Playing politics with border security

President Bush’s plan to militarize our southern borders is a disgusting display of election-year pandering by the Worst President Ever.

President Bush will announce plans to deploy "up to 6,000" National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to support border patrol officers...

Nevermind that our National Guard troops have been stretched far beyond their limit by the neverending Quagmire in Iraq. Let’s just look at whether or not this is a good use of U.S. resources.

First, how much will it cost to mobilize 6,000 troops on the border? Where will they sleep? Where will they eat? How long will they have to be there?

Second, is this really a national security crisis that merits taking these part-time soldiers away from their families and their jobs for an unspecified period?

Third, why can’t our Border Patrol do the job their paid to do? Why not just hire some more border patrol agents and leave it at that?

Oooh! That’s a good question! Let’s look at that question for a minute. Here is the FY 2006 Budget for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.
They got a 4.5 percent increase which they tout as one of the biggest of any government agency. Surely, you can’t criticize the Bush administration for that.

But wait! Maybe you can...

...in spite of what many feel is a generous budget increase, some security experts are disappointed over the continued lack of manpower at US borders and the lack of resolve to add the expected 10,000 new Border Patrol agents within the next five years....
The budget provides $36.9 million for 210 additional Border Patrol Agents, directly supporting the strategic goal to increase and extend control of the borders between the ports of entry. But critics complain that originally 2,000 border agents were supposed to be hired annually for five years and the 210 agents will not have much positive impact on border security.

So, the CBP requested funds for 2,000 more border patrol officers for 2006 and they got 1/10th of that, or enough for 210.
That doesn’t sound like the Bush administration thought this was all that serious of a crisis just a few months ago if they only funded 1/10th of the number of border patrol positions that had been requested.
But now, all of a sudden, Bush wants to mobilize the National Guard and send 6,000 troops down to the border? What has changed between then and now other than Bush’s plummeting approval rating?

Republican Sen. Judd Gregg, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security, wasn’t too happy with the Bush administration’s proposed budget, although it didn’t get much play at the time.

The Bush administration sent a "hollow" budget to Capitol Hill that does not fulfill its funding commitment to add 1,500 law-enforcement officers to guard the borders against illegal aliens, key Senate appropriators said yesterday.
    "This is a situation of showing a proposal and then hiding the funds, and so we end up with a budget that we've got a $1.6 billion hole in," said Sen. Judd Gregg, New Hampshire Republican and chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security.
    Facing off against Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff during a budget hearing yesterday, Mr. Gregg said the funding priorities of the Bush administration treat border protection like "a stepchild of national defense."
    "I can't think of anything more significant to national defense than protecting our border and making sure that our homeland is secure, and yet the Department of Homeland Security is being starved for funds in crucial areas," Mr. Gregg said.
    "It's a hollow budget and I can't understand it because I've watched the press conferences where the administration has said it's committed to border security and domestic defense, and yet this budget isn't going to get there," Mr. Gregg said.

   This is inexcusable. If President Bush thinks we need 6,000 more bodies guarding our border then we need to provide the requisite funding to get qualified and trained people down there in the agency we already have tasked with doing that job. And they are doing it to the best of their understaffed ability.
In 2005 they apprehended 411,221 individuals attempting to cross the border illegally, up from 336,316 apprehended in 2004.
So they are doing their job, unfortunately the only support they get from this administration is lip service. At least until it serves the president’s political purposes to try and boost his anemic job approval ratings.

I feel safer now

Let me see if I have this straight.

We are going to take all the arms we had been selling to Venezuela and we are going to sell them to Libya.

OK, then.

Buyer’s remorse

I love this poll that shows people prefer Bill Clinton to George W. Bush by a wide margin. It gives me some hope that the electorate is finally recognizing how badly they screwed up during the past two election cycles.

Clinton was favored by greater than 2-to-1 on questions of handling the economy and solving the problems of ordinary Americans. He even bested Bush when it came to ethics and trust.

Who did a better job...

