Thank you, Mr. Rove

In the annals of modern political life in America, Karl Rove is second to none in terms of the impact he has had on our country. Here is someone who, through sheer political cunning and determination, was able to get a man elected President of the United States that had no business being elected.

What attracted Rove to George W. Bush? What was it exactly that grabbed a hold of him with such righteous conviction that his major accomplishment in life would be to lead W to the highest office in our land? Was it because he saw W as a great leader that would march our country forward into the nascent 21st century? Was it something about the way W thought through issues and complex problems that just didn't come across well in televised appearances? Was it the strength of W's convictions that made him dedicate all of his waking hours to making W president? Was there something inside this son of a former president that none of us saw, yet he did?

Unfortunately, I believe the answer to these questions is a resounding NO. What Karl Rove saw in W was a simple man, one who could easily be molded and influenced, told what was needed from him and to follow orders. Rove had in his hands a lumpy piece of clay from which he could literally create a candidate that he could get elected.

That HE could get elected.

That person's pesky ideals or convictions wouldn't get in the way with someone like W, Rove thought. I can turn him into whatever I want. Rove's goal wasn't to elect a man he believed the most fit to run our country. No, his goal was a simple political science experiment: To create a candidate with generic conservative principles that would appeal to a vastly untapped conservative base. And when necessary, shore up support by stoking the fires of partisanship through all out smear assaults on the opposition and emphasizing wedge-issues to energize that base.

Elections for Karl Rove were the end all and be all, the means as well as the end. In hindsight it is rather apparent that this was his finish line. Sure, running the country under conservative principles was good and all, but its importance paled in comparison to winning an election. The myopic psyche that permeates throughout this administration has its genesis in Rove. The only consideration and fundamental driving force was short-term political gain - i.e. winning elections.

And look now at the state of our Union. We are stuck in a seething hellhole that is Iraq. Coming upon the six anniversary of 9/11 and Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden not only are still alive in Afghanistan/Pakistan, but they are gaining in strength?!?! (Read that last sentence again. How can that even be possible?!) We literally lost one of our most beautiful southern cities, New Orleans. We have an Attorney General who, even after unimaginable incompetence and horrific bungling of his duties, still holds his senior level position. And what about the opinion the world holds of our country? I mean any one of these debacles would have left an indelible scar on any administration, but to have them all under one presidency - and there is still more than a year left!! - is an indescribable phenomenon. I believe most of the country has yet to wrap their heads around the all-encompassing failure that is this administration. At a time when our country sorely needed a true leader, from either side of the aisle, we were short-changed and hoodwinked by Mr. Rove, and our country is currently and will continue to pay a dear price for having had W as our president.

So thank you, Mr. Rove. Thank you for giving us a president that has failed so miserably at every important challenge he faced over the last 7 years (except winning elections). Thank you for using our moral high ground after 9/11 to polarize our country for the simple purpose of winning an election or two. Thank you for dividing our country to such an extent that sensible issues that all Americans care about, like solving Social Security and dealing with immigration, are too toxic for moderates from both sides to sit down and hammer out a deal that would benefit the vast majority of Americans.

Your purpose was never to do what was in the interest of the United States. The only thing you cared about was to wield unlimited power in the short time you and your president were in the White House, and you mortgaged the future of our country for your narrow ideological goals and your short-sighted political experiment.


Because of you sir, my generation will have to spend most of its time in the future cleaning up the mess you and the administration you helped usher into office have made.



Thanks.

No End In Sight Movie: Go watch this!

Does it get anymore pathetic than Alberto Gonzalez?

The emotions one runs through when thinking about the Alberto Gonzalez fiasco are many: First, you go through anger and a sense that yes! if he is guilty of gross incompetence at the least and criminal wrongdoing at the worst, then he should face the consequences! Then he gets on the witness stand and gives not only one, but a handful of performances that leaves anyone remotely alive watching him with a sense of shock that those words are actually coming out of his mouth. I mean, how does he not see himself as the ridiculous horse's arse that he has become? Has he no sense of decency or loyalty to the country (and no, loyalty to the president is toooootally different than loyalty to country) or office that he holds and that he should be a man of principle and step down?!




