Category Archive

The flooding throughout the Midwest is bringing the Iraq War right to our front doors…

From a fellow in Iowa:

I am in Mason City.  Our levees broke Sunday morning.  Flood stage is 7 foot and waters are now at 19 feet.  Hundreds of homes and businesses are underwater.  The City’s water plant was flooded and the entire city of 30,000 is without potable water.  A couple of hours ago the main electric substation flooded and failed and much of the city is without power.  People remain in flooded homes.  Early tonight I saw people wandering the streets not knowing where to go. There are entrie areas of the city with NO emergency personnel on hand.

NOBODY from the outside has come to help.  Our local first responders are exhausted and overwhelmed.  Small rural towns downstream tonight are being devasted.  Levees everywhere are failing.  Calls for help in these small towns have been unmet.  Portions of our local guard are in Iraq.

The homeland has been left unprotected and people are suffering horribly.

(emphasis added)

And from further down in that blogpost:

The reason we organize ourselves into communities is to deal with the vagaries of man and nature we can’t effectively handle by ourselves.

Just like the wildfires in California and the bridge collapse in Minneapolis were likely made worse because “tax relief” won the day over public safety, this is the effect of small/no government attitudes and backassward policy priorities.

Nobody’s perfect but anyone should be able to predict that, at some point in time, a river will flood and we ought to be prepared. Each state’s National Guard is supposed to be a part of that preparation. When the Iowa Guard is off in the Middle East instead of at home, Americans are put in harm’s way.

It’s the Iowa National Guard, not the Iraq National Guard.

Just. Admit. It. (That last one’s a PDF)

How can anyone believe anything the Washington Republicans say…?

One of our kids’ favorite books is “Goodnight Moon” by Margaret Wise Brown. They love looking for the mouse and they always whisper “hush” right along with the little old lady. Their favorite page is the blank one that reads “Goodnight nobody.”

And so it was with rather loud laughter that I just noticed … “Goodnight Bush.”

The Republican party’s conservative base can’t both be mum when a well-known Iraqi immigrant to America (who also happens to be the Imam of the largest mosque in America) visits with and even advises Pres. Bush — in the White House no less — but then get hopping mad with hysteria when Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama meets with that same guy for a few minutes…

So which is it, either conservative partisans hate Muslims even if Pres. Bush and Sen. Obama meet with them or they don’t…

From DHinMI, in his reaction to reporting by Oliver Willis:

It makes sense that Obama would meet with the Imam.  Qazwini came to the United States in 1992.  He was first in California, but eventually ended up in Dearborn Michigan, home of the largest population of Middle Eastern Arabs outside the Middle East.  The Arab-American population in Detroit—between a quarter and a half million—is diverse, but the largest group is Lebanese Shiite Muslims.  Beginning in the 1990’s, the Shiite Lebanese were joined by Iraqi Shiites.

Like these new immigrants, Qazwini is from Iraq.  His Grandfather was an Ayatollah in Karbala who Saddam arrested, and he died in prison.  The family fled Iraq, Hussein Al-Qazwini came to the US, and unlike most of the Arab-American community, was a strong advocate for overthrowing Saddam. Eventually, however, even many of the Arab-Americans who supported the invasion of Iraq—always a small group–became disillusioned with the US occupation of Iraq and turned on Bush and the GOP.

Which brings us to the fun part about the wingers going crazy over Obama’s meeting with Qazwini.  How many of the wingers were going crazy in 2003 when Qazwini gave an opening prayer before Congress?  Who complained that Qazwini met with staffers of the Bush administration’s National Security Council to talk about the overthrow of Saddam?  Where were the complaints about the four or five invitations to visit Bush at the White House extended to Qazwini?  Did the wingers flip out when Qazwini participated in the roll-out of Bush’s Faith Based Initiative, an event that took place at the White House?

(links are original)

Oliver Willis even has photos of a hug and a kiss between Pres. Bush and his friend and advisor, Imam Qazwini. The Imam has even met with Pope Benedict for crying out loud.

But a handshake and a chat with Sen. Obama causes frantic fits among the cons?

Hypocrites.

…Actually, this round of “Which Is It” has a clear-cut answer.

Hard-line con hack Debbie Schlussel, no stranger to conspiracy theories and the originator of this most recent infopimped malarkey, has been attacking Bush, the Pope, and now Obama for the same reason — they’ve met with this Imam from Michigan her rabid, paranoid fear of Muslims…

What one person labels ‘vigilance against all Muslims’ is what most mainstream Americans refer to as “bigotry“… and clearly now the Pope, Bush and Obama are all automatically Muslim Manchurian Candidates simply for being in the same room as this Iraq escapee.

Oy.

Recently resigned Bush administration official Lurita Doan is alleged to have scheduled meetings and planned ribbon cutting type ceremonies with partisan aims in mind (ie, positive media stories) and generally pulled other strings to shine favorable lights on incumbent GOP legislators — while doing the opposite as retaliation against Dems.

Having the head of the taxpayer-funded general services administration committing such blatant political favoritism is of course a big no-no and apparently, after years and years of not being caught, she got caught and the WH asked her to resign. (Whether Bush wanted her to leave because what she did was unethical or because she got caught we may never know.)

All of which lead Time magazine blogger Karen Tumulty to wonder “what took so long”.

Atrios and several commenters to her own Time blog post give her the answer she least expected, but the most obvious for those paying attention — that darned (not so) liberal media ‘in action’ again.

McCain blames the Minneapolis bridge collapse on Congress:

Republican John McCain said Wednesday that the bridge collapse in Minnesota that killed 13 people last year would not have happened if Congress had not wasted so much money on pork-barrel spending.

Yet, McCain is a member of that same Congress he now chastises. If he really had a problem with his fellow Republican Ted Stevens and his Bridge to Nowhere, as he now claims, then he could’ve filibustered the spending bill til he got his way.

In fact, if McCain had a problem with spending over the last umpteen years all he had to do was turn to his fellow Republicans — they controlled Congress for all but a few months in the decade-plus leading up to that tragic bridge collapse.

This all-talk, no-action gig seems to be a pattern with McCain: saying he’s against something but not actually doing anything to quash it. From Rev. Hagee’s bigoted and anti-American sermons to the North Carolina Republican Party’s bizarre racially tinged guilt-by-association ad to now throwing his own fellow legislators under his campaign bus….

