------------------------------------------------------------------
Treasure Trove

Whenever George Bush stands in front of a microphone, we here at the BHC are certain that a deep, rich vein of bullshit is about to be tapped and the press conference on Tuesday did not disappoint. Of course, we are speaking in the small sense because disappointed is what we always are when George Bush stands in front of a mike and reminds us that he is the President of the United States. He doesn't remind in the way an actual president would; by sounding like he knows what is going on and has things under control. He reminds us of his presidency by being the exact opposite of what a president should be. He is a bizarro president. And in keeping with that assessment, he offered up a trove of silly sound bites and ludicrous blurbs.

The White House was exercised by the recent Amnesty International report that described the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay as "the gulag of our time." This may be overstating things but at a press conference Bush called the claim an "absurd allegation." Now, we are not quite sure to which allegation Bush might be referring, the "gulag" statement or all the evidence and documentation that exists and does describe human rights abuses at not only Gitmo but Abu Graib, Bagram and who knows where else.

At this point there is no doubt that such abuses have happened and continue to this day. Hundreds of detainees are currently being held at Guantánamo Bay without charges or trials; indeed, without anyone really knowing who they are. The US military refuses to identify them and holds them incommunicado, claiming they are of "high intelligence value." Considering how things are going in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is difficult to determine just what this high value might be.

We should all recall Major General Antonio Taguba's report that described "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” of detainees at Abu Graib. An Army investigation report described the beating deaths of two Afghan detainees at Bagram airforce base in Afghanistan. A US soldier, Eric Saar, stationed at Guantanamo Bay recently came forth and described human rights abuses at that US military installation. Saar was a strong Bush supporter but says,

We are trying to promote democracy worldwide. I don't see how you can do that and run a place like Guantánamo Bay.

But we already knew all this. So just what is it about the Amnesty International report that has George Bush so miffed? In view of all the evidence that the US military routinely abuses and tortures detainees in this War on Terror, there is clearly nothing absurd about allegations of human rights abuses. In fact, they are well beyond the station of allegation. So it must be the "gulag" reference. Is that what this really is about, Bush just didn't like the metaphor? He didn't ever seem to have a problem with Amnesty International when they were reporting Saddam Hussein's abuses. Or those in Cuba. Or China.

Bush stepped in it further by claiming that all these "allegations" are coming from detainees who are trained to lie and that they are "people who hate America." We always love it when he whips that one out.

Uh, no, George, the reports have come from your own military investigations. You are the one thing that is truly absurd in this misbegotten debacle.

But wait, gentle readers! There's more. Much, much more.

Bush also stated during this press conference that the nascent Iraqi government is "plenty capable" of handling the insurgents. This on the day the kidnapped governor of Anbar province was found dead. Does anyone tell George what is going on over there? We know he doesn't read much but, good Lord, someone tell him something, please! If for no other reason than to keep him from looking like a complete idiot.

But no, that didn't happen because no sooner did such nonsense flutter out of his mouth than this series of incomprehensible vowels and consonants shot out:

"I think the Iraqi people dealt the insurgents a serious blow when we had the elections."

He thinks this, does he? Does he know that over 700 people have been killed in Iraq in the last month? We here at the BHC have a suggestion for George. Read this and then go think some more ... or at least some.

After his deep thoughts about Iraq, Bush then felt comfortable enough to take on the tough questions surrounding the North Korea situation:

"If diplomacy is the wrong approach, I guess that means military. That's how I view it as either diplomacy or military.

Hmm, this sounds familiar, doesn't it? Yes, it is the Bush dichotomy: good-evil, us-them. But now he is adding a new facet to his nuanced view of international relations: diplomacy -- military. Considering that he has already prejudged diplomacy as being the wrong approach -- and don't let that "if" fool you -- guess which one he likes?


Read, weep, repeat ....

------------------------------------------------------------------
Free At Last!

Thank God Almighty, free at last. Well, not quite. In fact, not even close. The filibuster fight has been stalled, at least for now, and a bipartisan group of 14 Republicans and Democrats brokered a deal whereby the Senate filibuster rule will remain in effect for judicial nominees and, in return, Democrats will agree to only filibuster the most egregious of these. Of course, just what that means is almost anyone's guess and future judicial fights are sure to be expected and will be a direct result of the intentionally nebulous language of "the deal."