Handling the economy:
63 percent Clinton
26 percent Bush

Solving the problems of ordinary Americans:
62 percent Clinton
25 percent Bush

On foreign policy:
56 percent Clinton
32 percent Bush

On taxes:
51 percent Clinton
35 percent Bush

Handling natural disasters:
51 percent Clinton
30 percent Bush

Handling national security:
46 percent Clinton
42 percent Bush

Who was more honest:
46 percent Clinton
41 percent Bush

But Bush did win in one category:

Who did more to divide the country?
59 percent Bush
27 percent Clinton

I don’t think there is any question today that if the 2004 election were rerun knowing what we know now John Kerry would be president. In fact, if the 2000 election could be rerun, Al Gore would be president, as he should have been anyway.

More NSA snooping

Wow! Remember when Bush said that they were only tapping international phone calls and that all our domestic phone calls were safe? Well, he forgot to mention that the NSA was compiling data on all our domestic calls too.

In a hastily arranged appearance before reporters at the White House, Bush reacted to a USA Today report that says the National Security Agency has been secretly using records provided by the three largest American telephone companies to build a massive database of foreign and domestic phone calls. The program was launched shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with the aim of analyzing calling patterns to detect terrorist activity, the paper reported. The effort involves collecting phone numbers but does not entail recording or eavesdropping on phone conversations, it said.
The NSA declined comment, saying only that it "operates within the law."
In his statement, Bush denied that the government listens to domestic phone calls without court approval and maintained that "the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities."
"We are not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans," Bush said. "Our efforts are focused on links to al-Qaeda and their known affiliates."

Is that supposed to make me feel better? Bush says you don’t have anything to worry about unless you are a terrorist or maybe a terrorist sympathizer (i.e. anyone opposed to the Bush administration’s so called “War on Terror”).

I like the lead from this story from Forbes.com:

The allegations that the federal government has been secretly tracking the calls of millions of Americans, aided by three major telephone companies, will doubtless inflame privacy advocates and Democrats.

Got that? Privacy advocates and Democrats will be upset. Republicans are apparently OK with this. The phone companies turn over all your personal phone records to the feds and the Republicans don’t even bat an eye. Amazing!

Well, some Republicans are batting their eyes like Senator Arlen Specter, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who says he will call executives of AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon "to see if we can learn some of the underlying facts."
But it remains to be seen if he will follow through with anything other than a whitewash investigation.

Texas Blogs Left and Right

I was flattered the other day to find that my humble blog was included in a wrapup piece on Texas blogs entitled "A Guide To Texas Blogs Left and Right" that Vince Liebowitz of Capitol Annex put together for Dallas Blogs.
Liebowitz did yeoman's work pulling together his list which includes brief descriptions and background info on most of the sites. It is one of the best roundups I have seen and it is clear that Liebowitz is well versed on the Texas blogosphere. He highlights many excellent sites that I had been unfamiliar with.

While no one can pull together a completely comprehensive list of Texas political blogs, I would just point out a few sites that were overlooked in his list. Most prominently in my view is my friend Bill Crawford's excellent All Things Conservative based here in San Antonio which has become a popular hangout for conservatives looking for good news about the war in Iraq. Bill has even landed a regular gig at National Review Online writing a weekly column on that topic. While the site is decidedly conservative, Bill's open-minded tolerance of dissenting views makes it a good place for folks on the right and left to go and debate the issues of the day.
Also on the right-side of the spectrum is my friend Ranten Raven's The View From The Nest? also based here in the Alamo City.
And another Texas Lefty blog that got overlooked is Peter Bryant's excellent B and B with its focus on progressive politics, science and environmental issues.
Also missed was my friend Libertas who blogs at The Price of Liberty is Vigilance His eclectic libertarianism makes him hard to pigeonhole on either the right or left side of the political spectrum, but he is definitely a must read for people on both sides.

Privatization debacle

The Express-News has a lead story today about a state privatization deal gone sour.

Effective immediately, state workers again will be responsible for processing applications for assistance programs such as food stamps and Medicaid after myriad problems resulted with the private company hired to do the job.
Bermuda-based Accenture LLP won an $899 million, five-year contract early last year to take over the state's public assistance eligibility system.

