maybe…

Posted on Tuesday 28 August 2007

The other day, I was making an analogy to children’s games ["Let’s play like…"]. But I’ve been thinking, maybe we’re so jaded after six plus years of getting slammed that we can’t see the forest for the trees. Maybe what’s happening is what’s supposed to happen. These fools are going down like dominos. Maybe we’ve fallen for their mythology too, that they’re powerful people, invincible, always coming out on top. Maybe, just maybe, they’re just a bunch of cowardly opportunists who pulled off a big scam, but were too dumb to know it was bound to catch up with them sooner or later.

Maybe it’s over…

Mickey @ 7:47 PM

my, my…

Posted on Tuesday 28 August 2007

Well, I was going to skip over Larry Craig. No need to pile on. It looks pretty cut and dried from here. But Larry Craig is no quitter.

What’s interesting is his Hubris. He has been suspected of being Gay for years. It’s all over the Internet. Gay is okay, except for the fact that he’s a Gay Basher extraordinaire. So, he gets picked up on a sting at the Minneapolis Airport. The arresting officer doesn’t know who he is. There’s no connection between the Minneapolis cops and the bloggers who’ve been after Craig, or the Idaho Statesman who’ve been investigating him. Some cop was just doing his job, trying to keep the illicit sex trollers out of the men’s room. So, Craig gets picked up. He tries to flash his Senator credentials, but that gets him nowhere. So he pleads guilty.

Now, with the Conservatives dumping him like a hot potato, he’s coming out swinging. His story is shaky. He plead guilty, he says, because he was afraid. He was afraid because all the evil people have been hounding him. All the evil people have been hounding him because…

That part isn’t clear.

Either, he is the unluckiest guy on the planet, always getting picked on by random gay watchers, OR he’s digging a hole to China. Maybe people pick on him because he talks like a telephone answering machine or NOAA weather radio.

I wonder how this made it to the Press?

Mickey @ 5:51 PM

no more vacations for Dr. emptywheel

Posted on Tuesday 28 August 2007

Marcie Wheeler [AKA emptywheel] went on a weekend vacation. I don’t even know her, but I missed her. She’s the one, along with Josh Marshall, that keeps us all informed. Here’s a post of hers I would have hated to miss:

In my rush to leave town on Thursday, I missed this letter Pat Leahy sent to Brad Schlozman about his missing homework:

Dear Mr. Schlozman:

According to news reports, you have confirmed that you resigned last week from the Department of Justice. Yet, the Judiciary Committee is still waiting for your responses to written questions from Committee Members following your June 5 testimony at the Committee’s hearing on "Preserving Prosecutorial Independence: Is the Department of Justice Politicizing the Hiring and Firing of U.S. Attorneys?-Part V." These responses were due June 28, nearly two months ago.

In addition, during your appearance before the Committee, you testified about your preparation for the hearing, the unprecedented U.S. attorney replacements, the use of partisan considerations in career hiring, and your role as the interim U.S, Attorney and while at the Civil Rights Division in pressing certain cases in connection with recent elections. Your answers to questions made clear the importance of certain emails and other documents the Committee has still not received from the Department of Justice.

Your answers and these documents are especially important after you appeared to mislead the Committee and the public about your decision to file an election eve lawsuit in direct conflict with longstanding Justice Department policy. Despite testifying at least nine times at the hearing that you were directed to file this suit by the Public Integrity section, you sent a letter a week after the hearing that you were not, in fact, directed to do so, I asked you repeatedly about this case at the hearing because of concerns that it was done to use law enforcement power improperly to affect the outcome of the election, which is the reason the Department instituted the policy as a safeguard against such manipulation.

The Committee has authorized subpoenas, which I have not issued, for the information you have failed to provide. Please send your written responses to the Committee, including any and all requested documents, no later than August 28, to avoid any further action to compel them.

Marcie Wheeler is a Comparative Literature Ph.D. who wrote her thesis on what amounted to ancient blogs – short newspaper essays. And now she’s become the master of the modern version. Here, she keeps us posted of the doings of Bradley Schlozman, the most infuriating DOJ person yet. He’s resigned [who hasn’t? it’s all the rage], but he sat in that Committee Hearing and lied through his teeth about why he filed a voter case right before an election – a big no-no. Well, Senator Leahy isn’t letting go, nor is Marcie. Just because the entire DOJ and White House DOJ liason Staff have resigned is no reason to stop the investigation. What happened at the DOJ was as rotten as Watergate [and Nigergate]. It continues to demand our close attention. Thanks to Dr. emptywheel for keeping us on task…

Mickey @ 5:13 PM

Oh Ted…

Posted on Tuesday 28 August 2007

The New Life Church overseers will meet with former Pastor Ted Haggard Tuesday to discuss possible violations of an agreement that ended his relationship with the mega-church he founded.

