Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The Lost Years

Does the man just reflexively lie about everything or does he have so much to hide that it’s just smarter to lie first and ask questions later?

“I was working full time for an inner-city poverty program known as Project P.U.L.L.,” Bush said in his 1999 autobiography, “A Charge to Keep.” “My friend John White … asked me to come help him run the program. … I was intrigued by John’s offer. … Now I had a chance to help people.”

But White’s administrative assistant and others associated with P.U.L.L., speaking on the record for the first time, say Bush was not helping to run the program and White had not asked Bush to come aboard. Instead, the associates said, White told them he agreed to take Bush on as a favor to Bush’s father, who was honorary co-chairman of the program at the time, and Bush was unpaid. They say White told them Bush had gotten into some kind of trouble but White never gave them specifics.

“We didn’t know what kind of trouble he’d been in, only that he’d done something that required him to put in the time,” said Althia Turner, White’s administrative assistant.

“John said he was doing a favor for George’s father because an arrangement had to be made for the son to be there,” said Willie Frazier, also a former player for the Houston Oilers and a P.U.L.L. summer volunteer in 1973.

Fred Maura, a close friend of White, refers to Bush as “43,” for 43rd president, and his father as “41,” for the 41st president.

“John didn’t say what kind of trouble 43 was in – just that he had done something and he (John) made a deal to take him in as a favor to 41 to get some funding,” Maura said.

“He didn’t help run the program. I was in charge of him and I wouldn’t say I helped run the program, either,” said David Anderson, a recreational director at P.U.L.L.

It’s long been strongly suspected that he did his “volunteer” work at Operation Pull as some kind of alternative punishment, whether for criminal or familial reasons. Working with inner city kids during that irrational time in his life is so out of character it never passed the *sniff* test.

We know that his family was fit to be tied with him during that time, and for good reason:

Leaving the election-night “celebration,” Allison remembers encountering George W. Bush in the parking lot, urinating on a car, and hearing later about how he’d yelled obscenities at police officers that night. Bush left a house he’d rented in Montgomery trashed — the furniture broken, walls damaged and a chandelier destroyed, the Birmingham News reported in February. “He was just a rich kid who had no respect for other people’s possessions,” Mary Smith, a member of the family who rented the house, told the newspaper, adding that a bill sent to Bush for repairs was never paid. And a month later, in December, during a visit to his parents’ home in Washington, Bush drunkenly challenged his father to go “mano a mano,” as has often been reported.

Around the same time, for the 1972 Christmas holiday, the Allisons met up with the Bushes on vacation in Hobe Sound, Fla. Tension was still evident between Bush and his parents. Linda was a passenger in a car driven by Barbara Bush as they headed to lunch at the local beach club. Bush, who was 26 years old, got on a bicycle and rode in front of the car in a slow, serpentine manner, forcing his mother to crawl along. “He rode so slowly that he kept having to put his foot down to get his balance, and he kept in a weaving pattern so we couldn’t get past,” Allison recalled. “He was obviously furious with his mother about something, and she was furious at him, too.”

It’s certainly possible that Dad pulled strings because he wanted to teach his miscreant son a lesson. But, it doesn’t seem as if he had much control over Junior’s behavior during that time, so it’s a bit of a stretch to believe that he could have forced him to do this thing. After all, this was the same period that Junior was refusing to fulfill his commitment to the US government. It is much more likely that Bush had been arrested for drugs or drunk driving and that Poppy intervened — as he continued to do for more than a decade of decadence and hedonism.

It was in 1985, around the time of his 39th birthday, George W. Bush says, that his life took a sharp turn toward salvation. At that point he was drinking, his marriage was on the rocks, his career was listless. Several accounts have emerged from those close to Bush about a faith ”intervention” of sorts at the Kennebunkport family compound that year. Details vary, but here’s the gist of what I understand took place. George W., drunk at a party, crudely insulted a friend of his mother’s. George senior and Barbara blew up. Words were exchanged along the lines of something having to be done. George senior, then the vice president, dialed up his friend, Billy Graham, who came to the compound and spent several days with George W. in probing exchanges and walks on the beach.

