WASHINGTON (CNN) — The former emergency management chief who quit amid widespread criticism over his handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina said he received an e-mail before his resignation stating President Bush was glad to see the Oval Office had dodged most of the criticism.
Michael Brown, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Friday that he received the e-mail five days before his resignation from a high-level White House official whom he declined to identify.
The e-mail stated that Bush was relieved that Brown — and not Bush or Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff — was bearing the brunt of the flak over the government’s handling of Katrina.
The September 2005 e-mail reads: “I did hear of one reference to you, at the Cabinet meeting yesterday. I wasn’t there, but I heard someone commented that the press was sure beating up on Mike Brown, to which the president replied, ‘I’d rather they beat up on him than me or Chertoff.’ “
The sender adds, “Congratulations on doing a great job of diverting hostile fire away from the leader.”
[…]
Brown’s attorney, Andy Lester, who first wrote about the e-mail in the conservative weekly publication Human Events, said the White House was handling the situation in “a cowardly way.”
“What the White House was actually doing was taking some stories that got started in the media and pushing them and pushing them until everything got diverted to Mike,” Lester said. “Mike Brown was being made the scapegoat.”
I think the e-mailer is a guy named Joe Hagen, who Brown mentions every time he’s interviewed as being a good friend and a stand up guy.
During a trip to West Point on June 1, Bush pulled White aside for a private talk. “As long as they’re hitting you on Enron, they’re not hitting me,” said Bush, according to this Army official. “That’s your job. You’re the lightning rod for this administration.”
The Bushies are counting on being vindicated by history as Truman was. I don’t think so. This president is on record, more than once, saying that he expects his underlings to fall on their swords for him. It’s not exactly “the buck stops here.” History will properly record him as a coward, a dunce and a failure.
Blogger says it’s about to go down again. At least they gave us notice. It might last for five minutes, or it might last for 5 hours, I don’t know. I just thought I’d let you know.
I think a bunch of people are watching a World Cup match at a pub across the street from me right now. It’s only 8:30 AM. Do you think they’ll serve me a pint?
WASHINGTON — For nearly a decade, Allen Raymond stood at the top ranks of Republican Party power.
He served as chief of staff to a cochairman of the Republican National Committee, supervised Republican contests in mid-Atlantic states for the RNC, and was a top official in publisher Steve Forbes’s presidential campaign. He went on to earn $350,000 a year running a Republican policy group as well as a GOP phone-bank business.
But most recently, Raymond has been in prison. And for that, he blames himself, but also says he was part of a Republican political culture that emphasizes hardball tactics and polarizing voters.
Raymond, 39, has just finished serving a three-month sentence for jamming Democratic phone lines in New Hampshire during the 2002 US Senate race. The incident led to one of the biggest political scandals in the state’s history, the convictions of Raymond and two top Republican officials, and a Democratic lawsuit that seeks to determine whether the White House played any role. The race was won by Senator John E. Sununu , the Republican.
In his first interview about the case, Raymond said he doesn’t know anything that would suggest the White House was involved in the plan to tie up Democrats’ phone lines and thereby block their get-out-the-vote effort. But he said the scheme reflects a broader culture in the Republican Party that is focused on dividing voters to win primaries and general elections. He said examples range from some recent efforts to use border-security concerns to foster anger toward immigrants to his own role arranging phone calls designed to polarize primary voters over abortion in a 2002 New Jersey Senate race.
“A lot of people look at politics and see it as the guy who wins is the guy who unifies the most people,” he said. “I would disagree. I would say the candidate who wins is the candidate who polarizes the right bloc of voters. You always want to polarize somebody.”
Raymond stressed that he was making no excuses for his role in the New Hampshire case; he pleaded guilty and told the judge he had done a “bad thing.” But he said he got caught up in an ultra-aggressive atmosphere in which he initially thought the decision to jam the phones “pushed the envelope” but was legal. He also said he had been reluctant to turn down a prominent official of the RNC, fearing that would cost him future opportunities from an organization that was becoming increasingly ruthless.
“Republicans have treated campaigns and politics as a business, and now are treating public policy as a business, looking for the types of returns that you get in business, passing legislation that has huge ramifications for business,” he said. “It is very much being monetized, and the federal government is being monetized under Republican majorities.”
