Bipartisan Report on Detainee Abuse Blames Rumsfeld, Other Top Bush Officials
Category: White House
When You Get Blasted as Know Nothing Ideologues by Dick Cheney…
It’s official we are bizarro world:
Bush personally lobbied recalcitrant Senate Republicans after Vice President Dick Cheney failed to round up support Wednesday during a contentious two-hour meeting.
“If we don’t do this, we will be known as the party of Herbert Hoover forever,” Cheney told them, according to a Senate Republican aide, evoking the president whose inaction is widely blamed for helping trigger the Great Depression in the early 1930s.
Dick Cheney was right…I can’t believe that I said that.
Did the Dems Punk Bush and the Republicans?
Because, after the failure of the filibuster fight over the bridge loans to the auto makers, Bush and His Evil Minions™ are saying that they will take steps to ensure that the Big 3 (Big 2½) continue to function until the next Congress.
In fact, they are pretty much flat out saying that they will use TARP money for the loans.
When you look at the sequence of events:
- Dems suggest that the TARP be used, and Bush says no, so they fold like overcooked broccoli.
- They want Senate approval for the “Car Czar”, and Bush says no, so they fold like overcooked broccoli.
- They want improved fuel economy standards, and Bush says no, so they fold like overcooked broccoli.
- They want automakers to drop lawsuits against California-Type emission standards, and Bush says no, so they fold like overcooked broccoli.
- The Republicans kill the bill that gave Bush everything that he asked for.
- Bush is forced to use the TARP money to keep the automakers going.
It could be that the Dems screwed up in reverse, and that this is all an accident, but it looks to me like that Bush and Paulson (and for that matter, Bernanke) were punk’d.
Additionally, now that this has gone down in defeat, it appears that constituencies for the Big 3 (Big 2½) are coming out of the woodwork.
It turns out that auto dealers, for example, are absolutely incensed at this, and these folks give lots of political money:
“I have never been as disappointed as I am today,” said Versailles [Kentucky] Ford dealer Jack Kain, who was chairman of the National Association of Automobile Dealers Association in 2005.
Cover-Up Much?
It appears that Michael Mukasey and His Evil Minions™ are refusing to provide documents to the Obama transition team.
It appears that they are unwilling to supply the torture and snooping memos drafted by the Office of Legal Counsel for the CIA and the NSA:
The opinions, some of which have been released to Congress in redacted form, contain the legal rationale of the NSA’s warrantless spying program and the CIA’s detention and interrogation policies, among other intelligence initiatives.
The claim is that the spy agencies have, “own equity or interest in the information.”
Un-dirty-word-believable.
OK, This Might Explain why NASA is so Dysfunctional
It appears that the relationship between Mike Griffin, NASA Administrator, and Lori Garver, head of Obama’s space transition team are not going well.
More accurately, the relationship between the current NASA Administrator, and the , a former NASA associate administrator now working for Obama, has gone completely pear shaped, and it appears to be Griffin’s doing:
In a heated 40-minute conversation last week with Lori Garver, a former NASA associate administrator who heads the space transition team, a red-faced Griffin demanded to speak directly to Obama, according to witnesses.
In addition, Griffin is scripting NASA employees and civilian contractors on what they can tell the transition team and has warned aerospace executives not to criticize the agency’s moon program, sources said.
This is completely whack…..You have a program that you want to continue, and you proceed to piss off the transition team, and institute gag orders, when you cannot help but know that this will insure your rapid exit in January.
This is more than nuts, this is “Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich” nuts.
Obama Staffing Update
Nancy Sutley as head of the the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
She is also Obama’s first “out” appointment, being a member of Hillary Clinton’s LBGT committee.
Nobel Winner as Secretary of Energyw
Steven Chu, who got the Nobel in 1997, as Secretary of Energy.
Also, Lisa Jackson as head of the EPA.
Obama Staffing Update
Looks like Former EPA chair Carole Browner as head of head of environmental, energy, climate and related matters, unclear what that position means, it’s clearly staff, not cabinet.
It’s Because They Don’t Like You That Way
It appears that the Obama transition team is not interested in attempts by Bush and His Evil Minions™ to work together on the bailout, and this is of concern to members of the Bush economic team:
But tension is growing: Treasury officials believe Obama aides are being short-sighted in their refusal to offer more policy and lobbying assistance, while the transition team sees an administration looking to be rescued from its own miscues.
Obama and the people around him most likely think that George W. Bush and Hank Paulson and their people are incompetent and corrupt, and they believe to the degree that these folks do not take action, it is a positive development.
Any attempt to work with Paulson or Bush will imply buy ins of their policy, and that it like buying into the ice concession on the RMS Titanic.
This is Not News, This is Bullsh%$
So now we have the following report on what is going to happen with the current director of the CIA:
But officials are pushing back a little on that issue, suggesting that Hayden has been carrying out the policies backed by Congress and the president before he arrived at Langley, not freelancing on his own. “It’s unfair to blame Hayden for things that occurred long before he took the job. But he deserves credit for standing up for the folks over there at CIA, even though a lot of the stuff he has dealt with didn’t happen on his watch,” said an intelligence official. “Administration policy and American law shape what the CIA does. If the president says he doesn’t want something done, that’s it. These are his programs,” added the official.
(emphasis mine)
Ummm…this is not coming from the Obama people, it’s coming from the CIA, and remember that in Michael Hayden’s CIA, it’s OK to delete evidence and go after your own Inspector General to get him to stop investigating corruption.
So we are supposed to believe a source in the CIA, who does not even say that Obama is considering Hayden….It isn’t Michael Hayden talking to this reporter, otherwise, he would have to use the modifier “Senior” before official, but it’s someone who Michael Hayden sent out to talk to a one of his pet reporters.
