Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Orrin Hatch: Drug Lord

Senator, His Son Get Boosts From Makers of Ephedra

Orrin Hatch has kept regulators at bay and benefited via campaign donations. Lobbyists linked to his son have received $2 million.

March 5, 2003

WASHINGTON — For more than a decade, the dietary supplements industry has counted on Sen. Orrin G. Hatch to fend off tighter regulation of products such as ephedra, the controversial stimulant linked to more than 80 deaths — most recently a young Baltimore Orioles baseball player.

Among other things, the Utah Republican co-wrote the 1994 law that lets supplement makers sell products without the scientific premarket safety testing required for drugs and other food additives. That law has proved a major obstacle to federal control of ephedra.

For its part, the supplements industry has not only showered the senator with campaign money but also paid almost $2 million in lobbying fees to firms that employed his son Scott.

From 1998 to 2001, while Scott Hatch worked for a lobbying firm with close ties to his father, clients in the diet supplements industry paid the company more than $1.96 million, more than $1 million of it from clients involved with ephedra.

Hatch has been one of the most fervent believers in keeping the “supplement” industry free from regulation. He has no problem with the selling of mind altering herbs over the counter as long as one of his campaign contributors is making a bundle.

Perhaps the medical marijuana advocates should just start paying off politicians directly. Clearly, Americans are free to do as many drugs as they want, as long as they go through channels and get the ok of medical experts like Orrin Hatch.

The drug war isn’t about illegal drugs, per se. It’s about who gets a piece of the action.

Tortured Logic

For any of you who think that torture is ok because we can be sure of our righteous good intentions, because we know when and where it is right and wrong to do it, because bad guys “deserve it” and we always get only the bad guys, please read this powerful piece by Emma.

None of that makes any difference. By not understanding the ramifications of going down this path, there are many who are one short step away from becoming what they claim to abhor.

Leap Frogging

I heard a long discussion on CNN about who the Bush administration will be putting in charge of the three areas they plan to designate within the “Iraq federation.” The names, where they will be stationed and how they plan to “administer” the various areas until elections can be held were all discussed in some detail.

Apparently, the war is over. Hip, hip hooray.

The Better Rhettor deconstructs the latest Bush rhetorical ploy — “Leap-Frogging” — and finds that it’s a tried and true Karl Rove special.

It’s a bait and switch. Rather than continuing to argue for the merits of their position—an argument they have concluded they cannot win—they now want to shift the terms of the debate. They don’t want to talk anymore, in other words, about whether we should invade Iraq. We are supposed to accept the fiction that this has been already settled, and we are now in the “next phase” of discussing what to do in post-war Iraq. That way they can shift the discussion, aided by our feckless media, away from their losing hand and onto another topic—one that presumes the Bushies won the original debate.

Read on. You’ll learn that as with everything else with these guys, it always comes back to Florida.

Post Mortem

Uggabugga has the definitive word-for-word rundown on the press conference.

And check out the new blog Vote Quimby on Timmy Russert’s bizarre and inexplicable endorsement of Bush’s move to single handedly amend the constitution.

Timmy said: He laid out the case in his way – an interesting way. He said something very straightforward, that he has analyzed all the information, all the intelligence, all the data. That he had concluded as commander-in-chief that Saddam Hussein is a risk to American security and that he has made a decision. Therefore he has to act and has a constitutional duty to act.

You can not argue with that premise. You can argue that he is misinterpreting the data or the intelligence or he should have reached a different conclusion. But, the president will counter saying, “I’m sorry, you have a right to disagree with me. I have made this decision.”

I can’t? Watch me.

Although the President was extremely careful to avoid using the word “war” to describe the methods by which the United States would force Iraq to disarm, virtually nobody believes that an attack on another country that has its own stable government would not constitute a war.

So, although G-Dub put his hand on the bible (didn’t you just love that touch?) and swore to protect the Constitution of the United States, he cannot do so by attacking Iraq. If he wants to protect our Constitution, he will ask Congress to declare a war, which he will then prosecute as the Commander in Chief of our armed forces.

There. See how easy that was? I didn’t have to quibble with Bush’s interpretation of the data one iota. Hell, I could make the argument even if I granted the presupposition that Saddam’s Iraq poses a threat. Regardless of how seriously Bush takes his oath o’ office, war is simply not his call. Yes, Congress voted to cede that authority a few months ago, but again, the Constitution makes no provision for a branch of government signing away its authority on any matter, much less the gravest matter a nation can undertake. Which is to say, it wasn’t their call, at least not then.

Yeah, it’s an “interesting” new take on the whole “congress shall have the power to declare war,” constitutional thing. The congressional wimps may have abdicated their constitutional responsibility to the President in the case of Iraq , but they haven’t gotten around to giving him that power under the constitution yet. Perhaps they are saving it up for when they “constitutionally” declare him King.