Haggard moved to Phoenix, Ariz., to undergo treatment after admitting to buying but not using methamphetamines and to "sexual immorality" following last year’s 9Wants To Know investigation into his relationship with a gay escort.

He resigned from the church and from the National Association of Evangelicals in November 2006 after the scandal broke.

In February, Haggard signed a legal agreement with the New Life Church. The church leadership agreed to continue paying Haggard his salary for a year in exchange for Haggard agreeing not to speak publicly about the scandal and for his family to leave Colorado Springs and the ministry altogether.

Overseer Mike Ware, who also serves as head pastor at the Victory Church in Westminster, spoke to 9NEWS Tuesday morning from Denver International Airport as he was about to board a plane for Phoenix to meet with Haggard in person.
Some days, nothing seems to go right… 
Mickey @ 2:08 PM

preorder…

Posted on Tuesday 28 August 2007

Mickey @ 2:00 PM

Craig…

Posted on Tuesday 28 August 2007

I won’t bother listing the articles about Senator Larry Craig [R-Idaho]. You’ve read them all. I expect he’s one of those homosexual men who grew up in a time when that was unacceptable in his world, so he developed a "split" life, like Pastor Ted – "good boy" by day, "naughty boy" by night. That’s his business. What’s our business is the particular pattern of his lies. What’s our business is his blaming the Gay Community for his troubles. What’s our business is his hypocrtical voting. What’s Idaho’s business is his deceit…

2002 PRIMARY 

U.S. Senator

DEM

Alan Blinken

26,346

15,534

70.9%

 

DEM

D.P. "Dave" Sneddon

10,812

 

29.1%

 

LIB

Donovan Bramwell

1,179

 

100%

 

REP

Larry E. Craig

130,126

 

100%

2002 GENERAL ELECTION 

U.S. Senator

DEM

Alan Blinken

132,975

 

32.5%

LIB

Donovan Bramwell

9,354

 

2.3%

REP

Larry E. Craig

266,215

133,240

65.2%

Mickey @ 1:41 PM

one more time…

Posted on Tuesday 28 August 2007


On Tuesday, he plans to discuss the implications of the fight in Iraq for the broader Middle East, a global crossroads that has largely missed the democratic and economic advances seen in other parts of the world and is thus vulnerable to the rise of terrorism, said a senior administration official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting the president.

The pair of speeches is intended to set the stage for a crucial Sept. 15 assessment of the fighting, particularly whether the additional U.S. forces that Bush ordered to Iraq in January are improving security enough to create an environment for lasting political progress. The report, required by law to be presented to Congress, also is to measure Iraq’s performance on U.S. benchmarks for military and political development.
But he was also to make a broader argument about the importance of the fighting in Iraq. He was to argue that Iraq is at the heart of rising extremist movements in both the Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities, the former dominated by al-Qaida and the latter by Iran, the official said.

"Failure in Iraq would cause the enemy not to retreat but to follow us to America," Bush said Monday night in Bellevue, Wash., in remarks at a fundraiser for GOP Rep. Dave Reichert.
I sometimes tire of being repetitious in these posts, but continue because George W. Bush never seems to worry about his repetitions. In his 2000 campaign, Mr. Bush said nothing of the radical change in foreign policy that would come when he was elected. In fact, Bush said the opposite, "The term ‘nation-building’, sometimes used in this context, is a broad, vague, and often pejorative one. In the course of the 2000 US presidential campaign, Governor Bush used it as a dismissive reference to the application of US military resources beyond traditional mandates." Had we known to look, however, we would have found this future policy being said at the American Enterprise Institute or the related Project for the New American Century – said by the likes of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. In those places, Paul Wolfowitz’s earlier withdrawn Defense Guidance Policy was a strongly held plan. They had already written it to President Clinton:

January 26, 1998

The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC

Dear Mr. President:

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War.  In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat.  We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world.  That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power.  We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.

The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months.  As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections.  Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished.  Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production.  The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam’s secrets.  As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.

Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East.  It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard.  As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.

Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration’s attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam’s regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.

Sincerely,

Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristo, Richard Perle, Peter W. Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, William Schneider Jr., Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, Robert B. Zoellick

The rest of the history is well known. The Bush Administration came to office and immediately began looking for an excuse to go to war with Iraq. Richard Clarke and Paul O’Niell told us that, but we didn’t listen – it sounded too far fetched. Bush ignored the warnings of al Qaeda’s impending attack. He was dead set on their Iraq Plan. Even after the attack of September 11th, they still focused on Iraq.

We’ve been through a lot since then. We now know that the WMD/al Qaeda ties used to justify the war were a lie – simply a lie. The motive was probably a mixture of oil and the so called Bush Doctrine [which is simply Paul Wolfowitz’s 1991 Defense Guidance in a new wrapper]. For the nth review of the Bush Doctrine – it states [this version from Wikipedia]:

In the events following September 11, 2001 attacks two distinct schools of thought arose in the Bush Administration regarding the critical policy question of how to handle allegedly dangerous countries such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea ("Axis of Evil" states). Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, as well as US Department of State specialists, argued for what was essentially the continuation of existing US foreign policy. These policies, developed during the long years of the Cold War, sought to establish a multilateral consensus for action (which would likely take the form of increasingly harsh sanctions against the problem states, summarized as the policy of containment). The opposing view, argued by Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a number of influential Department of Defense policy makers such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, held that direct and unilateral action was both possible and justified and that America should embrace the opportunities for democracy and security offered by its position as sole remaining superpower. President Bush ultimately sided with the Department of Defense camp, and their recommendations form the basis for the Bush Doctrine.

The Bush Doctrine argues for a policy of pre-emptive war in cases where the U.S. or its allies are threatened by terrorists or by rogue states that are engaged in the production of weapons of mass destruction. The policy of pre-emption represents a rejection of deterrence and containment as the principal foundations of U.S. foreign policy because, it is argued, terrorists cannot be deterred in the same way as states. According to the Bush Doctrine, grave threats require a military response regardless of other countries’ views. The Bush doctrine includes making reasonable efforts to include other nations in military or diplomatic actions, however in the absence of coalition partners, unilateral military action is taken against perceived threats. The policy document states that "United States has, and intends to keep, military strength beyond challenge", indicating the US intends to take actions as necessary to continue its status as the world’s sole military superpower.

The policy is from Bush Senior’s reign in 1991, they pushed it on Clinton unsuccessfully in 1998, they got elected and put it into action in 2003, and they’re still saying it. No matter about their duplicity in sneaking it in under the guise of a War on Terror. No matter that their stated reasons for invading Iraq were lies from the beginning. No matter that what they thought would happen never happened. No matter that they’ve decimated our military and our treasury. So, when you read Bush’s speech tonight, remember this history – a history of a failed policy executed with deceit.

If I read what he’s going to say today correctly, there’s something else that it’s leaving out. "… that Iraq is at the heart of rising extremist movements in both the Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities, the former dominated by al-Qaida and the latter by Iran."  He’s leaving out that the reason Iraq is at the heart of rising extremist movements is because his policy, his actions made it happen. No matter what the truth now is, George W. Bush cannot be involved in what we do. He’s not part of the solution. He’s part of the cause of the problem!

Mickey @ 11:13 AM

follow-up on Pastor Ted…

Posted on Monday 27 August 2007

  • Apparently, the email was really from Ted Haggard [see Is the Ted Haggard Fundraising Letter for Real?]
  • The part about working for the Deam Center is not true:
    That announcement came as a surprise to those in charge of the Dream Center, and Haggard will not be working or living there, said the Rev. Leo Godzich, associate pastor at Phoenix First Assembly of God.

    “That was something that was totally unbeknownst to us when he sent it,” Godzich said. “It was just something that he thought of in a conceptual stage, and nothing had been decided.”
  • The charity Haggard mentions is run by a twice convicted sex offender, Paul G. Huberty:
    “My past record from years ago is documented and has nothing to do with Pastor Haggard or with this non-profit organization that seeks to help people in need,” he wrote.

    Military court records show Huberty was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force in 1996 when he was convicted of consensual sodomy, fondling his genitals in public, indecent acts and adultery. He was dismissed from the military and sentenced to six months’ confinement.

