Springtime for Democrats in Washington
Winter for Republicans and turds.
It matters not whether you win or lose; what matters is whether I win or lose.
– Darrin Weinberg
White House toilet staff begins ethics classes
The White House began mandatory, hourlong briefings Tuesday for an estimated 3,000 turd wranglers on ethics in response to the indictment of a top official in the CIA leak investigation.
Bush aides can help pay Libby's legal defense bills
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House officials are free to contribute to a fund to help pay for the legal defense of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, in the CIA leak investigation, the White House said on Wednesday.
Chalabi stirs Iraq war controversy
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraqi deputy prime minister Ahmad Chalabi met U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday, stirring Iraq war critics who denounced the visit of the man most associated with discredited prewar intelligence.
By David Podvin
In the aftermath of the California special election the headlines read, “SCHWARZENEGGER ROUTED”, a most welcome bulletin that for inspirational value ranks a close second to “COULTER DROWNS IN SEWAGE TREATMENT MISHAP”. Yet the most relevant factor is not that He Who Gropes has just been groped. It is the way in which he has been groped that serves as a template for liberal success.
Soon after taking office, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared war on the “special interests”, which from his perspective are the employees who serve the taxpayers. Arnold sued to block changes in the state's nurse-patient staffing ratios that would have improved medical care, and then taunted the nurses that he was “kicking their butts”. The governor also targeted educators and public safety personnel for abuse while promoting ballot initiatives designed to skew political power even further towards his corporate benefactors.
There is nothing unusual about a Republican attacking working people. The wild card was the response of union leaders, who reacted uncharacteristically for liberals by launching a withering counterattack. The unions understood that corporate news programs would never broadcast facts, so they did it themselves. For months, California television was blanketed with commercials in which gentle nurses and wholesome teachers and earnest firefighters and clean-cut cops politely explained that Arnold is a serial liar who has broken his promise to represent the common citizen…
The mainstream media disparaged the union effort as “outrageous propaganda”. And Schwarzenegger was so irate that at one point it seemed certain he would deploy the National Guard to invade Poland.
This is the stage of the scenario where liberals typically dissolve into tears and promise never again to transgress, but the unions deviated from the script. When the head of the teacher’s association was scolded because her ads were making conservatives collectively hold their breath and turn blue, she responded with an eloquence that was transcendentally beautiful: “I don’t care.”
The three magic words. Had Al Gore or John Kerry possessed such command of the English language, George W. Bush wouldn’t have stood a chance…
'Attacks that lie AREN’T WORKING. Attacks that tell the truth, WORK'
Carol @makethemaccountable
Voters came down hard Tuesday on school board members who backed a statement on intelligent design being read in biology class, ousting eight Republicans and replacing them with Democrats who want the concept stripped from the science curriculum.
The election unfolded amid a landmark federal trial involving the Dover public schools and the question of whether intelligent design promotes the Bible's view of creation. Eight Dover families sued, saying it violates the constitutional separation of church and state.
Dover's school board adopted a policy in October 2004 that requires ninth-graders to hear a prepared statement about intelligent design before learning about evolution in biology class.
Eight of the nine school board members were up for election Tuesday. They were challenged by a slate of Democrats who argued that science class was not the appropriate forum for teaching intelligent design.
"My kids believe in God. I believe in God. But I don't think it belongs in the science curriculum the way the school district is presenting it," said Jill Reiter, 41, a bank teller who joined a group of high school students waving signs supporting the challengers
Murdoch approved lunar right nutcase, Pat Robertson claimed Dover could now follow in the Sodom and Gomorrah tradition and be nuked by God.
It's true then...those whome the gods wish to destroy they DO first make mad. Now of course there's mad and then there's mad.
The Democrats’ New Wedge Strategy is an inside one, aimed at Bush-led Republican Washington, where team loyalty is supposed to be the number one virtue, and where the president has ruled with an iron hand. The Democrats want to unhinge that discipline by exposing — or creating — friction between: Bush and Cheney, Bush and his political advisor, Karl Rove; the White House and the Republican-run Congress; and between competing Republican leadership tongs on Capitol Hill.
None of these figures or factions is popular in the country right now, and the Dems’ rather simple idea is to force them to defend each other in broad daylight. And the Dems know that Bush — a loyalist by nature, who believes in the Texas adage of “dancing with the one that brung ya” — is likely to take the bait.