Indeed, having the presumptive Republican prez nominee throwing his fellow Members of Congress under the bus as a cheap political stunt makes even less sense than when the actual incumbent Republican President did the same thing a day earlier. (Pres. Bush complained Congress wasn’t sending him any bills to help “fix” the economy. It is members of Bush’s and McCain’s Republican Party who are holding up those bills with procedural shenanigans while the majority Dems have been working to get those bills unlocked from the GOP hijinx and send them down the street to the Prez…)

PS: If he were really concerned about our roads and bridges and infrastructure McCain wouldn’t be suggesting his cotton candy gas tax holiday (tastes good, but rots your teeth and leaves you empty). His empty gesture would instantly vacuum $10 billion out of the Highway Trust Fund with no alternate funding source for infrastructure investment in mind. Conservative and progressive economists agree that McCain’s anti-tax plan stinks

Ladies and gentlemen, your so-not-liberal-they-look-like-conservative-propagandists media in action…

To the public, these men [retired military brass] are members of a familiar fraternity, presented thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances and a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, executives, board members or consultants.

The companies include defense heavyweights but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major networks.

Hmmm… Billions of dollars for the military-industrial complex dangled like cheese on a trap? Check. Feigning objectivity while manipulating the media for positive political points and potential self-indulgent profits? Check. Controlling access to information rather than being open and honest? Check.

Heckuva job, disinformation services. Heckuva job.

It’s not like the Bush administration has ever played the media for tools or wasted billions on unethical war profiteers, have they?

Are those crickets I hear chirping instead of media conglomerates owning up to their ineptitude?

Thought so.

They apparently enjoy playing Rhetorical Twister™ by Milton Bradley.

By now most folks have heard what Sen. Obama said about folks being bitter because they are frustrated by the lack of progress in this country as more and more jobs get shipped overseas and the jobs that remain cover relatively less and less (all while the true elitists, fat cat CEOs, engorge themselves on ever larger “compensation packages”).

Now, that would leave most people “bitter”, especially after so many years (and presidencies) with it continuously happening.

But apparently, for both conservative Marathon Pundit and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, calling a spade a spade somehow means you’re “elitist.”

What don’t they get? Obama is clearly saying that people are ticked off at not being listened to by Washington … and so instead folks give up on economic issues (because they’re being overlooked and ignored) and turn to other issues where they think they may be heard.

Of course, far be it from a conservative partisan like Marathon Pundit to actually even try to understand that — not when his guy in the Oval Office runs around telling moms who work three jobs just to make ends meet for their kids that that situation is “fantastic.”

By the way, this whole Sideshow Bob act by all the reactionaries from Marathon Pundit to Senators ‘Four More Years’ McCain and Clinton is exactly why the economic plight of middle America gets overlooked. These partisans would rather make up some BS about elitism to try and score cheap political points instead of actually talking about strategies to alleviate the burden on parents who are forced to work three jobs just to take care of the kids they hardly ever see because they’re constantly working….

In order to rust over the Democrats’ image as the party of the working guys and gals, conservative partisans take to calling them names like “effete elitists” and “latte liberals” or whatever silly alliteration they can come up with to pull the wool over folks’ eyes. By the way, those “conservative partisans”? They’d be the gated community fat cats earning those $60 million compensation packages and their sweep-under-rug artists like Marathon Pundit, in other words, the actual “elitists” in this scenario.

When did stating the obvious become “elitist” and ignoring suffering become “fantastic”?

Must be something in the coffee, because apparently it’s not in the orange juice.

UPDATE: Hugo notes in comments I’ve neglected to post or link Sen. Obama’s original remarks from the April 6th funder. Here they are via Huffington Post (audio is available at that HuffPo link):

OBAMA: So, it depends on where you are, but I think it’s fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre…I think they’re misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to ‘white working-class don’t wanna work — don’t wanna vote for the black guy.’ That’s…there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today - kind of implies that it’s sort of a race thing.
Here’s how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by — it’s true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter).

But — so the questions you’re most likely to get about me, ‘Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What’s the concrete thing?’ What they wanna hear is — so, we’ll give you talking points about what we’re proposing — close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama’s gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we’re gonna provide health care for every American. So we’ll go down a series of talking points.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you’ll find is, is that people of every background — there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you’ll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I’d be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you’re doing what you’re doing.

I’ve emphasized the portions that get clipped for the soundbites. The bold portion is the full paragraph from which the most oft used quote is taken. The underline is the small portion that gets replayed over and over.

Perhaps someone who thinks these comments reflect an “elitist” attitude could explain the “elitism” in these words. Perhaps they could also explain why they don’t understand that Sen. Obama was talking about the pain many folks in middle America are going through in this latest economic downturn…

UPDATE 2: Former Secretary of Labor (under Pres. Bill Clinton no less) Robert Reich crystallizes what Obama (and I) are trying to say. So why is the media more focused on the hackneyed he-said-she-said instead of the root causes of the problem?

In a moment of clarity, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer notes that the Iraqi government has billions in savings thanks to Baghdad budget surpluses.

Meanwhile, we Americans are spending $340 billion million a day to fight the Iraqis’ battles and build the Iraqis’ roads and schools and police stations — all while running up such huge debts that the formerly Republican-controlled Congresses had to keep raising our national debt ceiling for their trillion-dollar shell games.

From Mr. Blitzer’s blogpost:

Just before and immediately after the U.S. launched its invasion of Iraq, Bush administration officials optimistically predicted that Iraqi oil exports would soon finance the reconstruction of the country. That didn’t happen. U.S. taxpayers were stuck with the literally tens of billions of dollars in bills.

Now, five years later and with the price of oil reaching more than $100 a barrel, Iraqi oil exports are generating huge sums [...]

[Democratic Sen. Carl] Levin notes that the Iraqis by and large are still not using their money to build new roads, bridges, schools and hospitals. Why should they? Uncle Sam is still doing that for them.

One clarification - Uncle Sam is not doing that for them. George Bush is (through his veto of reasonable plans for strategic withdrawal and other hijinks).