This is Hayden lobbying to keep his job, and it’s already quite well known that he wants to keep it, and he just knows a reporter who is willing to report a press release as real news.
Just in Case You are Wondering….
The selection of former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki as head of the Department of Veterans Affairs IS a big steaming helping of f$#k you to Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and and the rest of their Evil Minions.™
Shinseki, as you may recall, was basically fired for saying that we would need around ½ million troops in order to make sure that post invasion needs were attended to.
He was promptly cashiered, and both Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz made a point of not showing up to his retirement ceremony.
Rummie and Wolfie, suck…on…this.
Where is Stiglitz?
At Newsweek, Michael Hirsh asks this important question.
Joseph Stiglitz has a Nobel prize in economics, and he called the financial crisis, and made the correct policy recommendations about how to prevent it, for well over a decade.
Unfortunately, Obama is turning marginally enlightened Chicago School types like Austan Goolsbee, and people with a lineage that traces its path from Wall Street kleptocrats *cough*Robert Rubin*cough*, like Larry Summers, and neither of these groups are particularly interested in someone who has been consistently proved right, because he has also proveds them wrong.
This is the best endorsement of Stiglitz being brought in I can think of:
Like Keynes himself, who fought successfully to block “hot money” at the postwar Bretton Woods conference in 1944, Stiglitz understood the problem of international capital flows like few others of his era. As his longtime collaborator Bruce Greenwald—another Columbia professor who, by the way, is a conservative Republican—puts it: “You need radical global reform” to correct chronic imbalances in capital flows, all of which Stiglitz has laid out in his book, “Making Globalization Work.”
This is precisely our problem, and this man has gotten a Nobel plotting the solutions.
Quite my solution, in the broadest terms, is to recognize that Wall Street (and the Street in London, and the rest of the financial markets) have become gangrenous, and need to be amputated, but Stiglitz, has the specifics as to what is rotten.
Obama Staffing Update
Somr more leaks;
Mary Beth Maxwell on for Labor Secretary, which is interesting. She is gay and the founding executive director of American Rights at Work…..I’m not sure if this is good sign, that Obama wants a strong labor person , or a bad sign, that he could put a gay person there to act as a safety valve to diminish pressure on eliminating DADT.
It also appears that Rep. James Ramstad (R-MN) is his choice for Drug Czar, which counts as a Republican on the cabinet, though there is a lot of opposition.
Ramstad has a record of opposing things like needle exchanges to bring down AIDS rates, and voting against increased funding for treatment. He is a lock them up kind of guy.
For Trade Representative, the word is that it is, Representative Xavier Becerra (D-CA), who has some fairly good cred on the free trade agreement skeptic side of the house. He did vote for NAFTA, but has publicly regretted it ever since, and has been a harsh critic of recent agreements.
Perspective on Gates at DoD
While he is staying, his people at the undersecretary level are leaving.
He does not get to keep his own people, and everything he wants to do will have to be implemented via undersecretaries and the like who are Obama people.
He has been effectively marginalized, which begs the question, “Why is Obama keeping him then?”
Obama’s Cabinet Update
Bill Richardson, Commerce Secretary.
Obama National Security Team Named
President elect Obama rolled out his new national security team: (cut and paste from the Washington Independent)
- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as secretary of state.
- Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, to remain in his current position.
- Eric Holder, a former federal prosecutor and deputy attorney general, as attorney general.
- Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, as secretary of homeland security.
- Gen. James L. Jones (Ret.), as national security adviser.
- Susan Rice, national security adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign, as ambassador to the United Nations.
An interesting side story on all this is that
Hillary Clinton will not resign until she is confirmed.
My guess is that notwithstanding the famous collegiality of the Senate, she figures that there is at least one Republican willing do pull the secret hold crap, either to screw with her or Bill, and she just sent a message to them that if they do, she will be in the room with them for a long time.
Obama Staffing Update
Paul Volcker will be chairman of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Austan Goolsbee will serve as the board’s staff director and sit on the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Damn, I got Pwn36!!!!!*
Noah Shachtman writes on the likely Robert Gates reappointment as SecDef, and titles it, “Meet the New Boss…“
The Who is my favorite group. Townshend is my favorite composer.
And I missed the opportunity to highlight one of their iconic songs.
Damn.
*Owned
Obama Staffing Update
Nell Lancaster at a Tiny Revolution has a very good point, “President-elect Obama just made public the choices for his administration’s ‘economic team.’ What sort of signal does it send that a Secretary of Labor was not among them?” (emphasis mine)
On the good news side of the equation, we have John Brennan withdrawing his name from consideration as head of the CIA.
I guess that all the DFHs* objecting to his consistently pro-torture, pro rendition, and anti-civil rights statements won.
We are also seeing reports that Robert Gates will be the choice for SecDef, and that he would continue in the role that he assumed under Bush and His Evil Minions™ for at least a year into the Obama administration.
Not too impressed with that. I have not trusted him since Iran Contra, and defense procurement is completely out of control, and a change is needed.
Gates is not a change the system kind of guy.
*Dirty F%$#ing Hippies, which is what bloggers who care about right and wrong are, you know?
Obama Staffing Update
Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury, and Lawrence Summers, aka the human stain, as director of the National Economic Council.
Lawrence Summers, crap. This man leaves a trail of misery wherever he goes.
Melody Barnes, to head the Domestic Policy Council.
Christina Romer as head of the Council of Economic Advisers, she’s cut her teeth in the study of depression era economic, like, here is the scary part, Ben Bernanke.
Peter Orszag director of the Office of Management and Budget.