Here’s the way it’s playing out:
Bush v. Cheney
Rather than go after the president, the Democrats are highlighting Cheney, and hope either that the president is forced to come to the defense of his own veep, or publicly distance himself from him — at which point they’ll shout what amounts to “Cheney’s guilty!”
Bush aides are obliging the Dems by leaking word — or spin — that the veep had lost clout long before his former top aide, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was indicted by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.
Now Democrats are highlighting Cheney’s role as an advocate for exemptions to the new anti-torture policy, and focusing on the “what he knew and when he knew it” questions raised by the leak investigation of Libby.
Bush v. Rove
While most legal experts doubt that Rove will be indicted, Democrats will push for a public accounting from the “Boy Genius” about his role in the CIA matter.
More important, they will press the president to explain why he didn’t — or shouldn’t now — fire Rove for his involvement in the Valerie Plame matter.
Bush and Rove have been a political team for 32 years; no one expects them to go their separate ways. But Rove has his share of Republican enemies in town, and the Dems would love to give them an excuse to call for his departure, or at least demotion. The aim, if nothing else, is to unsettle the Boss.
White House v. Hill
The Bush presidency has ruled the GOP-run Congress as a fiefdom of its own. It worked in the first term, but has left behind deep resentment in the backbenches of the House, and the Senate as a whole, where Majority Leader Bill Frist (installed at the behest of Rove), is not widely liked.
Democrats want to stoke that resentment. One way: encourage a new discussion of budget cuts. The Dems aren’t really any more interested in cutting the deficit than the Republicans are, but they would like to see the GOP at war with itself over how to do it.
Republican v. Republican on the Hill
This is the easiest one for the Democrats: just raise the profile of Sen. John McCain by doing more deals with him. And they solemnly back his effort to ensure that foreign detainees are interrogated humanely. The senator’s chief foe: Cheney. For Democrats, there’s no Wedge Strategy wrestling match they’d rather see — unless they can find a way to lure Bush into the ring, too.
All of the above is from a Dem rag but don't worry...I'm not drinking THEIR kool-aid.
Zjust with kids dying in SW Asia I can't joke about how good the criminal Nazi regime is for anarchy and anarchism. Tactical voting time is here. ' Don't ask-don't tell '
It matters not whether you win or lose; what matters is whether I win or lose.
– Darrin Weinberg
White House toilet staff begins ethics classes
The White House began mandatory, hourlong briefings Tuesday for an estimated 3,000 turd wranglers on ethics in response to the indictment of a top official in the CIA leak investigation.
Bush aides can help pay Libby's legal defense bills
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House officials are free to contribute to a fund to help pay for the legal defense of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, in the CIA leak investigation, the White House said on Wednesday.
Chalabi stirs Iraq war controversy
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraqi deputy prime minister Ahmad Chalabi met U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday, stirring Iraq war critics who denounced the visit of the man most associated with discredited prewar intelligence.
By David Podvin
In the aftermath of the California special election the headlines read, “SCHWARZENEGGER ROUTED”, a most welcome bulletin that for inspirational value ranks a close second to “COULTER DROWNS IN SEWAGE TREATMENT MISHAP”. Yet the most relevant factor is not that He Who Gropes has just been groped. It is the way in which he has been groped that serves as a template for liberal success.
Soon after taking office, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared war on the “special interests”, which from his perspective are the employees who serve the taxpayers. Arnold sued to block changes in the state's nurse-patient staffing ratios that would have improved medical care, and then taunted the nurses that he was “kicking their butts”. The governor also targeted educators and public safety personnel for abuse while promoting ballot initiatives designed to skew political power even further towards his corporate benefactors.
There is nothing unusual about a Republican attacking working people. The wild card was the response of union leaders, who reacted uncharacteristically for liberals by launching a withering counterattack. The unions understood that corporate news programs would never broadcast facts, so they did it themselves. For months, California television was blanketed with commercials in which gentle nurses and wholesome teachers and earnest firefighters and clean-cut cops politely explained that Arnold is a serial liar who has broken his promise to represent the common citizen…
The mainstream media disparaged the union effort as “outrageous propaganda”. And Schwarzenegger was so irate that at one point it seemed certain he would deploy the National Guard to invade Poland.
This is the stage of the scenario where liberals typically dissolve into tears and promise never again to transgress, but the unions deviated from the script. When the head of the teacher’s association was scolded because her ads were making conservatives collectively hold their breath and turn blue, she responded with an eloquence that was transcendentally beautiful: “I don’t care.”