The emotional phase then moves over to the furious level, when you realize this nincumpoop is the number one law enforcement officer in the nation, one who has so demoralized and sabotaged our Justice Department that we almost cease to have a functioning arm of our government. And given all of the high crimes and misdemeanors committed around town lately, you would think it necessary and essential to have a functioning Justice Department, yeah? The worst part is that even if this clown were somewhat competent, his unflinching loyalty to W has no bounds, and he would go to the depths of hell and back before doing anything against this president. He never took up the torch of being America's top law officer - he never stopped being W's legal council. It is this innability to discern the difference between president and country that is Gonzalez's most egregious fault.


Slowly the emotion train pulls up into just plain sadness. I am just sad that we have such a pathetic and incompetent president. I am sad that we have a woefully terrible attorney general. Sad that our Congress does not have the moral courage to stand up as a co-equal branch of government and demand accountability for this administration's crimes. What are they afraid of? That blowhards on the Fox News Channel will insult them? That Rush Limbaugh will continue ranting and raving against them?

Has the Congress so pathetically lost its ability to hold another branch of government in check?

A President Besieged and Isolated, Yet at Ease!!!

Waking up this morning with my morning coffee and Washington Post, I almost spat out said coffee on said newspaper. One of the headlines read, "A President Besieged and Isolated, Yet at Ease" (emphasis mine). Now if there ever was a sentence that succinctly summed up this president, by God we have found it!

The article highlights the major failures of this administration since his re-election (Social Security, Hurricane Katrina, the Harriet Miers SCOTUS nomination, the Dubai Ports World fiasco, Cheney shooting a man in the face, the "Three Stooges" a.k.a Abramoff, Delay and Foley, the 2006 midterm elections, "Scooter", Gonzales, Wolfowitz and now last week's immigration bill collapse - breath!) and how they have led a steady drumbeat march down to the current poll levels W faces. Yet the president seems relatively unfazed by all of these crushing defeats.

"For all the setbacks, he remains unflinching, rarely expressing doubt in his direction, yet trying to understand how he got off course."

So W recognizes the various setbacks, but remains unflinching, and is trying to understand how his previous actions got him and our country in the proverbial crapper and off course, yet refuses to change that course. That is just great, and is actually the definition of insanity: When you do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.

The best part is a reference to the books W has been reading. A few on our first President, the Algerian war for independence and a new book out on Churchill, who W so happens to admire greatly - and to whom he compares himself!! The author of this book, "Troublesome Young Men," also wrote an op-ed in yesterday's Outlook section where she takes a rather, um, different view from W's. To those who do not want to click on the link and read the article, she basically says that W's actions are more close to Neville Chamberlain's than to Churchill's. A pretty damning, and if you read her arguments, accurate assessment if you ask me.

So here we have a president who apparently does feel the attacks and criticisms against him and is said to truly care about the consequences of our actions in Iraq, but who, in the words of a British historian who recently met with the president, said W "was very friendly, very relaxed. My God, he looked well. He looked like he came off a cruise in the Caribbean. He looked like he hadn't a care in the world. It was amazing."

Indubitably my jolly ol' chap from o'er yonder. It is amazing.

Cheney: The Defenition of Compassionate Conservatism

The Final Chapter of the Cheney story in Wednesday's Washington Post discusses his true concern: saving the planet and its species from destruction...oh wait, by 'saving' I meant 'complete disregard for' and by 'from' I meant ' and assuring their'. Sorry, sometimes I get a little confused after reading something so shocking and frigthening that I actually forget the meaning of words...I will quote only parts of the article that pertain to one case - known as the Klamath case in Oregon. It must be read to be believed...

"In Oregon, a battleground state that the Bush-Cheney ticket had lost by less than half of 1 percent, drought-stricken farmers and ranchers were about to be cut off from the irrigation water that kept their cropland and pastures green. Federal biologists said the Endangered Species Act left the government no choice: The survival of two imperiled species of fish was at stake.

