Thoughts on Barbara Bush Upon Her Passing

Not a whole bunch, except to note that she got a rather weird compliment from Nixon in the White House tapes, that, "She knows how to hate."

I think that there is a pretty good chance that, had she been born 2 or 3 decades later, she would have been the first major party woman candidate for US President.

I've always felt that she was both the smartest and tough member of the Bush family.

On the other hand, I have seen the discussions on Twitter regarding her, and I've alternately felt that they were crass and callous, and felt guilty for not understanding the mockery, and felt that they were very funny, and felt guilty for not being offended that they were crass and callous.

Basically, it's all guilt.

That is so Jewish.

Remember Last Night, When I Used the Phrase, "Bush Crime Family?"

Well today, we learn of the orgy of political payback and cronyism in the next generation of the Bush family, we have George P. Bush turning the office of Texas Land Commissioner into an opportunity for his buddies to profit while ignoring state law that requires public notice of open positions:

Less than a year after being elected to lead the oldest state agency in Texas, Land Commissioner George P. Bush has dramatically remade the General Land Office by ousting most of its longtime leaders and replacing many with people with ties to his campaign and family.

Eleven of the top 18 officials on the agency’s organizational chart a year ago have been fired or forced out or have quit, and more could leave soon in an overhaul that Bush has described as a “reboot.”

In their place, Bush, a former Fort Worth resident, has given top jobs to two of his law school classmates, two relatives of members of two Bush presidential administrations and at least three others with ties to the family or other political leaders.

In all, Bush has hired at least 29 people who worked on his campaign or have political connections, according to a review of thousands of pages of personnel records. The agency did not advertise any of the openings publicly.

………

State law requires all agencies considering external candidates for a job to post the opening with the Texas Workforce Commission. Newly elected statewide officials often ignore the requirement for some core positions. Attorney General Ken Paxton and Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller have been publicly criticized for doing it a few times this year.

But Bush’s hiring differs because it is so far-reaching, with hires ranging from a temporary transition director to five campaign veterans hired permanently for the new position of “regional outreach coordinator.”

Bush made many so-called appointment hires before even taking office but has continued them well into this year.

The General Land Office, established in 1837, oversees all state public lands and also leases mineral rights to oil and gas companies, generating billions of dollars for schools. Bush, the grandson and nephew of presidents and the son of current presidential candidate Jeb Bush, was elected in November.

………

“Any agency, board, bureau, commission, committee, council, court, department, institution, or office in the executive or judicial branch of state government that has an employment opening for which persons from outside the agency will be considered shall list the opening with the Texas Workforce Commission,” the law says.

Commission spokeswoman Lisa Givens said she did not know who was responsible for enforcing that law. The commission does not check to ensure that jobs are posted, she said.

The attorney general’s office referred questions about the law to the workforce agency.

Personnel records show that Bush directed at least 40 external hires from November to July but listed only four of those with the Workforce Commission.

The average salary for those four was about $65,000. The average salary for the 36 unposted jobs was $90,000.

Ten jobs went to campaign aides, including temporary transition director Trey Newton, who made $17,500 per month, and the five regional outreach coordinators, who are making $55,000 a year. Newton, the campaign engineer Bush once called “our Karl Rove,” left in January. He did not return a call seeking comment.

Another campaign strategist, Ash Wright, and his wife, Patty Wright, both got unposted jobs in December with annual salaries of $120,000 and $48,000, respectively. Both have left, with Ash Wright returning to Bush’s campaign.

The campaign’s spokesman, J.R. Hernandez, got a more permanent job as Bush’s chief of staff, with an annual salary of $110,000. Hernandez, the son of George W. Bush adviser Juan Hernandez and a 2008 college graduate, started the job exactly a week after the election. The application in his personnel file is not signed or dated, and there is no offer letter, making it hard to determine a timeline of employment.

The Bush family has been engaging in this sort of entitled privilege since my dad was in elementary school.

H/t Atrios.

This is a Night for Weird History

I just discovered that Prescott Bush, George H.W.'s dad, and George W's and Jeb's grand dad, was one of the founders of Planned Parenthood:

Can you name any historical figures who helped Planned Parenthood kick off its first fundraising campaign back in 1947? If you first guessed some progressive liberal icon, you’d be wrong.