The three magic words. Had Al Gore or John Kerry possessed such command of the English language, George W. Bush wouldn’t have stood a chance…
'Attacks that lie AREN’T WORKING. Attacks that tell the truth, WORK'
Carol @makethemaccountable
Voters came down hard Tuesday on school board members who backed a statement on intelligent design being read in biology class, ousting eight Republicans and replacing them with Democrats who want the concept stripped from the science curriculum.
The election unfolded amid a landmark federal trial involving the Dover public schools and the question of whether intelligent design promotes the Bible's view of creation. Eight Dover families sued, saying it violates the constitutional separation of church and state.
Dover's school board adopted a policy in October 2004 that requires ninth-graders to hear a prepared statement about intelligent design before learning about evolution in biology class.
Eight of the nine school board members were up for election Tuesday. They were challenged by a slate of Democrats who argued that science class was not the appropriate forum for teaching intelligent design.
"My kids believe in God. I believe in God. But I don't think it belongs in the science curriculum the way the school district is presenting it," said Jill Reiter, 41, a bank teller who joined a group of high school students waving signs supporting the challengers
Murdoch approved lunar right nutcase, Pat Robertson claimed Dover could now follow in the Sodom and Gomorrah tradition and be nuked by God.
It's true then...those whome the gods wish to destroy they DO first make mad. Now of course there's mad and then there's mad.
The Democrats’ New Wedge Strategy is an inside one, aimed at Bush-led Republican Washington, where team loyalty is supposed to be the number one virtue, and where the president has ruled with an iron hand. The Democrats want to unhinge that discipline by exposing — or creating — friction between: Bush and Cheney, Bush and his political advisor, Karl Rove; the White House and the Republican-run Congress; and between competing Republican leadership tongs on Capitol Hill.
None of these figures or factions is popular in the country right now, and the Dems’ rather simple idea is to force them to defend each other in broad daylight. And the Dems know that Bush — a loyalist by nature, who believes in the Texas adage of “dancing with the one that brung ya” — is likely to take the bait.
Here’s the way it’s playing out:
Bush v. Cheney
Rather than go after the president, the Democrats are highlighting Cheney, and hope either that the president is forced to come to the defense of his own veep, or publicly distance himself from him — at which point they’ll shout what amounts to “Cheney’s guilty!”
Bush aides are obliging the Dems by leaking word — or spin — that the veep had lost clout long before his former top aide, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was indicted by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.
Now Democrats are highlighting Cheney’s role as an advocate for exemptions to the new anti-torture policy, and focusing on the “what he knew and when he knew it” questions raised by the leak investigation of Libby.
Bush v. Rove
While most legal experts doubt that Rove will be indicted, Democrats will push for a public accounting from the “Boy Genius” about his role in the CIA matter.
More important, they will press the president to explain why he didn’t — or shouldn’t now — fire Rove for his involvement in the Valerie Plame matter.
Bush and Rove have been a political team for 32 years; no one expects them to go their separate ways. But Rove has his share of Republican enemies in town, and the Dems would love to give them an excuse to call for his departure, or at least demotion. The aim, if nothing else, is to unsettle the Boss.
White House v. Hill
The Bush presidency has ruled the GOP-run Congress as a fiefdom of its own. It worked in the first term, but has left behind deep resentment in the backbenches of the House, and the Senate as a whole, where Majority Leader Bill Frist (installed at the behest of Rove), is not widely liked.
Democrats want to stoke that resentment. One way: encourage a new discussion of budget cuts. The Dems aren’t really any more interested in cutting the deficit than the Republicans are, but they would like to see the GOP at war with itself over how to do it.
Republican v. Republican on the Hill
This is the easiest one for the Democrats: just raise the profile of Sen. John McCain by doing more deals with him. And they solemnly back his effort to ensure that foreign detainees are interrogated humanely. The senator’s chief foe: Cheney. For Democrats, there’s no Wedge Strategy wrestling match they’d rather see — unless they can find a way to lure Bush into the ring, too.
All of the above is from a Dem rag but don't worry...I'm not drinking THEIR kool-aid.
Zjust with kids dying in SW Asia I can't joke about how good the criminal Nazi regime is for anarchy and anarchism. Tactical voting time is here. ' Don't ask-don't tell '
posted by professor rat at 7:35 PM
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