Bermuda-based??? That should have been the first clue that something was seriously wrong with this deal. Companies base themselves in Bermuda to avoid paying U.S. taxes, so why would any government entity think that such a company would have the best interests of its citizens in mind?

The story does not give you a clear idea of who should be held responsible for this debacle, but it’s no secret that the Republicans who have taken charge of the state government have always insisted that privatization is the miracle cure for all that ails us. Unfortunately, we are now finding out what a bitter aftertaste that snake oil really has:

State eligibility offices are understaffed because of the departure of thousands of state workers who feared they would lose their jobs when Accenture took over.
Those understaffed state offices now will be required to deal with thousands of cases that are to be transferred out of Accenture's control.

Then there are the workers who were hired by the Bermuda-based company to staff their call centers who are now in limbo:

The system operated by Accenture includes four privately run call centers around the state that eventually will replace hundreds of local offices staffed by state workers. Already, the San Antonio call center, which is to serve a large swath of South Texas, has become the largest in the state, employing more than 500 workers.
It is not clear what other tasks the private workers will be performing because the jobs they were supposed to do will now be done by public employees.

I wonder how much money Texas taxpayers are going to be out as a result of this mess.

The Party of Fiscal Irresponsibility strikes again

Republicans desperate to regain an edge before the mid-term elections have finally settled on an answer: bribe voters with a $70 billion tax cut.

House and Senate Republican negotiators reached a final agreement yesterday on a five-year, nearly $70 billion tax package that would extend President Bush's deep cuts to tax rates on dividends and capital gains, while sparing about 15 million middle-income Americans from the alternative minimum tax.

Nevermind that the federal debt is setting new records everyday, cutting taxes (and raising the debt limit) is the only thing this crowd knows how to do. With the Republicans, it’s cake and cookies at every meal, with a big helping of whipped cream on the side. Eat all you want! Don’t worry about tomorrow! That’s the Republican mantra these past five years.

That’s fine if you prefer a weak, emaciated government that is incapable of responding adequately to national disasters like Hurricane Katrina, but if you would prefer to have a government that is strong enough to protect its citizens then we are going to have to put the grown-ups back in charge of things come this November.

E-N discovers blogging - in Austin

I guess all us local San Antonio bloggers just aren't exciting enough for our local newspaper the Express-News. They had to go all the way to Austin today to profile some blogger I'd never heard of for a piece touting the rising popularity of blogging.
Stephanie Klein, who writes a blog called Greek Tragedy got the fawning attention of our local paper mainly because she had already been written up by the New York Times before moving recently to Austin from the Big Apple.
It's not that I'm jealous or anything (ahem), it's just that they might look around sometime and notice that they have some ,fairly prominent and up-and-coming bloggers right here in their own backyard.

Kissing up to China; dissing Taiwan

I'm curious what my conservative friends thought of the Bush administration's intentional snubbing of the Tiawanese president last week.

The United States decided to bar a stopover by Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian on his way to Latin America to avoid angering China, whose backing for UN action against Iran is critical, analysts said.
In an apparent rebuff, Chen completely dropped plans to transit in the United States after Washington said he could only make a refueling stop in Alaska rather than New York or San Francisco as requested by him. Chen instead made transit stops in Abu Dhabi and Amsterdam en route to Paraguay and Costa Rica, two of only 25 nations that recognise Taiwan diplomatically.

We won't even let the Taiwanese president stay overnight in the U.S. for fear that it might annoy China and then they might not go along with our war-monging plans against Iran at the U.N.
Is this the same administration that claims that sacrificing thousands of U.S. lives and spending billions in tax dollars to promote democracy is a most worthy goal? And yet we turn our back on democratic Taiwan and shamelessly kowtow to the brutal totalitarians in China so we can advance a questionable foreign policy goal against Iran?
Are the pro-democracy conservatives upset by this? Or do they see it as a necessary sacrifice and compromise toward a larger goal? Which is it?