    The married father of three was convicted of fondling himself in front of two women in the Netherlands while assigned to the Geilenkirchen NATO Air Base in Germany. The charges of sodomy, indecency and adultery involved a 17-year-old girl who was his legal ward at the time.

    In Hawaii, Huberty was convicted of second-degree attempted sexual assault in January 2004. His sentencing included stipulations that he not contact minors over the Internet, visit area schools, or possess pornography. He is registered as a sex offender.
  • "That man, Paul G. Huberty, wrote in an e-mail to the Gazette on Monday afternoon that his group did not find out about Haggard’s solicitation until it surfaced in media reports. He added that no money has been sent to Haggard through the group."

Ted Haggard’s behavior since his exposure has been bizarre. First, his early denials were sort of ludicrous. He was exposed dead to rights. After a bit of faltering, he came clean. In his exodus from the New Life Church, he was going to go into an extended period of monitored treatment and counselling. After a short while, he left wherever he was sent, declaring himself "not gay" and announced he was going to school to learn to be a counsellor. Now he sends out this fund-raising email full of mis-statements and shady connections. Putting aside how much he and his fellows hurt this country with their religious drivel and persecution of homosexuals, this episode sounds pretty desparate and frankly crazy. Pastor Ted needs to get himself some help. He’s behaving like a man diving off the deep end…
Mickey @ 10:51 PM

grrr…

Posted on Monday 27 August 2007

I found this Press Statement absolutely infuriating – more than most. Who is this silly man to make an accusation that Gonzales “good name was dragged through the mud?” Alberto Gonzales has agreed to invent legal rationalizations for Presidential behavior that often verges on criminal. If there’s any such accusation to make, we are the ones that have been dragged through the mud by this puppet!
I’m trying to stop ranting every time Bush opens his mouth, but he’s making it hard. He has not earned the right to say this kind of thing in a public forum. He has no idea what it means to be a President. Alberto Gonzales has been a loyal lackey, not even a lawyer – much less a White House Counsel or an Attorney General. Torture’s fine.Eavesdropping is fine. Republicanizing the DOJ is fine. Giving away hiring and firing powers to junior staff is fine. Bullshitting Congress is fine. Trying to get his predecessor to sign papers in extremis is fine. Like Rumsfeld, Feith, and Rove, Alberto Gonzales should be marching off to prison instead of riding into the sunset.
My father had a saying that comes to mind. “I don’t mind your peeing in my boot, but don’t tell me it’s water.”
Mickey @ 8:53 PM

hmmm…

Posted on Monday 27 August 2007

As long as Bush and Cheney remain in power, we’re still in harm’s way. They are blocked from doing much new damage, but they have enough power to prolong the War, and, of course, our main fear is that they’ll attack Iran. I don’t know what the right thing to do about Iran is. But I do know that it’s wrong for Bush and/or Cheney to decide.

This time last year [August 2006], my post was about Dick Cheney’s speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He said:

"Some in our own country claim retreat from Iraq would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone," Cheney told a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Reno, Nevada. "A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would be … a ruinous blow to the future security of the United States."
 
"They overlook a fundamental fact. We were not in Iraq on Sept. 11, 2001, but the terrorists hit us anyway," he said, in a reference to the hijacked plane attacks that killed almost 3,000 people.
Cheney said terrorists wanted to arm themselves with chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons, "to destroy Israel, to intimidate all Western countries and to cause mass death in the United States."
"Some might look at these ambitions and wave them off as extreme and mad," he said. "Well, these ambitions are extreme and they are mad. They are also real and we must not wave them off, we must take them seriously."
Cheney said he welcomed the vigorous debate over Iraq but added: "There is a difference between healthy debate and self-defeating pessimism. We have only two options on Iraq – victory or defeat – and this nation will not pursue a policy of retreat."
So now it’s a year later. There are 1000 more dead American Soldiers. Thousands of dead Iraqis. Bush and Cheney are making the same speeches to the VFW. It’s no different now. There are no palpable signs that it will be different this time next year. The only reason we’re in Iraq is that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney want us to be there for whatever reason. That’s not a good enough reason for a war.

Today, it occurred to me that if Congress were to cut off funding for this war, Bush and Cheney both might resign. I think what put that possibility in my mind was thinking about Gonzales and Rove resigning – as a harbinger of something to come. I would not be surprised to see that happen. They don’t really care about the country anyway. They care about getting their way. And I could hear them blasting Congress as they sailed into the sunset. They are very destructive people…

Mickey @ 5:22 PM