What we here at the BHC were hopeful about was that maybe, just maybe, the press would ease back on the coverage of what, in more rational times, shouldn't even have been story. The interminable yakking about the "nuclear option", who was calling it what and the insipid press coverage of this "issue," we had hoped, was finally going to come to rest. But no sooner had the deal been brokered and the Senate sent Priscilla Owen's nomination to the floor, than Senate leader and natural born simp Bill Frist was up in front of the cameras pandering to his "base" and claiming the "nuclear option" is still on the table should Democrats ever choose to take umbrage with a Bush nominee.

That didn't take long.

But what about the “extraordinary circumstances.” clause? Frist clearly wants us to believe that Bush would never produce such a circumstance. No, not George. This despite the fact that Bush's own Attorney General Abugraiberto Gonzales, in at least one case, had described Priscilla Owen's opinion as "an unconscionable act of judicial activism." Republican's don't want activist judges. They want right wing activist judges. In the extreme mindset of the GOP these days, an activist judge is simply one who won't do their bidding, as witnessed by the recent Shiavo case.

As most already know, judicial appointments at the appellate level, while a juicy treat for right wing idealogues, is not the main thrust of the GOP. The real interest lies in Supreme Court appointments and Frist will no doubt resume his nuclear threat if and when such an appointment becomes possible. It can be easily imagined that no matter whom Bush might nominate for such a position -- no matter how "extraordinary" -- the filibuster will be on the blocks again should Dems take issue with the nominee. And make no mistake, the GOP will nominate the most strident right wing whacko they can find.

Oddly, lefty blogs immediately pronounced the deal as a win for Democrats but we here at the BHC have failed to recognise this. Right wing bloggers were incensed with the deal and denounced it as a failure of the GOP. Really, everyone needs to start paying a little more attention. Republicans gave away nothing, got their judges on the bench and still can nuke the filibuster any time they want just as Frist has already said. With Owen et al. on the federal bench, Republicans have established a threshold of “extraordinary circumstances" that it will truly be hard for future Bush nominees to cross (see below, Confirmed). The only thing Democrats may have gained from this is to look conciliatory but they really gained nothing other than postponing what some might rightly see as the inevitable doom for judicial filibusters by the hand of Frist and the Republican-led Senate.

One of the worst features of this otherwise featureless debacle was the Republican word play and a cowed and deferential press that, once again, decided to continue their role as stenographer. We saw this previously when Bush first started raising the Social Security issue and was calling for private accounts. After a few months and with a limp response from a public unconvinced by Bush's call to privatising action, the GOP decided that the word "private" was something the other side was using to disparage what should rightly be called "personal" accounts (see The BHC, Shortfall and a Long Drop). The GOP and their minions then set forth the new terms of the debate to which the press had better bloody well adhere or face the charge of "liberal bias." Well, the press more or less obeyed because we know how much it hurts to be beaten with the GOP liberal bias stick.

And then it was like Groundhog day: it was happening all over again, only with slightly different words. When Republicans like Trent Lott (R-Ms) first labelled busting the filibuster rule the "nuclear option," everyone started calling it that. But then, after a few weeks of the term being bandied about, and with polls showing that, yet again, the public was not abiding this GOP threat to a 217 year old Senate rule, Republicans like Frist stood up and declared that the nuclear option was now the "constitutional option," knowing full well how much better that sounded than "nuclear." This naturally had to be accompanied by the requirement that the press only use the scary term by referencing it as something Democrats said.

No, we're not making this up.

Much of the press slobbered it up and brought Frist his paper and slippers. An excellent example is provided by MSNBC

Frist’s proposal, which he calls “the constitutional option,” and which his foes call “the nuclear option"

What most of the mainstream media has also failed to note is the Republican record on using the filibuster and other techniques to block more than one of Clinton's nominees (see The Daily Howler, Special report—A passion for up-or-down votes!). Apparently, the filibuster was a perfectly fine senatorial tool when Frist himself was using it to block Clinton's nomination of Richard Paez in 2000.

The media in this country are now mostly a bunch of passive bobbleheads watching a tennis match, nodding back and forth and, in hushed tones, describing each volley but ignoring whether the ball was in or out.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Confirmed

Right on the heels of the Senate filibuster "debate" and the subsequent "deal" that saw Priscilla Owen's nomination finally move to the floor for the up-and-down vote Frist was insisting upon, the Senate confirmed it with a 56-43 vote. The Republicans, led by Frist, called the vote a "great victory for the American people". Owen has been described by supporters as a jurist of "impeccable integrity." What she is actually like, however, is an entirely different matter.

