I have some stuff to attend to, and won’t be back until later.
Consider this the open flame war thread.
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
I have some stuff to attend to, and won’t be back until later.
Consider this the open flame war thread.
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Politics
Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist has had his records subpoenaed:
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has been subpoenaed to turn over personal records and documents as federal authorities step up a probe of his July sales of HCA Inc. stock, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
The Securities and Exchange Commission issued the subpoena within the past two weeks, after initial reports that Frist, the Senate’s top Republican official, was under scrutiny by the agency and the Justice Department for possible violations of insider trading laws.
I think there is much less to this than will be made of it, actually. In the case of DeLay, I think he is a crook, but I don;t know if the indictments will hold.
Any way you look at it, though, it isn’t good for Republicans and will be yet another distraction. Considering what Congress has been up to lately, that night be a good thing.
This post is in: Domestic Politics
Christ almighty:
Straining to meet President Bush’s mid-October deadline to clear out shelters, the federal government has moved hundreds of thousands of evacuees from Hurricane Katrina into hotel rooms at a cost of about $11 million a night, a strategy local officials and some members of Congress criticize as incoherent and wasteful.
The number of people in hotels has grown by 60 percent in the past two weeks as some shelters closed, reaching nearly 600,000 as of Tuesday. Even so, relief officials say they cannot meet the deadline, as more than 22,000 people were still in shelters in 14 states on Wednesday.
The reliance on hotels has been necessary, housing advocates say, because the Federal Emergency and Management Agency has had problems installing mobile homes and travel trailers for evacuees and has been slow to place victims in apartments that real estate executives say are available throughout the southeast.
Why the artificial deadline to move people out of shelters? Because of all the stupid and over the top criticism directed at the White House in the aftermath of the devastation of Katrina. And before one of you wingnuts even tries to say I am attempting to mute criticism, don’t. I am all in favor of criticism. But what we got in the Katrina aftermath was not criticism- it was hysteria, part media-fueled, aided and abetted by fierce partisan motives, all provided without any whiff of perspective but with measured doses of suggested racism.
‘BLACK PEOPLE ARE EATING CORPSES!’
‘BUSH CUT THE LEVEE FUNDING AND KILLED 10,000’
‘FEMA WON’T FEED BLACK PEOPLE IN THE SUPERDOME AND THERE ARE SHOOTINGS AND GANG RAPES CONSTANTLY’
Yes, FEMA fucked some stuff up. That was bound to happen, and inescapable given the sheer magnitude of this disaster, the structural changes made to FEMA and what even now I conclude was a director in over his head. But to those of you who made this a capital case, exaggerated every breeze of a rumor into a gale force wind, and tried to pin everything on Bush and the White House- you won. Bush blinked.
And this bill is on you, as will be the militarization of future rescue operations and the usurpation of great swaths of state authority (which, considering many of you guys STILL refuse to admit that Gov. Blanco and Ray Nagin had anything to do with this disaster aftermath, may be just what you want). There is simply no reason the federal government should promise to have people out of shelters 6 weeks after an entire region is destroyed. It makes no sense. No more sense than it does rebuilding hastily and haphazardly or sending a fleet of trailers to the region, either, for that matter.
Welcome to the nanny state, Bush style. That should scare the shit out of you, if nothing else does.
by John Cole| 21 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Politics
And the numbers continue to get worse:
It has been weeks since Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast; since gas prices began spiking to record highs; and since Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, held her antiwar vigil outside President Bush’s Texas ranch. But, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, the fortunes of the Bush administration and the Republican Party have not yet begun to recover.
For the first time in the poll, Bush’s approval rating has sunk below 40 percent, while the percentage believing the country is heading in the right direction has dipped below 30 percent. In addition, a sizable plurality prefers a Democratic-controlled Congress, and just 29 percent think Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers is qualified to serve on the nation’s highest court.
“Any way you slice this data, I think these are just terrible sets of numbers,” said Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff.
