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Did You Know - Embassy Screw-Up

If you enjoy the constant stream of articles in the news about the Bush administration screw-ups in virtually everything that they do, here's one you'll get a kick out of. Read the clip - it's just the opening of a well-written article on just how messed up things are in just one aspect of our mission in Iraq.

U.S. diplomats in Iraq, increasingly fearful over their personal safety after recent mortar attacks inside the Green Zone, are pointing to new delays and mistakes in the U.S. Embassy construction project in Baghdad as signs that their vulnerability could grow in the months
ahead.

A toughly worded cable sent from the embassy to State Department headquarters on May 29 highlights a cascade of building and safety blunders in a new facility to house the security guards protecting the embassy. The guards' base, which remains unopened today, is just a small part of a $592 million project to build the largest U.S. embassy in the world.

From the Washington Post

Did You Know - Using Fear

In a great piece on the Patriotboy web site, Austin Cline outlines the Bush administrations masterful use of fear to increase their power and to decrease the civil rights of American citizens. In his discussion, Cline quotes from an interview with Hermann Goring, an architect of the German Nazi regime.

Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

Gilbert [the interviewer]: There is one difference. In a democracy, the
people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

Did You Know - Pardon Investigation

I guess we all tend to remember the past in some form that favors us the most. Still, is there any excuse for the following?

ETHICS -- SNOW DISTORTS HISTORY OF INVESTIGATIONS INTO PRESIDENT CLINTON'S PARDONS:

In his USA Today op-ed yesterday defending the commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's two and a half year prison sentence, White House spokesman Tony Snow referenced former President Bill Clinton's issuance of pardons in the final hours of his administration, calling it "a mad rush to push through pardons with dizzying haste." Asked at the White House press briefing yesterday if he was trying to justify the President's extraordinary clemency for a former aide by saying "two wrongs make a right" due to some of Clinton's questionable pardons, Snow responded "no," adding, "I think what is interesting is perhaps it was just because he was on his way out, but while there was a small flurry, there was not much investigation of [Clinton's pardons]."

Snow is dishonestly misrepresenting the facts. Less than two weeks after Clinton issued his pardons, the House Government Reform Committee, headed by Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), initiated hearings into the issue. A week later, the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), launched its own investigation. The following day, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, in conjunction with the FBI, launched a criminal investigation into Clinton's pardons. A week later, White announced that she was also investigating commutations that Clinton had issued. After Clinton waived executive privilege, three of his top aides, including Center for American Progress President and CEO John Podesta, testified before the House Government Reform Committee about the pardons. After all this, then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) pledged to continue investigations, saying Congress must not "walk away" from the work left to be done. Over a year after the investigation began, federal prosecutors concluded "it wasn't appropriate to bring charges" in the case.

From the Progress Report 7/6/2007.

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Given the President's game face whenever he's in public, it's difficult to tell if he feels any remorse for running the country into the ground. Just the sight of him depresses me. Now this...

At the nadir of his presidency, George W. Bush is looking for answers. One at a time or in small groups, he summons leading authors, historians, philosophers and theologians to the White House to join him in the search.

Over sodas and sparkling water, he asks his questions: What is the nature of good and evil in the post-Sept. 11 world? What lessons does history have for a president facing the turmoil I'm facing? How will history judge what we've done? Why does the rest of the world seem to hate America? Or is it just me they hate?

From the Washington Post.

Did You Know - Rebuplican Obstructionists

Well, this probably wasn't politicaly correct, but it strikes at the truth...

The problem for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn't just President Bush. It's the Senate.

Pelosi sounded more apologetic than celebratory Friday when she announced with her Senate counterpart, Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democrats' list of accomplishments six months after they seized control of Capitol Hill and promised "a new direction" in Washington.

"I'm not happy with Congress, either," Pelosi, of San Francisco, conceded. She pinned the blame on "the obstructionism of the Republicans in the United States Senate."

From SFGate.com.

Did You Know - J. Stephen Griles

The members of the Bush administration really believe that they have a God-given right to do whatever it takes to carry out their agenda. Don't doubt it for a minute.

A federal judge chastised a senior U.S. government official and doubled his proposed prison term to 10 months Tuesday for lying to senators in a lobbying scandal. He was the highest Bush administration official sentenced in the probe.

J. Steven Griles, the Interior Department's deputy secretary, pleaded guilty to obstructing a congressional investigation, but on Tuesday his lawyers tried to deflect blame for his faulty testimony.

U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle was not pleased.

"Even now you continue to minimize and try to excuse your conduct," she told Griles before doubling the five-month prison term he and prosecutors had agreed on.

