George W. Bush is the greatest president ever!
Topic: Bush Administraiton

Man, just when you thought things couldn't get worse for the Bush administration: Mohamed ElBaradei and the IAEA get awarded the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize. Here the US worked so feverishly to have him removed for being "wrong" about Saddam's nuclear weapons program and for not being a team player on the whole imminent threat of Iran's nukes and some namby pamby peaceniks give him one of the world's most prestigious awards! Jeez, what else can go wrong? (Don't worry; at least he won't be looking into Israel's covert WMD program any time soon.)

What else could go wrong, you say? What about Timothy Flanagan withdrawing his name from consideration from the number 2 spot at the DOJ? Yep, looks like the former deputy White House council is stuck using his administration connections to lobby for TYCO International for a little while longer. Eric Lichtblau writes for the NYT that Flanagan's nomination, "appears to have been scuttled by a convergence of disparate issues that have proven increasingly difficult for the Bush administration: charges of cronyism in political appointees, the wide-ranging investigation into Mr. Abrahoff's political lobbying work and lingering concern about the administration's allowance of the questionable treatment of suspected terrorists." You mean the water-boarding-is-good-for-leaving-no-marks comment wasn't helpful?

Who says the administration is filling the government with incompetent hacks who do the bidding of their corporate masters? Where's the evidence for that?

While the administration was digesting this set-back, David Safavian was in court answering charges of obstruction of justice in another Jack Abramoff case. Safavian's lawyer, whose picture is in the dictionary next to the word Chutzpah, said the golfing trip Safavian took to Scotland with Abramoff, was a personal trip, not professional. "A man wanted to go golfing with his friends. It was all about golf." Yeah, sure, I believe that, Safavian and Abramoff were buds. Just because a high powered lobbyist with connections to the highest levels of government wanted to take this relatively low level official out for a round of golf--in Scotland!---no one should get the idea there was anything fishy about it.

In Harriet Miers news:

Ryan J. Donmeyer writes for Bloomberg News that Miers' law firm, helped accounting firm Ernst & Young to "sell what came to be regarded as a sham tax shelter in 1999 by providing letters to shield customers from IRS penalties, a senate investigation found." Miers was comanager of the firm, Locke, Liddlle & Sapp, from 1999 to 2001. The article quotes White House spokesman Allan Abney as saying, "the transactions involved appropriate tax strategies," and noted that the firm said Miers was not involved with the shelter. One wonders what she did at the firm if she didn't know what was going on. Because these tax shelters were so "appropriate" Ernst & Young paid $15 million in fines to settle with the IRS over its tax shelter promotions in 2003. You'd think that kind of potential liability might have gotten the comanager of the firm's attention! But hey, she was probably too busy writing love notes to W..

Jay Root for the Knight Ridder News Service writes that the Texas State Library has released 2000 documents, including letters between Bush and Miers over the years. "In a 1996 letter thanking Bush and his wife Laura, for serving as chairs of a Dallas luncheon honoring Ms. Miers, she spoke of a little girl who had raved about getting Bush's autograph. 'I truly believe if the governor told her she should be an astronaut, she would do her best to become one. I was struck by the tremendous impact you have on the children whose lives you touch.' Barf! "You are the best governor ever----deserving of great respect!" In 1997 she got to take a plane trip with W. and she wrote to him that she thought it was "cool."

This sounds like the kind of person who is really going to be able to grapple with the major issues of the day in an independent and fair way, right? David Frum says she's merely a loyal assistant. "She's not an initiator. She was never a force for anything...She reflects the president's philosophy."

I think the picture is becoming pretty clear that this woman will go into the position ready to do the bidding of her beloved leader. Now I see what W. meant by saying she was the best candidate he could find. She was the least well known---he would have appointed Rove if he could have---and she's is rabidly loyal to him personally. (And then there's her tenure at the Texas Lottery commission which I'll get into at another time.) I don't see how any senator, Republican or Democrat, could possibly vote for this woman to be on the highest court in the land. What a travesty it would be if they confirm her. If the object of this nomination is to convince the rest of the world, and our creditors, that we're nothing but a banana republic; mission accomplished.

Note: W. is in New Orleans, again. He assures us this shameless exploitation of the Katrina disaster is not merely a photo-op: while he said this he was strutting around with a tool belt on.