George W. Bush, loving it

The depth of my disappointment goes without saying. I knew I had to do something! So, to help you (and myself) to fill the void, I created an off-the-cuff “Best of” list that will give you a taste of the smiles, tears, and fellowship that we missed out on at the Golden Globes.

Best Film

JUNO I know it’s a predictable pick for the young, hip, enlightened blogger [like myself ], but it’s nonetheless one of the best films I’ve seen in a good while. Fab acting, even fab-er script, and a Fat Man-sized hit to Jason Reitman’s Arsenal of Awesomeness.

Best Album

IN RAINBOWS – Radiohead. It was a close race with Alicia Keys’s AS I AM, but in the end I had to pick the aural-gasm that is IN RAINBOWS. This album even beats out KID A, my previous fave from Thom Yorke & co. Plus, props for the cool way they distributed it.

Worst Thing To Happen on the Internet

FACEBOOK APPLICATIONS with the exception of Graffiti, my personal fave, no, I do not want to play Jetman or Speed Racer or get bitten by a vampire or pretend that I am a zombie. Seriously. Close Second: Google buying Youtube. Thanks a lot. Now they’re actually paying attention to those pesky copyright laws.

Best Film I Won’t See

SICKO The thing is, I’ve heard enough John Edwards speeches that it’s kind of moot.

BEST (Or Worst, Depending How You Look At It) BUSH QUOTE

‘”There are some similarities, of course (between Iraq and Vietnam). Death is terrible.” –Tipp City, Ohio, April 19, 2007′

He goes on to say, “So, y’all understand the similarities between the War on Terror and the Revolutionary War, too. We’re fightin’ for freedom.”*

Damn. That last one depressed me.

*I made that up. Funny how you believed he said it, though, isn’t it?

1. a movement toward a goal or to a further or higher stage
2. advancement in general
3. continuous improvement

——–

George W. Bush on Iraq:

7/17/07: “We can report that satisfactory progress is being made…”

Mid 2006: “Progress will be steady…”

Nov. 2005: “Iraqis are making inspiring progress.”

Oct. 2005: “Iraq has made incredible political progress.”

April 2005: “We’re making good progress in Iraq.”

Sept. 2004: The United States is “making steady progress…”

Oct. 2003: “We’re making really good progress.”

——–

He must be using a different dictionary than me.

courtesy of digg.com and liveleak.com

While Al Gore’s seething indictment of the Bush Administration, The Assault On Reason, continues its assault on the New York Times Best Seller’s List, President Bush has been busy vindicating its title. No longer worried about his perpetually falling approval rating (mainly because its so far down, there is no return), Bush has decided to dig in his heels and go against public opinion, common sense, and overall decency when it comes to almost every decision he now makes.

First came his hypocritical decision to commute Scooter Libby’s prison sentence two weeks ago, when he decided that Scooter’s 30 month punishment was “excessive.” Even though, as I said last week, Libby was prosecuted by a Bush appointed U.S. attorney, convicted by a jury, sentenced by a Republican appointed judge, had his appeal denied by a three judge panel that included Republican appointed judges, and was handed a sentence which thousands of other people around the country have received for the exact same crime. Now, many people would consider Libby’s commuted prison term unreasonable, corrupt, or borderline illegal. Bush himself said at the time of the crime he would fire anyone found responsible for the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s name. But that would have been too principled a stand for Bush to take, so he decided go for the underhanded scumbag route instead.

Congress, meanwhile, this week decided to act on a problem that one would think has near universal support: children’s health insurance. While they may not be able to agree on much of anything, from immigration reform to the War in Iraq, the House of Representatives did decide bi-partisan bill that would expand medical coverage for underage kids.

Enter the White House. From the New York Times:

The White House said on Saturday that President Bush would veto a bipartisan plan to expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program, drafted over the last six months by senior members of the Senate Finance Committee.
The vow puts Mr. Bush at odds with the Democratic majority in Congress, with a substantial number of Republican lawmakers and with many governors of both parties, who want to expand the popular program to cover some of the nation’s eight million uninsured children.

The current program expires in September and Congressional action was needed to ensure that 4.1 million more children will have access to basic health care. Common sense would indicate that this bill would be a no-brainer, maybe even earn the President a couple percentage points to send his approval rating sky rocketing over the 30% barrier. Unfortunately, it seems he is more interested in satisfying insurance companies than sick children. His reasons for the upcoming veto, according to a White House spokesperson include: “The proposal would dramatically expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program, adding nonpoor children to the program, and more than doubling the level of spending. This will have the effect of encouraging many to drop private coverage, to go on the government-subsidized program.”

Holy Shit. Just imagine what chaos that would cause. People jumping ship on insurance companies that won’t even pay for treatment that they are entitled to, to a program where they are guaranteed it. Insanity.

