Two articles in today's WP are worth the read... Each of them (
here,
here) should be read in whole, but here are some highlights.
The first piece, Bush team rethinks its plan for recovery, is, on balance, fucking awesome. Sure, there are misfires here and there, but you just know that Rove, Bartlett and the rest of the political team would rather slam their own cocks in a car door than wake up to read this:
Some are concerned that although Bush has changed his approach, he has not changed himself. He has been reluctant to look outside his inner circle for advice, and even some closest to Bush call that a mistake because aides have given up trying to get him to do things they know he would reject.
How sweet!
flip
Of course, all that pleasure doesn't come without some cost... to wit, in the beginning of the article, you must endure this:
The Iraq push culminated the rockiest political year of this presidency, which included the demise of signature domestic priorities, the indictment of the vice president's top aide, the collapse of a Supreme Court nomination, a fumbled response to a natural disaster and a rising death toll in an increasingly unpopular war. It was not until Bush opened a fresh campaign to reassure the public on Iraq that he regained some traction.
They must have meant this "fumbled response":
Anyway...
Things do get better - like when they unveil this bombshell:
Peter D. Feaver, a Duke University specialist on wartime public opinion who now works at the White House, helped draft a 35-page public plan for victory in Iraq, a paper principally designed to prove that Bush had one.
Now the stunning part isn't that Bush's plan is a poll tested propaganda ploy paid for with our tax dollars - if you've payed close attention to the blogs, you've known that for weeks... No, that's not it at all... What is especially eye-popping about this is that it is being reported in the WP. Somebody pinch me... I mean, how surreal is it to witness this institutional news source extricate itself from the bowels of the republican noise machine right before our very eyes?
Lest you think I'm over-reacting, let's go to article #2, Abramoff probe spells trouble for Congress. If they had put the word "republican" before congress, I think I would have soiled my underpants, so I'm almost glad they did not... Anyway... There are some good bits in this article, but it is frustrating that the MSM only seems to feel the need to provide bullshit "balance" to pro-democratic facts.
Witness:
Soon the younger Abramoff developed a key alliance with Rep. Tom DeLay, a conservative Republican from Texas who was working his way up in the House leadership. The two met at a DeLay fundraiser on Capitol Hill in 1995, according to a former senior DeLay aide. The aide recalled that Edwin A. Buckham, then DeLay's chief of staff, told his boss: "We really need to work with Abramoff; he is going to be an important lobbyist and fundraiser."
DeLay, a Christian conservative, did not quite know what to make of Abramoff, who wore a beard and a yarmulke. They forged political ties, but the two men never became personally close, according to associates of both men.
I dunno... call me crazy, but don't you think, given the sources were "associates of both men," that this would have been a good time to note that Tom Delay toasted Jack Abramoff as, "one of my closest and dearest friends"?
Perhaps when they spoke of Dana Rohrabacher, Tom Delay, Bob Ney and John T. Doolittle, they should have mentioned that each of them were on Abramoff's "comp list" at his restaurant, Signatures.
And since Bob Ney is widely reported to be one of the first high profile republicans caught up in the crosshairs of the Justice investigation, I am left perplexed as to why he doesn't merit any substantive mention at all in the article.
All was not bad, however... Lemme dump some good stuff on you:
E-mails show that Abramoff put his money into an array of political and personal projects.
The nonprofit Capital Athletic Foundation, for example, allowed him to schmooze with Washington's movers and shakers at charity affairs. He put a congressional spouse -- Julie Doolittle, wife of the California lawmaker -- on his payroll to plan at least one event. The congressman's office has said that there was no connection between his wife's work and official acts.
The foundation was ostensibly created to help inner-city children through organized sports. There is no evidence money went to city kids, but the foundation did fund some of Abramoff's pet projects: a sniper school for Israelis in the West Bank, a golf trip to Scotland for Ohio congressman Ney and others, and a Jewish religious academy in Columbia that Abramoff founded and where he sent his children to be educated.
Alan K. Simpson (R), the former Wyoming senator who was in Washington during the last big congressional scandal -- the Abscam FBI sting in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in which six House members and one senator were convicted -- said the Abramoff case looks bigger. Simpson said he recently rode in a plane with one of Abramoff's attorneys, who told him: "There are going to be guys in your former line of work who are going to be taken down."
Dozens of lawmakers -- who were showered with trips, sports and concert tickets, drinks and dinners -- are returning campaign contributions from Abramoff and his clients and calling him a fraud and a crook.
`I hope he goes to jail...'
Burns, one of half a dozen legislators under scrutiny by the federal Abramoff task force, returned $150,000 in campaign contributions this month.
"This Abramoff guy is a bad guy," Burns told a Montana television station. "I hope he goes to jail and we never see him again. I wish he'd never been born, to be right honest with you."
2006 might be a watershed year. The schadenfreude
has been a long time coming. We've endured ridicule, Orwellian attacks, the questioning of our loyalty to country and worst of all, we've been powerless bystanders as this corrupt bunch of thugs ran our country into the ground.
I will celebrate the collapse of this government without even the slightest hint of shame. I can't wait to dance on their (political) graves.