A few random thoughts on a blustery Friday early in this presidential election year…

Putting Big Biz before safety isn’t smart. This week we’re learning that Federal Aviation Administration safety inspectors were told by superiors to ignore maintenance records and overlook safety issues. While that practice kept jets in the air, and helped airlines stay “efficient”, it quite literally could have led to fire and brimstones raining down from the sky.

–

Outsourcing a war doesn’t work. It’s great for war profiteers who snake billions in taxpayer money off to their private coffers, literally by the truckload. But, it’s horrible for everyone else from the people we’re supposed to be helping to the US taxpayers to the stalwart troops

…To the actual outsourced workers: Is this sort of rape cover-up what conservative-partisans mean when they talk about concepts like holding government accountable, family values and supporting our troops?

–

Deregulating the banking and investment industries hasn’t worked. Sure, financial institutions were able to rack up tidy profits and big payouts for their glass tower and gated community execs and CEOs. But Phil Gramm and the others’ slashing of firewalls implemented after the Great Depression is what has led directly to the mortgage crisis and the larger credit crisis. (PS: former Sen. Gramm is now advising GOP candidate John McCain on economic policy. Frightening considering Sen. McCain has repeatedly admitted to knowing little about economics.)

“Supply-side economics” ain’t working folks. Actually, a clarifiction. It works very well for a select few. It doesn’t work for the vast majority, ie, average Americans. Supply-side is like a tsunami that raises seawater very quickly in specific spots and leaves behind devastation once it crashes. Demand-side economics (ie, consumer-conscious economic policies which actually take into account whether or not people can afford to simply live their lives) are more like a rising tide which lifts everyone up without wreaking havoc.

–

Outsourcing vital government functions like the Passport office doesn’t work. Instead, we end up with peeping toms who snoop through sensitive passport records working for private contractors who have no accountability and, apparently, answer to no one. And, on top of that, they’re slow as molasses.

Over at her backyard, conserv-o-partisan Anne Leary is apparently worried that a President Barack Obama “would disarm us … In the face of an Islamofascist terrorist enemy as relentless as any we faced in the Cold War, as murderous and hate-filled as Adolf Hitler, with the terror state of Iran harboring and arming terrorists, hell-bent on developing nuclear weapons …”

Question for Ms. Leary: Where was the Iranian President (and Holocaust denier) Ahmadinejad was over the weekend?

Answer: Baghdad, hoping to “strengthen ties” with his Iraqi brethren in a nation our president (with the support of blinded-by-partisanship cons such as Ms. Leary) invaded under false pretenses in order to ‘liberate.’

That’s right. The leader of the nation Ms. Leary fears so much went straight to the heart of the nation we are propping up to the tune of nearly $4000 per second so that Iran and Iraq could form closer bonds.

And Ms. Leary is worried about the one presidential candidate who wants to change that dynamic, a certain Barack “The One Who’s Sane” Obama?

Methinks Ms. Leary is worried about the wrong things, and perhaps ought to look in a mirror and realize she’s pointing more fingers back at herself than at Presidential Candidate Obama. All that spinning is just making her and her cohorts falling-over dizzy.

CNN reports*:

President Bush, saying he was unaware of predictions of $4-a-gallon gasoline in the coming months, told reporters Thursday that the best way to help Americans fend off high prices is for Congress to make his first-term tax cuts permanent. [...]

When taking the question about the $4 milestone, Bush told the reporter, “That’s interesting. I hadn’t heard that.”

So Americans are supposed to pay $4 a gallon to get the kids to and fro, go to the grocey store or do other shopping, visit with family or go sight-seeing, and, of course, get to work … and Bush’s “conservative” suggestion for how to help is to transfer middle class earnings to the wealthy by making permanent his tax cuts for the upper classes?
No wonder conservative policies are failing left and right — they’re unstable and provide “solutions” to the wrong problems.

Instead of those tax cuts, if the President actually cared about $4/gallon gas he would’ve started (in Jan. 2001) investing the money given back in tax cuts into sustainable energy efforts like the Apollo Project.

Alas, modern conservative-partisans could care less about the common good with this me-me-me attitude of theirs and so, like lemmings off a cliff, they drag us all toward ever more costly policies that lead to issues like $4/gallon for Regular Unleaded, billions a month for the Iraq Civil War, spiralling out of control health care costs, etc.

* Note that the quotes attributed to Pres. Bush in that CNNMoney.com article are not in chronological order. In reality, the dumbfounded quote came before the solving-the-wrong-problem quote.

Brrr… Sure is cold in the West Wing these days.

The latest ARG poll has the Republicans’ chieftain at 19% approval, the lowest point ever for a sitting president.

No wonder the guy running for Bush’s 3rd term has to send his wife out to disparage his likely opponent’s wife… taking the original quote completely out of context in the process.

The American people are solidly rejecting the failed conservative policies and the weakened Republican party that forced those failings down our throats. Ouch.

While it’s understandable that the Clinton campaign would be jumping on any little tidbit of Rezko flotsam they can scare up, it’s much less clear why conservatives would play along. As point of fact, Illinois Review wrote up a “new” series on Rezko rehashing a bunch of old info from a conservative partisan perspective. Curiously, in the second post of that series (about Rezko’s political donations) Fran Eaton begins:

Tony Rezko aimed his campaign dollars where he would get the most return on his investments, there’s no doubt.

Perhaps she didn’t realize Mr. Rezko put quite a large investment in her conservative hero, Pres. George Bush.

Mr. Rezko donated $7000 directly to Bush and also helped co-chair a $3.5 million Bush-Cheney04 fundraiser in 2003. Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed called it simply a “megamillion” fundraiser which, at $3.5 mil, it certainly is. Her S-T colleague Lynn Sweet notes that co-chairs for that event were responsible for bundling at least $100,000 in donations to Pres. Bush. In addition to that largesse in support of Bush, Rezko of course also was quite generous to a variety of other Republican pols over the years.

I wonder if Ms. Eaton knows what sort of “return” Rezko was trying to get on his mega Bush “investment.”

…Those without their partisan blinders on will be willing to read through the nearly 1000 lies told by the conservative Bush Administration in the lead-up to the Iraq War and evaluate them for what they are. Even the abbreviated versions are damning — Pres. Bush himself came in as the liar-in-chief, having expressed the most falsehoods (259).

