An Unblemished Record
Bush is being especially irritating today. No he’s not, he’s always this irritating, but there are a lot of examples of that around today and recently. I feel like gathering a few of them together.
He didn’t get to appoint his friend to the Supreme Court – no fair.
Harriet Miers, the US president’s nominee for the supreme court, announced today she had withdrawn her name from consideration. Ms Miers, who is George Bush’s former personal lawyer, had been facing growing opposition amid questions about her qualifications and claims of cronyism.
Gee, I can’t imagine why. Just because she’s never done any judging. Just because she’s totally unqualified, and wouldn’t be nominated for even the smallest localest judicial post if she weren’t friends with Bush (just as Bush wouldn’t be elected lunch monitor if he weren’t his father’s son), and refuses to tell Senators what they need to know on account of how that would violate executive privilege – that’s no reason!
Both Mr Bush and Ms Miers said that the decision to withdraw followed a concerted attempt by senators to gain access to internal papers about her work at the White House…Mr Bush, who has insisted publicly in recent weeks that he did not want her to step down, said today: “It is clear that senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during her tenure at the White House, disclosures that would undermine a president’s ability to receive candid counsel.
No, senators would not be satisfied, and why should they be?! What are they supposed to do, just take Bush’s word for it? ‘She’s nice – I like her – she’s an evangelical.’ ‘Oh well in that case, no further questions.’ If he didn’t want senators asking to see the papers, it wasn’t very smart of him to nominate – of all the possible lawyers in the country – his own lawyer, was it! Ridiculous crybaby.
Then there’s the reinstatement of the Davis-Bacon Act. Remember last month, when we were treated to outraged diatribes on the subject of Davis-Bacon and the minimum wage? Oddly, even some Republicans found Bush’s suspension of Davis-Bacon a bit much. Even some Republicans don’t feel like stooping that low.
The White House yesterday reversed course and reinstated a key wage protection for workers involved in Hurricane Katrina reconstruction, bowing to pressure from moderate House Republicans who argued that Gulf Coast residents were being left out of the recovery…Conservatives strongly backed the waiver. But a group of moderate Republican members of Congress – many from districts in industrial areas populated by blue-collar workers – lobbied the White House and the congressional leadership for the prevailing-wage provision to be reinstated.
But – no such luck for the minimum wage.
U.S. senators – who draw salaries of $162,100 a year and enjoy a raft of perks – have rejected a minimum wage hike from $5.15 an hour to $6.25 for blue-collar workers…The minimum wage was last increased in 1997.
And, finally, Bush covers himself with glory by seeking an exemption from a ban on cruelty to terrorism suspects for the CIA.
The White House wants the CIA to be exempted from a proposed ban on the abusive treatment of terrorism suspects being held in United States custody. The Senate defied a threatened presidential veto three weeks ago and passed legislation that would outlaw the “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” of anyone held by the US. But the Washington Post and the New York Times, both quoting anonymous officials, said the vice-president, Dick Cheney, proposed a change so that the law would not apply to counter-terrorism operations abroad or to operations conducted by “an element” of the US government other than the defence department.
Impressive, isn’t it. Impressive how very seldom he does anything even minimally admirable – impressive how consistent he is. Make the rich richer, keep the poor poorer, appoint hacks to important government jobs, and seek to abuse suspects. Lovely fella.
You understand, Ophelia (yeah! got it right this time) that the withdrawal of The Toady just means he will appoint someone REALLY scary. Leviticus as Law of the Land, here we come :)
I predict that Alberto “de Sade” Gonzales will be George’s next nominee. Okay, so he’s soft on abortion, but at least he isn’t soft on prisoners and their so-called right not to be tortured.
Yeah, Brian (well done on name!), I understand that possibility (although he’s staggering so badly now he might not have the political capital to try someone too scary). But the comment didn’t really take a position on the nomination or the withdrawal itself, but rather on Bush’s absurdly petulant comment about the Senate’s attempt to do a minimal job – as if it had no business inquiring into Miers’ record.
Karl, you are always good for a guilty chuckle!
It’s really, really sad that Gonzal;es may be in many respects the best we could hoppe for. Over on Cyburbia, there was yet another comment about needing to compromise with the loonies. Sorry, I’m tired of “compromising” with theocrats who would throw me in prison.
