It turns out that in addition to being tied to Sweeney, the Albany lobbying firm Powers & Company was also tied to Jack Abramhoff.
After the wife beating and drunk driving, who knew that former Congresscritter John Sweeney would be tied into Abramhoff?
I’m shocked.
Boy, the Avignon president is a really classy guy:
If you’re going to fire someone, you want to make sure you do it in a place where the now-unemployed can’t make a scene.
You know…a place like, say, a church.
That, according to a new book – “Machiavelli’s Shadow” – by former Time magazine reporter Paul Alexander, is where President George W. Bush informed trusted advisor Karl Rove in 2007 that his services would no longer be needed at the White House.
“On a Sunday in midsummer, George W. Bush accompanied Karl Rove to the Episcopalian Church Rove sometimes attended,” writes Alexander. “They made their way to the front of the congregation. Then, during their time in the church, Bush gave Rove some stunning news. ‘Karl,’ Bush said, ‘there’s too much heat on you. It’s time for you to go.’”
It appears that Rove is a screamer, and Bush was afraid that he would be shouted at.
But according to the Republican party, Bush is really brave for sending soldiers to die in Iraq.
Pathetic.
Boy…Firing a man in church because you were afraid he would be angry with you? Bush is one classy dude.
In addition to demonstrations regarding reinstating the Pakistani supreme court judges, now you have constitutional amendments to curtail his power and a bill of impeachment being drawn up.
I do not think that he is long to Pakistan.
The Bush Blue Dog Democratic Caucus has spent too much time presenting only lip service to Democratic party goals. This move by the SEIU (scroll down) is a good start on dealing with the guys who forget the people what brung them after the elections:
In a move likely to upset some Democrats, the delegates approved an “accountability plan” in which the union would spend $10 million to pressure or punish political candidates who made pro-worker, pro-union promises, but broke them after being elected.
The union’s leaders cite a primary last February in which the service employees played an instrumental role in defeating Representative Albert Wynn, Democrat of Maryland, because the union thought he was favoring business over workers.
Howard Dean has spent much of the primary season trying not to be seen as favoring one candidate over the other. Now that Obama has clinched it, he feels free to say this:
“The wounds of sexism need to be the subject of a national discussion,” the chairman, Howard Dean, said in an interview. “Many of the most prominent people on TV behaved like middle schoolers” toward Mrs. Clinton.
I wholeheartedly agree.
So does the Women’s Media Center:
FWIW, I don’t debate their example, but the quotes and schmaltzy music make the clips less effective, not more effective.
On the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. He voted against investigations and aid to the Gulf coast.
After Siegelman and Scrushy were convicted in what increasingly appears to be a politically motivated trial, prosecutors appealed the original sentences of around 7 years (already unprecedentedly harsh), asking for 30 and 25 years respectively.
They have now now withdrawn their appeals of the sentences.
Obviously, the coverage scared off the prosecutors, because it has become increasingly obvious that this trial would give one of Stalin’s show trials a run for its money.
As John Amato of Crooks and Liars notes, along with half the liberal blogosphere, that when David Brooks says the following:
DAVID BROOKS, “NEW YORK TIMES”: Obama‘s problem is he doesn‘t seem like a guy who can go into an Applebee’s salad bar and people think he fits in naturally there. He has to change to be more like that Applebee’s guy and as he‘s done that he‘s become much more transactional. Much more, I‘m going to deliver this and this and this to you on policy.
He gets one fact wrong, there is no salad bar at Applebee’s.
I guess he’s never been to one.
It’s nice that shareholder activists are foing after undeserved executive compensation:
Almost one in five HSBC shareholders refused yesterday to back a controversial executive pay scheme that could see the bank’s top six executives pocket up to £120m over three years.
Shareholder after shareholder at a lengthy and at times fractious meeting in London brought up the subject of the huge bonuses that could be paid at HSBC despite the drop in the bank’s share price and a multibillion-dollar write-down from the US sub-prime mortgage crisis.
“You have been paid a salary; your bonus is not for losing money, which you have consistently done,” one shareholder told the chairman, Stephen Green. “You and the rest of the board have caused misery to millions of people and yet you are there with your hands out taking everything you can … how much is enough?”
I would hope that this becomes more common, and more effective (the activists got 18% of the vote).
This is crony capitalism at its worst.
In his article, which I recommend that you all read, The Fading of the Mirage Economy, he nails what is going on in the first three paragraphs:
Suddenly, it seems, we’re getting hit from all directions.
Energy and food prices are soaring. The housing market continues to collapse. Government revenue is falling, and taxes are rising. Airlines are jacking up fares and fees while reducing service. Banks are pulling credit lines. Auto companies are cutting production once again. Even investment bankers are losing their jobs.