My, oh my. It’s amazing what happens to people when they run into trouble with the law, isn’t it? Talk about your moral clarity.
Now, we all know this has been true for a long time. The modern GOP plays the hardest of hardball. There are no limits. And if they weren’t such arrogant assholes, they could probably always get away with it because law enforcement tends to be conservative. These guys have pushed the limits so far, however, that the law just can’t ignore it any longer.
Hacker and Pierson’s “Off Center” discusses this polarization philosophy in terms of governance, making the case that the Republicans work hard to pass legislation on strict party lines in order to maintain the polarized atmosphere that benefits them so well come election time. And if they lose an election or two they can blame it on the other side — for being obstructionist or partisan. It’s very creative. And they have constructed quite the WATB argument to justify it:
DELAY: In preparing for today, I found that it is customary in speeches such as these to reminisce about the good old days of political harmony and across-the-aisle camaraderie, and to lament the bitter, divisive partisan rancor that supposedly now weakens our democracy. Well, I can’t do that —
RUSH: Oh, right.
DELAY: Because partisanship, Mr. Speaker —
RUSH: Amen.
DELAY: — properly understood.
RUSH: Amen.
DELAY: — is not a symptom of democracy’s weakness but of its health and its strength, especially from the perspective of a political conservative.
RUSH: Damn A straight. He is so right; he may not even know how right he is. And partisanship has often been used as a criticism of the right by the left, and the way they want to say, “We gotta get rid of this partisanship.” If you get rid of your partisanship it means you become liberal; you agree with Democrats; you agree with the left, and he’s right. Every time one of these bigwigs leaves the House, they lament the, “Long lost days where camaraderie and getting along across the aisle, celebrating, going to barbecues, bar and so forth, after a session. Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan tipped a couple drinks every day after fighting like cats and dogs in the middle of the legislative process,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And all that is a liberal’s lamenting the days when they ran the show. Here’s the second of our four bites.
DELAY: Liberalism, after all, whatever you may think of its merits is a political philosophy, and a proud one, with a great tradition in this country, with a voracious appetite for growth. In any place or any time, on any issue, what does liberalism ever seek, Mr. Speaker? More. More government, more taxation, more control over people’s lives and decisions and wallets. If conservatives don’t stand up to liberalism, no one will. And for a long time around here, almost no one did. Indeed, the common lament over the recent rise in political partisanship is often nothing more than a veiled complaint instead about the recent rise of political conservatism.
RUSH: Amen bro, number two. He’s nailed it. This is exactly right. When they talk about this partisanship, all they mean is that conservatives have too much power, too many conservatives in this place, too many people disagreeing with us, the libs say.
Gotta love ’em. Vicious partisanship is necessary to thwart the liberal monolith, but when liberals complain, it’s sour grapes because liberals have no power anymore.
One thing I think Dems haven’t discussed enough is that last paragraph in the New Hampshire phone jamming piece— how the Republicans have set up politics as a business. We’ve often noted that they have the wingnut welfare system through their phony “think” tanks and media outlets. And the K Street project is notorious. But there’s another factor involved that I hadn’t thought much about — all these satellite consulting firms that make money directly from the RNC — you know, the group that’s funded by millionaires and little old ladies on social security.
After Forbes lost, Raymond became executive director of the Republican Leadership Council. Around that time, he set up GOP Marketplace, which served as a middleman [my emphasis]for telemarketing services sought by Republican campaigns.
The firm was funded with a $246,000 loan from a group of elite Republicans. One of the investors was Raymond’s former boss, Barbour, who said at the time he was “convinced that GOP Marketplace will not only be a profitable business, but will also give Republicans an edge in the 2000 election.” Another investor was lobbyist Ed Rogers , who had served as executive assistant to former White House chief of staff John H. Sununu during the administration of George H.W. Bush.