At the Center for Public Integrity’s “The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War” readers can review a database of the whoppers told to the American people and when they were disseminated. (The Fund for Independence in Journalism also helped produce this database of deceit.)

Meteor Blades has more. Shame on the “Fourth Estate” for buying this bill of sale lock, stock and barrel.

For as much as the conserv-o-partisans hate the guy, he sure know how to hit the nail on the head. Sen. Ted Kennedy from the floor of the Senate this morning:

The President has said that American lives will be sacrificed if Congress does not change FISA.  But he has also said that he will veto any FISA bill that does not grant retro-active immunity.  No immunity, no FISA bill.  So if we take the President at his word, he’s willing to let Americans die to protect the phone companies.

Sen. Kennedy said this in support of Sen. Chris Dodd’s filibuster of the deeply flawed telecom immunity version of the FISA bill. Senate Majority Leader called that version (aka, the Intelligence Committee version) to the floor instead of virtually the same FISA bill from the Judicial Committee, sans get out of jail free cards for telcos that may have broken the law at the President’s “request.” Sen. Reid has said he actually supports the Judicial Cmte. version so why he called the un-Constitutional Intelligence version for a vote is anybody’s guess.

Regardless, Sen. Dodd is now filibustering the bad version. You can learn more about Sen. Dodd’s vital filibuster here. It’s an effort everyone who supports our Constitution and the American tradition of the Rule of Law ought to back 110%.

The Obama-Coburn inspired Federal spending tracker USAspending.gov came online earlier this week, allowing we citizens to see firsthand what our government is spending money on….

Several folks are already noting that one of the fastest growing expenses is document shredding — up a whopping 600% since Pres. Bush first sat down in the Oval Office.

What’re they trying to hide with those millions of dollars dedicated to erasing their record? Gee, I wonder.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told The Hill:

“They like this war,” she said. “They want this war to continue. That was a revelation to me. I had thought they would listen to their constituents and change their position.”

Just why would Speaker Pelosi say such a thing? Let us count the ways…

1. “General Petraeus is coming back, not just as (a) guy who’s going to give us his take on the Iraq situation, but as the leader of more than 160,000 American personnel in uniform in Iraq. And they’re not only watching his testimony, but they’re also watching our testimony. They’re watching how we treat him. They’re watching this Congress to see if we give credibility to what people in uniform say.” - Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif. (Petraeus-Crocker hearing on Iraq status)
2. “As Congress prepares to take our next steps in support of our troops, we are faced with a critical choice. Will we ignore the progress we’ve made and play politics with the security of our nation, or will we finally listen to the generals?” - House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio (Petraeus-Crocker hearing on Iraq status)
3. “With respect to the GAO report, their data cut off - the answer is the data cut-off. At the very least, their data cut-off was five weeks ago. And in some cases, I think - might check this - but in some case I think it was nine weeks ago. But at the very least, these last five weeks, as we showed you on the slides, have actually been very significant. ” - [Gen. David] Petraeus in response to questioning about the differences between the data he presented and that contained in the recent Government Accountability Office report (Petraeus-Crocker hearing on Iraq status)
4. “If the commanders of America’s Armed Services on the ground in Iraq determine that a temporary troop increase is critical to complete our mission, we should have a bipartisan discussion about how best to proceed and support our troops. … My hope is that the president’s plan will be accompanied by specifics, and I’m confident it will be.” - House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio (orig. to Cincinnati Enquirer, 1/10/07)
5. “As for myself, I intend to support this new effort to quiet Baghdad and to give us a chance to succeed. I think that’s what the American people would like to have. … I think it is inappropriate for the Congress to try to micromanage, in effect, the tactics in a military conflict. I don’t think Congress has the authority to do it. I don’t think it would be good at it. You can’t run a war by a committee of 435 in the House and 100 in the Senate.” - Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) (press conference, 1/9)
6. “You know, I think that it’s a mistake for members of Congress to think that they can fight about whether the right number of troops is 20,000 more or 40,000 more or 20,000 less. I’ve been to Iraq a couple of times. I’ve never come back thinking I knew the exact right number of troops.
   “I think the president and military leaders — and I know we hear that the military leaders may not be on board. I have a feeling they’re much more on board than we know.
   “… Ultimately, our foreign policy has to be about us. And at some point, you can’t secure the future for a people who don’t want to secure their own future. I see this as one of the last chances for the Iraqi people to secure their future with us as a principal partner.” - Minority Whip Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) (orig. to “Late Edition” CNN, 1/7)
7. “… I do think we need to continue to look at our goal. If redeployment is another word for just let’s get out of there, I’d have to question about how you do that. We do want to still have a success as we leave Iraq. And we, in my opinion, should leave Iraq in a responsible period of time. But how you change the dynamics, how you set it up where you don’t leave total chaos, and that all of our effort is for naught, that is a critical question.” - Minority Whip Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) (orig. to “Late Edition,” CNN, 1/7)
8. “The mission of these troops would be to implement the thus-far-elusive “hold” element of the military’s “clear, hold, build” strategy: to maintain security in cleared areas, to protect the population, and to impose the government’s authority. Our troops would work in cooperation with Iraqi forces, and stay in place until the completion of their mission. The worst of all worlds would be a small, short surge of U.S. forces. We have tried small surges in the past, and they have been ineffective because our commanders lacked the forces necessary to hold territory after it was cleared. A short surge would have all the drawbacks associated with greater deployments without giving our troops the time they need to be effective.” - GOP Pres. candidate and Sen. John McCain (R-Az) (orig. to Powerline blog, 1/10)
9. “The president is very committed to what he’s doing. I, based on what he told me today, I would support his proposal. This is different from what he’s done in the past. He’s going to have a new commander in General Petraeus, and these 20,000 additional troops are going to go in and root out the insurgents, root out the terrorists, and stay there until we know those neighborhoods are secure, unlike in the past, where they swept the neighborhoods, but then left because we didn’t want to leave a big imprint. We have to leave an imprint, we have to stay there, and at the same time be training the Iraqi army.” - Rep. Peter King (Ranking Republican, Homeland Security Cmte.) (orig. to Fox News, 1/9)
10. “So I think we need a new footprint there, a different way to continue the war on terror. And Somalia just showed us a good example how to do that [with special operations forces].” - Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore) (orig. to Fox News, 1/9)

Want to know where the Republican prez candidates stand with regards to the Iraq War? Only Rep. Ron Paul favors ending it asap, the rest hope to continue and perhaps even expand it (with what magical batch of troops they don’t ever seem to say). And it’s not just Iraq… There has been plenty of rhetoric about bombing Iran in recent weeks (including Sen. McCain’s exciting rendition of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann” … “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran!”), up until the National Intelligence Estimate revealed America’s spy agencies don’t think the Iranians are pursuing nukes.
Need a few more choice GOP quotes on war and other matters? Head here.

