Sunday, June 25, 2006

PICK YOUR POISON: LIE AND DIE OR SQUAT AND ROT

A group of volunteers for the Barbara Radnofsky campaign for U.S. Senate are having great fun today creating catchphrases to beat back Rove's cut and run mantra. Which, by the way, doesn’t seem to have the impact Rove and party had hoped. That is what happens when the facts on Iraq and the opinion of the American people are in conflict with a silly campaign motto.

Two slogans, in the title of tonight's blog, Pick Your Poison, is the work of Clark.
Randy created a great one, too: Bush/Rove/Cheney cut and ran. They all ran from Vietnam. Thomas thought of a beauty: The Neocon Greed Creed. I’ll post an article tonight that inspired Thomas’s great phrase.

We are all in Texas and are fighting with all we have to make the state blue again, without, thank you very much, the support of our national party, at least in terms of $$$$$. We'll go it alone if we have to but it would be so much easier if the national party could throw us a dime or two. Do whatever it takes to win Kansas to South Carolina but don't forget that Dems have been gerrymandered to smithereens in Texas.

Moving alone, cool and chilled inside though it is 94 degrees outside…..

Who wants out of Iraq? Let’s see: The majority of the American people; surely the Iraqis would like for us to have left yesterday, if not sooner; most Democrats in Congress (except perhaps for Lieberman and Clinton); the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, General Casey, and Iraq’s newly elected Prime Minister.

Who wants to stay besides Halliburton? The cut and run chicken hawks of course: Bush, Cheney, Rove, most Republicans in Congress, neocon ideologues and their cronies who get even richer when we are at war. Believers in the greed creed.

OK, enough of the fun stuff and on to the business at hand. News that will make your blood boil.

Don't get angry, get involved. Send a nickle to Texas Democrats.

"THE ROAD FROM K STREET TO YUSUFIYA”

Written by Mr. Frank of the New York Times today. This piece will make you go absolutely crazy when you learn the extent to which corruption has infested and pervaded our government.

The piece can be found in NYT Select or below is a link to Truthout.org

Excerpt:

Privates Tucker and Menchaca made the ultimate sacrifice. Their bodies were so mutilated that they could be identified only by DNA. Mr. Safavian, by contrast, can be readily identified by smell. His idea of wartime sacrifice overseas was to chew over government business with the Jack Abramoff gang while on a golfing junket in Scotland. But what's most indicative of Mr. Safavian's public service is not his felonies in the Abramoff-Tom DeLay axis of scandal, but his legal activities before his arrest. In his DNA you get a snapshot of the governmental philosophy that has guided the war effort both in Iraq and at home (that would be the Department of Homeland Security) and doomed it to failure.

Mr. Safavian, a former lobbyist, had a hand in federal spending, first as chief of staff of the General Services Administration and then as the White House's chief procurement officer, overseeing a kitty of some $300 billion (plus $62 billion designated for Katrina relief). He arrived to help enforce a Bush management initiative called "competitive sourcing." Simply put, this was a plan to outsource as much of government as possible by forcing federal agencies to compete with private contractors and their K Street lobbyists for huge and lucrative assignments. The initiative's objective, as the C.E.O. administration officially put it, was to deliver "high-quality services to our citizens at the lowest cost."

The result was low-quality services at high cost: the creation of a shadow government of private companies rife with both incompetence and corruption. Last week Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who commissioned the first comprehensive study of Bush administration contracting, revealed that the federal procurement spending supervised for a time by Mr. Safavian had increased by $175 billion between 2000 and 2005. (Halliburton contracts alone, unsurprisingly, went up more than 600 percent.) Nearly 40 cents of every dollar in federal discretionary spending now goes to private companies.

FRANK RICH: 'THE ROAD FROM K STREET TO YUSUIFYA"

ABRAMOFF HID MONEY THROUGH TAX EXEMPT FIRMS WITH THE WILLING ACCEPTANCE OF THOSE IN CHARGE

His buddy Norquist would pocket several thousand dollars before passing the money on.
Money was also used to buy face time with Bush, facilitated by Rove, of course.

Howard Dean was not kidding when he said the Republican Party is a culture of corruption. I don't think
Dr. Dean knew at the time he uttered these words that the party was as bad as it is.

Excerpt:

Among the organizations used by Abramoff was Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform. According to an investigative report on Abramoff's lobbying released last week by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Americans for Tax Reform served as a "conduit" for funds that flowed from Abramoff's clients to surreptitiously finance grass-roots lobbying campaigns. As the money passed through, Norquist's organization kept a small cut, e-mails show.

A second group Norquist was involved with, the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, received about $500,000 in Abramoff client funds; the council's president has told Senate investigators that Abramoff often asked her to lobby a senior Interior Department official on his behalf. The committee report said the Justice Department should further investigate the organization's dealings with the department and its former deputy secretary, J. Steven Griles.

Norquist has long been an architect of tax-cutting policies and political strategies that have boosted the Republican Party. He and Abramoff have been close since their days as young conservative leaders of the College Republicans more than two decades ago.

The Senate committee report also details Abramoff's dealings with two others from the College Republicans crowd: Ralph Reed, former Christian Coalition executive director; and Amy Moritz Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, which sponsored a golf trip in 2000 to Scotland for then-Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).

WASHINGTON POST: "Nonprofit Groups Funneled Money For Abramoff"

MORE ETHICALLY CHALLENGED WHITE HOUSE STAFFERS

Including Rove. Found on MSNBC.com

ETHICALLY CHALLENGED WHITE HOUSE STAFF

MOVING ALONG FROM THE STENCH OF ABRAMOFF, ROVE AND SAFAVIAN INTO THE NEOCON GREED CREED SEWER

Here is the article that inspired Thomas's slogan.

CEOS EARN 262 TIMES PAY OF AVERAGE WORKER
From Yahoo.News.Com

THE NEOCON GREED CREED

NEWLY ELECTED PRIME MINISTER OF IRAQ WANTS US OUT OF THERE

He also extends an olive branch to insurgents. Found on The Huffington Post.

IRAQI PM WANTS US OUT OF IRAQ

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