RockThrower

Payback is a Bitch

Arlen Specter has two new babysitters.

In what appears to be nothing less than payback to religious conservative groups seeking to repeal Roe vs. wade and impose their “moral” agenda on America, Republican leaders in the Senate appointed Sam Brownback (R) Kansas and Tom Coburn (R) Oklahoma, two of the nation’s most outspoken anti-abortion leaders to the Judiciary Committee.

The holier-than-thou crowd could hardly contain their glee.

"It is likely that there will be a Supreme Court vacancy next year. With the additions of Brownback and Coburn to the committee, there will be more watchful eyes and ears on Specter.” said Jan LaRue, chief counsel for Concerned Women for America in a statement from the organization. "Concerned Women for America has vowed to hold Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) accountable to his promise not to impose a litmus test on nominees and to conduct fair and timely hearings after he was forced to back-track from what was widely perceived as a message to the president about pro-life candidates," LaRue added.

The Washington Times reports that Capitol Hill insiders see the changes as a signal that Republican leaders intend to take a hard line against Judiciary Committee Democrats, who have led the filibusters against some of Mr. Bush's judicial nominees.

Gee, ya think so?

The appointment of two whack jobs like Coburn and Brownback to the Senate Judiciary committee appears to be a payoff to religious conservative groups who had forcefully opposed Arlen Specter’s appointment as head of Judiciary, but relented after Senate leader Bill Frist arranged a meeting between Specter and religious conservatives in which they claim Specter promised not to oppose anti-abortion nominees to the federal bench and Supreme court.

If anyone had any doubts abut the intent of Republican leaders in the Senate to move forcefully to overturn Roe v. Wade during the reign of the Bush administration, today’s appointments should remove it. There is little doubt about who is in charge.

Delusions of War

Maybe he's on drugs -- or maybe he ought to be.

In most countries, when people are delusional, they lock them in the looney bin and give them drugs. Especially if they are dangerous.

But here in the United States we elect them president.  Even if they are dangerous. And I am beginning to think he has his own drugs.

On Sunday, Andrew Card, President Bush's chief of staff told the nation that President Bush thought Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was doing a "spectacular job."

Meanwhile, in the streets and alleys of Iraq, insurgents were busy killing nearly 70 people in a bombing and shooting spree.

But Monday morning, there was President Bush telling the world that Rumsfeld was doing "a fine job."

And that was after the news leaked about Rumsfeld using a machine to sign the death notices of the more than 1300 soldiers he sent to their death.

But hey, can you really blame them?  Just weeks ago, the boss, Dick Cheney was telling them and the rest of the world that Iraq was an "outstanding success." 

Now though, even some Republicans are starting to smell the stench of a corpse and are moving to distance themselves from Rumsfeld, and maybe beginning to wonder about the President's conduct of the war. Or maybe they just have better meds. Today in comments reported by Don Walton in Iowa's Lincoln Journal Republican Senator Chuck Hagel said," Deteriorating conditions in Iraq are a consequence of the arrogance and incompetency of the civilian leadership at the Pentagon." 

And that was before the story on FBI allegations about the military's abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba broke in the New York Times and Washington Post.

More likely though, Hagel and other Republicans taking Rumsfeld to task got wind of the new CNN poll showing more than half of Americans disapprove of Rumsfeld leadership of the war in Iraq.

Maybe a lame duck president can afford to be delusional.  Ambitious Republicans cannot.

BCS- Bush Cheney series?

Bush-Cheney Series

Heads up Berkeley Radicals

Officially the term BCS stands for Bowl Championship Series.  It’s the ratings system that determines what college football teams get to play in the top bowls, and in theory, determines what team is tops in the nation.

But given the recent turn of BCS events resulting in

Berkeley

getting bounced from the Rose Bowl, questions are emerging as to what it really stands for.

Sources tell Rockthrower (o.k. so we are making this one up) that what it really stands for is the Bush-Cheney Series.  According to several coaches named Bubba, there was no way the Neocons in the Bush machine were going to stand by and let a bunch of liberals from Berkeley play in the big game while their good ol boy Texas Longhorns languished in some second rate bowl.

“Hellfire”, said one

Texas

football booster, “I bet some of them

Berkeley

players are even married to each other out there, being in

California

and all.   I hear they don’t even drink Budweiser, just that imported beer.”

Bush and Cheney are alleged to have placed several calls to top coaches voting in the BCS, pressuring them to change their votes and lower

Berkeley

in the BCS rankings.  When coaches resisted they were shown articles by conservative think tanks alleging that the coaches were communists, which would be leaked to sportwriters across the nation.

Just in case that didn’t work, sources say that Bush-Cheney had contracted with Swift Boat Veterans for Justice to develop an advertising campaign smearing

Berkeley

coach Tedford.  The ad’s apparently allege that Tedford reads books and believes in science.  Sources say that Tedford is not a Born Again Christian.