The truly bizarre thing?! Talking head conserv-o-partisans have lost their marbles and are harping on Speaker Pelosi for stating the obvious. What? Malkin, Limbaugh and the like suddenly think Republicans stopped promoting Pres. Bush’s never-ending war in Iraq?

Ack.

I wrote about White House spokesperson (and University of Illinois at Springfield grad) Dana Perino the other day after she revealed she had no clue what the Cuban Missile Crisis was about, though she thought it might have involved ‘Such as, Cuba… And, umm, missiles? … Maybe?’

In explaining the conservative administration’s views on the illegality of torture she shows us yet again why the Heckuvajob Administration keeps her on staff:

Q Did the questioning of al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah conform with the interrogation program approved by President Bush?  [...]

MS. PERINO: I will say that all interrogations — all interrogations have been done within the legal framework that was set out after September 11th…All of the — the entire program has been legal.

Q Are you saying that whatever was done in this case was not torture?

MS. PERINO: I am saying that the United States does not torture. The President has been —   [...]

Q But when you have a former CIA officer, John Kiriakou, now saying that waterboarding was used — since you’re saying the interrogations were legal; he’s saying on the record now, waterboarding was used in at least one case. You’re saying waterboarding is legal?

MS. PERINO: Ed, I’m saying I’m not commenting on any specific technique. I’m not commenting on that gentleman’s characteristics of any possible technique. I’ve given you a very general statement about interrogations being legal, limited and –

Q You just said it was legal.

MS. PERINO: I’m sorry?

Q You said it was within the legal framework.

MS. PERINO: Yes.

Q Everything that was done.

MS. PERINO: Yes.

Q So waterboarding is legal.

MS. PERINO: I’m not commenting on any specific techniques.

Even for a Bush Admin spinmeister that’s pathetic semantic gymnastics.

Can UIS revoke her degree?

(h/t BarbinMD)

Salon’s War Room reports on White House spokesperson Dana Perino being apparently little more than a bobblehead… Rich Miller adds a little extra identifying info that leaves me embarrassed for UIUC’s sister school to the southwest.

At a White House press briefing on Oct. 26, a reporter asked [UIS Public Affairs Reporting grad] Dana Perino about Vladimir Putin’s suggestion that a U.S. plan to base parts of a missile shield in Europe was similar to the events that led to the Cuban missile crisis.

Perino’s response: “Well, I think that the historical comparison is not — does not exactly work. What I can say is what President Putin went on to say, which is that the president and President Putin have said that we can work together on this.” […]

Appearing on NPR’s “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me” over the weekend, Perino said she “panicked” when she got the Cuban missile crisis question because she wasn’t exactly sure what the Cuban missile crisis was. “I really know nothing about the Cuban missile crisis,” Perino said. “It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I’m pretty sure.”

Perino said she went home that night and asked her husband, “‘Wasn’t that, like, the Bay of Pigs thing?’ And he said, ‘Oh, Dana.’”

(emphasis added to Mr. Miller’s identifier)

Like, duh. Y’know?

And here we thought conservatives were concerned about Cuban exiles and their proud history, let alone ousting the only remaining Communist dictator in the Western Hemisphere…. Apparently not so much.

UIS needs to start adding basic recent history as a prereq.

Talk about dumping a stinking, steaming load on our vets… Via Carpetbagger Report:

When Jordan Fox was serving in Iraq, his mother helped organize Operation Pittsburgh Pride, which sends thousands of care packages to U.S. troops from his hometown, which prompted a personal “thank you” from the White House. When Fox was seriously injured in Iraq, the president sent what appeared to be personal note, expressing his concerns to the Fox family.

But more recently, Fox received a different piece of correspondence from the Bush administration.

The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments.

To get people to sign up, the military gives enlistment bonuses up to $30,000 in some cases.

Now men and women who have lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and can no longer serve are being ordered to pay some of that money back.

[...] Last week, the Pentagon sent him a bill: Fox owed the government nearly $3,000 of his signing bonus.

Is this sort of spit-in-a-vet’s-face attitude what Republicans mean by “smaller government” and “saving tax dollars”? What are they so fond of saying? That’s right: “It’s your money!”

To that shortsighted greediness I say no thank you. Without our armed forces serving honorably and loyally there would be no America in which to earn your money. Without each of us contributing our fair share to invest in our country there would be no armed forces, especially not the caliber of personnel by whom we are blessed to be defended.

Those brave and stalwart Americans (including several in my family) who choose to serve our country and sacrifice themselves in defense of our Constitution deserve our utmost respect and admiration — not harassment by the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Gates collection agency.

At least the Democrats, contrary to the cons’ lying spin, offer our veterans the dignity they deserve in light of their sacrifices. Again, from Carpetbagger:

For what it’s worth, Fox’s congressman, Democrat Jason Altmire, has introduced a bill to prohibit the Bush administration from asking the troops for refunds.

[...] “Hard as it may be to believe, the Department of Defense has been denying injured servicemen and women the bonuses that they qualified for,” Mr. Altmire said.

He said he drafted the legislation after hearing “outrageous” examples of bonuses being denied…. Mr. Altmire’s legislation, the Veterans Guaranteed Bonus Act, would require the Defense Department to pay bonuses in full within 30 days to veterans discharged because of combat-related wounds.

You can call your Congressman to demand they support Rep. Altmire’s Veterans Guaranteed Bonus Act via the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 or directly by searching this directory. And, here are some tips on how best to present your support for our troops and Rep. Altmire’s proposal when calling.

(h/t Army veteran Kos)

UPDATE: In comments at the Carpetbagger Report thread, Olo points out the Bush Pentagon has been doing this to Iraq War vets for years.

