Political Jackass

House Republicans voted to cut student loan subsidies, child support enforcement and aid to firms hurt by unfair trade practices as various committees scrambled to piece together $50 billion in budget cuts.

More politically difficult votes ? to cut Medicaid, food stamps and farm subsidies ? are on tap Thursday as more panels weigh in on the bill. It was originally intended to cut $35 billion in spending over five years, but after pressure from conservatives, GOP leaders directed committees to cut another $15 billion to help pay the cost of hurricane recovery. Read more…

I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney?s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby?s testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson?s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration?s handling of intelligence about Iraq?s nuclear program to justify the war. Read More

Campaign records show Bush’s Texas gubernatorial campaigns paid Miers a total of $163,000 in legal fees, most of it for work done during the future president’s 1998 re-election bid.

Some senators are planning to explore Miers’ legal work for Bush during her confirmation process to be the newest Supreme Court justice, but the White House says it won’t release any memos detailing that work.

Why does BushCo refuse to release anything that has to do with their past?

“I think people across the country recognize the importance of attorney-client privilege,” said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

Reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission show that two payments of $70,000 were made to Miers’ Locke, Purnell, Rain and Harrell firm in Dallas within a month of each other during the 1998 campaign. Another $16,000 in payments were made between March and December 1999.

The 1998 totals dwarfed the $7,000 Bush paid Miers’ firm during his first run for governor in 1994, and are extremely large for campaign legal work in Texas, an expert said.

“I’m baffled,” said Randall B. Wood, a partner in the Austin firm of Ray, Wood and Bonilla, and former director of Common Cause of Texas. “I’ve never seen that kind of money spent on a campaign lawyer. It’s unprecedented.”

The amount received by Locke, Purnell for the 1998 Texas race approaches the national tab for the 2004 Bush presidential re-election campaign, when at least $191,000 was spent on lawyers,
Federal Election Commission records show.

In 2000, the Bush presidential campaign spent about $365,000 on legal services, the records show.

The Associated Press reviewed Texas records between 1993 and 2000, although detailed reports weren’t available for the last half of 1995. A state commission spokeswoman said the panel had planned to retain all of the records because of their historic significance when Bush became president, but some were misplaced.

Dana Perrino, a White House spokeswoman, said the legal fees to Miers’ firm were for routine campaign work, but declined to be more specific. Presidential aides declined to say whether Miers ever worked on researching Bush’s past, such as his military record.

A spokeswoman for Locke, Liddell & Sapp ? the firm created when Miers’ office merged with another Dallas law firm ? said it wouldn’t provide details on the payments, citing attorney-client privilege.

Former Texas Land Commissioner Garry Mauro, a Democrat who was defeated handily by Bush in the 1998 campaign, said both the amount and the timing of the payments are curious. In late September, when Miers’ firm received the first of two $70,000 payments, Mauro said he trailed Bush in the polls by 35 points.

“If they’re spending that kind of money,” said Mauro, now an Austin attorney who estimates he spent less than $20,000 on legal fees during the campaign, “they’re spending it to protect themselves from something.”

A spokeswoman for Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record) of Vermont, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the panel plans to explore the legal work done by Miers’ firm for Bush.

A questionnaire sent out last week by Leahy and Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), the Pennsylvania Republican who chairs the committee, has asked Miers to “explain how you will resolve any conflicts that may arise by virtue of your service in the Bush Administration, as George W. Bush’s personal lawyer, or as the lawyer for George W. Bush’s gubernatorial and presidential campaigns.”

Miers provided answers to the questionnaire earlier this week, but lawmakers rejected her answers as too vague.

Source

Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government’s foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.

In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: ?What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. Read more…

It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Thursday were choreographed to match his goals for the war in Iraq and Saturday’s vote on a new Iraqi constitution.

“This is an important time,” Allison Barber, deputy assistant defense secretary, said, coaching the soldiers before Bush arrived. “The president is looking forward to having just a conversation with you.”

