Month: July 2007

He Really Wants To Direct

by digby

Spencer Ackerman at TPM points out this very interesting letter from George W. Bush to the Armed Service Committee:

It’s official: President Bush will veto any and all measures put forth by Congressional Dems to halt the Iraq War, according to a little-noticed letter from the White House to Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The letter also says that the White House will veto any measure that would tie its hands on Iran — including on military action inside that country. That Bush will veto any such measures was expected, and isn’t surprising. Nonetheless, the letter makes it official that Congressional Dems face the daunting prospect of having to muster a veto-proof majority on any Iraq or Iran measures. The little-noticed letter can be read right here. The Iran section of the letter is particularly interesting. It says the White House will veto any Congressional effort to either “direct or prohibit” any military, intelligence or diplomatic action regarding Iran. While the emphasis is clearly on possible restrictions to the president’s ability to go after the Iranians, the most prominent amendment on Iran is Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (ID-CT) successful effort to get the Senate to “confront” Iran for alleged attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’ll be interesting to see if that effort, which passed the Senate yesterday on a 97-0 vote, spurs Bush’s veto pen.

Ackerman has the veto threat letters at the link.

First of all we have the rather disconcerting news that Bush himself is making explicit references to Iran rather than simply say that he was going to veto any restrictions on his ability to conduct foreign policy blah, blah, blah. He’s not even trying to hide it.

But, as Ackerman cleverly notes, it will be very interesting to see if Bush is as adamant about his prerogatives when the congress is “directing” him as he is about the congress restricting him.

Nothing else seems to work with this fool so maybe it’s time to try reverse psychology. Like you would with a four year old. Perhaps the Democrats should taunt Bush on the subject, characterizing the Senate as directing Bush to conduct foreign policy their way and warning him that he must not veto it.

H/T Tnrc

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Let me count the ways
by Dover Bitch

Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1961, but that remarkable accomplishment wasn’t enough to get him into the Hall of Fame. To get a plaque in Cooperstown, a player needs to be consistently spectacular for a long time.

Conversely, George W. Bush has been spectacularly bad at his job for most of the time he’s been in office, and yet Congress is apparently waiting for a single, remarkable, odious act before seriously considering impeachment.

After posting on the president’s outrageous comments about health care Tuesday, I joked that Bush has necessitated a version of the Ninth Amendment for bloggers:

The enumeration in the blog, of certain transgressions by the president, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others noted by the readers.

I simply could not list ways the president was wrong and possibly include all of them. Similarly, I couldn’t possibly list, at this point, all the things Bush and Cheney have done that would, by themselves, make me vote for impeachment were I representing my district or state. The day the news broke about domestic wiretapping was the day Bush jumped from the “lousy president” to the “felon” category for this blogger.

Others could point to Katrina, Abu Ghraib, secret prisons… Again, what’s the point of trying to list them all?

But for whatever reason, no singular event has been enough to convince Congress to put impeachment on the table, so to speak. More striking, though, is the failure of Bush’s cumulative record to create any traction for impeachment. Not even with a majority of Americans supporting Cheney’s impeachment and practically as many in favor of Bush getting the heave-ho as opposed the idea.

We’re supposed to believe that Scooter Libby’s probation is a serious consequence of his behavior because he can’t lie to any more FBI agents for a while. It is tragic, however, that Bush was never placed on a form of probation when the opportunities presented themselves, repeatedly. For example, when Russ Feingold introduced his measure to censure Bush over the wiretapping, the Democrats responded with anonymous quotes by Senate aides:

“Feingold’s grandstanding screwed the pooch and played into Bill Frist’s hands,” the aide said. “Thank God Dems punted this down the field. Frist was going to force Democrats to vote on a resolution Feingold had kept a big secret and he would’ve split the caucus on an issue that needed time to get the whole caucus to support. Russ Feingold had only one persons’ interests in mind with his Sunday bombshell, and those were his own. He practically handed a victory to a Bush White House that desperately needs a win.”

