By GottaLaff
Via a Yahoo e-mail alert:
ON THE GULF OF MEXICO (AP) Documents: Oil rig's deadly blast triggered by methane gas bubble, series of safety failures.
By GottaLaff
As George W. Bush continues to pen the book on his presidency, friends say that his goal is to focus on 10 to 12 of his most controversial decisions and provide the background that will prove he was right at the time. "As he researches and reviews meeting notes, he plans to provide the context of what was happening when he was deciding," says a friend. Take the deficit as an example. Yes, he expanded it. But the prez wants to explain that 9/11 and the wars that followed required it and that he wasn't on some drunken spending binge. The book is due out in the fall of 2010.Key words: "9/11" and "drunken."
Dammit, this is Roll Call which is subscription only, but just read what you can for free.
Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans on Wednesday boycotted a confirmation hearing for a federal appeals court judge over concerns that the panel is moving “at an unreasonable pace” on President Barack Obama’s nominations.An "unreasonable pace"? WTF is that supposed to mean? They bitch when there are openings not filled, they bitch when we try and fill them. Will no one just admit that they are a failed, and I mean failed party? Bring back the damn Whigs.
By GottaLaff
Countdown to The Beginning of Yes We Did:
By GottaLaff
Former U.S.-installed Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has denounced the policies of President George W. Bush as an "utter failure" that gave rise to the sectarian venom that ravaged his country. [...]He really ought to think about blogging for TPC.Allawi ruled Iraq for almost a year after U.S. occupation officials handed power to him in 2004 as prime minister of an interim government. He was selected by a council hand-picked by Washington after the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
"Yes, Bush's policies failed utterly," said Allawi, describing the U.S. administration that once backed him. "Utter failure. Failure of U.S. domestic and foreign policy, including fighting terrorism and economic policy."
"His insistence on names like 'democracy' and 'open elections', without giving attention to political stability, was a big mistake. It cast shadows on Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Egypt, and I believe this will be remembered in history as President Bush's policy," he said.
President Bush had none of the power rooted in respect, judgment and persuasion. He won two elections and he controlled an army. Now he has nothing.
By GottaLaff
"If Bush ever hopes to have the history of his presidency revived, a la Truman, it's going to start with success in Iraq. That's why it must have been that much harder for him to deal with the fact he had shoes thrown at him in his final visit to the country before he leaves office. It's bad enough in our last NBC/WSJ poll that 79% of Americans said they wouldn't miss him -- but at least no one is throwing shoes at him stateside. In that same poll, we asked respondents to judge Bush on his greatest achievements and failures. Not surprisingly, Iraq was at the top (or near it) in both lists. Removing Saddam Hussein was seen as Bush's second greatest accomplishment, but going into Iraq and starting a war was seen as his greatest failure. Iraq is THAT complicated for Bush and his legacy. This economic downturn in the last year of his presidency probably serves as the exclamation point on a public judgment of a below-average presidency for him. But Iraq has always been viewed as Bush's last chance at historical redemption. The good news for him: He's taking this with humor and, as he points out, journalists could not have done that in Iraq eight years ago. But yesterday's shoe-throwing incident -- the showing of the sole of a shoe is a great insult in Arab culture, NBC's John Yang points out -- might very well be the epitaph of the Bush presidency."The obvious joke: Bush is a heel. Oh wait. That's wrong. The obvious joke is Bush himself. A really, really bad joke.
By GottaLaff
An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.H/t: CLGThe history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.
In one passage, for example, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ ”
Mr. Powell’s assertion that the Pentagon inflated the number of competent Iraqi security forces is backed up by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander of ground troops in Iraq, and L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator until an Iraqi government took over in June 2004.
Among the overarching conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale.
The bitterest message of all for the reconstruction program may be the way the history ends. The hard figures on basic services and industrial production compiled for the report reveal that for all the money spent and promises made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed. [...]
The history contains a catalog of revelations that show the chaotic and often poisonous atmosphere prevailing in the reconstruction effort. [...]
Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the history concludes, “the government as a whole has never developed a legislatively sanctioned doctrine or framework for planning, preparing and executing contingency operations in which diplomacy, development and military action all figure.” [...]
Mr. Bowen’s deputy, Ginger Cruz, declined to comment for publication on the substance of the history. But she said it would be presented on Feb. 2 at the first hearing of the Commission on Wartime Contracting, which was created this year as a result of legislation sponsored by Senators Jim Webb of Virginia and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, both Democrats.
By GottaLaff
The most comprehensive guide to these and other Bush administration failures is a new list compiled by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), a non-profit investigative journalism group which recently "set out to document just how off-track things have gone," assigning thirteen reporters to document the worst failures of the last eight years.Here's the list, in part. No amount of scouring, scrubbing, detoxifying, or sanitizing can compensate for the following:
Working from government investigations, news stories, and suggestions from experts and government employees, the team compiled a list of 250 failures, which it then narrowed down to just 128 "that attracted bipartisan criticism and had major impacts on the lives of ordinary Americans."