The die-hard public pro-life bona fides of George W. Bush and his brother and current GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush are undeniable. Jeb has repeatedly said that he would defund Planned Parenthood if he’s elected, and it’s been a promise he’s been making long before the Center for Medical Progress launched their viral undercover video campaign attacking the non-profit, claiming the organization was “selling baby parts.”

But a little known fact — first resurfacing in a 2005 article in SFGate — reveals that the grandfather and father of the last two Bush presidents, Prescott Bush, was the treasurer of the organization in its early years.

But even then, supporting a woman’s right to control over her own reproductive system was politically dangerous.

The political repercussions hit hard. Prescott Bush was knocked out of an expected victory for a Senate seat in Connecticut in 1950 after syndicated columnist Drew Pearson declared that it “has been made known” that Bush was a leader in the “Birth Control Society” (The old name of Planned Parenthood had been the Birth Control Federation of America.) Recall that contraceptives were controversial in those days — and remember that a constitutional right to use them wasn’t established until 1965, when the Supreme Court affirmed an implied right to privacy in Griswold vs. Connecticut.

Prescott Bush won a Senate seat two years later, and his son George and daughter-in-law Barbara continued to support Planned Parenthood even after George’s election to Congress from Texas. In fact, he was such an advocate for family planning that some House colleagues gave him the nickname “Rubbers.”

If I believed that there was an ounce of integrity in the Bush Crime Family, my head would hurt, but Poppy Bush made it patently clear that this was not the case when he turn his back on both his father's legacy and own his lifelong support of reproductive rights to become Vice-President.  (And let us not forget that Prescott Bush's investment firm was shut down for acting as an agent of Nazi Germany in 1942.)

I don't think that this family would walk a straight line if their lives depended on it.

Looters Gotta Loot

And, since the days of GHW Bush's father Prescott laundering Nazi money, the Bush family has been at the top of the looting pyramid:

Jeb Bush had just completed his successful campaign for re-election and now confronted a second term as governor of Florida. Seeking to shape his immediate agenda, he solicited advice from one of his most trusted advisors: David Rancourt, his former deputy chief of staff, who had since become a corporate lobbyist at one of the most powerful firms in the state, the Southern Strategy Group.

“If you were governor, what would you be focusing on for the next two or three years,” Bush wrote Rancourt in an email dated Aug. 13, 2003. “What initiatives do you think we should pursue? How do you think we should do it?”

Two days after sending that note, Bush effectively delivered on one of Southern Strategy Group’s key aims: He signed legislation limiting the dollar value of damages that hospitals and insurance companies could be forced to pay to resolve instances of medical malpractice. The Florida Supreme Court would eventually overturn the bill, arguing that it effectively punished victims of mistreatment in hospitals. But at least for the moment, the governor’s signature handed a victory to Rancourt’s firm, which represented a major association of hospitals. It added to the cachet of the Southern Strategy Group, whose leadership was drawn heavily from the ranks of former Bush staff members and trusted associates.

………

According to IBTimes’ review of email correspondence between Jeb Bush, his top aides and Southern Strategy Group lobbyists, the firm frequently engineered meetings with the governor for its clients. A lobbyist at the firm helped write two of his major speeches. In some instances, Bush sought the direct input of Southern Strategy lobbyists as he crafted his legislative agenda, and he gave them private glimpses of public policy as they represented the corporate interests that had a financial stake in his decisions.

The Bush family has a long history of enriching themselves, and themselves through their political clout.  (Look at the deal that with the Texas Rangers Baseball Team that made George W. Bush's fortune)


Corruption and self dealing?  It's a family tradition.

I'm quoting American Conservative Magazine?

Why yes, I am quoting American Conservative Magazine.

You see, Daniel Larison, reads Ross Douthat's most recent New York Times screed (no link to the Times, I don't want to encourage them, but his wankitude is here on my blog).

Ross, it seems, felt offended because people were using insufficient nuance when describing Bush and His Evil Minions^™, particularly with regard to the architects of the invasion of Iraq, and Mr. Larison responds:

Yes, the problem might be that we do not have artists capable of rendering contemporary architects of a war of aggression that was based on shoddy intelligence, ideological fervor and deceit in a sufficiently subtle, even-handed manner. If only Hollywood were better at portraying the depth and complexity of people who unleashed hell on a nation of 24 million people out of an absurd fear of a non-existent threat! Life is so unfair to warmongers, is it not? Then again, the reason our debates are so poisonous and our nation so divided might have something to do with the existence of utterly unaccountable members of the political class that can launch such a war, suffer no real consequences, and then reliably expect to be defended as “decent” and “well-intentioned” people who made understandable mistakes. The unfortunate truth of our existence is that villains do not have to come out of central casting for comic book movies. They are ordinary, “decent” people who commit grave errors and terrible crimes for any number of reasons. Many great evils have found their origins in a group’s belief that they were doing the right thing and were therefore entitled and permitted to use extraordinary means.