[…]

“There were concerns that this would backfire on the Democrats just as they were beginning to get the upper hand or at least beefing up the playing field on homeland security credentials,” the aide added. “The Dubai deal, the war in Iraq, the president’s numbers heading south. Democrats have a long history of shooting themselves in the foot when the good things work and we’ve been known to do some things that end up hurting us rather than helping us.”

That measure was unlikely to pass, anyway. But think how much easier it would be to hold Bush accountable if the Democrats had been nearly unanimous (thanks, Lieberman) in objecting to his dubious acts. Instead of a series of abstract and already internalized events, there would be a record of established abuses of power and failures of leadership. The same way the administration sold America on the 17 U.N. resolutions Saddam Hussein violated, the Democrats could point to the number of times Bush needed to be reprimanded for violating the trust of the people and his oath of office.

By failing to hold Bush accountable to even a minimal standard along the way, Congress not only encouraged more bad behavior from this administration, they made it incredibly difficult to ever reach a point where they could say “enough already.”

No War Left Behind
by Dover Bitch

On Monday, we learned that there has basically been no measurable progress in Iraq:

A draft report to Congress on the war will conclude that the U.S.-backed government in Iraq has met none of its targets for political, economic and other reform, speeding up the Bush administration’s reckoning on what to do next, a U.S. official said Monday.

One likely result of the report will be a vastly accelerated debate among President Bush’s top aides on withdrawing troops and scaling back the U.S. presence in Iraq.

Yes, we all held our breath waiting for the “likely” debate in the White House about a change in course. Today, the NY Times gives us the less likely, yet inevitable, actual outcome: Bush to Declare Gains in Iraq on Some Fronts:

The Bush administration will assert in the next few days that progress in carrying out the new American strategy in Iraq has been satisfactory on nearly half of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress, according to several administration officials.

But it will qualify some verdicts by saying that even when the political performance of the Iraqi government has been unsatisfactory, it is too early to make final judgments, the officials said.

The administration’s decision to qualify many of the political benchmarks will enable it to present a more optimistic assessment than if it had provided the pass-fail judgment sought by Congress when it approved funding for the war this spring.

The administration officials who provided details of the draft report to The New York Times, insisting on anonymity, did so partly to rebut claims by members of Congress in recent days that almost no progress had been made in Iraq since President Bush altered course by ordering the deployment of about 30,000 additional troops earlier this year.

[…]

On the political front, none of the benchmarks that have been achieved include the high-profile legislation on which Congress asked to see progress. Debate has not yet begun in the Iraqi Parliament on the oil law or the revenue-sharing law, both of which are crucial to keeping Iraq united over the long term.

You read that right. Bush “altered course” by ordering more troops into this mess.

What a perfect example of the Bush administration’s tactics. They ask the military to solve everything while our nation’s top diplomat works hard “to raise awareness of golf as a sport.”

Bush is like a superintendent with a large toolbox containing only a hammer. When he fails to solve a problem that cannot be fixed with a hammer, he either demands to know how anybody could suggest it’s not the finest hammer ever manufactured, or he tries to obscure the view so only the nails are visible.

I thought this president believed in accountability and testing. His under-funded No Child Left Behind Act requires that 100 percent of students tested will pass. One hundred percent.

Bush made “accountability” the cornerstone of his sales pitch when NCLB was in front of Congress:

No longer is it acceptable to hide poor performance. No longer is it acceptable to keep results away from parents. One of the interesting things about this bill, it says that we’re never going to give up on a school that’s performing poorly; that when we find poor performance, a school will be given time and incentives and resources to correct their problems. A school will be given time to try other methodologies, perhaps other leadership, to make sure that people can succeed. If, however, schools don’t perform, if, however, given the new resources, focused resources, they are unable to solve the problem of not educating their children, there must be real consequences. There must be a moment in which parents can say, I’ve had enough of this school. Parents must be given real options in the face of failure in order to make sure reform is meaningful.

It’s unfortunate that Bush’s funding isn’t tied anything measurable. America could use some real options, too.

UPDATE: Over at Corrente, Shane-O spots this in Bush’s speech today:

Economic development funds are critical to helping Iraq make this political progress. Today I’m exercising the waiver authority granted me by Congress to release a substantial portion of those funds.