After engaging herself in the legal representation of oil and gas companies as a lawyer, Owen entrenched herself in that unseemly world and, as a result of her early affiliations, Halliburton and Enron began to figure prominantly in her public life as a jurist. Enron's PAC has given more to Priscilla Owen than any other corporation and in 1994 sent $8600 her way for a Texas Supreme Court election, which she won. Gentle readers, can we guess what surely was going to follow? Oh, yes. Two years later, Owen's majority opinion reversed a lower court's order and saved Enron $15 million in taxes. School taxes. In five out of six cases involving Enron, the Texas court ruled in favour of that company's interest.

She also has a well-earned and deadly reputation for slowness.

Willie Searcy died while his family awaited an opinion from Owen in the lawsuit the family filed against the maker of a defective seat belt. The jury awarded millions in the judgment and medical care was going use up a lot of that. The family needed the money immediately to continue care but Owen dilly-dallied and even ordered a new trial. It was during this delay that Searcy died. The attorney in the case said, ""There's no question, absolutely no question, that the delay contributed to causing Willie's death. We could have saved his life if we'd had the funds to do it."

Yes, Priscilla Owen is a GOP poster child for for their notion of "impeccable integrity."

So just what does "extraordinary circumstance" mean to a Senate that voted for cloture, sent Owen's nomination to a floor vote and confirmed it within 24 hours? What constitutes "extraordinariness" if not a store-bought shitbag like Owen? Like we said above, no one knows although Charles Pierce has a few ideas:


1) Space aliens
2) House pets
3) Stigmatines
4) Shrubbery
5) Spokespeople
6) Clowns
7) Imaginary People
8) Invisible People
9) Mimes
10) Ken Starr


One can't help but wonder why George Bush would push so hard for Owen's nomination and engage his administration in the unprecendented move of renominating her after an initial Senate rebuff. It turns out -- and this should come as no surprise -- that Owen used to entertain George Bush, Laura Bush and others of the Texas Republican guard by roasting up a few quail once in awhile. And she would do this at the house of the host with the most, Karl Rove. Apparently, not even two hundred year old congressional senate rules will come between George Bush and appointments of his quail-roasting cronies.

Oddly enough and despite declaring that Owen had ""an extreme ideological approach to the law," House minority leader Harry Reid still thinks she might mend her ways:

"I hope she surprises those of us who have fought her nomination. Perhaps her experience as a judicial nominee has exposed her to a broader range of views, and that experience may make her more sensitive to concerns regarding privacy, civil rights and consumer rights."

Harry? Where the hell have you been?

------------------------------------------------------------------
The Slightest Guilt

Meanwhile, outside the tennis stadium, the world burns.

It seems like Brazilian soy bean king Blairo Maggi has been doing quite a fine job ravaging the Amazon rain forest in his headlong pursuit of big profits. Some 10,000 square miles of rain forest were obliterated last year and half of that was the result of Maggi's soy bean farm operation in the state of Mato Grasso. Soy beans are now in huge demand and especially so after the mad cow scare drove countries to adopt soy as an "untainted" food source. And Maggi is the world's number one producer, grossing over $600 million last year.

So how or why has the government allowed Blairo to puncture the world's "lung"? Happily for Maggi and not so for the future prospects of the Amazon rain forest, he also happens to be the governor of Mato Grasso. He has no qualms about the rampant deforestation. In fact, he wants more:

To me, a 40 per cent increase in deforestation doesn't mean anything at all, and I don't feel the slightest guilt over what we are doing here.

We are to believe, presumably, that Mr. Maggi's level of guilt is directly correlated to the magnitude of ecological devastation that he is wreaking. No guilt, no devastation. Good news! We all can take comfort in Mr. Maggi's astonishing lack of guilt and know that everything is fine.


Burn, baby, burn ....

------------------------------------------------------------------
It Goes to Eleven

All most immediately after Bush and other prominent Republicans vowed that they were going to bring fiscal responsibility back to Washington after having been the ones to deliver such responsibility a kick in the chuff with a frozen boot, the Senate voted to exceed Bush's transportation budget cap of $284 billion by some $11 billion. Of course, in the United States, transportation == highways and almost nothing else. There is a lot of money for slapping down new roads, repaving old roads, building overpasses and underpasses and bypasses but precious little for anything remotely resembling what , in this country, can now laughably be called public transportation.