………

(emphasis mine)

That is a righteous rant.

Torture Authorized from the Top

Read Vanity Fair's article on how created their gulags and their torture regime. Of interest is the dispatch of senior administration lawyers to Gitmo to ensure that torture was done.

It's chilling.

Wanker of the Day: Bill Clinton

What the hell was he thinking?????

He goes and suggests that when Hillary becomes prez, she sent people out to convince allies that the US is open to real diplomacy (good idea), and that one of the people she send out is George Herbert Walker Bush, father of George W. Bush?

Let's see, you piss off the Democratic primary voters bu suggesting that Shrub's DAD be a part of a foreign policy good will tour in which he repudiates his son?

This is wrong on so many levels, which Bush-the-elder clearly sees, as he said no bloody way.

I gotta figure that he was going off and trying to be the center of attention, and his mouth outran his mind.

Waxman Has Just Made the Plame Investigation More Interesting

Bush and His Evil Minions^™ have been stonewalling on releasing Patrick Fitzgerald's Plame investigation to Henry Waxman, Chairman of the Committee ON Oversight and Ggovernment Reform, has sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey saying that the White HOuse is blocking release of these documents to his committee, and said that:

Equal application of the law means tþat there should not be one standard applied by the Justice Department to congressional investigations of Democratic administrations and another standard applied to congressional investigations of Republican administrations. I ask that you personally look into this matter and authorize the production of the documents to the Committee without any further delay.

He also notes that Janet Reno cooperated with Congressional committees, which I think is a subtle way of saying that if he does not make a statement for turning over the documents, that Reno is a better man than he is (insert Janet Reno jokes here).

Personally, I think that Mukasey is probably too much one of Bush's lackeys to to the right thing, but I won't be disappointed if I am wrong.

Bush and His Evil Minions™ Claiming Secrecy Needs for Details on Abramoff Visits

You have GOT to be kidding me. Just when I thought that this group of criminals have gotten me so jaded about their venality and corruption that they can no longer shock me, they do something like claiming that details about Abramoff's visits to the White House are somehow deep state secrets that must never be revealed.

This is even more transparent than the Libby pardon.

Scott McClellan Calls Bush Cheney, Rove, Libby, and Card Liars

An excerpt from Scott McClellan's new book:

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

"There was one problem. It was not true.

"I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the president himself."

Abu Gonzales May Be Facing Prosecution

At least that's what one of the fired prosecutors thinks. He believes that the IG will recommend prosecution.

FWIW, "Fredo" Gonzalez clearly thinks so too. He's lawyered up, and he's not saying a word to anyone.

Personally, I'd like to see him go to the Hague, not for his perjury, but for his active participation in the torture policies of Bush and His Evil Minions^™. He'd get a fair trial, and it would be telecast.

Congress Demands Torture Memos

Congress seeks justice dept. documents on interrogation.

What is clear here is that Bush and His Evil Minions^™ are objectively pro torture, and that they find torture a good thing in and of itself, and so they are using any means necessary to continue to torture.

They have to know that it does not work. They have to know that it damages the US's reputation and ability to gather competent intelligence. They don't care.

Ordering torture makes them feel like real men. It makes them feel virile and effective to cause needless harmful pain.

A Do-Over in Iraq???

There is now a report saying that that the Iraqi Police are so compromised that they need to be disbanded and reformed.

They are in essence wings of the Shiite militias.

Does it surprise anyone that Bush and His Evil Minions^™ have screwed this up too?

Hmmmm....I've Heard This Before

A few years back...I can't put my finger on it....Those things that Bush and His Evil Minions^™ have been saying about Iraq Iran,"And Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust," sounds strangely familiar.

It's almost like I've heard this before, maybe about 5 years ago.

Gonzalez Replacement Will Signal New Biparisan Approach for Bush

On another bipartisan note, monkeys will be flying out of my butt.