Movies, movies, movies

It looks like there are a lot of good movies coming out this summer.

Here are the ones currently in the theaters or due to come out soon that I think would be most entertaining:

Mission Impossible III Tom Cruise may be a loopy Scientologist, but he is still a good actor and I really enjoyed the first two films in this series.
The Da Vinci Code All controversy aside, I don’t see how you can go wrong with Ron Howard directing and Tom Hanks starring.
X-Men 3: The Last Stand I’m also a fan of this series and am looking forward to the next installment even if it does have a lame subtitle.
Cars Pixar + Disney = Blockbuster hit. Any questions?
Superman Returns In a brilliant casting move, the director found someone who looks just like Christopher Reeve. That’s all they will need to sell this movie.
James Bond movie In a brilliant casting move, the director found someone who doesn’t look anything like James Bond. That’s all they will need to sell this movie.
Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man’s Chest Another can’t miss sequel, especially since they kept the original cast together.
United 93 One of the two great stories to come out of 9/11 was the heroic struggle of these airline passengers to divert their hijacked plane from its intended target.
World Trade Center The other great story is about the cop and port authority officer who survived the collapse of one of the towers. Helmed by Oliver Stone who needs a hit to redeem himself after the lackluster response to Alexander.

Of course I’m not likely to see any of these films until they come out on DVD. And I already have a long list of films out on DVD that I want to see:

King Kong
Chronicles of Narnia
Walk the Line
Harry Potter Goblet of Fire
Cinderella Man
Serenity
Fantastic Four
Good Night, Good Luck
Capote
History of Violence
Constant Gardener
Syriana
Munich
The Producers
Chicken Little
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit
Corpse Bride
Sahara

Louis Rukeyser

First John Kenneth Galbraith and now Louis Rukeyser is gone. It is a sad time for fans of popular economics.

Louis Rukeyser, a best-selling author, columnist, lecturer and television host who delivered pun-filled, common-sense commentary on complicated business and economic news, died Tuesday. He was 73.
As host of "Wall $treet Week With Louis Rukeyser" on public TV from 1970 until 2002, Rukeyser took a wry approach to the ups and downs in the marketplace and urged guests to avoid jargon. He brought finance and economics to ordinary viewers and investors, and was rewarded with the largest audience in the history of financial journalism.

My wife grew up listening to Rukeyser every evening as Wall Street Week was her father’s favorite TV show. I came to appreciate the man later in life and was outraged when he was summarily dumped by PBS back in 2002.

In response, I wrote this column for the San Antonio Business Journal.

Ban those laptops

The AP reports that more professors are banning laptops in classrooms. I say more power to them!

As the professor lectured on the law, the student wore a poker face. But that was probably because, under the guise of taking notes on his laptop, the student actually was playing poker - online, using the school's wireless Internet connection.

Well, at least the student showed up for class. That’s more than you can say about most of the students taking my wife’s chemistry classes at UT San Antonio. I think there are something like 200 students enrolled in one class and on any given day about one-third will bother to show up.

It really amazes me what students today think they can get away with. I wasn’t the ideal student when I was in college by any means, but I would at least show up to class 90 percent of the time. I would try and limit myself to no more than one absence per class per semester for any reason.
But these students today only show up to take the exam and then they have the gall to complain when they make a failing grade. They don’t attend lectures, they don’t do their homework and then they expect the professor to curve the grades or give them enough extra credit to slip by. It is really pathetic.

Colbert’s devastating satire

Stephen Colbert’s performance at the Washington Correspondents dinner is already legendary. It was delicious satire as has rarely been pulled off for a captive audience at that level of society in Washington.

It was a performance so masterful and struck home so forcefully that it left the Washington elite politicos and media dumbfounded. Some responded indignantly, whining that Colbert had “gone over the line.” Others tried desperately to ignore it the next day like New York Times reporter Elizabeth Bumiller who didn’t even mention Colbert in her story the next day. Absolutely pathetic. That’s like going to a Bruce Springsteen concert and writing your review about the opening act.