One particular story comes via the book Purple Hearts: Back from Iraq by Nia Berman, which was published in 2004. Author Nia Berman recounts, among other soldiers’ stories, the details of Army veteran Tyson Johnson’s ordeal with the Pentagon demanding a return of his signing bonus since “he didn’t fulfill his contract because he was wounded.”

(h/t Stephen Handwerk at We the People! Mr. Handwerk also includes a list of additional linked stories — at the end of his WTP! column — about several other wounded vets being pestered to return their signing bonuses. Where the heck is the supposedly-but-not-really “liberal” media on these stories about how the Republicans choose to “cutback on tax dollars”?!)

Rep. David Obey (D-WI) tells Pres. Bush who to call for a good time:

“Let me repeat,” said Obey, “the money [Bush recently requested for Iraq] has already been provided by the House of Representatives. If the president wants that $50 billion released, all he has to do is to call the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, and ask him to stop blocking it. That phone number is (202) 224-2541, in case anybody’s interested.”

[...] “I would be happy to provide them with the entire $200 billion that they’ve requested for the remainder of the year — of next year, I should say — if the administration accepted these modest and reasonable conditions.”

That’s the problem with blocking upper-down-votes by filibustering common sense legislation… Too bad for the Republican President that it’s the Republicans in the Senate doing the obstructionalism. (And, again, notice how the Senate Repubs dropped the “nuclear option” like a moldy apple and decided to leave filibustering well enough alone? Gee, seems like that decision was made just about a year ago.)

Now if only Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would actually force the Republicans to commit to a real filibuster instead of a double-dog-dare with ketchup on top pseudo filibuster.

(h/t Huffington Post)

Talk about missing the point. Seriously… “No, he’s not for torture?“

If Attorney General Michael Mukasey were actually opposed to torture then why didn’t he simply say so?

Instead he hemmed and hawed and claimed he didn’t know what waterboarding was. Only later did he say torture was repugnant, but he still didn’t declare that he would actually enforce our nation’s laws banning the repugnant, un-American practice.

But none of that stopped the Trib from defending anti-American values while contradicting themselves in the process:

But he won’t say it is illegal. And there’s at least one important reason: Such a declaration could open the potential for criminal prosecution or lawsuits against CIA officers who used the harsh interrogation practice. It could also endanger their bosses and anyone else who authorized the practice. [...]

A vote for Mukasey is not a vote to defend waterboarding. The technique is illegal under the 2005 anti-torture amendment promoted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). That law prohibited “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment of prisoners — including waterboarding, as McCain and others reiterated in a letter sent to Mukasey this week. [Writer's Note: This is only technically true -- the President still has the ability to set the definition of what is or isn't "cruel, inhuman and degrading" and his definition may differ from 2/3rds of Americans. And besides, we know the White House has ok'ed the use of waterboarding.]

If that law wasn’t specific enough, the president and Congress last year agreed on rules for interrogating and trying suspected terrorists that also would prohibit waterboarding, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a veteran military lawyer. [Writer's Note: As we've seen time and again, the President often tends to say one thing and then do another when he thinks no one's looking.]

So the Trib first says an Attorney General should not declare torture to be illegal and then in later paragraphs says we shouldn’t worry because torture is illegal (on paper at least).

Even Sen. Graham, to whom the Trib referred, said of AG Candidate Mukasey:

“I am urging him that he needs to come forward. If he does not believe that waterboarding is illegal, then that would really put doubts in my own mind because I don’t think you have to have a lot of knowledge about the law to understand this technique violates” the Geneva Convention and other statutes, Graham said.

Torture should be illegal; not allowed by unitary executive fiat.

The definition of torture should be based on common sense and existing laws and international treaties; not parsed legalese.

The point the Trib is completely missing is that even though the laws passed by Congress may say torture is illegal, Pres. Bush has in the past asked his former Attorneys General (he’s had two now) to declare that he, as president, can simply ignore the law. 

Pres. Bush, in his best impression of Ellen DeGeneres’ dog lamentation, is now whining that America may have to go without an Attorney General because Democrats are increasingly refusing to accept an AG candidate who is wishy-washy on actually enforcing the law. Good. America deserves an AG which will enforce the law, no matter the political pressure from the West Wing to allow our “president” to ignore the law. (That’s no longer an American presidency; it is something very different.)

If Tribune editorial page editor and excuse-maker extraordinaire Bruce Dold doesn’t think waterboarding is torture then perhaps he’d enjoy being on the receiving end as a demonstration of the procedure.

Maybe then he’ll decide not to continue overlooking the many ways in which this “conservative” president has found ways to ignore and blatantly disobey our nation’s laws. Since when was considering one’s self to be above the law a part of the conservative philosophy such that the Trib would pimp a knee-jerk defense of it?

Arch kindly calls it cognitive dissonance. I call it what it is: hypocrisy.

What is it with all these conserv-o-partisans like Fran Eaton at Illinois Review clamoring for Gov. Blagojevich’s head simply because he’s an inept quasi-leader who stomps his feet when he doesn’t get his way and has been implicated — though not yet charged, let alone convicted — in several legally questionable activities…?

Don’t they realize that also describes their not-so-lovable Pres. Bush to a T?

As a two-time Bush endorser, the Trib simply put the question of recall out there (likely knowing full well others would call for impeachment). Illinois Review’s Ms. Eaton, herself a well-recorded Bush defender and dogmatist, takes that next step and yelps, “Anything less than impeachment is dereliction of lawmakers’ duties.”

Yet, the only difference at this point is the number of letters after the B in their last names. Other than that, their leadership “styles” (I’m being generous) are almost exactly alike.

The Chicago Tribune excoriated Gov. Rod Blagojevich over the weekend:

Blagojevich is an intentionally divisive governor and a profoundly unhelpful influence. He is unwilling or unable to see the chaos all around him. This year, lawmakers failed to make progress on schools, on state pension reform, on any number of critical matters. Mass transit in the Chicago region is about to implode, largely because of the state government’s failure.

While their gripes about Blago are familiar and I agree with several of them…

This is coming from the same paper that endorsed George W. Bush twice???

And they had to cite the conservative National Conference of State Legislatures for “research” about recalling a Guv?

Hypocrites.