"Law and science seemed to be on the side of the fish. Then the vice president stepped in. First Cheney looked for a way around the law, aides said. Next he set in motion a process to challenge the science protecting the fish, according to a former Oregon congressman who lobbied for the farmers."

"Because of Cheney's intervention, the government reversed itself and let the water flow in time to save the 2002 growing season, declaring that there was no threat to the fish. What followed was the largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River."

"Characteristically, Cheney left no tracks...(this case) is one of many in which the vice president took on a decisive role to undercut long-standing environmental regulations for the benefit of business. "

"When the lead biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service team critiqued the science academy's report in a draft opinion objecting to the plan, the critique was edited out by superiors and his objections were overruled, he said. The biologist, Michael Kelly, who has since quit the federal agency, said in a whistle-blower claim that it was clear to him that "someone at a higher level" had ordered his agency to endorse the proposal regardless of the consequences to the fish."

"Last summer, the federal government declared a "commercial fishery failure" on the West Coast after several years of poor chinook returns virtually shut down the industry, opening the way for Congress to approve more than $60 million in disaster aid to help fishermen recover their losses. That came on top of the $15 million that the government has paid Klamath farmers since 2002 not to farm, in order to reduce demand."

So let me get this straight: Cheney gets the restrictions on water use lifted to benefit farmers for political gain and to the detriment of the fish population in the region. Next, the commercial fishery failure in Oregon is linked to this move, forcing the government to dole out $60 million to the fishermen AND $15 million to those same farmers to NOT grow their crops in order to reduce demand. This, my friends, is what is known as a complete circle of disaster, where the results are thousands of dead fish and $75 million of taxpayer money spent to keep one industry on life support and another to NOT do what they do. Wow.

Exploring the Cheney Vault, Continued...

Highlights from today's Washington Post story on the Cheney Vice-Presidency:


"Cheney has changed history more than once, earning his reputation as the nation's most powerful vice president. His impact has been on public display in the arenas of foreign policy and homeland security, and in a long-running battle to broaden presidential authority. But he has also been the unseen hand behind some of the president's major domestic initiatives."


"The president is 'the decider,' as Bush puts it, but the vice president often serves up his menu of choices."


"'Dick's major concern, one of them was, and I agree, that there needs to be a greater and more effective role for the vice president,' Marsh, a longtime Cheney friend, said in an interview. 'He holds the view, as do I, that the vice president should be the chief of staff in effect, that everything should run through his office.'"

"In Bush, Cheney found the perfect partner. The president's willingness to delegate left plenty of room for his more detail-oriented vice president."


"Cheney's influence is manifested not just in crisis but also through his extraordinary involvement in the daily machinery of the White House."


"It is well known that Cheney is usually the last to speak to the president before Bush makes a decision. Less so is his role, to a degree unmatched by his predecessors, in steering debate by weighing in at the lower-level meetings where proposals are born and die."


"Perhaps more important than Cheney's influence in pushing policies is his power to stop them before they reach the Oval Office."



There can be no doubt now as to the immense influence this Vice-President carries within the W administration. His fingers are in most of the policy pies cooked up in the White House, and it is no wonder that each one fed to the American public has a rather odd taste...


What I take issue with, however, is not the fact that he wields this much power. In my opinion the VP post has always been under-utilized - you just basically wait for the top guy to keel over - and I see no problem with the person in this position trying to accomplish the policy goals of his president in a more forceful manner (they were, after all, on the same ticket!). What really disturbs me is the VP's utter contempt for the other branches of government and disdain for accountability. The VP's argument that his office is not part of the executive branch because he is the president of the Senate - and is therefore not required to disclose his handling of classified information as directed by the president - is a semantic stretch that would have raised many an eyebrow at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia some 200 odd years ago. It is an audacious claim whose only purpose is to circumvent accountability. It would appear that this VP office would especially need some form of accountability and oversight, given their notorious and conspicuous bouts of classified information leaking (see Scooter Libby).