If the Washington elite media was anxious to downplay Colbert’s performance, it’s not hard to understand why.
Here is Colbert, in character as the right-wing talkshow host he parodies on his Comedy Central show:

I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America, with the exception of Fox News. Fox News gives you both sides of every story:  the president's side, and the vice president's side.

But the rest of you, what are you thinking, reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason:  they're super-depressing. And if that's your goal, well, misery accomplished. Over the last five years you people were so good -- over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.

But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!

Ouch!! No wonder Busmiller wanted to ignore Colbert’s tour-de-force performance. It was aimed right at her.

Fortunately, Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post has the best round-up of the story to somewhat make up for the deafening silence and blackout it has recieved elsewhere.

President Bush on Saturday night had the audience at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in stitches. With doppelganger comedian Steve Bridges alongside -- playing his inner self -- Bush poked gentle fun of his own mangling of the English language, his belligerence and his feelings about the media.
Then Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert ripped those stitches out.
Colbert was merciless, reserving his most potent zingers for the people in spitting distance: The president who took the nation to war on false pretenses and the press corps that let him do it.

The boozy bonhomie of the annual event is intended to serve as a balm for the often tense relationship between the White House and the reporters who cover it.
Bush largely delivered on his side of the bargain. Colbert delivered something else entirely.

Colbert stayed in character as the bombastic, over-the-top, right-wing cable TV host he plays on the Colbert Report.
"Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us; we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in 'reality.' And reality has a well-known liberal bias. . . .
"The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday, that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change, this man's beliefs never will...

You can watch the latter half of Colbert’s performance here (Including the video-taped routine with Helen Thomas).
And you can read the entire transcript here.

I think Billmon sums it all up best here.

Colbert's routine was designed to draw blood -- as good political satire should. Colbert used satire the way it's used in more openly authoritarian societies: as a political weapon, a device for raising issues that can't be addressed directly. He dragged out all the unmentionables -- the Iraq lies, the secret prisons, the illegal spying, the neutered stupidity of the lapdog press -- and made it pretty clear that he wasn't really laughing at them, much less with them. It may have been comedy, but it also sounded like a bill of indictment, and everybody understood the charges.

The fine art of Bush-bashing

President Bush’s approval rating has been under 50 percent for more than a year now and is currently at an all-time low, so it is not surprising that there is a lot of Bush-bashing going on. But a lot of these critics are Johnny-come-latelys who are just jumping on the bandwagon now that it is deemed OK by the CW to show your disapproval of the president’s policies (although even now you still risk being labeled a traitor for doing so).

But if you want to see real quality Bush-bashing of the highest level, you have to turn to the masters of the craft who have been honing their talents from the start. Start with Frank Rich who sliced and diced Bush in this Sunday’s NYTimes with his usual razor-sharp eloquence.

LIKE the hand that suddenly pops out of the grave at the end of "Carrie," the past keeps coming back to haunt the Bush White House. Last week was no exception. No sooner did the Great Decider introduce the Fox News showman anointed to repackage the same old bad decisions than the spotlight shifted back to Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury room, where Karl Rove testified for a fifth time. Nightfall brought the release of an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll with its record-low numbers for a lame-duck president with a thousand days to go and no way out.

The demons that keep rising up from the past to grab Mr. Bush are the fictional W.M.D. he wielded to take us into Iraq. They stalk him as relentlessly as Banquo's ghost did Macbeth. From that original sin, all else flows. Mr. Rove wouldn't be in jeopardy if the White House hadn't hatched a clumsy plot to cover up its fictions. Mr. Bush's poll numbers wouldn't be in the toilet if American blood was not being spilled daily because of his fictions. By recruiting a practiced Fox News performer to better spin this history, the White House reveals that it has learned nothing. Made-for-TV propaganda propelled the Bush presidency into its quagmire in the first place. At this late date only the truth, the whole and nothing but, can set it free.