For all of his hectoring and lecturing about “the responsibility era” and ending the ethos of “if it feels good, do it,” he has never taken even the tiniest bit of responsibility for what he did. He even lied about his “born again” experience — not mentioning that it was the result of yet another intervention by his frustrated parents

Lying in the most craven way about this Operation PULL episode, by claiming that he “helped run the program” when it’s obvious to any sentient being that he was forced to be there, is the kind of thing that continues to stoke interest in the 40 odd lost years of George W. Bush. Nobody would care if he didn’t constantly behave like a man with something to hide.

Below The Belt

I knew the Bush campaign was ruthless and I knew they were cruel. I expected them to play dirty.

But, I never dreamed they would sink this low.

If Karl Rove is willing to play the cute puppy card, we are truly doomed…

They’ll Believe Anything

I thought you might enjoy this wingnut e-mail that’s been going around:

Almost half of the nation’s flu vaccine will not be delivered this year. Chiron, a major manufacturer of flu vaccine, will not be distributing any influenza vaccine this flu season. Chiron was to make 46-48 million doses vaccine for the United States. Chiron is a British company. Recently British health officials stopped Chiron from distributing and making the vaccine when inspectors found unsanitary conditions in the labs. Some lots of the vaccine were recalled and destroyed.Why is our vaccine made in the UK and not the US? The major pharmaceutical companies in the US provided almost 90% of the nations flu vaccine at one time. They did this despite a very low profit margin for the product. Basically, they were doing us a favor.

In the late 80’s a man from North Carolina who had received the vaccine got the flu. The strain he caught was one of the strains in that years Vaccine made by a US company. What did he do? He sued and he won. He was awarded almost $5 million! After that case was appealed and lost, most US pharmaceutical companies stopped making the vaccine. The liability out weighed the profit margin. Since UK and Canadian laws prohibit such frivolous law suits UK and Canadian companies began selling the vaccine in the US.

By the way…the lawyer that represented the man in the flu shot lawsuit was a young ambulance chaser by the name of John Edwards.

Mighty decent of the Bush campaign not to use this bombshell in the last two weeks of the campaign, don’t you think? John Edwards is personally responsible for the flu vaccine crisis and they refrain from using that information in ads and speeches. Wow. To think that some people say they are tough guys who will pull out all the stops to win when they are really just a bunch of softies who don’t want to embarrass their rivals.

On second thought, this can’t be yet another completely unbelievable lie to fool Republican morons, can it? My gawd. I hope these people aren’t allowed to operate heavy machinery or drive without supervision. People that dumb are a public health hazard in and of themselves.

Under Pressure

One of the hallmarks of the modern Republican party has been the efficacy of its communication infrastructure and its commitment to the long term. Over time it has become a sophisticated national political machine. Now, Sinclair Advertiser Boycott has shown that our side truly has the beginnings of a strong and vital counter force if we devote ourselves to long term thinking. The battle is just beginning whether we win or lose this election.

The immediate necessity, however, is to not let up on Sinclair. They have not capitulated. They merely changed their strategy. They are committed to the extreme right wing and will continue to evangelize in various ways for the cause with no sense of fairness or journalistic ethics. This little gambit has personally cost the family more than 40 million dollars and yet they continue. It seems that they have not yet learned their lesson and perhaps they never will. But, there is an object lesson for others out there who might try something like this, so whatever happens we must take this all the way to the end.

We must not let up on the pressure until the propagandists understands that there will be a serious price to pay economically for ignoring their responsibilities to the nation as a guardian of democracy. They are allowed to use the airwaves as a public trust. If they continue to abuse that trust they should be relieved of it.