It all comes down to this: The founders crafted the Constitution and our government with specific safeguards against the abusive use of power. In other words, they made three co-equal branches of government that would be able to check and balance each other. And put in even another way, no single branch can act without being responsible for its actions: ACCOUNTABILITY! Tyranny is born from unchecked power, and the Founding Fathers, having dealt with tyranny first-hand, knew the dangers of an unaccountable government.


Vice-President Dick Cheney appears to be under the impression that he does not need to be held accountable for his actions. He has the freedom to push his agenda without any consequences. And even if you agree that he is not accountable because his office is not technically part of the executive branch, he has to be accountable somehow!!! If not the executive, then the legislative or even the judicial!! And if under neither, he is then a rogue entity within our government.


This VP has seriously undermined two hundred years of checks and balances on government power, and I shutter to think what lies at the end of this path if it is not properly and forcefully addressed.

Simply Disturbing...

The Washington Post has just come out with an incredible expose on the inner-workings of the W administration - with a specific focus on Vice-President Dick Cheney:

Angler: The Cheney Vice-Presidency

While most of the information reported has been speculated on and circulated around the blog-o-sphere for quite some time, it is very disturbing to see it in the WaPo with this attention to detail and siting of sources. If you haven't had a chance to check it out, please do yourself a favor and read it. This will become vital reading for anyone who actually cares about what is going on in our country...I am still in relative shock and will need to digest it a bit before commenting further. Here are, however, some highlights:

"Cheney expresses indifference, in public and private, to any verdict but history's, and those close to him say he means it."

"Before the president casts the only vote that counts, the final words of counsel nearly always come from Cheney."

"Across the board, the vice president's office goes to unusual lengths to avoid transparency. Cheney declines to disclose the names or even the size of his staff, generally releases no public calendar and ordered the Secret Service to destroy his visitor logs. His general counsel has asserted that "the vice presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch," and is therefore exempt from rules governing either. Cheney is refusing to observe an executive order on the handling of national security secrets, and he proposed to abolish a federal office that insisted on auditing his compliance."

"The vice president's lawyer advocated what was considered the (what is known as the torture memo)'s most radical claim: that the president may authorize any interrogation method, even if it crosses the line into torture. U.S. and treaty laws forbidding any person to "commit torture," that passage stated, "do not apply" to the commander in chief, because Congress "may no more regulate the President's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield."

"The irony with the Cheney crowd pushing the envelope on presidential power is that the president has now ended up with lesser powers than he would have had if they had made less extravagant, monarchical claims," said Bruce Fein, an associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan."

"The only person in Washington who cares less about his public image than David Addington is Dick Cheney," said a former White House ally. "What both of them miss is that ..... in times of war, a prerequisite for success is people having confidence in their leadership. This is the great failure of the administration -- a complete and total indifference to public opinion."

There were too many nuggets to post above. Read the article in its entirety. This is just the tip of this Titanic-killing iceberg. WaPo has two more episodes of this series coming out tomorrow and Wednesday. Tighten your seat belts, as I predict it will be bumpy with a slight chance of catastrophe for the W admin in the days and weeks ahead...

W Would be at the Bottom...

...were it not for Richard Nixon. New poll results released today show that W's approval rating has hit a new low: 26% approve of his job as president. Only Tricky Dick's 23% beauty keeps W from the bottom of the barrel. It would be amuzing were the consequences of having such a person in office not so damaging to our nation.

Hold strong people, 578 days left...

Also, who are these 26% that still approve of the job he has done? Seriously, who are these people?

The Importance of Grey Areas

One thing we will be able to take away from watching the Bush administration's foreign policy ethos in action is that grey areas actually do matter. Drawing such a clear and distinct line in the sand, the "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists" mentality, is so contrary to diplomatic thinking that its consequences can be readily seen across the world. We have needlessly and significantly hindered our diplomatic options because we paint a variety of actors with one broad brush. Human interaction, the essence of diplomacy, is too complex and yes, nuanced to be divided into two simple categories. What might come as a surprise to the W administration, there are people who may agree on most issues, have a difference of opinion on some and be completely antagonistic towards each other on others. It is vital to have the flexibility to deal with these differences and nuances in our complex world.

