What's worse? One really, really bad week (Miers withdraws nomination, indictments of at least two senior administration officials) or two bad weeks (if Miers had withdrawn next week). Seems like the White House is cutting their losses here. The right despised the nominee and can get behind the president's next choice whether or not Rove and Libby (and Cheney?) go to jail...
I know there are differing opinions and conflicting accounts of what actually occurred today as special prosecutor Fitzgerald withheld handing down indictments today or announcing one way or another what the immediate future holds for his investigation into the outing of a CIA operative, however, we can always hope for the best...
Deputy Chief of Staff to President Bush, Karl Rove, Chief of Staff to Vice President Cheney, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and Vice President Dick Cheney, will be indicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice as a result of this investigation.
Bush can easily fill the void of Karl Rove (at least it so seems; despite the major role that Rove obviously plays politically, it is a made-up position) and Libby works for the vice president. The major question is: who will be the next vice president of the United States? Easy.
Bush has a very wide rolodex to choose from, and he wants to play it smart politically (which means not nominating Mike Brown) and he also wants to, once again, appease the far right. But the GOP will also want a piece of the pie. The vice president has always been a primer for a White House run; speculations have been made even about Cheney in 2008 (until he's indicted, that is). This opening of the VP slot would be an early opportunity for the GOP to begin selling their 2008 candidate to the people.
Therefore Bush has the following to choose from... George Pataki (soon-to-be former Governor of New York); Harriet Miers (yes, she will withdraw her nomination; a woman VP); Condoleeza Rice (first female VP, first african-american VP); Rudy Giuliani (he will not accept); John McCain (he will not accept); Don Evans (long-time Bush friend); Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (has he ever said "no" to Bush?); and Colin Powell (he will not accept).
The frontrunners will be Condoleeza Rice (for obvious reasons: she has already been confirmed twice, she is the Secretary of State, she is a neo-con in the mold of Cheney and she is a possible 2008 White House contender) and Alberto Gonzales (first Hispanic vice president, first minority vice president). The dark horse candidate would be George Pataki (because Bush likes white male governors of big states and he is a contender for the GOP nomination for 2008).
With no defense of a do-nothing Congress or an obstructionist Senate (all three branches of the federal government are GOP-controlled), the GOP has to face up to the fact that maybe their policies for the wealthy are not as effective as one may have hoped. Doonesbury targets a few of the GOP's unfortunate political shortfalls in this past Sunday's edition... (Click on image for full cartoon.)
Image: Yahoo!
On the topic of Judith Miller, is it so hard to believe Miller is next in line behind Maggie Gallagher and Armstrong Williams as paid pundits by the Bush administration to covertly praise their plans (cloaked as journalism)? Maybe she wasn't paid the nominal $21,500 but did the reporter act in concert (knowingly or unknowingly) with the administration (read: vice president's office) in spreading the "facts" of WMDs in Iraq?
I posted a satirical response to Jake Tapper's most recent blog-entry...
Aren't we pre-judging the outcome of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson's comments? Isn't it also critical to evaluate the weight of the crime that is referenced when someone purportedly perjures? I mean, the crimes committed in the Clinton administration versus the alleged crimes by the Bush administration (trumping up false evidence of WMDs in Iraq to garner public support for a war, political retaliation of an administration critic by outing his CIA-operative wife, associated coverup by the vice president's office) don't even compare. The Clinton administration should be the target of Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation as it was the Clinton people who didn't remove Saddam, making it necessary for Cheney/Bush/Rove to do it themselves. Shame on you, Bill; shame on you...
UPDATE: Apparently some readers didn't catch my satire...
Zamboni wrote... "By your logic then Fitz should just go back and investigate Bush41, because he actually invaded Iraq and didnt remove Saddam either. Please turn in your old talking points, they are so...2003."
I posted a response (maybe I shouldn't have; taken the high road) but whenever someone alleges that I may be a "republican," I get so upset...
My response... "I think davidlee, but unfortunately not zAmboni, correctly interpreted my satire (or was it sheer sarcasm) in my comment that it is actually Clinton that is at fault for the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. (Hopefully, Jake picked that one up.)"
UPDATE: More readers question my loyalty to the yellow dog cause...
Ed Wagner wrote... "Rey, you can't be serious?!?
"How can you even say that the fact that Clinton lied to a Grand Jury about sex is anywhere near the crime of trumping up false evidence of WMD just to start a war along with using the power of the Executive to punish someone that spoke out against and administration sponsored cause. (Assuming of course that the latter is true).
"Don't you find it appalling that men and women are dying daily in a war possibly precipitated on a lie. If these charges floating around in the press are even remotely true, then I think that we all have a right to be spared crap about a president that left office five years ago.
"Maybe I'm morally corrupt, but I'll take Clinton's sex scandal over Bush's rush to war any day. I hate to be cliché but when Clinton was getting sex, no one died from it.
"Now that I think of it, you are right Rey. There is no comparison."
Good stuff.