All too fittingly, Tony Snow's appointment was announced just before May Day, a red-letter day twice over in the history of the Iraq war. It was on May 1 three years ago that Mr. Bush did his victory jig on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. It was May 1 last year that The Sunday Times of London published the so-called Downing Street memo. These events bracket all that has gone wrong and will keep going wrong for this president until he comes clean.

To mark the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion last month, the White House hyped something called Operation Swarmer, "the largest air assault" since the start of the war, complete with Pentagon-produced video suitable for the evening news. (What the operation actually accomplished as either warfare or P.R. remains a mystery.) It will take nothing less than a replay of D-Day with the original cast to put a happy gloss on tomorrow's anniversary. Looking back at "Mission Accomplished" now is like playing that childhood game of "What's wrong with this picture?" It wasn't just the banner or the "Top Gun" joyride or the declaration of the end of "major combat operations" that was bogus. Everything was fake except the troops.

"We're helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools," Mr. Bush said on that glorious day. Three years later we know, courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers, that our corrupt, Enron-like Iraq reconstruction effort has yielded at most 20 of those 142 promised hospitals. But we did build a palace for ourselves. The only building project on time and on budget, USA Today reported, is a $592 million embassy complex in the Green Zone on acreage the size of 80 football fields. Symbolically enough, it will have its own water-treatment plant and power generator to provide the basic services that we still have not restored to pre-invasion levels for the poor unwashed Iraqis beyond the American bunker.

John Kenneth Galbraith

One of my heros has passed on. Liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith died at the ripe old age of 97. I had been hoping he would make it to 100.

John Kenneth Galbraith, the Harvard professor who won worldwide renown as a liberal economist, backstage politician and witty chronicler of affluent society, died Saturday night, his son said. He was 97.
Galbraith died of natural causes at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, where he was admitted nearly two weeks ago, Alan Galbraith said.
During a long career, the Canadian-born economist served as adviser to Democratic presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, and was John F. Kennedy's ambassador to India.

I just recently noted that Galbraith headed a list of prominent 90 year olds. He was also on my list of the 100 people who have most influenced me during my life.

The one time I got to see John Kenneth Galbraith in person was when I still considered myself to be a Republican. I was at Texas A&M and attended a special program that featured William F. Buckley Jr., the prominent conservative I knew from his PBS show "Firing Line". I attended the event wanting to see Buckley and had no idea who the fellow was he would be debating. As it turned out, his debate partner was Galbraith and they were arguing over the merits of having a strong federal government, with Galbraith naturally taking the pro-government side.
While I didn't immediately change my views after that event, I did walk away with a favorable impression of Galbraith and over time I gained more and more respect for him as my opinion of Buckley declined.
Galbraith was a prolific author and today I own about a dozen of his books. But then, that was about the only way to get his viewpoint. While Buckley had his own TV show, his own magazine and a nationally syndicated column, Galbraith's only outlet was through his books which I would pick up at Half-Price Bookstore every chance I got.
It's a shame that more people end up being exposed to that blowhard Buckley than they are to Galbraith. I think it explains in part why the electorate is so foolish as to put incompentent people like George W. Bush in the White House.

Looking for someone to blame

I’ve said before that Republicans would probably be happier once they are back in the minority. They need Democrats to be in power so that they will have someone to blame for all the countries problems.
Somehow blaming everything on outspoken Hollywood liberals like Michael Moore or Jane Fonda who have zero influence in Washington just doesn’t quite cut it. So now we have a concerted effort to shine the light of culpability on Mary McCarthy, a veteran CIA analyst who was just 10 days away from retirement when she was “fired” for undisclosed contacts with the media and for allegedly leaking classified materials — a charge that she denies.
Rightwingers have been making a big deal out of the fact that McCarthy gave $2,000 to the Kerry campaign during the last election cycle and they have insinuated darkly that she sought to use her insider status at the Agency to damage the White House and hurt Bush’s chances at re-election. But the CIA has said she was not believed to be the person who exposed the CIA’s rendition program and its secret prisons in Eastern Europe, and they are apparently not taking the case all that seriously. They are not charging her with any kind of crime, nor are they launching a specific investigation targeting her. They are not even trying to penalize her by taking away her pension, thus the firing 10 days before her retirment has practically no ill effect on her whatsoever other than causing some embarrassment and spreading her name all over the news.
Meanwhile, these same rightwingers while pointing out McCarthy’s political ties have conveniently ignored the fact that the person who chose to fire her is Bush’s hand-picked choice for CIA director Porter Goss, a right-wing Republican and former congressman from Florida.
The Washington Post the other day had an editorial criticizing Goss for his selectivity in going after McCarthy while doing nothing on many other more pressing matters.