The tendency is to see these as separate developments, each with its own causes and dynamic. Fundamentally, however, they are all part of the same story — the story of the global economy purging itself of large and unsustainable imbalances that for a time allowed many Americans to think they were richer than they really were.
I disagree on one point. I do not think that this was some sort of random confluence of events.
I think that this has been mainstream economic policy for the past 28 years. It is the gradual removal of wealth from the bottom 90+% and its transfer to those at the top, with free, easy, and increasingly unregulated credit and credit markets to create the temporary illusion of a high standard of living.
The goal was to create debt peonage, to make our society less like the industrialized world, and more like Mexico.
It’s about 12 minutes long, and it’s a USAF general’s wet dream.
What’s not mentioned is that the current USAF training and doctrine have hurt, rather than helped in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that the next generation fighters that they tout are simply too expensive to field or use in reasonable numbers.
From Thers of Whiskey Fire:
Movement conservatism started off as a racket. Movement conservatism has always been about exacerbating and then profiting from existing cultural, social, and economic resentments. There was never any fall from an original ideological Eden. The corruption was there from the start. Packer is quite right to emphasize how the political and popular success of movement conservatism owes everything to its legitimization of a politics of resentment that arose in the 1960s. Movement conservatism has nothing without Hatred of the Liberal, a point reinforced not least by the image with which Joyner chooses to adorn his post.
Actually, if you look at Bill Buckley’s pro segregation essays in the 1950s, the promulgation of hate for political power starts about a decade earlier.
It got its start from hating FDR, and folks like Buckley patted themselves on the back for being able to put a pseudo intellectual gloss on hate and greed.
In the middle of a housing crash, with prices still falling, Fannie Mae has reduced down-payment requirements to as low as 3% on some loans.
The only thing that I can think of is that they hope that this sort of gesture will keep Congress from looking too closely at tighter restrictions.
Bad move, because it opens them up to even more risks.
So I get this in my in box. It is not, as Bullwinkle says, “fan mail from some flounder”, though I think that some intellectual floundering definitely present.
Note that I have permission to reprint, and the only changes have been to email addresses.
#####@aol.com <#####@aol.com> Sun, May 18, 2008 at 8:28 AM
To: me
From an AOL address…How utterly appropriate
Since taking over Congress two years ago, everything has GOTTEN WORSE.
First, of course, it’s not been two years, it’s been 11/3 years. Congress came in on January 2007. It’s only 1½ years from the election, so now we know that you can’t count.
Gas is skyrocketing, and they campaigned and told us they would stabalize prices.
Actually, gas prices were not an issue in the 2006 elections, it was war and corruption. In fact the only people who are claiming that they can control gas prices are the Republicans, both through John McCain’s (and to her shame Hillary Clinton’s) gas tax holiday, and through the two months (most likely case the 6 months quoted is best case) that are under the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The economy is failing and all they want to do is take more in in TAXES.
The economy is failing because our deficits are catching up to us. We need to balance the budget.
Furthermore, the economy is failing because the velocity of money is slowing….Rich people spend more slowly than poor ones, and so you want to get money going further down the scale.
The spending cuts instead proposal means throwing retirees out into the street and downsizing our military to the size of that of Norway. You arguing for that?
Republican profligacy, as evidenced by Ted Stevens’ bridge to no where, and Dennis Hastert’s road project to inflate the value of his land are Republithug innovations, thank you very much.
It’s why we are seeing a breakout in inflation, which is higher than reported.
The common theme is that President Bush is the problem.
He is a large part of the problem. His solution to the credit crisis is to eliminate oversight and regulations over financial institutions, as the abandonment of basic regulations was not what screwed this up in the first place.
While many of these problems go a long way back, starting with baby steps under Jimmy Carter, and proceeding to spring under Reagan, it’s clear that Bush has been long opposed to doing anything about this, and he is still largely trying to wish the problem away.
With the veto pen, and Mich McConnell being willing to filibuster a burp, there are limits to what can be done under our system.
Is president Bush a god or something.
Only to you guys, though I’m sure that when he leaves power, your worship will end. At that point, to paraphrase Richard Widmark you will be blaming the Eskimos.
Seems like the Dems have no clue what or how to do anything.
Truth be told, I’m not too happy at their relative lack of success in getting through their agenda, but the bulk of the Democratic members of Congress have limited experience with being in the majority, and they seem to be doing better month by month, albeit very slowly.
Oh by the way, dont think that the 57 STATES mentioned by Obama will go away. It is clear, Obama was referencing the 57 Muslim states. HGMMMMMM……I wonder what was on his mind when he made that comment.
