...the longest tours of duty since World War II...
How sad and pathetic for our soldiers and their families!
Posted by Seven of Six at April 13, 2007 09:06 AM"So why does Michael Chertoff at DHS still have a job?" Chertoff has a job because DHS is a falsehood, an organization developed by Rove/Bush to fill a political need, not to fill a civil need. Bush has no more interest in DHS or FEMA than he has in the Trip to Mars he pretended to be so interested in. Listen to the way he refers to Chertoff when doing a joint presser...as in "Chertoff says we are doing all we can". I'm not sure he even knows his first name, much less sees him as person serving in a very high capacity. He treats him like I'd imagine he treats the guys who clean out his barn in Crawfish, TX. This is all part of the "you work for me and do what I say" Bush mentality. It's manifested in his need to demean those around him, give them off-color nicknames, etc. Make them "little men" around the Big Boss.
Posted by T2 at April 13, 2007 09:11 AMI second T2's comment. Further, I suspect that the Dept of Homeland Security should be called "Full-employment Security for Born-again Christians", and it's there for the entire ladder, not just the top rung. The only quality necessary is to have born-again connections.
Posted by Julie at April 13, 2007 09:29 AMTPM is going through another document dump right now; could be interesting.
Posted by iamcoyote at April 13, 2007 09:41 AMLittle Nero probably does have a short guy problem and when you add in dyslexia and other likely cognitive maladies, (asperger's anyone?, his loopiness begins to be understandable.
Great grab bag, all in all. I live in Mutt Romney land and all he did was make a hash of Massachusetts with a half broken infrastructure and disasters of every description.
His running mate will be the dead Hispanic woman crushed by falling concrete from the graft infected big dig.
Posted by Chris Rich at April 13, 2007 09:41 AMJulie, as things start to unravel, I'm getting the suspicion that at the core of the Bush/Cheney/Rove rot is a scheme to use the presidency stolen in 2000 to implement a government takeover at all levels run by Ultra-Conservative Born-Again Evangelical Rapture-ites. I mean Conservative not in the political sense, but the "cover your women from head-to-toe" sense. Basically the Western version of the Taliban. Mormon's fit right into this also. The takeover of the country by religious extremists. Only in Religion can you find the "end justifies the means" mentality this bunch of crooks and liars exhibit.
Posted by T2 at April 13, 2007 09:51 AMT2 and Julie: Just like in The Handmaid's Tale. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. (:>
Posted by Donald Cormac at April 13, 2007 10:50 AMT2, did you read Tristero's series at digby's place on the theocratic movement whose goal is to turn the US into an authoritarian dictatorship? The leaders are interested in a political takeover, not so much a religious one, even if they are using the religion angle since they have a ready-made constituency for authoritarianism. American Taliban, indeed.
Posted by iamcoyote at April 13, 2007 11:02 AM"whose goal is to turn the US into an authoritarian dictatorship"...umm, I think they already did it. Its up to us to un-do it. (us being the collective us, i.e. citizens of the USA) I'd say that politics was the method, Nut Theocratic control the goal. The Bible is the ultimate Get Out of Jail Free card. You can do anything and find justification in the Bible. No coincidence Rove has weekly prayer meetings in the WH.
Cormac- thank's, Handmaid's Tale is very apt description of the mentality at work here.
To Chris Rich:
Asperger's and dyslexia have nothing to do with "Little Nero's" problems. And "short guy" is a nice theory, but, unlike evolution, it's just a theory.
More to the point, everyone in political circles, except for complete religious whacks and a handful of AA graduates, drinks like a fish. That means that said AA graduates are constantly surrounded by temptation. What saves them--at least some of the time--is AA and mutual support structure that it provides. W has no support structure. He claimed to have gone dry of his own will--and, given ample evidence that his will is virtually nonexistent, it is highly unlikely that he can maintain his sobriety--that is, if he were ever sober. The behavior that we do have an opportunity to observe (which is not much) suggests an active drunk with a history of drug problems, but that's nothing new.
To T2:
I disagree somewhat with your assessment that "the government [is being] run by Ultra-Conservative Born-Again Evangelical Rapture-ites". In fact, Ultra-Conservatives and Evangelicals (which are not the same group to begin with, so I am not sure why you only want to look at their intersection) do not run the government. They proclaim loudly that they do--or desire to--but that's not who is in charge. The agenda is decidedly corporatist neo-con and very pragmatic. Ultra-cons and Evangelicals are not pragmatic except when it comes to electing allies. The allies know this and use them. But they are not controlled by them. It is quite the reverse.
Finally, to Steve Soto,
You wrote that Romney "distances himself from his own universal health care program he plans to take credit for in the general election." This is mostly correct, but there is one problem--it is not his program. He reluctantly conceded its passage, but he was on record against it in its entirety and even against the eventual compromise that he could not avoid. It passed contrary to his desires, so there is no way to describe the program is "his".
Posted by buck at April 13, 2007 11:38 AMbuck, sounds like you could have omitted the "somewhat". I explained that Conservative was not used in a political sense. I do agree that there is manipulation of the Evangelical/Religious nuts by the Corporate, just as the Corporate seek to manipulate us all. Actively seeding the Justice system from the State level up to the Supreme Ct with religious zealots sworn to Bush/Rove, as Attygate indicates, could present a pretty tight control over a wide swath of our lives.
Posted by T2 at April 13, 2007 12:20 PM