“He has taken no disciplinary action against CIA personnel identified by his inspector general as having played a part in the failure to prevent the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He has taken no action against CIA interrogators known to have participated in the torture and killing of foreign detainees, or against those who knowingly violated the Geneva Conventions in Iraq.”

So the Mary McCarthy firing seems little more than a PR ploy by Mr. Goss. But conservatives like my friend Bill Crawford are almost desperate to make it into something much more convoluted than that.

Haloscan update

My Haloscan problems persist, but at least it looks like someone has finally identified the problem. Now I am just wating to find out if there is a solution.
Last week after I paid to upgrade my Haloscan account my comment links beneath each post began randomly disappearing throughout the day. I’ve racked my brain trying to figure out how to correct it to no avail. I was on the verge of dumping Haloscan and going with Blogger comments when I finally received this response from the administrator at Haloscan in their Help Forum:

One of the 3 servers that handles the comment loads seems to not be working correctly for just your account for some reason. I'll look into this and get back to you.

Just on my account? Aren’t I lucky!
At least I know now that it is nothing that I did. Hopefully they will figure out how to correct it and I will just be patient for a few more days.

White fluffy stuff

I can’t believe they are hiring a guy named Snow to be the president’s new press secretary.

Definition of Snow:
Slang To overwhelm with insincere talk, especially with flattery.

I think it says everything you need to know about Fox News that President Bush taps one of their news anchors to be his spokesman. Fox is the closest thing we have to a state-run media in this country.

32 percent

Bush just keeps falling and falling.

Bush's approval ratings slide to new low

President Bush's approval ratings have sunk to a personal low, with only a third of Americans saying they approve of the way he is handling his job, a national poll released Monday said.
In the telephone poll of 1,012 adult Americans carried out Friday through Sunday by Opinion Research Corporation for CNN, 32 percent of respondents said they approve of Bush's performance, 60 percent said they disapprove...

That’s pretty bad. And there is not much that Bush can do to turn things around as historian Sean Wilentz notes in his recent piece for Rolling Stone.

George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.

Bush’s problem is that he was elevated way above his level of competence when the Supreme Court annointed him president in 2000. He was already a miserable failure as a businessman at that point, running several companies into the ground before being saved each time by wealthy Bush-family friends. But he had done OK as governor of Texas, a state with a weak governor system that invests most of the governing power with the lt. governor. And before that he was at his best as the figure-head owner (2 percent) of the Texas Rangers baseball team.
But Washington, D.C., has proved to be his undoing. I think he went to Washington with the best of intentions, truly believing his own speechwriters who told him he was a “uniter and not a divider.” But what he found was a political environment that was already bitterly divided over the Clinton impeachment fiasco and he decided to try to get along by following his gut instincts, which were never that good to begin with.

The best that Bush can hope for now is that the electoral system is already so skewed in favor of incumbents and the wealthy that it will prevent the kind of political sea change that shoved Democrats into the minority two-years into the Clinton presidency. Only by holding on to a slim Republican majority will Bush manage to keep the lid on the numerous festering scandals that have plagued his incompetent administration.

Star Trek on the rebound

I was glad to see this bit of news the other day. It looks like the Star Trek franchise will be back in 2008 with a new feature film helmed by the guy who is doing the latest Mission Impossible movie. It will reportedly feature an all new cast as it looks at the early days of Star Trek (but not as early as the now defunct “Enterprise” series) when the young James T. Kirk and Spock first meet.
I wonder if they will give William Shatner a cameo?