That’s the final chapter in the toothless Iraq Supplemental Bill that Congress passed after Bush’s veto.

Metaphor Reporting

by digby

I realize that the WaPo’s Chris Cilliza is writing a blog and not writing for the paper, but I think it’s still worth looking at how he approaches the Rudy Giuliani/NYC Firefighters stand-off to get an idea of how these sorts of things are seen by the DC press corps.

Here’s part of what Cilizza wrote yesterday:

Giuliani’s campaign knows that if the video catches on in the world of YouTube and Drudge it could get out of control very quickly. By seeking to discredit the messenger before the video even hits the Internet, the Giuliani campaign hopes it can deaden the impact before it has a chance to grow.

The next 48 hours will show whether their strategy worked.

Really? That’s all it takes?

Again, I recognize that Cilizza is observing the political aspect of the thing and is not actually required to delve into the substance of the matter in every post. (I would hope that someone in the press corps is, however.) But the way he frames it automatically puts it into the category of a Swift Boat smear, which could be completely wrong. (The fact that it’s being put out in a viral video is meaningless — the Swift Boaters put theirs on TV and then got a ton of free air time. The method isn’t important.) Ultimately, it’s the quality of the charges, and Cilizza has already made the firefighters’ charges suspect by putting it in this context.

Most importantly, he’s framed the whole issue as one of how well the campaign “pre-butted” the charge, rather than if the charge is actually true. And this one isn’t hard to evaluate on the merits. It didn’t happen on the Mekong delta 35 years ago — it happened in NY city six years ago. There’s no reason that this should be accepted as a meaningful “test” for Giuliani, certainly not by the press, whose job it is to gather the facts and tell us what they are.

But for some reason, the media has come to habitually weigh the prospective competence and leadership qualities of candidates on the basis of how well they thwart smears. This stands in for real questions of leadership and competence, even in the case of Giuliani, whose entire rationale for running rests on his leadership and competence on 9/11 — and which is being attacked specifically in this ad. There is no need to substitute his campaign’s response for the real thing.

In the larger sense, this is another example of the impulse on the part of political journalists to find metaphors when reality is staring them in the face. I don’t know if it’s a tick or if they simply don’t see that they are missing the point. In this case, it is crystal clear. How Giuliani responds to a viral video is meaningless. How he responds to fetid, poisonous air and the recovery of dead bodies after a terrorist attack isn’t. There’s no need to go looking for hints of whether he’ll be a good president by looking at his campaign operation’s competence at rebutting charges. Just go to New York and do some reporting.

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Politics In The Extreme

by digby

You have to give these Republicans credit, you really do. They are changing the rules of the game right in front of our eyes and daring the Democrats to do something about it. And the Democrats are flummoxed, as usual, scrambling to figure out the play. Republicans are just better at this new form of extreme politics.

I’m specifically talking here about the executive privilege claims, although it applies to virtually everything. Traditionally, there would be some posturing and back and forth, negotiations and perhaps some court involvement.Presidents may push the envelope, but they try to maintain the relationship with the congress in order that we not push these things into litigation which might go the wrong way (from their perspective) and therefore codify congressional prerogatives. Some presidents might even actually respect the notion that oversight is a necessary part of the balance of power and believe it’s important to preserve it without creating new laws and rules that make it more difficult. The balance of power between the branches is actually quite a delicate thing that requires a certain amount of good faith to keep that going. The Republicans have thrown that good faith into the trash bin.

Oversight is constructed as a political dance, with the members of the president’s own party anxious to preserve their constitutional prerogatives as much as help their president. The other side also knows that they may very well have a president in that position someday and so they don’t want to create unnecessary restraints on them or codify certain rules that might not apply for the future. Politics, being a game of survival, assumes that politicians will work in their own self-interest by taking the long term into account — the long term meaning the next election, and the health of their party and their branch of government.