The firm landed contracts worth nearly $2 million during the first two years, typically involving calls to determine where voters stood on issues and candidates. But it became involved in more aggressive tactics that drew the attention of federal prosecutors. The first sign of the questionable tactics was on Super Bowl Sunday in 2002. Raymond’s firm had been hired by the campaign of James Treffinger, a New Jersey Republican. Raymond’s company was asked to arrange phone calls that attacked one of Treffinger’s opponents on abortion without revealing that Treffinger was paying for the calls and to make those calls during the Super Bowl. “It was shenanigans,” Raymond said. “You put the call in at 6 p.m. on Super Bowl Sunday,” which was designed to irk voters who didn’t want to be called away from the television. After complaints were raised, prosecutors interviewed Raymond about the matter, but he was not charged.
I suspect the Republicans aren’t the only ones who create lucrative “middleman” jobs for political consultants. But I’ve never heard of the Democrats doing this kind of “shenanigans” with the money, although it’s always possible. Nonetheless, it’s the GOP that has institutionalized this system and created a formidable national political machine out of it.
This next election is going to be a major test of this philosophy of polarization and the political machine that’s been carefully designed to capitalize on that. They are very, very good. They got sloppy up there in New Hampshire and left some fingerprints on their work, but that’s unusual. Generally, they are much smoother. And this next election is the ultimate challenge. They are dramatically unpopular. If they can pull it off, they will be political magicians. I have no reason to believe they won’t give it a good run.
Remember, Democrats are not only cowardly sissies who will give away the country to gay terrorists at the drop of a hat — they are hiring millions of illegal aliens to cast illegal votes. This is a known fact. They’ve been doing it for years, but they’ve really pumped up the operation this time because they are afraid the Republicans are going to deport all their voters. I swear it’s true. Rush told me. Somebody even called me on the phone and asked if I agreed with the Democrats doing that. I said no way.
NEW YORK – Conservative author Ann Coulter, in the midst of her new book tour for Godless: The Church of Liberalism, snatched a mother’s newborn child from her arms last night and swallowed her whole.
Bonnie Seaberg, the mother of six-week old Jennifer, stood in horror as Coulter unhinged her jaw and dropped the infant straight down her gullet. “Yes, I was wearing a ‘Gore in ’08’ button,” Seaberg began, teary-eyed, “but it’s a free country, isn’t it? And that woman, that devil-whore-Nazi-cokehead, spotted me and my little Jenny, stopped reading in mid-sentence, ripped her from my bosom and swallowed her like a grape.”
Coulter, in her defense, says, “Look, every audience member who shows up at my book tour must sign a release form. Okay? It specifically affirms that they are not a liberal, are not having liberal thoughts and are not wearing any liberal paraphernalia. Period. I’m very upfront about that. All right?”
When asked if swallowing a newborn whole was simply another publicity stunt to boost sales of her book, Coulter shrugs off the suggestion. “That’s ridiculous! Another convenient accusation spun out of the law of liberal infallibility. Liberals are never willing to take responsibility for their actions. Look, Mrs. Seaberg accepted the conditions of the release form – in a free society, actions have consequences. And you really think I need to feed on the flesh of small children to sell my books? Didn’t you see me on the Today Show with Matty Lauer? Didn’t you see Hillary Clinton doing a better job than my faggy publicist?” Pausing a moment, she adds, “Besides, I’ll defer to the Jews when it comes to eating the flesh of small children. Historically, they’ve certainly set the benchmark. I’m an amateur.”
Since this is such a blogerrific day, it seems like a good one to link to this Blogometer Bloggers poll. They asked the top 500 traffic blogs to rank their top 20 favorite bloggers and this is what they came up with.
Thrilling for me, I’ll tell you that. I may not have the hot traffic, but it pleases me to no end to be respected by my peers — even if my peers are at this very moment drinking tequila shots out of Duncan’s fuzzy navel and singing “These Boots Are Made For Walkin'” at the Riviera Karaoke and Kahlua Lounge.
Since I blog anonymously, it’s pretty obvious that I’m a big fan of privacy. As such, I admit that I’m kind of shocked at how much information people put online about themselves. It’s probably a temperamental thing more than anything else, but I just can’t fathom why people are so anxious to lay everything out for strangers. (But then I never got why anyone would go on Jerry Springer either.) And I suspect that it’s not a very healthy thing in the long run.