William Saleton says that Bush knows the difference between a lie and the truth but that’s all he knows. Uh, Will, don’t think so. Bush definitely doesn’t know the difference between a lie and the truth. This means that we are back where we started. Bush doesn’t know anything.

And Tom Shales has the temerity to actually report on the elephant in the East Room (and I’m not talking about Karen Hughes.) The former hard-partying, frat-boy, mean drunk may be on prescription drugs:

The contrast between the foggy Bush of last night and the gung-ho Bush who delivered a persuasive State of the Union message to Congress not so long ago was considerable. Maybe Bush thought he was, indeed, coming across as cool and temperate instead of bored and enervated, and this was simply a rhetorical miscalculation. On the other hand, it hardly seems out of order to speculate that, given the particularly heavy burden of being president in this new age of terrorism — a time in which America has, as Bush said, become a “battlefield” — the president may have been ever so slightly medicated.

He would hardly be the first president ever to take a pill.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that mind you. Those Dr.’s Feelgood over at Walter Reed prescribe only the very best. (Just so long as it isn’t something really bad that requires the use of certain paraphernalia, if you know what I mean.) It is actually a citizen’s patriotic duty to use mind altering prescription drugs because it creates jobs in the pharmaceutical industry.

UPDATE:

TBOGG informs me that the probable drug in question is called “Weazac,” a sedative used on weasels and press secretaries. I did some research and it is a new combination therapy that is usually prescribed to counteract a Viagra and Ritalin addiction which is apparently becoming epidemic in the flabby, middle aged Republican doughboy population. Good to know.

I think that says it all.

Nobody Does It Better

Atrios links to a mutual hero, Charles Pierce subbing for Eric Alterman

WELCOME AGAIN TO THE MUSTANG RANCH

This overripe piece of faith-based palaver has been on the newsstands for four days now, long enough for the rot to endanger whatever honest journalism may be placed next to it on the shelf. For sheer sucking up to established power, Howard Fineman makes Larry King look like Thomas Paine, and there is so very much in this with which to make happy sport. (Cover your ears, Nick Kristof.)

Let us begin with the obvious: there’s absolutely no goddamn way how to know how genuine someone’s faith is. Perhaps W does spend every morning with a book of sermons. (The Bible, after all, has all those inconvenient passages about rich men, camels, and the eyes of needles.) It doesn’t matter if he spends it playing handball with the ghost of Thomas Aquinas. What goes on in his mind — insert cheap joke here — as regards the family Deity is so far beyond empirical proof that you might as well assert as fact that he’s leading the country based on his dreams.

There’s more where that came from

A Lazy Schoolboy

OK. He’s doing what he always does. He repeats his bumper sticker bullshit over and over again in slightly different ways, taking his time, speaking very slowly and in tententious tones, not making any real sense, but with an attitude of seriousness. The clock ticks while he says nothing. Freedom, God, Security, Oath, blah, blah, blah…

A few questions, he says nothing, the pundits say he hit a home run, Churchill is back.

He is like the 6th grader who didn’t do his homework and is called to the front of the class to tell us what he’s learned. “The first president of the United States was George Washington. He was called the father of our country. He was called the father of our country because he was the first president. And the first president is known as the father of our country because he was first. His name was George Washington. He was the first and he was the father and he was the President. amen.”

He should just memorize Tony Blair’s answers.

UPDATE:

“The North Korean nukular weapons might end up in the hands of dictators.”

Boy, I sure hope not. That would be awful. They might even have ICBM’s and be able to hit the United States. I hope they can talk Kim Jong Il out of making any and selling them to…say, dictators.

And he really did say that “we will disarm Saddam Hussein” line.

This was bad.

And Tim Russert just ejaculated.

UPDATE:

Chris Matthews just said aloud that Bush repeated himself endlessly. That was a big mistake. He’s going to be replaced any day now with the new Lyndon LaRouche show.

Sorry, he wasn’t Churchill.

Fineman tells us he is “Shane, strapping on his six-guns to protect his family.The rejection of the UN is a badge of honor. He swore an oath on the Bible to protect the American people.”

Much better. He’s not a rootin’ tootin’ cowboy, he’s a reluctant cowboy.

UPDATE:

It’s kind of scary when the borg over at the Corner are unable to pull out a rah, rah for the Cheerleader in Chief.

“He’s tired,” they all say. He’s a tired and sleepy little cowpoke and that makes him somber.

And repetitive. And rambling. And stupid.

Geez. Doesn’t this guy already sleep about 13 hours a night? He sleeps more than my cat.

Porno and Prayers

Avedon Carol has a number of great posts up from the last couple of days and I urge you to go read them. This one, however, a letter from one of her readers taking issue with the ridiculous numbers used in Nicholas Kristof’s article about how the poor Christian right is treated in the media is particularly great.