The modern Republican party has perverted that idea by adopting the belief that they can manipulate the press so efficiently that the public will never really understand just what was done. This has freed them to adopt the Wall Street style of short term thinking that makes it possible to care nothing for the long range effects of their actions, as politicians might have before, and simply do whatever it takes to “win” the next play. The Democrats have never caught on to this new extreme form of politics and continue to think that these people play by the established rules. But the Republicans know that the press and the Democrats will be confused by this kind of provocative behavior and will fail to respond with any coherence because they cling to their quaint notions.

Right now, for example, we have the Republicans filibustering everything in sight and calling the Democrats a do-nothing congress. We have the president spending twelve billion dollars a month on a war the country hates and saying the Democrats are overspending. And oversight is being met with incoherence that better resembles a three stooges routine than cooperation. They are not behaving as normal politicians behave, they are behaving like reckless, emotionally deranged teen-agers daring someone to stop them. And like the nice, nurturing parents they are, the Democrats try to be reasonable and “talk” while the miscreant kids steal the money out of their wallet and take the family car — screaming “suckers” as they peel out of the driveway.

They aren’t playing by any rules and neither the press nor the public seems to quite understand that. The Dems are trying to position themselves for the next election, which is what the system anticipates, but their hapless act in the face of this anarchistic GOP response is not going to get them there.

I know that many of you feel that impeachment is the only answer and I’m not going to say you’re wrong. What else can you do with an administration that is totally unresponsive to public opinion and the congress? They are not leaving the Dems much choice — indeed, I almost think they pray for it, as a means to get their base enthused and test their Three Stooges theory of extreme politics on impeachment.

But, short of that, there are some other things that should be done immediately. First of all, Harry Reid has to make these filibustering jerks do a real damned filibuster or STFU. As Mimikatz at The Next Hurrah writes here, there is no requirement that the Democrats observe this polite procedural nicety of calling for cloture and then pretending that the filibuster happened. If the Republicans want to filibuster everything that comes through this senate they need to put up. Hell, Pete Domenici is already wearing his pajamas, all they need to do is roll in some cots and have a slumber party.

Yesterday, they should have excused Sarah Taylor instead of playing her little self-serving game of invoking privilege except when she wanted to exonerate one of her little friends. As Dahlia Lithwick pointed out:

Whitehouse finally becomes frustrated with Taylor’s selective invocation of the privilege when she refuses to explain to him what she meant in an e-mail describing the ousted U.S. attorney from Arkansas, Bud Cummins, as “lazy.” Whitehouse says that refusing to discuss a publicly released e-mail, unprotected under any possible theory of executive privilege, is representative of the “unbelievably preposterous situation” you’ve been put in.

But Whitehouse is wrong on one point. The committee doesn’t refuse to discuss all these matters with Taylor. They discuss them for three long hours. And even though the discussions are largely confined to arguments about what is and what is not privileged, the fact is that the country has now seen Taylor—as she continues to assure the committee—trying her best to be helpful, which is going to make a contempt citation next to impossible.

The Democrats should never have taken this deal. It’s the functional equivalent of off-the-record, unsworn, behind-closed-doors testimony—in that the witness appears to be cooperating even when she gives them nothing at all. There is absolutely nothing to be done with Taylor’s numerous very helpful nonanswers today. Specter mournfully tells her at the end of the hearing that her helpfulness will come back to haunt her: “You might have been on safer legal ground if you’d said absolutely nothing.”

Pooh. The real truth is that Democrats would have been on safer political ground if they’d asked absolutely nothing.

Taylor played them but good by changing the rules and pretty much daring them to do something about it. The harried young, sweetheart can say she “cooperated” and making the contempt charge stick is much more difficult.

Harriet Miers is taking it to the next level and telling them to shove it altogether. The response? Christy Hardin Smith blogged the hearing this morning and explained in the comments:

They voted to enforce the subpoena — they’ve given Miers and/or the WH 5 days to respond and, depending on the response, they will either haul someone’s ass into court or issue a contempt citation. They are following the procedure as required to issue a contempt citation if and when it is necessary — there are parliamentary rules in the House that have to be followed for something like this, as I understand it. But they got the vote they needed to move forward toward a contempt citation – and Miers has five days to show cause why it shouldn’t be issued.