Via the Sinclair Boycott blog, I see that an unnamed Sinclair employee (and stockholder) is exhorting us to keep the pressure on the company to try to stop them from broadcasting the comedy and keep them from repeating it throughout the week-end. They have not learned their lesson:

You have today and tomorrow to prevent A POW Story from airing. Now is not the time to stop. If SBG is prevented from airing A POW Story, they will be forced to air regularly scheduled programming, and generate regularly scheduled ad revenue. This will have the effect of forcing SBG to accept money against their apparent will.

What you and others are doing here is very much like having an intervention with a drug addict. You don’t give him the benefit of the doubt. You don’t let him dictate terms. You don’t allow yourself to be dazzled by his arguments. And you don’t leave him alone so he can “go to the bathroom.” You are trying to save this company from itself. The Smith brothers took actions that caused their company stock to rapidly lose $90 million in value, of which $40 million came right out of their hides, and they still didn’t want to stop. There is no reason to beleive that they have come to their senses. They said what everyone wanted to hear, and now they are going to do what they wanted to do in the first place. They will do what Fox News does, and pay lip service to offering “both sides”. There will be some liberal lightweight phoning in a perfomance that will make Alan Colmes seem like Kenneth Galbraith by comparison.

…. SBG may use this weekend to get this program on the air more than once. The SBG press release mentions only what affiliates will be airing on Friday night. SBG may chose to air the program any number of times on any number of their affiliates after Friday. Should they do this, the company will likely bleed money like a stuck pig. If Glickenhaus and Media Matters don’t like what they see at 9 pm, what are they going to do? Wait til Monday morning to take legal action?

We are running promotional announcements for A POW Story as of today. So, my company believes this is a done deal. Prove them wrong.

Read the whole letter, it’s quite interesting. Keep sending all those calls and letters folks.

According to Atrios, there is also a mass protest scheduled for 8pm on Friday night at all the Sinclair affiliates. He’s got all the info.

If anyone you know lives in one of those towns, send them an e-mail and tell them to head down there at 8pm. Local news is important and if we make enough noise, Sinclair’s competitors will be more than happy to report these actions. The decline of the company, the protests and the boycott, unlike “A POW Story”, actually are news.

Trouble In Paradise?

I have to agree with the Bull Moose that Unka Karl indicating that Pat Robertson is a bald faced liar is quite the risky step to take in the waneing days of a very close election.

Now, what primarily disturbs the Moose are not the President’s comments nor does he doubt that Pat is on the Lord’s speed dial. Rather, the Moose is in a lather over the fact that Karl Rove is apparently calling Pat a liar. The Washington Post reports, “White House political adviser Karl Rove told reporters that Bush never said he did not expect casualties. “I was right there,” Rove said of the president’s conversation with Robertson.”

My, my, is there no gratitude from Karl for all the good works that Pat has performed for the President? And surely, it is not smart to call into question the credibility of a man who has a direct line to God merely days before a national election!

Or a man who just a couple of weeks ago threatened to take his flock and form a third party if he didn’t get his way:

Influential American evangelist Pat Robertson said Monday that Evangelical Christians feel so deeply about Jerusalem, that if President George W. Bush were to “touch” Jerusalem, Evangelicals would abandon their traditional Republican leanings and form a third party.

Evangelical Christians – estimated at tens of millions of Americans – overwhelmingly support Bush for his pro-Israel policies, Robertson told a Jerusalem news conference Monday.

But if Bush shifted his position toward support for Jerusalem as a capital for both Israel and a Palestinian state, his Evangelical backing would disappear, Robertson indicated.

“The President has backed away from [the road map], but if he were to touch Jerusalem, he’d lose all Evangelical support,” Robertson said. “Evangelicals would form a third party” because, though people “don’t know about” Gaza, Jerusalem is an entirely different matter.

The article goes on to quote him raving about Satan and Islam and all kinds of other crazy shit, but his naked threat wasn’t exactly subtle.

Can this marriage be saved?

Oh Please

So, I see (via Atrios) that Junior is taking a day off on Saturday.