Wanna freak yourself out? Consider the Big Brotherly implications of blogging:
New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon’s National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in internet technology – specifically the forthcoming “semantic web” championed by the web standards organisation W3C – to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.
Gee, I can’t imagine how that capability might possibly be abused.
No kidding. My rather paranoid assumption is that there are certain forces in the world that will always use whatever power they have against you. Certainly, I believe that in a country in which the secret policing agencies have been empowered with virtually limitless funds and are allowed to operate in secrecy, it is virtually assured that information will be abused. It’s the nature of authoritarian power.
My spouse is up in Alaska right now working. Apparently, the place is crawling with police, everywhere, and the local daily police blotter is much bigger than it’s ever been despite no population growth. They have received a lot of homeland security money from Uncle Ted Stephens.
This story, which I’ve written about before,really tells the tale:
DILLINGHAM, Alaska — From Anchorage it takes 90 minutes on a propeller plane to reach this fishing village on the state’s southwestern edge, a place where some people still make raincoats out of walrus intestine.
This is the Alaskan bush at its most remote. Here, tundra meets sea, and sea turns to ice for half the year. Scattered, almost hidden, in the terrain are some of the most isolated communities on American soil. People choose to live in outposts like Dillingham (pop. 2,400) for that reason: to be left alone.
So eyebrows were raised in January when the first surveillance cameras went up on Main Street. Each camera is a shiny white metallic box with two lenses like eyes. The camera’s shape and design resemble a robot’s head.
Workers on motorized lifts installed seven cameras in a 360-degree cluster on top of City Hall. They put up groups of six atop two light poles at the loading dock, and more at the fire hall and boat harbor.
By mid-February, more than 60 cameras watched over the town, and the Dillingham Police Department plans to install 20 more — all purchased through a $202,000 Homeland Security grant meant primarily to defend against a terrorist attack.
I suspect that this is happening all over the country and it is almost certainly happening at the federal level. If you pay for it, they’ll use it. And cops will use it to find people who are committing “crimes.” I think we all know where that leads.
Gavin at SN highlights some earlier work he and Lambert did on this topic and it’s really creepy. I predict that this issue is going to be very big. in fact, I would put a pitch in right now that the democratic party becomes the party of privacy. Somebody’s got to.
Speaking of which, I haven’t commented on the “Armando issue” until now because it’s just so depressing. Armando has been a supporter of mine over the years. Before he became a bigshot blogger on his own, he used to comment here prolifically and was always a great booster of my work over on Kos. We have both written a lot about Lincoln 1860 and the American tribal divide and the like. I’m not a DKos regular so I only interact with him on this larger blogospheric level, but in a wierd way we’ve been close.
His outing is disgusting to me, however, on principle and not because he’s been a friend. There have been a spate of these things lately coming from the right and it’s a problem. It’s not surprising, unfortunately. Character assassination has long been one of the most potent weapons in the wingnut arsenal. It was only a matter of time before they began to use it against bloggers. But it’s a cautionary tale. If malevolent people can use their power against you they will. QED.
Update:Here’s a link to Lambert’s entire series on this issue called “Weapons of Mass Surveillance.” (He writes “Use the “up/next/previous” feature at the bottom of the post to see the whole series.”) It’s some fascinating, if scary, stuff.
Here’s the schedule, which includes those panels that are being streamed. CSPAN 2 will be carrying the DailyKos superstar panel later today. (Or so they announced.)
Bush is on TV right now, going on and on about Al Zarqawi being a criminal mastermind whose raison d’etre was to stop democracy in iraq. Blah, blah, blah.
Does he have any credibility at all these days? I hear this stuff and my first reaction is to say “sez who?” I realize that I’m a member of the partisan angry left and all, but I have to suspect that at 30%, I’m not the only one. I look at the guy now and see nothing but a lying loser.
Imagine what other world leaders think. Or terrorists. It’s dangerous.
Update: Get a load of this:
People are goin’ ta look back on this moment in history and say a democracy in Iraq helped change the world for the better and helped provide security. It certainly helped address the simmering resentment that exists in a part of a region that for too long has been ignored, see…
It’s addressed it allright. Jesus, what a delusional fool he is. We’ll be lucky if 9/11 and Iraq are the worst things that happened to us under this idiots leadership.