I too am worried about who gets named next. After all it was the really scary Republicans who objected most to Miers because they were worried she might not oppose abortion…
But living in the UK I’m even more pissed off about ‘faith’ schools (isn’t that an oxymoron?). The double move of removing local authority responsibility for their schools and expanding private provision means there is no obvious democratic way of opposing the trend.
This is all depressing shit really; should be rejoicing at Bush going so palpably into a screaming fireball of a nose-dive, with Rove, Katrina, Miers, Iraq, etc, etc frikkin etc, but I’ve got a horrible nagging feeling there’s even worse around the corner, and he’ll prevail. He just falls ass-backward into priviledge and alibis doesn’t he, with that coterie of shitbag plutocrats and right-wing fundamentalists guarding their number one spot like junkyard dogs? And no-one in any position of US or UK power has the guts to say it like it is. I mean, are Rory Bremner and Jon Stewart enough ?? Is Michael Moore enough ?? Is arrogant French posturing enough ?? Is the bumbling, mammering EU enough ?? They’re not even the beginning of enough.
Chris Whiley “there is no obvious democratic way of opposing the trend.”
Thanks – that’s really finished me off.
[weeps, exits stage left]
OB, your description of the comments opposing minimum wage laws in last month’s discussion as “outraged diatribes” is dishonest in the extreme, as anyone who cares to read the debate will easily be able to confirm.
Is it really necessary stoop so low to cast aspersions on those who hold views on the issue that differ from your own.
GT, I went back and had a look and I disagree with your assertion that my description is dishonest in the extreme. There was a lot of outrage in some of the comments (not all of them, but some) and many of them were lengthy diatribes. I also don’t think the phrase ‘outraged diatribes’ is a terribly low stoop, or much of an aspersion.
And by the way, while we’re on the subject of rhetoric, calling someone dishonest in the extreme – them’s fightin’ words, bub.
“It’s really, really sad that Gonzal;es may be in many respects the best we could hoppe for.”
Hell, I’ll take Miers over Gonzales. Sorry, but I draw the line at torture-enablers.
‘He just falls ass-backward into priviledge and alibis doesn’t he’
Yes he does. He’s the most perversely glaring, blinding example of that we’ve ever seen – he’ll stand as the most paradigmatic paradigm of oxymoronic weirdness the US has ever thrown up.
OB, your comment and response to GT surprised me, so much so that I had to look up the words ‘outraged’ and ‘diatribe’ to check that they meant what I thought they meant. I also had to look up ‘invective’; I then re-read both threads about the minimum wage. The posts that came closest to meriting any of those terms (especially outrage) were some of the posts in favor of minimum wage, although I still wouldn’t use diatribe, sarcastic and self-righteous would do better, and even then, mainly applicable to the first half of the first thread.
GT’s remark was a simple statement of fact, they were not fighting words.
Karl “I draw the line at torture-enablers”. You can’t handle the truth.
stuart – saying ‘your description…is dishonest in the extreme’ is a simple statement of fact, not fighting words? Okie doke then. Your comment above is dishonest in the extreme. Love and kisses.
FWIW, it seems a little petty going into these issues at this level. Ophelia, while you have a mind like a razor when you engage it, this kind of post is not such a case.
“Shrub is a nutter because (1) these three things he was said to have said today irritate me and (2) the things he did fail to meet my approval when compared with the cosmopolitan democrat platform”.
This blog of yours is a great personal rant page and its nice of you to let us join in; but all you need to say is ‘that’s nice, dear’ to anyone who quibbles over such a patently non-substantive post.
“the things he did fail to meet my approval when compared with the cosmopolitan democrat platform”.
Cosmopolitan, certainly. But Democrat? Not everyone who despises Bush is a Democrat.
FWIW – that’s not a lot, frankly. I don’t actually think it is entirely petty, because I think people ought to distinguish between disagreeing and attributing dishonesty.
Also – this is petty – ‘fwiw’ I detest the use of ‘democrat’ for ‘democratic’. ‘Democrat’ is not an adjective. That’s an obnoxious and rather ridiculous Republican meme; it shouldn’t be encouraged.
Also also, as Karl suggests, I’m no fan of the Democrats.
I stand (or sit) corrected.
Still…I wouldn’t claim I’m never petty. No, I’d better not try to claim that. No, definitely better not. You’re probably right about the pettiness, really.