Under pressure the coaches caved, and

Berkeley

lost out on its first Rose Bowl appearance in 49 years.

“If those liberals out there in

California

think we’re going to let them play in the big time they got another thing coming, said a highly placed and completely made up White House source.  Even if they were eleven and one and looked like the best team in the nation, football is a real man’s game played by teams in Red States.

Responding to criticism that they had cheated and stolen the Rose Bowl from Berkeley, a Bush spokesman said, do you really think we care?  We stole an election, you think we’re going to hesitate to act on something really important, like a football game?

Correction

Jonathan Schell is not a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, as was written in the previous post "Raising Joe McCarthy."

Raising Joe McCarthy

Now we get down to brass tacks.

During the first Bush administration, those disagreeing with the powers that be often found themselves under attack.  They were derided as liars or fools, or just plain paranoid by the Bush machine.  Those who questioned Bush’s policy in Iraq or on terrorism were said to be undermining our troops, or had their patriotism questioned. Just ask Richard Clarke.

But now, even before they have finished prepping for the inauguration, the wraps are apparently coming off.  No more kid gloves. If you dare to question the Bush administration, now you are a communist.

Somehow I am not surprised.

And my guess is that Selig S. Harrison, a respected analyst on Korea isn’t either.  Just days after the initial release of his insightful new report in Foreign Affairs questioning the use of U.S. intelligence on North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons, Seligman is being compared to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and branded as a communist by a conservative publication.

Writing in The Conservative Voice, Peter Huessey compares Harrison to those who provided the former Soviet Union with nuclear secrets and says that Harrison, along with writers Jonathan Schell and Noam Chomsky “have been long-time premier apologists for communism and communist regimes everywhere.” He goes on to say “At heart, Chomsky, Harrison and Schell hate the U.S. and everything it stands for. They are in reality Marxists to the core.”

In the next few days look for more conservative writers and pundits to come out swinging at Harrison.  Hey, if you can’t question his research, you can always call him a communist.

Blacklist Anyone?

Here We Go Again

At Least They Are Consistent

The Bush administration lied, oh alright, I’ll be nice, mislead the American people about the reasons for going to war with Iraq.

So why should anyone think that they would be honest about what is really happening in North Korea?

Turns out, some very smart people are asking that very same question.

In the December/January issue of Foreign Affairs, Selig S. Harrison, a widely recognized expert on North Korea and the Chair of the Task Force on U.S. Korea Policy writes:

“Much has been written about the North Korean nuclear danger, but one crucial issue has been ignored: just how much credible evidence is there to back up Washington's uranium accusation? Although it is now widely recognized that the Bush administration misrepresented and distorted the intelligence data it used to justify the invasion of Iraq, most observers have accepted at face value the assessments the administration has used to reverse the previously established U.S. policy toward North Korea.

But what if those assessments were exaggerated and blurred the important distinction between weapons-grade uranium enrichment (which would clearly violate the 1994 Agreed Framework) and lower levels of enrichment (which were technically forbidden by the 1994 accord but are permitted by the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty [NPT] and do not produce uranium suitable for nuclear weapons)?

A review of the available evidence suggests that this is just what happened. Relying on sketchy data, the Bush administration presented a worst-case scenario as an incontrovertible truth and distorted its intelligence on North Korea (much as it did on Iraq), seriously exaggerating the danger that Pyongyangis secretly making uranium-based nuclear weapons. This failure to distinguish between civilian and military uranium-enrichment capabilities has greatly complicated what would, in any case, have been difficult negotiations to end all existing North Korean nuclear weapons programs and to prevent any future efforts through rigorous inspection.”

Seligman goes on to say that the U.S. Government opted to exploit he intelligence for political purposes. 

Silly me, I thought the purpose of national security was to keep us all a little safer.

I hope Selgiman has his ducks in order.  You can bet he is in for a bashing from the Bush Boys. 

He's Not Going Away

This is worth a read

Check out the Speech by Governor Howard Dean On the Future of the Democratic Party
given at George Washington University on December 8, 2004.

Abstinence?

Some of you may have noticed an absence of posts to rockthrower lately.  Sorry, I'm just a little jammed right now (those pesky clients), but I'll be back with a vengence. Until then.....

Does Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder?

or does it just makes you desperate.

I don't know about you but after a few days without sex I get kinda irritable.  My wife says its more like "desperate."

Maybe that's why all these newly elected senators and their born again friends are so cranky, even though they won the election.

Meanwhile, the push is on to keep horny teenagers from having sex. No wonder they are so moody. President Bush is spending millions on "abstinence" programs. One slight problem, they don't work.  Oh yeah, and their full of lies.

Check out the New congressional report on abstinence programs Download 20041201102153-50247.pdf