From the International Herald Tribune.

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Did You Know - Duck a la Orange

Bush's proposal to overhaul the nation's immigration policy fell 14 votes short of the 60-vote filibuster-proof majority that White House officials had assured reporters was well in hand. Three out of four Republican senators ultimately turned against their party's erstwhile
leader.

...

Ron Hutcheson writes for McClatchy Newspapers: "The Senate's rejection Thursday of President Bush's immigration plan was the latest in a series of embarrassments that have exposed Bush's political weakness and shaken his hold on power. . . .

"In the space of a single short week, Bush was hit with more Republican defections on Iraq, more bad news from the battlefield, more subpoenas from a hostile Congress, a new assault on his signature education plan and embarrassing disclosures about his vice president.

From the WashingtonPost.com

Did You Know - Freedom of Speech

Hmmm....

The following clip from a fairly conservatice rag intrigues me - and leaves me confused on where our new Supereme Court will take us. Following the "Bong Hits for Jesus" decision, it just isn't clear what types of free speech are free. I'll bet, however, that before long a lot of other freedoms of speech will be gone. It's just a matter of time before we become GWB's religious nation.

Putting its recent ruling on student speech into practice, the Supreme Court on Friday rejected a school district's appeal of a ruling that it violated a student's rights by censoring his anti-Bush T-shirt.

A seventh-grader from Vermont was suspended for wearing a shirt that bore images of cocaine and a martini glass _ but also had messages calling President Bush a lying drunk driver who abused cocaine and marijuana, and the "chicken-hawk-in-chief" who was engaged in a "world domination tour."

From Newsday.com.

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Did You Know - Government Supports Religion

It's a new nation out there, folks...

Bush just loves that Supreme Court: Court Bars Suits Against Faith-Based Initiatives.

The Supreme Court today handed President Bush's faith-based initiatives program a victory, ruling that federal taxpayers cannot challenge the constitutionality of the White House's efforts to help religious groups obtain government funding for their social programs.
In a 5-4 decision, the court blocked a lawsuit by a Wisconsin-based group of atheists and agnostics against officials of the Bush administration, including the head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

The court ruled that the suit, by the Freedom from Religion Foundation and three of its taxpaying members, could not go forward because ordinary taxpayers do not have standing to challenge the expenditures at issue. The ruling reversed a 2-1 decision in favor of the foundation by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in January 2006. The case is Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation.

From the J-Walk Blog...

Did You Know - Private Contractors

I have a relative who works for the federal government in D.C. and he's explained to me, on a number of occasions, how the government now sub-contracts huge chunks of its work to private companies. Apparently this started under Ronald Reagan who held a firm belief that the private sector could do a much better job of almost anything than the government. Under Reagan, large numbers of government jobs were abolished and the work was farmed out to companies hovering around Washington. Based on reports that appear in the newspapers quite frequently, one would guess there is just as much waste and fraud, if not more, in the private sector.

More importantly, according to stuff I've heard, the government is paying obscene money to these sub-contractors for work that could have been done much more cheaply by government employees. For some jobs, we are paying over $400 per hour per employee.

Now this...

A new report by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform concludes that, under the Bush administration, the "shadow government of private companies working under federal contract has exploded in size. Between 2000 and 2005, procurement spending increased by over $175 billion dollars, making federal contracts the fastest growing component of federal discretionary spending." These big government contractors make huge profits at the expense of taxpayers. According to the report, federal spending to Halliburton "increased over 600% between 2000 and 2005." The Government Accountability Office recently found that the government has wasted at least $2.7 billion to Halliburton on "overpriced contracts or undocumented costs." Federal contracts to companies like Halliburton have grown five times faster than the overall inflation rate and almost twice as fast as the growth in other discretionary federal spending. A record level of "nearly 40 cents of every discretionary federal dollar now goes to private contractors."

From The Progress Report, June 28, 2007

Did You Know - Republicans Is Crazy!

Sometimes Republicans aren't just crazy - they're funny, too.

State Police are investigating one of Mitt Romney's top campaign aides for allegedly impersonating a trooper by calling a Wilmington company and threatening to cite the driver of a company van for erratic driving, according to two law enforcement sources familiar with the probe.

Jay Garrity, who is director of operations on Romney's presidential campaign and a constant presence at his side, became the primary target of the investigation, according to one of the sources, after authorities traced the cellphone used to make the call back to him. The investigation comes three years after Garrity, while working for Romney in the State House, was cited for having flashing lights and other police equipment in his car without proper permits.

From Boston.com.