That sounds right to me. But I wouldn’t assume that Miers will respond as one would assume she would. I would guess that she “caves” and comes forth, only to stonewall as Taylor did. If they dismiss her for being unresponsive, as Lithwick suggests above, they will look incoherent and churlish for having forced her to appear. (The harried blond Goodling/Taylor sweeheart routine won’t play with Harriet.) See how this works? Every play has a different rule.

I don’t pretend to have the answers. These guys are almost as good at advancing their heinous goals from the minority as they are from their majority. They enjoy this sort of guerilla warfare where they are able to toy with the foolish nerds who are trying to actually do the people’s work. It suits their temperament. It’s also quite effective.

*And yes, I did mention impeachment so there is no need to go ballistic on me in the comment section and rail repeatedly that until I write about impeachment non-stop I’m helping the terrorists win, ok?

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Red Queen Politics

by digby

There’s a lot of discussion today about Michael Chertoff’s “gut feeling” that we are going to have a terrorist attack this summer and rightly so. This is particularly true in light of this article I talked about the other day. It’s one thing for Uncle Dick to manipulate lame Duck Junior into thinking he made his own decisions with his gut, it’s quite another for people like the Homeland Security Czar to be fear-mongering with his at this late date. “Gut feeling” can sometimes be a heuristic device for making complicated assessments of other people based on a complex set of subliminal observations, but when it comes to assessing something like terrorist threats, it’s pretty much complete horseshit:

Gut instinct isn’t science
If it were, the world really would be flat, wouldn’t it?

HERE’S A PARADOX: Science is our best way of deciphering the complexities of the natural world. It is useful, consistent and, despite the claims of fundamentalists — religious or postmodern — true. Yet the insights of science are often counterintuitive, frequently lacking what Stephen Colbert called “truthiness.”

[…]

But such gut thinking poses another set of dangers to science. All too often, it bumps into scientific truth, and when it does, it tends to win — at least in the short term. Ironically, much of the time, scientific findings don’t seem immediately logical; if they were, we probably wouldn’t need its laborious “method” of theory building and empirical hypothesis testing for confirmation. We’d simply know.

After all, the sun moves through our sky, but it is the Earth that is going around the sun. Our planet is round, even though it sure feels flat under our feet as we walk. The microbial theory of disease only prevailed because Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch and other scientists finally marshaled enough irrefutable evidence to overwhelm the alternative perspective: that things too small to be seen with the naked eye couldn’t possibly exist or have any effect on us.

[…]

The good news is that over time, actual truth wins out. Only scientifically illiterate troglodytes deny the microbial theory of disease, or the reality of atoms, or of evolution. Still, scientists face a constant struggle, a kind of Red Queen dilemma. Recall the scene in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass,” in which Alice and the Queen run vigorously but get nowhere. The Queen explains, “Here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.”

Science, bless its innovative soul, constantly reveals new realities. Many of them — global warming, nuclear weapons, overpopulation, threats to biodiversity — are pregnant with immense risk. Others, like genomics or stem cell research, offer great opportunity. But nearly all are freighted with a lack of truthiness.

And so our intellectual race with the Red Queen continues. Evolution did not equip Homo sapiens with ready access to insights that transcend our personal experience. But somehow, we’d better get over our stubborn bias toward “thinking” with our gut, which is to say, not thinking at all. And that’s the truth.

We’ve had an awful lot of Red Queen politics these last few years haven’t we? Just about everyone had a strong gut feeling that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. They know in their gut that those prisoners down in Gitmo are all guilty and that Scooter couldn’t have possibly broken the law. Their gut was screaming that Iraq would be a cakewalk and all the sectarian strife that was predicted was just plain wrong. Their gut still tells them today that bin Laden will surrender if we just kick enough ass and show we can’t be pushed around.

I think it’s terribly important for a successful politician to have excellent political instincts and I appreciate what they bring to the party. But thinking is done with the brain not the gut and we desperately need some leaders who think. All this reliance on gut feeling has given the whole planet a massive case of indigestion.