The poll shows that Bush’s approval rating stands at 39 percent, a new low for the president. In the last NBC/Wall Street Journal survey, which was released in mid-September, 40 percent approved of Bush’s job performance while 55 percent disapproved. In addition, just 28 percent believe the country is headed in the right direction, another all-time low in Bush’s presidency.
We have observed the White House operate in Arrogance/Hubristic mode, and with a flurry of indictments about to hammer the White House, and the House and Senate leadership under investigation (and I don’t care if they are bullshit indictments/charges- they are indictments, and at the very least, a distraction), let’s just say I am not looking forward to watching this place operate in Bunker Mentality Mode.
by John Cole| 51 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity
This will makethe liberal denizens of this site cringe, but Ann Coulter is a must-read this morning:
The only sexism involved in the Miers nomination is the administration’s claim that once they decided they wanted a woman, Miers was the best they could do. Let me just say, if the top male lawyer in the country is John Roberts and the top female lawyer is Harriet Miers, we may as well stop allowing girls to go to law school.
Ah, but perhaps you were unaware of Miers’ many other accomplishments. Apparently she was THE FIRST WOMAN in Dallas to have a swimming pool in her back yard! And she was THE FIRST WOMAN with a safety deposit box at the Dallas National Bank! And she was THE FIRST WOMAN to wear pants at her law firm! It’s simply amazing! And did you know she did all this while being a woman?
I don’t know when Republicans became the party that condescends to women, but I am not at all happy about this development. This isn’t the year 1880. And by the way, even in 1880, Miers would not have been the “most qualified” of all women lawyers in the U.S., of which there were 75.
By 1950, there were more than 6,000 women lawyers, three female partners at major law firms and three female federal judges. She may be a nut who belonged to a subversive organization, but Ruth Bader Ginsburg graduated first in her class from Columbia Law School – and that was before Harriet Miers was applying to law school…
Which brings us to the other enraging argument being made by the Bush administration and its few remaining defenders – the claim of “elitism.” I also don’t know when the Republican Party stopped being the party of merit and excellence and became the party of quotas and lying about test scores, but I don’t like that development, either.
The average LSAT score at SMU Law School is 155. The average LSAT at Harvard is 170. That’s a difference of approximately 1 1/2 standard deviations, a differential IQ experts routinely refer to as “big-ass” or “humongous.” Whatever else you think of them, the average Harvard Law School student is very smart. I gather I have just committed a hate crime by saying so.
Contrary to the Bush administration’s disingenuous arguments, it’s not simply that Miers did not attend a top law school that makes her unqualified for the Supreme Court. (But that’s a good start!) It’s that she did not go on to rack up any major accomplishments since then, either.
Read the whole thing. And just to clear up somethings from other comments threads, Attorney General Gonzalez has a much more impressive resume than Miers. He was also, as it should be pointed out, opposed by a great number on the left and the right.
And this correspondence between Bush and Miers, in light of the position he has now nominated her for, makes me cringe. (via Drudge)
Also in Miers news, John Fund describes the botched vetting process for Harriet Miers.
by John Cole| 64 Comments
This post is in: Humorous
Every now and then, some of you say something in the comments that just makes me laugh, and then makes me sad because it is so accurate. This is one of those comments, regarding the debate about the flat tax:
The only revenue-neutral way to implement a flat tax would hose the shit out of the low and middle incomes without affecting the lives of upper incomes perceptibly. If you want a simple tax, super. I could write a workable progressive taxation scheme on one page.
The problem is that congress has line-item control over our tax code and that they’re, well, congress. If I gave them line-item control over what I ate for dinner tonight I’d have seventeen courses, beginning with dessert and ending with motor oil from a powerful Senator’s district.
While I am sure a flat tax scheme, or a flatter tax scheme, if you will, could be devised that would not in and of itself hose the middle and lower classes, the latter portion about Congress is completely accurate.
by John Cole| 4 Comments
This post is in: Excellent Links
Ezra Klein has an op-ed in the LA Times, which is, of course, cool.