In a March 17, 2003, address to the nation, Bush outlined one more time the threats posed to the United States by Saddam Hussein's regime as he called for the Iraqi leader to leave within forty-eight hours. Bush insisted, "the terrorist threat to America and the world will be diminished the moment that Saddam Hussein is disarmed."
Source: unknown
Following my first day of work at the first company I worked for out of school, I came home and told my girlfriend how my day went. "They are both republicans," I said to her. "Well, not republicans, conservatives." She instantly wondered how I was able to determine that in what amounted to less than one day (let's get real: a first day of work includes the "hello" period and the "goodbye" period, as well as paperwork time, and "oh, so this is where the bathroom is" moments).
My girlfriend told me she doesn't look at people that way and that she would never be able to tell anyway. And what difference does it make?
I told her it came natural and that I couldn't help but find out. She still didn't understand how I did it though. I told her it was an inate ability I had developed over the years, and I had been able to hone my skills so perfectly that I am able to determine one's political leanings within a few hours of meeting someone. In some cases, it doesn't work, primarily with apathetic persons; in other cases, I may only need one conversation less than an hour. Male or female, young or old, there are clear signals.
So here it is: reyonthehill's guide to determine if your talking to a conservative...
Simple tells...
Pro-life versus pro-choice; more often than not, pro-choicers are liberal and pro-lifers are conservative. If the conversation becomes a political scorcher and this topic comes up, the lines between conservative and liberal, right and left, evil and good, will become crystal clear.
Gun control; if they cannot defend the gun industry (few can) they certainly won't fight against them. The second amendment may say nothing about owning guns and everything about well-organized militias, but the third amendment was right on: our government cannot force the quartering of her troops in our homes. (Sounds harsh, actually.)
Shutting down the borders; especially the Mexican one. They believe it is a grave issue of national security (terrorists filtering through is their excuse). Yes, their grandparents immigrated to America, and yes, their weekly maid is an illegal alien, but we're talking about national security, people; remember nine-eleven.
Death penalty; outright support of the death penalty is one of the easiest tells of a conservative. And that means no thought or debate on ethics, health, value, cost, or if it even functions as a deterence to crime.
Middle of the road...
Religion in schools; once again, a drab topic at a dinner party, but even if they are atheists, deists, or agnostic personally, the majority of conservatives still believe that the separation of church and state is weak. It is more like your father spending the weekend at your aunt's house than a full-on divorce.
Private schools versus public schools; conservatives feel that public schools are overfunded. If local budgets get out of control, conservatives look to cut the school budgets first; sports, music and art programs are easy targets. Focus on the music and art though; those two breed liberals. In a political argument (er, conversation), even the logic that a well-funded public school is the best for any child's education can't get through; property taxes are too high.
Environmental concerns are silly; "time on earth is meant for us," as the battle cry goes. Conservatives (read: republicans) tend to feel that money should not be spent on something that costs nothing. Clean air and water, they want it; they are too cheap to pay for it. (There are reports that far right conservatives and its movement clashes with goals of today's republican party. Either way, the person votes republican.)
Once you get the hang of it...
If the person continually complains about bridge tolls (notably when he/she doesn't even use the bridge on a daily basis), your probably talking to a conservative. Moreover, the roads are poor and he/she comments how the local government is failing to do their jobs; public works programs are despised.
There is ample pressure on the Bush administration as this week comes to a close: indictments are feared; the economy is still struggling; young Americans continue to die in Iraq. Tom Toles offers a suggestion on how Bush should spend the upcoming weekend... (Click on image for full cartoon.)
Image: Yahoo!
Judith Miller, embattled reporter for the New York Times, who had spent three months in a jail cell protecting a source she can not recall, was a cog in the propaganda machine orchestrated by the Bush administration as it made its case for war against Iraq. Miller once wrote in the Times that Iraq had definitively contained at least one thousand identified WMD sites. They had none. Miller has spouted that she had been given a security clearance while she was an embedded reporter during the Iraq war; the government refutes that claim.
All of this points to the fact that Judy Miller was working for the Bush administration as a trumpeter of the trumped up (read: false, misleading, distorted) claims for a war against Saddam Hussein. Will Miller be indicted along with Rove, Libby, and Cheney? If so, we at least know she will have a long career after prison. The GOP has a circuit of former convicts, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North to name two; each receives their own radio show or Fox News program and garners thousands of listeners and viewers as they report the latest immoral acts of liberals.
The Parents Television Council (PTC) released its annual list of the best and worst of what is on television (for family viewing, that is, not quality), and to no one's surprise, Fox made the "worst" list on six occasions. It turns out however that PTC had a hard time making their list this year, not in finding bad shows (good god, no; there are plenty of lewd and crewd shows to go around), but in finding good shows to include. It proved so difficult, PTC couldn't even find a tenth "good" show to fill out the list. Does this mean that all but nine shows are "unfriendly" for families, or is PTC as prude as ever? (Click for full image.)
Image: Parents Television Council