The only reason the Tribune doesn’t have a similar “bill of particulars” against Pres. Bush is because the Republican Congresses refused to actually investigate the guy and, now that Dems are back in charge, the president’s staff (past and present) refuses to honor the growing number of Congressional summonses and the Bush-led Justice Dept. has indicated they’ll refuse to enforce them. Not that a newspaper which would endorse a Rubber Chicken as long as it had an R after its name would ever bother publishing such a list damning their president (gone are the days of “nobody of sound mind can read [the transcripts] and continue to think that Mr. Nixon has upheld the standards and dignity of the Presidency.”)

Illinois, like the United States itself, does have a “recall” option: impeachment. It is up to the State Legislature and the Congress, respectively, to determine what is or is not an impeachable offense. With self-serving, hypocritical editorial bents such as that seen over the weekend, the Tribune does not help further that option at either the State or Federal level.

How pathetic is it when your approval rating is below Bush’s?  No, I’m not talking about the approval of the Congress as a whole.  I’m talking about our very own Dear Leader, Governor Blagojevich.  Rasmussen’s latest polling pegs Bush’s approval rating at 31% in Illinois (down 1 point from last month).  Blagojevich dropped to 16%.  Let me say that again…

S-I-X-T-E-E-N P-E-R-C-E-N-T! 

 Don’t get me wrong, Blago wasn’t terribly popular when his current term began.  He won re-election with less than 50% of the vote.  But he has dropped to 16%.  6 point drop in one two months. 

 I’ve complained about this Governor quite often in the past.  I’ve never really liked him.  One of the first things he did upon entering office was cut funding for higher education (with my Alma Mater taking the biggest hit, I believe (UIUC)).  Coincidentally, UIUC’s tuition has risen astronomically since Blago became governor. 

 But his handling of the budget situation and the RTA problem has been absurdly awful.  He issues fiats saying this is what’s going to happen and takes everyone by surprise.  Then he complains when the legislature won’t play ball.  He fights Mike Madigan at every opportunity, no matter how ridiculous.  He is willing to risk sinking the economy in Northeastern Illinois so that he can abide by a campaign pledge. 

At this point, it’s all about the Governor’s ego.  He has to beat Madigan at something.  I never thought I would see the day where Madigan looked like the good guy.  Well, that day is here.  Mike Madigan is the good guy in Springfield.  It’s time for the Governor to govern, not fight with the Speaker. 

Governor, you will never win another election in this State.  This approval rating should show you that.  Give it up.  You lost.  It’s over.  You are now a lame duck. 

You are almost as unpopular as Dick Cheney, sir.  Twice as many people in this state think George Bush is doing a good job than think you are doing a good job.  Those 16%?  They are on your payroll.

 Update:  Rich Miller has another story up today about our Dear Leader.  The Governor did a press release saying he met with all the Legislative leaders, except for Mike Madigan, and hammered out a deal to save the RTA.  The release went on to say that Tom Cross was to meet with Madigan to convince him to get on board and drop his support for SB 572. 

Unfortunately for the Governor, his bff, Senate Prez Emil Jones said he knows nothing about such a deal, but he has heard ‘rumors.’ 

Tom Cross said a deal had been discussed, but nothing was concrete.

Senate Republican Leader Frank Watson said that there is no plan.

And the RTA and its’ related agencies are completely in the dark.

 Good Job Governor!!!

Attorney General nominee Mike Mukasey at one point a few years back in his Senate confimation hearings compared the White House-approved tactics used at Gitmo to Nazi torture tactics (the Trib conveniently softens it up, saying only Mukasey “explicitly [told] a Senate panel he disapproved of the position on abusive interrogation practices backed by his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales.”)… [UPDATE: Video here.]

Sounds familiar… Isn’t there a Senator who made the same comparison a few years back based on an FBI report about Gitmo?

Don’t Republicans, almost to this day, keep lying about that Senator by claiming he somehow called our troops “Nazis” (which couldn’t be further from the truth)?

Well, you don’t need me or anyone else to tell you. You can read the FBI report (PDF; detailed news article here) about the White House-approved torture yourself. From the Guardian article:

Captives at Guantánamo Bay were chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor for 18 hours or more, urinating and defecating on themselves, an FBI report has revealed. [...]

Besides being shackled to the floor, detainees were subjected to extremes of temperature. One witness said he saw a barefoot detainee shaking with cold because the air conditioning had bought the temperature close to freezing.

On another occasion, the air conditioning was off in an unventilated room, making the temperature over 38C (100F) and a detainee lay almost unconscious on the floor with a pile of hair next to him. [...]

“There was an unknown bearded longhaired d (detainee) gagged w/duct tape that had covered much of his head … No answer how they planned to remove the duct tape” [...]

It acknowledged that soldiers and interrogators had kicked the Qur’an, had stood on it and, in one case, had inadvertently sprayed urine on a copy. [...]

And those are just a few of the tactics used at Gitmo. Remember, all those “interrogation techniques” were approved by the White House. Our soldiers (and “contractors”) were carrying out White House orders.

Then compare it to actual tactics used by Nazis:

Even persons who were only suspected of opposing any of the policies of the German occupation authorities were arrested, and on arrest were interrogated by the Gestapo and the SD in the most shameful manner. On 12th June, 1942 the Chief of the SIPO and SD published, through Mueller, the Gestapo Chief, an order authorising the use of “third degree” methods of interrogation, where preliminary investigation had indicated that the person could give information on important matters, such as subversive activities, though not for the purpose of extorting confessions of the prisoner’s own crimes. This order provided:

Third degree may, under this supposition, only be employed against Communists, Marxists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, saboteurs, terrorists, members of resistance movements, parachute agents, anti-social elements, Polish or Soviet Russian loafers or tramps; in all other cases my permission must first be obtained …. Third degree can, according to circumstances, consist amongst other methods of very simple diet (bread and water), hard bunk, dark cell, deprivation of sleep, exhaustive drilling, also in flogging (for more than twenty strokes a doctor must be consulted).

Judge Mukasey himself acknowledged, “We don’t torture, not simply because it’s against this or that law or this or that treaty. Soldiers of this country liberated concentration camps and photographed what they saw there as a record of the barbarism they opposed. [Torture is] antithetical to what this country stands for.” (emphasis added)

Yet, somehow now that he’s in the running for Attorney General, Judge Mukasey has suddenly forgotten what is or is not torture… Torture is not an American value. If Judge Mukasey has forgotten this basic truth so readily since his nomination, what other American values might he forget?