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Funny Boy

by digby

Earlier today in the NY Times, Sheryl Gay Stolberg told us that the white house is having a very difficult time getting any press coverage and that the press corps is queasy about appearing too close to Bush because they fear being attacked by liberal bloggers:

Back when he was riding high in the polls, when his every utterance made headlines and the press planes trailing him around the country were still full, President Bush had little need to indulge reporters with ceremonial pleasantries.

But that is what Mr. Bush intends to do Wednesday, when he cuts the ribbon for the renovated White House briefing room. It is the latest sign of how times have changed for a president who now must work to hold the attention of a press corps that often seems to have lost interest in him.

[…]

Mr. Bush’s communications team, trying to gin up coverage, has gotten more creative. Last summer, he held a news conference in Chicago intended to attract regional coverage. In April, he used high-tech electronic graphics in Grand Rapids, Mich., to promote his troop buildup in Iraq. He held one town-hall-style meeting in Tipp City, Ohio, in April, and another Tuesday in Cleveland — a departure for a White House that prefers controlled events.

“They have to dig a little bit deeper into their toolkit at this point in the presidency to get the front-page coverage,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist at Towson University in Maryland who studies the White House communications operation.

[…]

…with the White House press corps under attack from liberal bloggers as being too cozy with the Bush administration, some reporters say they feel a little bit queasy about attending. Mr. Snow said the president would not take questions, which poses a quandary for journalists uneasy about being seen with him at a purely ceremonial affair.

Still, Mark McKinnon, a former Bush media strategist, senses “an opportunity for détente” in the awkward affair. “But,” Mr. McKinnon said, “I wouldn’t advise any member of the White House press to get too close to the ribbon.”

Well gosh. Here you have a president who is allegedly desperate for some coverage and a press corps that is queasy about being seen as too close to him, you should be able to expect some fireworks, right? Even if Junior refused to answer questions, this new press corps would be anxious to get difficult questions about Iraq, and Cheney and Libby and Gonzales and impeachment and, god knows what else, on camera, so they’d make like Rather and Donaldson during Watergate and Iran-Contra, right? He was right there!

Here’s what happened:

The relationship between the President and the press is a unique relationship, and it’s a necessary relationship. I enjoy it. I hope you do. As I say, sometimes you don’t like the decisions I make, and sometimes I don’t like the way you write about the decisions. But nevertheless, it’s a really important part of our process. And the fact that you were working in substandard conditions just wasn’t right. It really wasn’t.

And so my White House worked with Steve and Ann, worked with Mark Smith to get it right. And I think it’s going to benefit future Presidents and future White House press corps, to be working in modern conditions, conditions where a fellow like me will feel comfortable coming in here answering a few questions without losing 20 pounds. (Laughter.)

It was really hot in here. As a matter of fact, I can’t imagine how Snow could handle it on a regular basis. But now it’s modern, and it’s going to enable you to do a better job. And I’m glad that’s the case.

I want to thank Peter Doherty — where is he? Yes, Peter, thanks for working hard here. You get a lot of credit for making sure this thing works. And one of these days Laura and I are looking forward to coming and actually see what it’s like working here. I’ve never toured — I’ve never even been able to get beyond the podium — (laughter) — if you know what I mean. As a matter of fact, I’ve always felt comfortable behind the podium in front of you, kind of as a shield. (Laughter.) But I would like a tour.

Q Bullet-proof —

THE PRESIDENT: Well, it’s not exactly bullet-proof. Some of your bullets are able to — verbal bullets — (laughter) — are able to penetrate. But you’ve been around a long time, see, you know what it’s like to query Presidents. You’ve been — you’re kind of an older fellow. (Laughter.)

Q — (inaudible) —

THE PRESIDENT: Yes — proudly so. Thanks for the birthday greeting, too. I appreciate that thoughtful gesture.

But, anyway, we’re glad to join you for this ribbon-cutting, and we thank you very much for working with Hagin and the bunch to make sure this thing — deal works. And it’s going to. And it’s going to make your life better and, frankly, it’s going to make the lives of future Presidents better, as well. And so it’s a good contribution that you all have left behind. And we’re glad to have been a part of it. And so — wait —

Q What, do you think I’m going to ask a question?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I did think you were going to ask me a question, yes. (Laughter.)