One area where this stubborn adherence to an idea does us the most damage is with regards to democracy promotion. This tenet has been the cornerstone of W's foreign policy, regardless of the consequences - intended and unintended - it brings. This administration has pushed autocratic governments in the Middle East to reform quickly and to usher in democracy. We literally forced it on Iraq and have told Egypt and Saudi Arabia, among others, in no uncertain terms to open up their political system. This blind push does not take into consideration the situation in each of those countries. Are they ready for democracy? Do they have the institutions, the poles in place to support the democratic tent? What would the results be if elections were held in X country? And from a selfish perspective, is it in the best interest of the United States? Do we do ourselves - or democracy for that matter - any good by explicitly and forcefully pushing for it? Of course having democracy around the world has been and should continue to be an American foreign policy goal, but should it also be a means? Is democracy not the end result of a people's struggle for freedom? Does having this administration push it the way it has actually slow down the democratic march?

A great example is Palestine. An Arab populace holds a free election and brings to power Hamas. Yet the US considers it a terrorist element and therefore withdraw funds and support from the Palestinian government. So what are smart, rational people in the Middle East to think when they hear W call for democracy, while at the same time he blatantly discriminates against a democratically elected government? W undermines his own position, and he is either too obtuse to care or too clueless to notice. The notion of democracy appears to be,"yes, you can choose your leaders, but we have to accept them as well." The argument you hear from supporters of the administration is, "well they are a terrorist organization and we shouldn't support terrorists." True, but you must accept the consequences of you earlier assertion for democracy! You cannot abandon a central tenet of your foreign policy when it suits you. It reeks of hypocrisy. Enemies become unnecessary when you gut your own argument. Osama bin Laden and his ilk laugh and point at us and say, "See what they are trying to do? Do you see what 'democracy' truly means? It is the yoke of oppression with a new name." We play right into their hands, and it is shocking and sad that W and his ilk do not even seem to notice. All the military force we can muster and all of the sacrifices our soldiers are making will be for naught if we keep undermining our own credibility. We must remove the albatross of hypocrisy from around our necks, or the only 'slow bleed' we will suffer will be from the sides of our own moral standing.

Four-fifths of the Way There!

HOOOOORAY!!!!!!

Good morning all. It is with great pleasure that I can now say we are four-fifths finished with the W administration! It happened over the weekend, when the inevitable march of day and night brought us mercilessly closer to the end. I have the counter at the bottom of this blog, and here is the link to the official counter.

Behind W's Disastrous Actions

In order to move forward I believe it necessary to at least examine what exactly got us in the mess we find ourselves in. And by mess, since it can be broadly defined given that you can point to almost anything happening right now in our country and find fault, will for this discussion focus solely on foreign policy (I look forward to discussing the various domestic policy messes we have to get out of in future posts).
Trying to understand the ideas behind the actions taken by our current leaders is a good starting point. Now I do not pretend to have the capability of reading the minds of W, Cheney, et al. But one redeeming quality of individuals so extremely stubborn and set in their ways is that you can somewhat glean some sense of what they are thinking. I am convinced, for example, that 9/11 irrevocably changed W's world view (as it did for most of us). Now I know there are many of you out there that believe in the various conspiracy theories that he either knew and/or planned the attacks, etc. A simple rebuttal to any conspiracy argument along this line is this: Just think of the sheer magnitude of coordination and planning that would have been necessary to not only pull off the attacks, but to then make it appear that it was the work of Islamist terrorists and cover your tracks so thoroughly that only crazy left wing conspiracy nuts would believe it. I find it ironic that those who criticize W for his ineptitude can give him the benefit of the doubt of pulling off such a major operation as this conspiracy would inevitably entail. But I digress.

