance.

But the obvious reason for the rise in Shi'ite-related US casualties - ignored in US media coverage of Lieutenant-General Raymond Odierno's charge - is that the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr was defending itself against a rising tempo of attacks by US forces at the same time attacks by al-Qaeda forces had fallen.

-snip-

Odierno claimed intelligence reports supported his contention of an Iranian effort to influence public perceptions of the "surge" strategy. "They're sending more money in, they're training more individuals and they're sending more weapons in."

He repeated the charge in an interview with Michael R. Gordon of the New York Times published on its front page on August 8 under the headline "US says Iran-supplied bomb is killing more troops in Iraq". In that interview, he declared of Iran, "I think they want to influence the decision potentially coming up in September."

What Odierno framed in terms of an Iranian policy, however, can be explained much more simply by the fact that the US military mounted more operations on Muqtada's Mahdi Army during the spring and summer.

Sounds like they're framing the Iranians to force a war to me. Not all that differently than how they framed Saddam for 9/11 so they could go to war with Iraq.

What goes through the minds of these people? Our President is supposed to keep us safe no matter what. Peace is always supposed to be the option and war is supposed to be a reluctant, last ditch effort made in self defense. Your job as President is to keep us OUT of wars. In doing so your job REQUIRES you to use diplomacy, even with those who have not traditionally been our allies or that completely agree with us. You use law enforcement here and abroad (with the help of partner countries) to capture terrorist suspects before they strike. You strengthen our own country's security at airports, nuclear facilities and ports. You make tactical strikes where you need to but with the cooperation of leadership in that country to have help in flushing out the enemy. But you DO NOT STRIKE PRE-EMPTIVELY JUST BECAUSE YOU WANT TO. That is NOT the President's job. Afghanistan you can make a strong case for after 9/11 but Iraq is absolutely wrong and Iran would be as well.

Not to mention our military is stretched beyond their limits. It's to the point where they'll accept anybody. They lowered standards and missed recruitment goals in 2005. They lowered them further and barely reached recruitment goals in 2006.

Much of the money we're sending to the Pentagon to handle this war has gone to overpay contractors like Blackwater, whose mercenaries go to Iraq with no United States military jurisdiction and kill at will. It's become a nightmare and they're killing our troops now... while we pay them!

So back to recruiters, they'll accept anybody right? Well almost anybody. Remember that Max Blumenthal video we posted about drafting College Republicans? Well apparently on townhall.com a College Republican wrote an editorial trashing him for it and proved why those cowardly jerks who used every cheap health excuse in the book, REALLY couldn't serve.

At the July 2007 National College Republican Committee Convention, whining wannabe journalist Max Blumenthal asked attendees why they weren’t fighting in Iraq. The college kids in his amateur ambush video fumbled with their words and gave medical excuses like asthma and bad knees. They were young, nervous and in front of a jerk holding a camera. Guilt isn’t necessary. The reality is that most of us wouldn’t make the cut.

There you have it. College Republicans are physically and mentally inferior to high school dropouts, felons, racists, convicts, and illegal immigrants and cannot join the military. They said it, not me.

That being said, if that is the case, none of them should then ever be considered qualified to be elected for a public office. After all they're too dumb to pass the military recruitment exams, do we really want them working on complex budget issues, passing laws, or worse dealing with complicated policy negotiations? Please. Time to treat this bunch of fools worse than drop outs are treated. At least the drop outs have the courage to stand and fight for their country, unlike these chickenshits who just call for war while hiding behind their parents' money.

-Rp