Carpetbagger Report has a very good analysis regarding Judge Mukasey’s remarks (comparing US torture at Gitmo to the Holocaust) and Senator Durbin’s remarks (comparing that same White House-approved torture to “Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others”). They conclude:

And yet, here we are, and the president’s nominee for Attorney General is making the same analogy. No one gasped, or expressed outrage, or demanded an apology. Mukasey’s comparison made sense, just as Durbin’s did.

It’s a reminder that the right, for all of its many faults, can manufacture an outrage out of nothing, and then pretend it never happened. It’s almost impressive, in an offensive kind of way. (emphasis added)

So Judge Mukasey is opposed to torture but ‘doesn’t know’ whether a widely-acknowledged torture technique is actually torture. And the conserv-o-partisans grow strangely silent when yet another national leader compares the White House-approved torture at Gitmo to Nazi tactics.

Is it any wonder Americans are leaving the right side of the aisle in droves?

(h/t Lighthouse Keeper and Hesiod, the bloggers of TPM Muckraker and Election Central, and The Carpetbagger Report)

Despite the fact it was a bipartisan compromise to update a highly successful and trusted program which promoted the general welfare of our youngest citizens, Republicans won a phyrric victory by killing the override on Pres. Bush’s SCHIP veto.

There were only 273 votes to override — 290 were needed — with almost all Illinois Republicans voting against an override:

• Roskam
• Shimkus
• Biggert
• Manzullo
• Johnson
• Weller (retiring)
• Hastert (retiring)

If you live in one of their districts, scold them for their ignorance.

Only Republicans Mark Kirk and Ray LaHood had the guts to stand up to the compassionless, hard-line conservative John Birch Society wannabes who lied through their teeth and tarred-and-feathered little kids to get their way.

From CNN:

Before the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke of a middle-class family caring for a child with a birth defect, asking lawmakers: “So when the president wants to have 4 or $5 billion for children in this initiative, is he the one, the decider, who wants to go to that family and say, ‘Your child is out’?”

“We’re lobbying for all of the children,” said the California Democrat.

Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner explained his and other opponents’ stance on the bill.

“What we’ve been working towards is trying to find a way to say that we ought to insure poor children first,” said the Ohio Republican. “Let’s not let this become another Washington program that starts with one principle of mind and then becomes something for everyone.”

The bone-headed Republican Minority Leader Rep. Boehner may want to check the facts and stop lying: SCHIP is and has always been designed to help middle class families, the kids with parents who are working but who (for whatever circumstance) are unable to afford private insurance. SCHIP is a safety net to help those families obtain that private insurance for their kids.

That’s why the health insurance industry and HMOs were for it, Catholics and other religious groups were for it, doctors and hospitals were for it, and the vast majority of Americans were also for it (even 54% of self-declared Republican voters supported it).

Unfortunately for those 54% of GOP voters and the rest of America, those elitist Republican “leaders” thought they knew better than the rest of us and proved yet again that for them being “pro-life” ends at birth.

Radical Republicans in the form of cold-hearted, drain-the-country-down-the-bath-tub reactionaries won today; and our nation’s youngest citizens lost.

Other than bald-faced partisanship lemmingness, it’s very murky as to just what the Republican leadership doesn’t get about SCHIP and the clear-as-day need to override the President’s unpopular and uncompassionate veto.

Because of the overwhelming and bipartisan popularity of the successful program, and the overwhelming and bipartisan call for its expansion as times change (with inflation and job situations evolving) … those relatively few Americans (ie, dyed-in-the-wool, John Birch-like conservatives) have decided their only chance of stopping an override of the President’s veto is to lie, lie again, lie some more, keep lying, try hiding the truth for a spell, and then, for good measure, stalk 12-year-olds and trash 2-year-olds who benefit from the successful program while, because they’re too ignorant to think things through, lying about their parents.

Even the Senate Republican leadership was about to get in on that smearing action, attacking 12-year-olds, though they backed off when they realized their activist base was off its collective rocker. The No-voting Republicans are still standing in lockstep unison, running directly counter to their constituents’ wishes.

All this has led to even mainstream Republican partisans growing disgusted by the level of lies and tone of vitriol and conservative Republican Senators having to come out and stand up for a good, bipartisan compromise bill.

Now, the President’s bizarrely hypocritical rationale for vetoing is well-documented. It is what it is for all to see.

But the House Republicans’ refusal to recognize a good program when they see it, and one developed in bipartisan fashion no less (those funding questions ought to go to Senate Republicans, who insisted on a tobacco tax), is beyond bizarre and into the land of the nutty.

And that brings us to Rep. Judy Biggert and Sen. Dick Durbin, both of Illinois. Last Thursday, Rep. Biggert submitted a letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune on why she would not vote to override the President’s veto. Her reasons for maintaining the override were full of holes (as some of the above links prove). First and foremost, Rep. Biggert erroneously declares, “This is a program designed to provide health care for low-income children.” Actually, this is a program designed to assist families who are in the lower- to mid-middle class — the working poor, depending on the cost of living where they live — secure health care. It does not provide health care; it makes it possible for families to afford private health care.

As for the rest of Rep. Biggert’s letter, I’ll let the Senior Senator from the State of Illinois do the talking, through his own letter to the editor refuting Rep. Biggert’s hollow assertions:

SCHIP bill accomplishes Biggert’s goals
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, (D-Ill)
October 16, 2007

U.S. Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) argued [...] that she wants two things: to remove parents from the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and to work in a bipartisan fashion. I agree but the bill she opposes does both of those things — it removes parents from the CHIP program and was accomplished through bipartisan cooperation. [...]

[...] Currently, 14 states cover adults because the Bush administration gave them permission or waivers to do so. This bill eliminates that waiver system. As Biggert points out, because of those waivers, Illinois would spend more money on adults than children in the first year. What she doesn’t point out is that the bill provides a three-year transition period that removes all adults from the CHIP program. [...]

As we worked out this bipartisan compromise, we took the steps necessary to decrease the likelihood of individuals switching from private insurance to CHIP. [...] In fact, the American Health Insurance Plans, a natio