Well, since you haven’t read the full quote, where he says that he won’t make it to Alaska and Hawaii, but will hit all the other states, it’s a brain fart on numbers, particularly since there aren’t 57 Moslem nations. To quote the Republican president Abraham Lincoln*, “It is better to stay silent and let people think you are an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt,” as there are roughly 40, Wiki has 37, Majority Islamic nations.
The dems are certainly making this a better country, YEAH RIGHT.
They are trying, which is more than I can say for Republicans. I mean this in a very literal way.
I went to school, and served in the SGA Senate with, (convicted of corruption) Tony Rudy and Brian Darling (of Schiavo Memo Fame), classic modern movement conservatives, and I actually had fairly good social relationships with them.
They honestly believe that government is an unmitigated evil, and that government programs, even when they work, are evil, so their goal is to break stuff so that it does not work.
It’s why, after 38 years of Democratic rule in the house, you had corruption defined by a few bounced checks and one guy splitting salaries with ghost employees, where with the Republicans you had representatives preying on little boys, and an explicit pay-for-play bribery system.
It’s harder to be an honest Republican, because the only reason you are in government is money, power, and getting your way.
resp Paul P
Back at you.
BTW, you might want to use the comments instead in the future. I do read them.
*There are some disputes on the source of the quote. It has variously been attributed to Lincoln, Twain, and Franklin.
Completely owned….
Wingnut radio talk show host talks about appeasement, but he does not know what Neville Chamberlain actually did.
In fact, I don’t think he knows who Neville Chamberlain was.
When Chris Matthews owns you, you have to be completely ownable…..I’ve never been that owned so completely by my cats, and as any cat owner knows, cats pwn their human. completely and routinely.
Yep, speaking in Israel, George W. Bush made Nazi references with regard to Barack Obama’s suggestion that we might want to talk to potential adversaries:
“We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Bush said in remarks to Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”
This is repulsive. You have this sort of accusation made in a public forum by the President of the United States. What’s more, this misuse of WWII and the Holocaust was made before the Knesset in Israel.
This is unbelievably, and unspeakably low, and speaks to the mind of a man who has no moral compass whatsoever.
What surprises me the most is that I’m not stunned by this. This is exactly what I have been expecting from him, and so I’m not surprised.
That being said, had he been drowned at birth, the world would be a far better place.
It appears that the Loss in the special election has shaken them up something fierce:
House Republicans turned on themselves yesterday after a third straight loss of a GOP-held House seat in special elections this year left both parties contemplating widespread Democratic gains in November.
The Republicans have a real problem. When the Dems lost power in 1994, it was because of a few bounced checks in the house bank, not delivering on healthcare, and supporting NAFTA.
When you consider the war, child molestation (Foley), corruption, incompetence, etc. of the Republicans, it’s going to be a lot longer than 12 years for them.
Happy dance!!!!
Karl Rove, in response to Congressional questions regarding the Siegelman political prosecution, has refused to testify, but now is magnanimously agreed to submit answers in writing without any swearing in.
Seriously, if Karl Rove is not under indictment by January 1 2010, I’m calling the next president of the United States a secret Bush Toadie.
The Republicans have a new slogan that they are selling, “The Change You Deserve“.
The first problem with this is that it sounds punitive, like something a dominatrix would say to a bad, bad boy.
More problematic is that the slogan is already being use, by the anti-depressant Effexor.
**snort**
One of the things that is going on right now is that the Bush administration, recognizing that they will be leaving power shortly, are trying to protect themselves from future prosecution and litigation. Jeffrey Toobin in the New Yorker* notes that the Bush administration is desperately trying to make their system of kangaroo courts and torture appear legal, or, failing that, at least make it appear routine:
In any case, according to lawyers inside and outside government, the Bush Administration may launch a proposal for a national-security court this summer or fall, after what they presume will be its next loss in the Supreme Court. “It looks like when Boumediene comes down the Court may say to the President and Congress that they need more procedures for the detainees,” Goldsmith said. “So, to correct the problem, the President might consider sending something up to Congress this summer or fall. It would help the Republicans in the fall election.” The measure would force congressional Democrats to take a stand on the issue in the middle of the campaign—just as Bush did successfully with the Military Commissions Act after the Hamdan defeat. “It worked very well in 2006,” Goldsmith said. “The only way the Democrats have to not make it an election issue is to give the President the powers he seeks.”
Seeing as how the only driving ideology of the Bush administration has been the abuse of government power for political advantage, this surprises me not one whit.
H/t Mithras
*So there are other reasons to read them besides just the cartoons…though their cartoons are da bomb.