I see it as a perfect storm. 9/11 altered the shallow and dim view W had of the world (I once saw a clip where a Canadian comedian posing as a journalist asked candidate W how he would get along with the prime minister of Canada, Pomme Fritte (French Fry in french). W said that if elected he would look forward to working with Prime Minister Pomme Fritte), and combined with the influence of a few powerful and ideological individuals, the course was set for cleaning house in the broader Middle East. Of course Afghanistan would have to be changed. Iraq would be next and, after completing the classic pincer movement on Iran, it would fall third. Imagine if the Iraq invasion would have gone swimmingly...I have no doubt that Paul Bremner would be sitting right now in a Tehranian Green Zone wondering what to do with the Revolutionary Guard. That was the big prize, the revenge dreamt of and sought after by various foreign policy intellectuals from both sides of the aisle since the fall of the Shah.

Was 9/11 known by W administration officials? I highly doubt it. But did they take full advantage of the leverage the attacks gave to their ideas and did they use it as cover to pursue policies that otherwise would have just sat on the shelf? Absolutely. The only thing that stopped this advancing assault has been the massive tactical blunders commited in Iraq.

So that is what happened. A weak and feeble-minded president, shocked by the attacks and determined to not look weak in the face of terror, swallowed hook, line and sinker the argument that pre-emptive action against rogue nations with ties, however vague, to terrorism was absolutely necessary. There was no stepping back, no clear thinking of the consequences and implications of military actions taken - a point of significant importance because it was pushed by a cabinet notorious for its lack of military experience. It had to be done. Plain and simple. After shoving the threat down the throats of the nation, easily washed down by a compliant mainstream media and the political thumbs up from Karl Rove (after all, a war-time president is always more popular), W decided to go to war. He was told that it would be a cakewalk, that both Afghanistan and Iraq could be done on the cheap (without inconveniencing the country to make sacrifices a la WWII) and that he would be enormously popular at home and abroad. For someone who thought the leader of our neighbor to the north was a hamburger's side order, it appeared to be a pretty good idea.

So note to the country: Doubt what our leaders say. If not outright, at least take it with a grain of salt. The more sure they are about a course of action they want to take, the more we have to push back. Apathy and compliance for the sake of inaction is unacceptable. Granted most of us were scared breathless on 9/11 and it took a while for the shock of that horrible day to dissipate, we can never let our leaders ride roughshod over us again. The consequences, as we painfully see every day, are just too dire. As Wendell Phillips once said, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." That not only applies to our country's actions abroad; it is essential that citizens apply it to their own government.

Where to begin

I would be willing to wager that future historians will have a tough time measuring the extent of the damage done to our country by our current sitting president, George W. Bush. Actually, they will probably scratch their heads in wonderment at the fact that not only was W elected twice, but that his second election garnered the most votes ever! The sheer number of people who actually got off the couch in November of 2004 to cast their ballot for him is astounding. The crazy thing is that these people weren't the 50% of the nation that don't care at all about politics and do not even bother to vote. These people cared enough to actually get off their posteriors, drive down to their respective polling stations and in effect say "Yes, I support what the current administration is doing and I am willing to voice this support with the power of my vote." It is the strongest political statement a private citizen can make, and over 60 million of our fellow Americans gave this power to W (again!). What were they possibly thinking? What aspect or policy of this administration could you point to and say Yes!, now that is something I can support! What was it? Seriously, if you know, please tell me because sometimes I feel like I am taking crazy pills!

I remember watching TV on election night and saying to myself, there is no way W can win again. Just no way. There is too much riding on this election for him to be the leader of our country for the next 4 years. So much damage had already been done (Iraq was already 2 years in the making) that we needed a new leadership to correct the course of our nation. What will the rest of the world think of us as a people if we re-elect this man? How will I explain this to my unborn (and as yet not conceived) son in the future if we do this? I shuttered at the thought of what our country would be like in late 2008, early 2009 if we were to have W be president until then...

Not that I was excited about Kerry by any stretch of the imagination. I didn't think he was particularly exciting except for the fact that he was not W. That was his most redeeming quality, which in hindsight makes it understandable why he did lose to W...

But we are where we are, and we can only sit and count down the days until our national nightmare is over. At least we can do it together.

Welcome!

Hey! Welcome to my site! I just got it up and running and will write soon. Come back in a bit!

Els