...more recent posts
There are two excellent online pieces that anyone trying to make sense of our current political situation should read and study:
Robert Kennedy Jr.'s massively detailed (204 footnotes!) expose of 2004 voter fraud in Ohio published in Rolling Stone:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_st olen
U of Michigan Economist Dean Baker's free online e-book "The Conservative Nanny State," which explains the major economic issues of our day in layman's language and makes the argument that far from being "free-marketeers" today's so-called "conservatives" are really corporate welfare queens who demand and benefit from government intervention into markets. For those of us who never got past Econ 101, this is the best explanation I know of of how such things as The Fed, free trade agreements, and immigration policy work---and work to benefit top-heavy CEO-dominated corporations.
http://www.conservativenannystate.org/cns.html
go to link for the links via fatherflot
Although Coulter also criticized 9-11 widows for "cutting commercials" for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-MA) during his 2004 presidential campaign against Bush, Lauer failed to note that other 9-11 widows made campaign appearances for Bush. As Newsday reported September 25, 2004:
[A]t the Republican National Convention, Debra Burlingame, whose brother piloted the American Airlines flight that crashed into the Pentagon, was one of three women who spoke in highly personal terms of their loss. She told the Associated Press yesterday she, too, was willing to make campaign appearances for Bush to outline her differences with the pro-Kerry families. "They want people fired, and I think we've moved on from that," she said."
The story on the Rove-Novak connection recalls what happened to Rove during Bush I's campaign in 1992. It turns out that Rove was fired from that campaign for leaking information to Novak to undermine another person working on the campaign. It was that one event that has led to the disaster known as W.
When Rove was fired from Bush Sr's campaign, he vowed to show him what a mistake he had made. He would take the president's alcoholic, coke snorting, business failure of a son, and make him president. He would show Poppy that it didn't matter who was the candidate, Rove could get him elected.
So Rove's first step was to get Bush elected governor of Texas. Way behind a popular incumbent in the polls just prior to election day, Bush somehow got elected. Maybe it was creative campaigning, who knows, but Ann Richards was out and the decider was in. End of phase I.
The next step was to create the image of a "compassionate conservative", which, we all know by now, was nothing but a phrase. There has been no compassion in the Bush Administration, and he has even abandoned conservative principles. This false image made Bush appealing to moderates who just wanted tax cuts.
To get Bush elected, Rove had to assemble the most amazing coalition of supporters and keep them happy. He knew his financial base would be the oil industry, so being from Texas that was a natural. Adding Cheney to the team was a stroke of genius.
Rove also needed the support of fundamentalist Christians, so he gave their leadership a starring role in defining social policy. The oil industry didn't care, their main concern was the supply of oil, at high prices. What would be great for the U.S. oil industry would be U.S. military bases surrounding a large oil field, or what Iraq looks like today. The oil industry would support bush if he would find a way to invade Iraq, which was the stated goal of his administration even before he took office.
To get support for invading a country that presented no threat to America, Rove needed political cover, and the neoconservatives provided that. They weren't all religious fanatics, and they weren't all oil whores. Alot of them actually believed invading a country of relgious fanatics, being run by a secular dictator, would actually embrace American democracy. But that didn't matter, the neocons gave the Bush administration the air of respectability, so that people wouldn't think they were just crazy (although that would eventually happen).
So there's the oil industry, the Christian right wing, and the neoconservatives who believe war can overcome religious fanaticism (not including their own fanaticism). There would still be alot of skeptics within the Reublican party. So Rove resorted to that old standby, tax cuts. Even with massive government spending, Republicans could be counted on to ignore their principles in exchange for tax cuts. Works every time.
Throw in manipulation of the news, friendly state republican voting officials, and not only does Rove get the alcoholic, drug addicted, business failure of a son to the White House (he didn't get him elected, but appointed is just as good), but he gets him re-installed for a second term, which is something Bush Sr. couldn't do without Rove on board.
So Rove really showed GHWB. And now we are all paying for his mistake of firing Rove. Thanks alot.
- kgofsb, 05.25.2006
The Tom DeLay Legal Expense Trust is currently featuring a Stephen Colbert clip on the front page of their website in which Colbert "defends" Tom DeLay. QED. LOL.
"Every war becomes a proving ground for new tactics and new technologies. Battleships rose to prominence in World War I; tanks and bombers determined the course of World War II; Vietnam brought air power definitively into the Jet Age. The current conflict is no different. The Pentagon began this war believing its new, networked technologies would help make U.S. ground forces practically unstoppable in Iraq. Slow-moving, unwired armies like Saddam Hussein’s were the kind of foe network-centric warriors were designed to carve up quickly. During the invasion in March 2003, that proved to be largely the case—despite most of the soldiers not being wired up at all. It was enough that their commanders had systems like BFT, which let them march to Baghdad faster than anyone imagined possible, with half the troops it took to fight the Gulf War in 1991. But now, more than three years into sectarian conflict and a violent insurgency that has cost nearly 2,400 American lives, an investigation of the current state of network-centric warfare reveals that frontline troops have a critical need for networked gear—gear that hasn’t come yet. “There is a connectivity gap,” states a recent Army War College report. “Information is not reaching the lowest levels.”"