Barber said the president was interested in three topics: the overall security situation in Iraq, security preparations for the weekend vote and efforts to train Iraqi troops.

As she spoke in Washington, a live shot of 10 soldiers from the Army’s 42nd Infantry Division and one Iraqi soldier was beamed into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building from Tikrit ? the birthplace of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

“I’m going to ask somebody to grab those two water bottles against the wall and move them out of the camera shot for me,” Barber said.

A brief rehearsal ensued.

“OK, so let’s just walk through this,” Barber said. “Captain Kennedy, you answer the first question and you hand the mike to whom?”

“Captain Smith,” Kennedy said.

“Captain. Smith? You take the mike and you hand it to whom?” she asked.

“Captain Kennedy,” the soldier replied.

And so it went.

“If the question comes up about partnering ? how often do we train with the Iraqi military ? who does he go to?” Barber asked.

“That’s going to go to Captain Pratt,” one of the soldiers said.

“And then if we’re going to talk a little bit about the folks in Tikrit ? the hometown ? and how they’re handling the political process, who are we going to give that to?” she asked.

Before he took questions, Bush thanked the soldiers for serving and reassured them that the U.S. would not pull out of Iraq until the mission was complete.

“So long as I’m the president, we’re never going to back down, we’re never going to give in, we’ll never accept anything less than total victory,” Bush said.

The president told them twice that the American people were behind them.

“You’ve got tremendous support here at home,” Bush said.

Less than 40 percent in an AP-Ipsos poll taken in October said they approved of the way Bush was handling Iraq. Just over half of the public now say the Iraq war was a mistake.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Thursday’s event was coordinated with the Defense Department but that the troops were expressing their own thoughts. With satellite feeds, coordination often is needed to overcome technological challenges, such as delays, he said.

“I think all they were doing was talking to the troops and letting them know what to expect,” he said, adding that the president wanted to talk with troops on the ground who have firsthand knowledge about the situation.

The soldiers all gave Bush an upbeat view of the situation.

The president also got praise from the Iraqi soldier who was part of the chat.

“Thank you very much for everything,” he gushed. “I like you.”

On preparations for the vote, 1st Lt. Gregg Murphy of Tennessee said: “Sir, we are prepared to do whatever it takes to make this thing a success. … Back in January, when we were preparing for that election, we had to lead the way. We set up the coordination, we made the plan. We’re really happy to see, during the preparation for this one, sir, they’re doing everything.”

On the training of Iraqi security forces, Master Sgt. Corine Lombardo from Scotia, N.Y., said to Bush: “I can tell you over the past 10 months, we’ve seen a tremendous increase in the capabilities and the confidences of our Iraqi security force partners. … Over the next month, we anticipate seeing at least one-third of those Iraqi forces conducting independent operations.”

Lombardo told the president that she was in New York City on Nov. 11, 2001, when Bush attended an event recognizing soldiers for their recovery and rescue efforts at Ground Zero. She said the troops began the fight against terrorism in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and were proud to continue it in Iraq.

“I thought you looked familiar,” Bush said, and then joked: “I probably look familiar to you, too.”

Paul Rieckhoff, director of the New York-based Operation Truth, an advocacy group for U.S. veterans of Iraq and
Afghanistan, denounced the event as a “carefully scripted publicity stunt.” Five of the 10 U.S. troops involved were officers, he said.

“If he wants the real opinions of the troops, he can’t do it in a nationally televised teleconference,” Rieckhoff said. “He needs to be talking to the boots on the ground and that’s not a bunch of captains.”

Evangelicals, Republican women, Southerners and other critical groups in President Bush’s political coalition are worried about the direction the nation is headed and disappointed with his performance, an AP-Ipsos poll found.

That unease could be a troubling sign for a White House already struggling to keep the Republican Party base from slipping over Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, Gulf Coast spending projects, immigration and other issues.