The results of the investigation, which are summarized at CPI's PaperTrail blog and presented in full at its Broken Government project, are stunning in their scope even for those who have been following the scandals of the last eight years.
By GottaLaff
No matter what they do, the Republicans can't pin this on Obama or Pelosi. This has been brewing for a very long time. Bush's legacy is one of abject failure, and when a book is written, this will most likely be included in Chapter Eleven:
By GottaLaff On Tuesday, I reported that Sarah Palin's favorability ratings, which peaked shortly after the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, were starting to slip. Between Sept. 13 and Sept. 17, the Alaska governor's unfavorables had climbed in the Diageo/Hotline poll from 30 percent to 37 percent; her favorables, meanwhile, had fallen from 52 percent to 47 percent. All in all, she'd gone from the most to least popular White House hopeful over the course of five short days. I'm sure the First Dude will offer his deflating wife a sympathetic shoulder, if only poor Sarah can manage to catch up with it as her big, brave Dude scrambles to evade subpoenas.
Yes, the post title is ambiguously punny, because it's Friday and a few Comments down thread made me feel a little feisty.
The reason? "I suspect that we're starting to see Palin's considerable novelty wear off," I wrote. "Between now and Nov. 4, voters will stop seeing Palin as a fascinating story and starting taking her measure as an actual candidate for office." [...]
[T]he stats confirm my initial hunch. According to the Research 2000 daily tracking poll--which is conducted for the liberal blog DailyKos by a nonpartisan firm that ranks as one of the most accurate in the field--Palin's favorability rating has been steadily declining since Sept. 11, when it topped out at 52 percent favorable / 35 percent unfavorable (+17). On Monday, Palin's positives and negatives flatlined; by this morning, more respondents disapproved (46 percent) than approved (42 percent) of the Republican vice-presidential nominee. Lest you discount a poll commissioned by a Democratic organization--and something tells me that many of you will--the latest survey from CBS News and the New York Times shows a similar decline. On Sept. 8, Palin boasted a 44-22 favorable-unfavorable rating. Today, her split is 40-30. That's the exact same net swing of -12 points found in the Diageo/Hotline poll.Whether Palin's slippage affects McCain's bid remains to be seen. But to deny that she's slipping is no longer a reality-based proposition.
Then again, Republicans create their own reality. In their warped view, she's soaring.
By GottaLaff
George W. Bush is a despicable little cretin who has accomplished two things in his unfathomably failed presidency: Deteriorating America to the point of its being nearly unrecognizable, and being the perfect mentor to Gramm-pa Sid and his granddaughter, Rookie McLipstick.And here is what you might call the "money quote": "[M]y administration is focused on meeting these challenges. The American people can be sure we will continue to act to strengthen and stabilize our financial markets and improve investor confidence. "
Anbody reassured? I didn't think so.
His remarks, made just outside the Oval Office, lasted less than two minutes. Nothing he said changed the growing awareness in Washington that, despite being the nation's first MBA president, Bush has been and remains largely AWOL as the nation's wealth dwindles away.
And of course, he took no questions.
On Tuesday, Bush ignored a shouted question while touring hurricane damage in Galveston. "Mr. President, what are you going to do about AIG?" Tabassum Zakaria of Reuters yelled out. Bush shot back: "We're here talking about the people of Galveston, Texas. They've got a great mayor and they're working hard."
Yesterday, Bush ignored Associated Press reporter Deb Riechmann's request for comment during a photo op with Panama's President Martin Torrijos. The exchange was not reflected in the official transcript of his newsless event. But Cox News Service reporter Ken Herman captured it on video, and provided his own transcription:
"'With all due respect,' [Riechmann] said with all due respect, 'you haven't taken any questions since Aug. 6.'
"'I can't hear what you said,' Bush responded, with all due respect.
"'This way please, through the Rose Garden,' a pool wrangler said, with all due respect.
"'You got to speak with a louder voice,' Bush said, with a smile and all due respect.
"'I can't hear you,' he added. 'I'm old.'"
And Ben Feller writes for the Associated Press this morning: "As he finished his very brief statement and turned to walk back into the Oval Office, a reporter asked if he believed the economy was still sound. The president kept walking."
By GottaLaff
Even a clock is right twice a day. Nancy Pelosi got this one right:
In an interview on CNN, the California Democrat was asked to respond to video of the president criticizing the Democratic-led Congress for heading into the final 26 days of the legislative session without having passed a single government spending bill.It would be nice for them to sweep up after their own mess once in awhile. Oh, and Nance? One very effective way to clean up Bush's disastrous presidency is to impeach.
Pelosi shot back in unusually personal terms.
"You know, God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States, a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject," Pelosi replied. She then tsk-tsked Bush for "challenging Congress when we are trying to sweep up after his mess over and over and over again."
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