Q I am. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Well, maybe some other time.

Q Oh, but do you think you open —

THE PRESIDENT: See what I’m saying? (Laughter.)

Q You can’t come to the press room, especially a modern press room —

THE PRESIDENT: Wait a minute, let’s do this — let me cut the ribbon, and —

Q You think anything has changed?

THE PRESIDENT: Let me cut the ribbon — are you going to cut it with me, Steve — and then why don’t you all yell simultaneously? (Laughter.) Like, really loudly. (Laughter.) And that way you might get noticed.

Q It doesn’t sound like you’re going to answer —

THE PRESIDENT: No, I will. I’ll, like, listen —

Q And leave?

THE PRESIDENT: — internalize, play like I’m going to answer the question, and then smile at you and just say, gosh — (laughter) — thanks, thanks for such a solid, sound question.

Here we go, ready? I’m going to cut the ribbon. (Laughter.) Then you yell. I cogitate — and then smile and wave. (Laughter.)

Are you going to come, Laura? Here we go.

(The President and Mrs. Bush cut the ribbon.) (Applause.)

Q — (inaudible) —

THE PRESIDENT: Brilliant question.

Q — (inaudible) — cogitating that, right?

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all. See you soon.

Q We look forward to seeing you come and do a little —

THE PRESIDENT: I will see you soon, thank you.

Q Y’all come back. (Laughter.)

Yeah, you can just feel the queasiness in that room. And the president’s deep yearning to get their attention is palpable. zzzzzzzzzzzz

I should point out that this is the white house transcript. But the NY Times blog reports the names of the two reporters who are featured in the exchange. The first is Martha Raddatz of ABC, who never got her question out of her mouth.

The other was Bill Plante:

And, holding to his promise, ignoring, among others, Bill Plante of CBS News when he tried to ask him whether Vice President Cheney is part of the executive branch. “Brilliant question,’’ he joked.

(It’s funny how the white house transcribers couldn’t hear that question, isn’t it?)

So, the NY Times reported this morning that the white house is desperately trying to find ways to get the attention of the news media and yet Bush refused to answer any questions today when the whole white house press corps was present. And the same article said that the white house press corps was queasy about attending this event because they are being attacked for being too cozy with Bush — yet they went and they laughed uproariously at every one of his stupid, humiliating jokes like a bunch of Justin Timberlake fans, even as they made a pathetic attempt to ask him questions they knew he would not answer.

I give up.

Update: Now he’s making little girls cry. As Joan Walsh writes:

Boy, is Bush’s hostile, dry-drunk, nickname-giving faux alpha male act getting old.

It was old for me after the first interview I ever saw with him seven years ago when he slumped in his chair like a sullen 14 year old and snapped at the reporter. I’ve always recoiled at that particular personality type and I’ve been so traumatized by Junior that I think I’ve developed a knee-jerk hatred for it that’s going to take some work to get rid of.

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The Scooter Is Safe

by digby

What Jane Said:

Matthew Yglesias points to the Gallup Poll which indicates people actually do care about what happened in the Scooter Libby matter and wonders if there isn’t a campaign issue in the offing. For that to be the case, Democrats with presidential aspirations could not embrace the divided loyalties they do currently. As much as they would all like to appear to be populists, the 08s must also self-identify as part of the beltway elites, which transcends party affiliation. And the bobblehead class has made it clear — Libby is one of their own, and coming out strong against Scooter is tantamount to a war on them. Edwards already suffers from marginalization because of his perceived class betrayal — it fueled the scoffing over a rich man with the audacity to care about poverty and the obsession with his $400 haircut. So anxious was Obama to escape this fate I believe it motivated his general counsel’s call for Scooter to be pardoned — in retrospect it looks to me like nothing so much as end-of-the-quarter dog whistle that told the Washington Brahmins that they shouldn’t worry about him being owned by his quarter-million plebe donors, he still knows how to observe the edicts of the ruling class.