“Politically, this is very serious for the president,” said James Thurber, a political scientist at American University. “If the base of his party has lost faith, that could spell trouble for his policy agenda and for the party generally.”

Sentiment about the nation’s direction has sunk to new depths at a time people are anxious about Iraq, the economy, gas prices and the management of billions of dollars being spent for recovery from the nation’s worst natural disaster.

Only 28 percent say the country is headed in the right direction while two-thirds, 66 percent, say it is on the wrong track, the poll found.

“There is a growing, deep-seated discontentment and pessimism about the direction of the country,” said Republican strategist Tony Fabrizio, who believes the reasons for their pessimism differ for those in one political party or another.

Among those most likely to have lost confidence about the nation’s direction over the past year are white evangelicals, down 30 percentage points since November, Republican women, down 28 points, Southerners, down 26 points, and suburban men, down 20 points.

Bush’s supporters are uneasy about issues such as federal deficits, immigration and his latest nomination for the Supreme Court. Social conservatives are concerned about his choice of Miers, a relatively unknown lawyer who has most recently served as White House counsel.

“Bush is trying to get more support generally from the American public by seeming more moderate and showing he’s a strong leader at the same time he has a rebellion within his own party,” Thurber said. “The far right is starting to be very open about their claim that he’s not a real conservative.”

The president’s job approval is mired at the lowest level of his presidency ? 39 percent. While four of five Republicans say they approve of Bush’s job performance ? enthusiasm in that support has dipped over the last year.

In December 2004, soon after his re-election, almost two-thirds of Republicans strongly approved of the job done by Bush. The AP-Ipsos survey found that just half in his own party feel that way now.

The intensity of support for Bush’s job performance has also dropped sharply among white evangelicals, Southerners, people from rural areas and suburban men.

“We’ve lost focus on where we’re supposed to be going and not able to respond to the crises that affect the people of this country,” said David Ernest, a Republican from San Ramon, Calif., who is angry about the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. “We’re mired in a Middle Eastern adventure and we’ve taken the focus off of our own country.”

Bush has tried to reassure conservatives about his Supreme Court nominee. He’s also trying to counter critics of the war by tying U.S. efforts in Iraq to the larger war against terrorism. And he’s made frequent trips to the areas devastated by hurricanes Katrina and Rita to offset criticism of the government’s initial response to Katrina.

Of all the problems facing the country, the war in Iraq is the one that troubles some Bush supporters the most.

“I approve of what the president is doing, but it’s a mixed decision,” said Richard Saulinski, a Republican from Orland Park, Ill. “We should get out of Iraq. It seems like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. I just think we’re dealing with a culture we don’t really understand.”

The poll of 1,000 adults was conducted by Ipsos, an international polling company, from Monday to Wednesday and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Source: Yahoo news

Wow, Bush really is a loon. I know a lot of people talk to god, and they feel comfort into doing so, but actually claiming that god is talking to you is a bit much. He really is a moron.

President George W. Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq – and create a Palestinian State, a new BBC series reveals.

In Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, a major three-part series on BBC TWO (at 9.00pm on Monday 10, Monday 17 and Monday 24 October), Abu Mazen, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Minister, describe their first meeting with President Bush in June 2003.

Nabil Shaath says: “President Bush said to all of us: ‘I’m driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, “George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.” And I did, and then God would tell me, “George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq ?” And I did. And now, again, I feel God’s words coming to me, “Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.” And by God I’m gonna do it.’”

Abu Mazen was at the same meeting and recounts how President Bush told him: “I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state.”

The series charts the attempts to bring peace to the Middle East, from Bill Clinton’s peace talks in 1999/2000 to Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza last August.

Norma Percy, series producer of The 50 Years War (1998) returns, with producers Mark Anderson and Dan Edge, to tell the inside story of another seven years of crisis.

Presidents and Prime Ministers, their generals and ministers tell what happened behind closed doors as peace talks failed and the intifada exploded. Source: BBC