Sure he is. In the fight of his life, ten days before the election, he’s taking a precious day away from the campaign trail.

How much do you want to bet he’s being measured for a new military costume as we speak?

My only question is whether it will be Kabul or Baghdad.

And if the braindead press corpse handle this as anything but a cheap, taxpayer financed stunt we should raise holy hell. In fact, it wouldn’t hurt to let them know now that any October Surprise like this is not a “surprise” it’s an act of sheer desperation and if they don’t cover this with the skepticism and derision it deserves they can never call themselves anything but whores.

It’s called working the refs folks. If this thing happens, the press needs to have our take on it firmly implanted in their minds before they start their bizarre, erotic fantasizing about the manly preznit.

Obscene?

Cult of the Codpiece

I have been sort of half heartedly working on a piece about the Susskind article this week-end but I may just give it up since Ezra has already eloquently laid out a good part of my thesis:

And the Iraqis will greet us with flowers and shiatsu massages, the tax cuts will result in more revenue entering government coffers while stimulating the economy, the Northern Alliance will do an excellent job securing Tora Bora, we know Putin is good because his soul said so, Ariel Sharon is a “man of peace”, our allies are materially unimportant because a small and maneuverable fighting force can easily carry out the mission in Iraq, simply requesting that companies consider the environment will be more effective than actual regulation…

Time and again, the Bush administration has placed their trust and crafted their policy based on a dubious or unproven assertion, and time and again they’ve found their faith misplaced, though not before the situation spun out of control to the country’s great harm. This Administration’s problem isn’t that they’re optimistic, it’s that they’re certain the world is similarly sunny. People are grabbing on to Suskind’s “reality-based community” quote, as well they should. But they’re missing its point. The Bush aide is arguing that the Administration operates off the idea that they shape their reality, that they are history’s forces, not victims. That’s why, presumably, they only plan for what they believe will happen. The parallels to New Age spirituality would be funny, if they weren’t so scary, and the idea would be admirable if reality didn’t keep proving it wrong.

This “don’t worry be happy” philosophy has gotten these guys into trouble over and over and over again. I’m a Los Angeleno like Ezra so I should have made the connection to New Age spirituality before, but I didn’t. Bush isn’t a bible-based, messianic fundamentalist. His “crusade fer freedom” is really much more in the mode of a New Agey Kumbaaya cult leader than an Armageddonist. (Maybe Ariana could give us some insight on how this works. This is her guy, John-Roger.)

He doesn’t know the bible except in the most rudimentary way. He doesn’t attend church. He doesn’t follow any of the most basic tenets of Christianity. He is simply the leader of the republican cult whose members believe that anything he says is the word of God — hence the bizarre screams of orgasmic fervor when he say words that one would not usually associate with deep emotional beliefs, like “tort reform.” It doesn’t matter what he says, it’s how he says them.

This is why he doesn’t have to make any sense and this is why his followers are so blind to reality. As with all cults they are willing to give up their money and their free will and turn it over to the leader. It has nothing to do with any traditional religion.

He’s the leader of the Cult of the Codpiece and as far as his followers are concerned, anything he says and does is divine.

Fabulous Flyboy

Paul Lukasiak has uncovered evidence that Bush was discharged from the TANG:

for failing “to possess the required military qualifications for his grade or specialty, or does not meet the mental, moral, professional or physical standards of the Air Force.”

It’s likely because he was either dumb, gay, drunk, high, insubordinate or cowardly. That’s what “mental, moral, professional or physical” means in military speak.

Looking across the entire landscape of his life, I’m thinking it just screams repressed gayness.

The Chippendales costumes alone…

Reality-Based Torture

I know that we are all obsessed at this point with the immediate needs of getting out the vote and making sure that Kerry wins two weeks from today, but I didn’t want to let this article slip past without comment. The NY Times reported over the week-end that people are beginning to speak out about the torture at Guantanamo.