While Bush has threatened to veto the bill -- a threat we expect is filled more with sound than fury -- senators nation wide seem thrilled with the prospect of a few billion coming to each of their home states because if there is one thing the voting public appreciates it is smooth and efficient motoring. And George Bush will not be allowed to stand in the way of that.

By far and away the worst aspect of this bloated highway bill is not that it is bloated but that it is made that way by a large majority (76 - 22) of Senators who are also seriously considering cuts to food stamp programs, Medicaid, clean water funds, etc. (see The BHC, Fat-Free). On the same day that senators thought little of adding $11 billion to the highways bill, it was reported that the number of homeless people in Washington, D.C. area saw an increase for the fifth straight year, up 6.2% from last year. These increases appear to be mainly caused by the spiralling cost of housing around Washington area and the National Low Income Housing Coalition now estimates that a worker must make $22.83 per hour to afford a basic apartment in the region. The increasing social burden is falling on local and state governments as Congress has continued to be worse than stingy when it comes to social programs, unless, of course, they involve four wheels and shopping.


------------------------------------------------------------------
The Outer Limits

We here at the BHC always love hearing Republicans say they love the free market. The free market is it! they will loudly intone. And they seem to believe it judging by the wild look in their eyes. Except we have grown to expect a sharp left turn when we start hearing them spout on about rising boats because we know they're lying.

Doubt that?

At the end of January this year, trade quotas were lifted on China's textile industry and within one month, China's textile exports increased many fold, in some cases by as much as 1800%. American and European textile makers were swamped by competition with which they simply could not compete and within a month were yowling for new quotas. Free market Bush was only too happy to respond affirmatively and now China will face restrictions on their exports of clothing and other textiles to the US, land of the free market, home of the protected.

Some of the complaints about the Chinese products are legitimate, however. China has long been scolded for not floating its currency and has been keeping it pegged to the US dollar. With the greenback taking a nose-dive over the last few months, Chinese goods would be much more expensive had the yuan (renminbe) been a floating currency. But China is hesitant to do this now primarily because they own vast quantities of US debt (estimated $235 billion ) and should the dollar drop against the yuan -- and it will -- China's debt holding banks will take a huge loss. The US wants to call China a currency manipulator, which seems unwise considering that they are bailing out our debt-ridden asses.

But the Chinese government knows their industries just can't dump everything they make on the world and they have begun to take aims at curbing exports with taxes, etc. And just to let readers know that it is not just the US howling about this, even Bangladesh is worried about cheap Chinese textiles. Bangladesh!

Republicans -- and especially George Bush -- should just stop talking about "free markets" like they are the saviour of the world and then turn around and routinely violate them with quotas, restrictions and duties the moment such freedom appears to be relegating American voting constituents to the trash heap of failed industries. They should stop spouting such nonsense when they know full well that global markets are tightly controlled by governments trying to keep their own citisens employed -- if only for awhile and in the face of inevitable forces.

Now that the US barely makes much of anything the rest of the world would buy and it consumes far more than is economically sustainable, the forces of trade, debt and currency are coming to bear and will only grow stronger with time. And this will happen because the White House continues to view the world as something it owns rather than comporting itself within a reality that knows the world now owns a good part of the US.


Spending money we don't got ....

------------------------------------------------------------------
No Flushing, Please

We did not have flushing relations with that Koran

Or something like that. Yes, the US military has stood forth and proudly declared that, while it may engage in the occasional Muslim beating, it most assuredly would never, ever abuse a copy of the Koran. At least not with a toilet. Yes, this is now the level to which the defense of military practice at Guantanamo Bay has descended.

Despite the fact that a military inquiry has determined that there have been at least five instances where guards and or interrogators had "mishandled" the Koran -- three of which were deliberate -- the White House has not admonished the publishers of that report but are apparently content to ladle scorn upon Newsweek for its failing to verify the source for its report that claimed the Koran had been abused by a toilet. Commander of the Guantánamo Joint Task Force, General Jay Hood, stood up proudly to declare,

I'd like you to know that we have found no credible evidence that a member of the Joint Task Force at Guantánamo Bay ever flushed a Koran down a toilet.

Whew. Glad they cleared that up. Because while we may have credible evidence that numerous instances of abuse of actual people has occurred, rest assured gentle readers, no Koran was knowingly sullied by the crapper during such activity. It is a principled position.

------------------------------------------------------------------

everything is okay, really. Just ask George.