It appears that we have a number of papers (here, and here) suggesting that George Bush will reach across the aisle in a non-partisan spirit.

What the frack are they smoking? Did they see the official announcement? It was angry announcement was angry and petulant. He'll flip the bird to the congress.

My guess is that it will be Ted Olson, since his wife was killed on 9/11, it allows them to pull out that card.

Of course, there that whole lying under oath thing, where he claimed to not to be close to R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. under oath, the guy who manufactured the Paula Jones crap, despite the fact that he was best man at his wedding.

I won't bet on that, but I would bet that whatever choice it is, it will be a big $%#@ you to Congress.

Corrupting the Military for Politics

Well, it looks like the Pentagon is setting up a propaganda office to sell their phony report.

I am so not surprised.

FWIW, a Pentagon propaganda operation directed at the American public is technically illegal, but that's never stopped Bush and His Evil Minions^&trade before.

Bush Administration Running Attack Ads Against....Republicans?

Well, it appears that an Astroturf group loaded with money from Bush contributors, Freedom Watch, is doing its bit to try to extend the war in Iraq: It's running attack ads against Republicans who are going weak kneed on the war.

Seriously, this is being run through either current, or former, or soon to be former *cough* Rove *cough*Bush political operatives.

Quoting Politico:

"For those who believe in peace through strength, the cavalry is coming," said former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, who is a founding board member of the group.

The big ad buy, funded by high-profile Republicans who were aides and supporters of President Bush, reflects a furious public relations battle that will unfold as Congress debates the crucial progress report by Gen. David Petraeus, which is due Sept. 15.

BTW, there is no Petraeus report. The Bush White House is writing the report with "input" from Petraeus.


FWIW, Tom Matzzie of Americans Against Escalation in Iraq has written their spokesman, Ari Fleischer, a thank you note, in which an analysis of the first ad buy is made, 37 targeting Republicans vs. 4 Democrats, and only one of the Democrats is not sharing a District with a Republican.

BTW, one of the people that they are targeting is Mitch McConnell, Republican leader of the Senate.

This is truly a WTF moment, and typifies Bush's idea of loyalty. Even if it does not backfire, and I think that it will, because it shows how narrow and petty Bush and His Evil Minions^&trade are, it gets these folks voting pro-war, and makes them vulnerable.

He's crossing a line, a very big one, and it might be enough to shake some Republicans loose from mindlessly goose-stepping with him.

Bush Family Values.

Well, Wonkette has an absolutely hilarious post wondering whether Jenna is pregnant.

If so, it's probably not the first time, that is why, in December 2000, Bush went on his fishing vacation when Jenna had her abortion appendix removed.

It's a family tradition. Bush got a girlfriend an abortion in the late 1960s (when it was illegal).

Rats and Ship? Pushed? What's with Rove?

Karl Rove has handed in his resignation, effective the end of August.

That's not a whole bunch of notice, so one wonders what the back story is.

He is suggesting that he wants to spend more time with his family, which is such a cliché that no one with half a brain believes this.

I see three possibilities:

• He has become a political liability, and was given his walking papers.

I find this very unlikely. The Washington press loves him, and if this were the case, it would have been around the time that Libby was convicted.

• He left because he had a serious disagreement over some policy of the administration.

Likely, and I believe that this dispute might very well be spelled Alberto Gonzalez. I believe that his continued presence is coming from Bush, and not the people around him.

• He's getting out because a whole bunch of sh$@% is about to hit the fan, and he's trying to avoid jail time.

I hope so. It would have to be big, and shattering...but I think that I want this too much to discuss this in an objective matter.

• He realizes that this is the best time for him to get a lucrative book deal, and leaving for the last 18 months of the Bush administration will insulate him from a lot of the toxic waste that will follow up.

Most likely alternative.

[on edit]There is also the possibility that he's leaving to join a presidential campaign.

Does the Onion Have a Source Inside the Bush Administration????

Seriously...It has to...Because I cannot tell the difference between White House press releases and the Onion.

Bush and his Evil Minions^™ have decided to send someone to Iraq to help their legal system.

I guess that they need someone there, "To help fashion the country's legal system". Who could it be?

I can't recall.

What name leaps to mind.

I can't recall.

Oh, yes, I remember, it's Alberto "Abu" Gonzzlez.

Seriously, this is too far from reality for The Onion's writers to have dreamed this up.

Impeach them all now.