But the coup de gras against all forms of reason still rests in Iraq, where the Bush administration continues to dig itself an ever increasing hole just so they won’t have to admit they just might have made some mistakes in the War’s justification, timing, planning, execution, and follow up. Finally, though, Congressional Democrats seem to be stepping up to the plate. Almost a year after they were put in office to end the war, they seem to be willing to take the fight to the necessary next level. Sunday’s edition of Meet the Press was a start, where Senators Jim Webb (D-VA) got in Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) face about the right course of action and bogus justifications for continuing to “stay the course.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also announced yesterday that the Senate will be holding an all night filibuster on Iraq on Tuesday night so that Republicans can justify the continued presence of troops, in spite of five years of mayhem, misdeeds, and mistakes. The White House even released a report showing 10 of the 18 benchmarks it set forth six months ago have not been met. Iraqi parliament, who has enacted none of the legislation recommended by the U.S., will be taking the entire month of August off to vacation. White House spokesman Tony Snow’s reasoning behind their extended break was it is “130 degrees in Baghdad” in August. He’s right. I mean it’s not like our troops still have to put on their uniforms, armor, and weapons and battle insurgents in that same scorching heat. Why should Parliament have to convene in an air conditioned room and make decisions for a country engulfed in a civil war?

Now comes news that the military is considering actually expanding the surge and sending more troops in. At the same time, Dick Cheney is pushing ever harder for military action in Iran. I’d say I am surprised, after all the failures of this war that they actually want to expand it into a regional conflict that would require vast amounts of troops that we simply don’t have, but it just keeps within their pattern of ignoring the facts, the American people, the world, and just plain common sense.

Yesterday, George Bush commuted ex-Dick Cheney Chief of Staff Scooter Libby’s 30 month prison conviction so he will not have to serve a day of jail time for obstructing justice in the investigation into leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame’s name to reporters.

Libby was, of course, procecuted by a Bush appointed U.S. attorney, convicted by a jury, sentenced by a Republican appointed judge, and had his appeal denied by a three judge panel that included Republican appointed judges, and handed down a sentence which thousands of other people around the country have received for the exact same crime.

Yet Bush decided that justice had not been fairly handed down and declared that the punishment was “excessive.” Of course this is a man not known for his leniency.

Before he was President, Governor George W. Bush’s most famous achievement was presiding over 152 executions in Texas–a modern record for governors. Knowing now that Bush agonizes over sentences just like the Scooter Libby one, it is strange to wonder why in Texas he only commuted one death sentence in his 28 months as governor. It seems within 152 executions W. might have been able to find some that were “excessive,” just like in Scooter Libby’s case. Maybe some where the defendant couldn’t afford the best attorneys in the world like Libby, or where the prosecutor, judge, or jury may have acted improperly, unlike the Libby case. Maybe in a case like this, from the NYT:

Take, for example, the case of Terry Washington, a mentally retarded man of thirty-three with the communication skills of a seven-year-old. Washington’s plea for clemency came before Governor Bush on the morning of May 6, 1997. After a thirty-minute briefing by Gonzales, Bush checked “Deny”— just as he had denied twenty-nine other pleas for clemency in his first twenty-eight months as governor.

Bush did not take into account how Washington was “regularly beaten with whips, water hoses, extension cords, wire hangers, and fan belts” as a child. Or “that Washington’s trial lawyer had failed to enlist a mental-health expert to testify on Washington’s behalf (although he was entitled to one under a 1985 Supreme Court ruling).”

Notice that in the above excerpt, “Gonzales” refers to Alberto Gonzales, the current Attorney General, who, at the time, also wrote up summaries for Bush about Death Row inmates on the day they would be executed. The reason Bush did not take those facts into account was because Gonzales did not put them into his report. Not that it would have mattered in most cases, as Alan Berlow of Atlantic Monthly pointed out:

Gonzales declined to be interviewed for this story, but during the 2000 presidential campaign I asked him if Bush ever read the clemency petitions of death-row inmates, and he equivocated. “I wouldn’t say that was done in every case,” he told me. “But if we felt there was something he should look at specifically—yes, he did look from time to time at what had been filed.”

He goes on to say…

Gonzales’s summaries were Bush’s primary source of information in deciding whether someone would live or die. Each is only three to seven pages long and generally consists of little more than a brief description of the crime, a paragraph or two on the defendant’s personal background, and a condensed legal history.

A close examination of the Gonzales memoranda suggests that Governor Bush frequently approved executions based on only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute. In fact, in these documents Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence.

So basically, Bush would “agonize” over a man’s life for a half hour or less, using a summary that included nothing about the possibility of innocence or impropriety, refused in most cases to even read the clemency petition and then signed off on the man in question’s execution.

Cut back to yesterday when Bush released his statement regarding the commuting of Scooter Libby’s sentence. He says, “In preparing for the decision I am announcing today, I have carefully weighed these arguments and the circumstances surrounding this case.”

I wonder if he considered the Libby case the same way?