Midwest Monday News 10.31.05
Posted by Steven Bellah on 10.31.2005
Happy Halloween! Off we go!
That James Van Praagh guy has NOTHING on me!
Directly from my column two weeks ago:
"Harriet Miers is a red herring. A macguffin. A mirage. She is only being nominated so that everyone will hate her and she can then withdrawal her nomination, opening the door for Bush to nominate the most Right Wing candidate possible. Then the congressional Republicans will say, “Just confirm this new nominee. We’ve already lost the last one. Do it for the comfort of the country.”
And, from Yahoo yesterday afternoon:
President Bush neared a decision on a new nominee for the Supreme Court as Republican lawmakers suggested Sunday he should pick a solid conservative with a track record as a judge.
Well, well, well! You know, sometimes I even surprise MYSELF. Everyone else (especially the liberals and Democrats) are saying Harriet Miers' withdrawal is a major blow to the Bush administration. I think exactly the opposite. I believe Miers was deliberately nominated to elicit the type of reaction she got. Democrats complained that she didn't have enough experience. Republicans complained that she wasn't conservative enough and that she had **GASP!** once been a Democrat.
Well, we will never know how she would have done as a justice because she convientely refused to cooperate and stepped aside, almost on cue. Now, like I said two weeks ago, Bush will nominate someone so conservative that he/she never takes left turns when they drive. And all the Republicans in Congress will be talking about how we need to get someone confirmed and appointed as soon as possible, for the good of the country. And the Democrats who will obviously be against this new nominee will be (you guessed it) hurting the process and HURTING AMERICA by not just fucking confirming him/her.
And I'm sure John Kerry will send out a press release reminding us that he still exists, denouncing the president and his new nominee.
You know, I don't think George W. Bush is the sharpest knife in the drawer, but that's why he has Karl Rove around. Well, at least right now.
Well, well well. I just refreshed Yahoo, and now apparently the new nominee will be unveiled today. So, by the time you read this, we’ll know which right wing nut we’ll all be arguing over for the rest of the year. Let the fun begin.
”I will not comment on an ongoing investigation”—every Bush official
Finally, after months of speculation, Karl Rove was NOT indicted on Friday. Instead, Louis Libby (or “Scooter” as his buddies call him—how much do you want to bet that nickname is dropped, much like Kenneth “Kenny Boy” Lay?) had to resign on Friday after getting the old Tom DeLay treatment. Rove is still technically not out of the woods yet, but I think we all know that he is on easy street. When he gave Matt Cooper the OK to out him as his source, you had to know that something was up.
Now, I’ll be honest—I think that the outing of Valerie Plame is a bad thing, and SOMEONE needs to be punished. But, I don’t think that it’s worth the hoopla that the media has made it out to be. Now, it could be a Watergate like, and everyone in the Bush administration could have had a hand in it—and if that’s true, the hoopla is justified—but I have the same feeling about this scandal as I did in 1998 with Clinton—except this time I’m not pissed, just indifferent.
In 1997, Bill Clinton had an affair with Monica Lewinsky. We all know that. It doesn’t matter if they just had oral sex or full blown animal intercourse, they had an affair. I don’t deny that, and neither does anyone else. But what bothered me in 1998, and what bothers me today is that the entire scandal and media hype was not needed. Yes, Bill Clinton had an affair, but that wasn’t what the impeachment was about. Republicans argued that he had lied about having the affair, which was true—and that somehow equaled perjury, and he needed to be removed from office.
Give me a break. Yes, Bill Clinton lied, but the months and months of Ken Starr parading around Washington and the eventual impeachment trial was NOT what it was all about. What it was REALLY all about was that the Republicans HATED the Clintons and would do ANYTHING to get rid of him. If they somehow got Bill removed from office, Al Gore would take over. Sure, there would still be a Democratic President, but the entire administration would have been tarnished, and Gore wouldn’t have stood a chance in 2000. In a way, that still happened, as the Right would have made you believe Gore was under the desk holding Monica’s hair or something.
But—there was no need to have a long investigation and trial, especially when everyone knew that there weren’t enough votes to convict. And what a shock, almost all the Republicans voted guilty, and almost all the Democrats voted not guilty—after spending the weeks preceding the trial talking about being neutral and following the law. Yeah, right. Bill was acquitted, but the damage had been done to his administration and his legacy. THAT was the reason for the whole thing. It wasn’t about the law, it was about hurting Clinton, his administration, and the Democratic party. Well, how things have repeated themselves.
Now, a CIA agent has been outed. Like the Lewinsky affair, no one doubts that. And now, Libby has been indicted, and perhaps others will be as well. However, what is the REAL reason for every Democrat to be speaking out against the Bush administration? Why is every liberal and Bush hater treating this scandal like the biggest stain on the biggest dress? Because, just like the Republicans 7 years ago, is a “Ah-HA! Gotcha!” moment in the ongoing battle for control in Washington.
How many times in the last week has a Democrat linked this CIA scandal to the “lies that got us into war in Iraq”? Well, I think we know what kind of an agenda everyone on the left has, don’t we? Now, someone leaked out the information that Valerie Plame was a CIA covert agent. That person, and anyone else who helped in the disclosure and cover-up needs to be prosecuted. THAT is a crime. But please don’t take this investigation and turn into Cindy Sheehan and make it out to be another reason to be pissed off about the war in Iraq. That whole debacle stands on it’s own. THOSE lies are in a class by themselves—we don’t need another reason to bring them up.
But you know what really grinds my gears? Not Peter Griffin, but that both of these scandals and their ensuing investigations have cost us Americans millions (if not billions) of dollars and time in Congress that could have been spent on gun control, health care, social security, terrorism, national security, the economy, unemployment….well, I think you get the point.
Instead, those millions went towards partisan bickering and planning. All of it was for party control—the exact opposite thing that those 435 men and women in Washington are supposed to be doing. Are they really thinking about US when they ask to spend thousands of dollars vilifying a blue dress? Are they thinking about US when they spend countless hours babbling on the Senate floor about how a shitty president led us into a shitty, meaningless war? Mr. Kerry, I’m looking at YOU.
Personally speaking, I think the damage to the Bush administration and the Republican party has already been done. We will have a Democratic (and probably woman) president on January 21, 2009, unless something drastic happens, which I doubt.
Plugs
Next week, I will give a short review of the new Al Franken book, The Truth: With Jokes.
I didn't talk about Rosa Parks, because Jason Easley already did a better job than I ever could have done in The Political Universe
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