Scooter Libby has taken on some sort of exalted totemic DC status that transcends what we commonly understand to be politics, government or even partisanship. Jane is right. Scooter is a Village litmus test. Anyone who fails to understand his symbolic importance and doesn’t behave accordingly will suffer the fate of the Clenis.

And who wants that?

The Sacred Scooter Is Safe. And that’s all that matters.
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Health Hazard

by digby

Dover Bitch caught the same Bush health care speech I did earlier and (among other things) makes a good point about Bush’s cavalier attitude in this comment:

He said something pretty wise, though. He said, you can have all the technology that man can conceivably create, but if you continue to smoke, we’re going backwards. If you’re not exercising, if you’re not taking care of the body yourself, all the technology isn’t going to save your life. In other words, there is a certain responsibility that we have as citizens to take care of ourselves.

DB asks:

Have we ever had a president who has been more of an obstacle to average Americans’ ability to make informed decisions about the food and products they consume? Or a president who has been less interested in protecting average Americans from dangerous products and food?

It’s a double whammy. You have to be responsible to take care of yourself, but we’re going to make it as hard for you as humanly possible to do that because the Big Money Boyz need to be free to sell tainted food and pollute your air and water and sell you a bunch of crap with false advertising. Caveat emptor, suckers.

I have no doubt that this lazy, privileged moron truly believes that his good health proves that you only get sick if you aren’t a “disciplined” person like he is. (Never mind the fact that the man is an alcoholic who has substituted exercise addiction for booze.) Like most rich Republicans, his consciousness would only be raised if he or someone he loves got sick, at which point he would be the first to point fingers. They just don’t have the empathy gene — unless they personally know someone who’s gotten sickfrom melamine poisoning or mad cow or tainted prescriptions drugs or e. coli, it just doesn’t matter. (See: Nancy Reagan, stem cell research.) Geez, they don’t even care about wounded soldiers, fergawdsake.

Perhaps our bumper sticker for ’08 should just be “Republicans are hazardous to your health.”

Dover Bitch has a good run-down of the Bush health atrocities.

Update: John Amato has the whole ugly “town meeting.” I’m having 2004 flashbacks.

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“Stand Down, Don’t Talk About It”

by digby

Wow. Check out today’s testimony from Bush’s last Surgeon General, Dr Richard Carmona:

“Anything that doesn’t fit into the political appointees’ ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried,” Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as the nation’s top doctor from 2002 until 2006, told a House of Representatives committee.”The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds. The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party,” Carmona added.

Carmona said Bush administration political appointees censored his speeches and kept him from talking out publicly about certain issues, including the science on embryonic stem cell research, contraceptives and his misgivings about the administration’s embrace of “abstinence-only” sex education.

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Carmona said he was politically naive when he took the job, but became astounded at the partisanship and manipulation he witnessed as administration political appointees hemmed him in.

Carmona said the administration prevented him from voicing views on stem cell research. Many scientists see it as a promising avenue for curing many diseases. But because it involves destroying human embryos, opponents call it immoral.

Carmona said he was prevented from talking publicly even about the science underpinning the research to enable the U.S. public to have a better understanding of a complicated issue. He said most of the public debate over the matter has been driven by political, ideological or theological motivations.

“I was blocked at every turn. I was told the decision had already been made — stand down, don’t talk about it,” he said.

Carmona said some of his predecessors told him, “We have never seen it as partisan, as malicious, as vindictive, as mean-spirited as it is today, and you clearly have it worse than anyone’s had.”

We knew all this, of course. But the most important theme that’s emerging these days about the lawless Republican rule of the past decade is their manipulation of non-partisan government agencies for political gain. (Considering these people took office through a partisan congressional impeachment followed by a corrupt Supreme Court decision, this shouldn’t have been any kind of surprise.) This kind of testimony is important for hammering that home.

The Universal Health blog has Carmona and Waxman’s video. It’ll make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

Update: Speaking of hair on the back of your neck standing up, check this out from Kevin Drum. Seriously, lead poisoning is a scourge and it does make people stupid and violent — which explains why Bush is pushing to loosen the restrictions. It’s the last of Rove’s plan to create a Republican majority.

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