I’ve gotta tell you, if Kristoff’s numbers were true, then the rest of us are buying porn and drinking whiskey and watching debauched television every single waking minute of the day because these industries are sure as hell making billions off of somebody.

It reminds me of the great story (possibly apocryphal) about a porno store owner in Utah who was busted and tried for violating community standards. However, his defense attorney was able to prove that some huge number of locals watched porno on their cable television and that the local hotels all carried it on their closed circuit systems. Ooops.

This entire line about America being the “most religious” country on earth is belied by what we see every day in our popular culture. (If you define shopping as a religion, then perhaps it’s true.) Otherwise, people are quite obviously defining themselves to pollsters as “religious” if they have even a vague belief in God or go to church on Christmas eve. I do not know how many truly devout religious people there are, and I’m sure there are many, but clearly this is not a majority and this constant citing of polls as if they mean something on a subject like this is absurd.

In a nation where the entire congress goes completely apeshit over the words “under God” in the silly pledge of allegiance, is it any wonder that people tell pollsters they are religious? I’m sure they even believe it. They also believe that watching “Secret Co-ed Web Cam” is a sacrament, apparently.

Hell Froze Over?

Tonight at 8 ET, President George W. Patton is having his second prime time press conference since taking office.

He’s reportedly going to break news by saying, “if Saddam Hussein does not disarm, with a coalition of the willing, I will disarm Saddam Hussein. I understand there are some who don’t believe that Saddam Hussein presents a true risk to the United State and we just have a difference of opinion.”

Unnamed White House sources said that the President also planned to tell the American people, “Saddam gassed his own people, he’s a cold-blooded dictator.”

With respect to al Qaeda, he will publicly reveal that “We’ve got ’em on the run. We will bring ’em ta justice.” But, he is expected to also remind the public, “I told the Murican people they were gonna have ta be patient, an I meant it!”

Reporters will undoubtedly give the president no quarter as they confront him for the first time in the formal East Wing setting since just after September 11th. It is assumed that they will ask such hard hitting questions as:

“Do you feel that exercise is important at times of stress?”

“How much did your heroic experience as a fighter pilot contributed to your understanding of the military planning in Iraq?”

“Do you think that your faith has played a part in your overwhelming popularity among the American people?”

“How does the first lady feel about all this snow?”

“Saddam Hussein is reported to have gassed his own people. How do you feel about that?”

“Is the current planned amount of badly needed tax relief for the hardest working most productive members of society really going to be enough, or do you plan to ease the terrible burden even more, so that this economy will continue to grow as you predicted it would?”

“Now that the United Nations has been proven irrelevant, do you plan to seize its assets and deport the anti-american diplomats who sought to humiliate you and failed?”

“What would you tell average Americans to do when they see a muslim terrorist in their neighborhood?”

“Are you glad that God has chosen you to eradicate evil on this earth?”

It should be exciting. Bush appearing before the public without his cue cards is always suspenseful. But then, he does benefit from the bigotry of low expectations. If he doesn’t vomit on somebody, he’s already outshown his father.

If you all are praying types, put one in for the washington press corp to grow some journalistic cojones in the next couple of hours. This President only answers wide ranging questions once every 18 months or so. We could be in nuclear winter the next time Karl decides he’s in sufficient trouble to require taking the chance that President Pom Pom will break into the “Barney” song and start singing “I love you, you love me” on national television. Let’s hope they make the most of it.

A Mediwhore’s Gotta Do What A Mediawhore’s Gotta Do

TBOGG’s back (whew, I was having withdrawal) and he quotes Chris Matthews on Imus:

Matthews: “It’s about changing these governments around so that they play ball with us and I think that’s what the game has been from Wolfowitz and Feith and Rumsfeld and Cheney — they’re all hardliners. You know, when they get off the air with me they always giggle, ‘You know, I hope they don’t disarm.’ That’s their worst fear, that Saddam Hussein will throw all his guns out in the street in front of ’em, then we can’t go to war and these guys will be miserable. It’s not about guns. It’s about ideology. These guys want to change that part of the world and they’re damned, they’ll come up with any excuse to do it. And look, that’s an idealistic Wilsonian notion. I think it’s squirrelly. It’s going to make every Arab kid grow up to hate our guts for the next thousand years, but that’s they’re (sic) point of view and I’ve got mine.”

TBOGG: So why doesn’t Matthews confront them about their off-screen comments the next time they come on? Is it Hardball or T-Ball?

I think the Boggster was out of town when the MSNBC circular was sent around. It went like this:

Donahue presented a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war……He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration’s motives.” The report went on to outline a possible nightmare scenario where the show becomes “a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”

Chris, of all people, understand that the only thing standing between him and obscurity is a “liberal anti-war agenda.” As long as he remembers that he doesn’t even have to get ratings.