Many detainees at Guantánamo Bay were regularly subjected to harsh and coercive treatment, several people who worked in the prison said in recent interviews, despite longstanding assertions by military officials that such treatment had not occurred except in some isolated cases.

The people, military guards, intelligence agents and others, described in interviews with The New York Times a range of procedures that included treatment they said was highly abusive occurring over a long period of time, as well as rewards for prisoners who cooperated with interrogators.

One regular procedure that was described by people who worked at Camp Delta, the main prison facility at the naval base in Cuba, was making uncooperative prisoners strip to their underwear, having them sit in a chair while shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forcing them to endure strobe lights and screamingly loud rock and rap music played through two close loudspeakers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to maximum levels, said one military official who witnessed the procedure. The official said that was intended to make the detainees uncomfortable, as they were accustomed to high temperatures both in their native countries and their cells.

Such sessions could last up to 14 hours with breaks, said the official, who described the treatment after being contacted by The Times.

I wrote several pieces about this a couple of months back and I remain shocked and stunned that we have done what it now appears clearly that we did. We created a high tech concentration camp in Cuba that evolved into primarily a training camp for interrogators — the training of whom is bound to be inferior because of the suspect methods employed. This was done because of a hysterical overreaction to 9/11 combined with a truly cynical opportunism that allowed certain people in the administration to act upon some dark compulsion to “show strength” through cruelty.

Many of the prisoners had no affiliation with al Qaeda or the Taliban and those that did were very low level and useless for intelligence. Indeed, the top level al Qaeda who have been captured are being held and tortured elsewhere. The military tribunals are a joke and it is said that most of the prisoners, like Yousaf Hamdi, will be set free having served their PR purposes in a failed strategy to project US strength. Gitmo is a show prison camp.

Back in August, I summed it up like this:

Here’s the nut. Prisoners in Guantanamo were taken into custody under extremely questionable circumstances and assumed to be terrorists with no further recourse. This was done (again via VF) because:

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says Gitmo plays not one but three vital roles in what the Pentagon calls the gwot, or global war on terror. First, it keeps terrorists “off the streets,” until death if necessary. Second, it turns them into sources of intelligence. Finally, with the first special “military commission” tribunals set to begin at Gitmo early in 2004, it lets America bring the perpetrators of terrible crimes to justice-in accordance, says Rumsfeld, “with the traditions of fairness and justice under law, on which this nation was founded, the very principles that the terrorists seek to attack and destroy.”

We know that in the first case, many of these people were not terrorists yet they are being subjected to horrifyingly inhumane treatment indefinitely. The three Britons being the ones most able to tell their stories to westerners, confirm this. There have been more than 60 others released back to their home countries after having been through this. We don’t know how many more are still inside.

In the second case, there has been little intelligence value in their interrogations, not just because they aren’t actually terrorists, but because even if they were, they’ve been out of the loop now for years. In fact, we know that there have been no high value terrorists ever held in Guantanamo. They are being water-boarded at discreet facilities elsewhere in the gulag.

In the third case, these sham military tribunals, the nature of which military lawyers themselves are appalled at, really mean that hundreds of innocent men could spend the rest of their lives in prison and for the forseeable future undergo mental torture that can only be described as criminal. At the least, the administration is intent upon dragging its feet for years, if necessary, to keep them from ever seeing the light of a real courtroom.

I don’t know what the Kerry admnistration will do about this, but I think it’s fair to say that they are going to be under tremendous pressure to appear “tough” on terrorism by the enraged firebreathers on the right who are already gearing up to engage in their own special form of political torture should they lose. Counter pressure is going to be needed.

We are going to have to be prepared to support the Kerry administration as it tries to do the right here while keeping the mediawhores from lapping up the inevitable Wurlitzer feeding frenzy with cries of treason and appeasement. This is going to be a very tough issue for a Democrat to deal with in this political environment and I think all of us need to be prepared to help the administration do what needs to be done. (Along with a million other things over which the wingnuts are going to lose their tiny little minds …)