From Holden: Two quickies from Chimpy’s visit to New Mexico today. One. People don’t plan big amounts of money to invest on a short-term basis. It’s important to provide stability in the tax code so that the planners and thinkers and investors have confidence that if they make an investment five years from now, the reason they made the investment in the first place — besides trying to improve product lines — the reason they made the tax — the reason they made the investment because of tax incentive will still exist. Two. You’re right, old guys like us, we’d … Continue reading Your President Speaks!

From Holden: Just a quick gaggle today onboard Air Force One but, goddammit Scottie, it’s a question for the President’s spokesman, not the Office of the Special Counsel. Q Is the President — will he give Libby’s defense team access to the presidential daily briefs? MR. McCLELLAN: I’m sorry? Q Libby’s defense team is asking for access to — MR. McCLELLAN: You know where we stand on the investigation. The President directed the White House to cooperate fully and that’s what we have done and will continue to do. Q I’m sorry, is that a “yes” or “no”? Will you … Continue reading Today on Holden’s Obsession with the Gaggle

That’s Stripe on the left, relieved to be fatter than Fox again. A. Continue reading Friday Ferretblogging: Gratuitous Cuteness Edition

From Holden: What do you get when you take a Tom DeLay co-conspirator, a cushy seat on the board of the Employees Retirement System of Texas, and a check from the man who funded the Swift Boaters? High hilarity, Texas style. A state lawmaker said Wednesday that it’s absurd not to require public officials to disclose the size of checks given to them as gifts. Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, urged the Texas Ethics Commission to reconsider its ruling that law does not require Bill Ceverha, a member of the Employees Retirement System of Texas board, to disclose the amount … Continue reading Sometimes I Have To Laugh

From Scout:

The fight over the Baker bill that would aid Louisiana Katrina victims by providing funds to buy out their homes at 60% equity got serious Thursday….

The debate over how to rebuild homes and communities destroyed by Hurricane Katrina erupted into public warfare between Louisiana and the White House on Thursday as the Bush administration sharply denounced the state’s preferred solution and the author of the Louisiana plan accused the administration of misleading the public in an effort to kill the proposal.

Bush’s reconstruction czar Don Powell launched a “media blitz” that included an op-ed in the Washington Post and TV appearances and a press conference in which he announced another 18 billion for hurricane relief. However details on where the money would go will not be available for another 10-30 days.

Richard Baker a Louisiana Republican, and sponsor of the popular Baker bill was Outraged…..

“That Mr. Powell would take out op-ed space specifically to undermine my legislation is disappointing to say the least,” Baker said in a written statement. “That he would use that column to spread gross mischaracterizations of the legislation is just disturbing. If I had any worries that my legislation was dead, I am now certain that it isn’t, or else Mr. Powell would not be shooting at it.”

He said that the White House suggestions that Louisiana’s housing problems can be solved by helping 20,000 homeowners outside flood zones rebuild is ludicrous, given the estimates that 200,000 homes were either seriously damaged or destroyed.

“If you relegate the solution to just helping people outside the flood zone then your relegating most of our country to not receiving housing help in the event of a major catastrophe like Katrina,” Baker said.

Later in the day Baker got a call from the White House saying let’s talk about housing.

If the administration would devote a sizable portion of the new $18 billion to housing in Louisiana, Baker said, “We could be a long way to meeting the problem.”

But early indications are that the emergency financing is intended for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Housing and Urban Development and Small Business Administration, and perhaps for damaged military facilities in the hurricane zone, not for new major housing restoration programs.

Reaction to the new spending proposal was uncertain because no details were provided.

The Bush administration has never supported fellow Republican Richard Baker’s bill which does have bi-partisan support in Louisiana. Of course they won’t give details on the $18 billion for 30 days. They are stonewalling. The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee has agreed to a Feb. 15 hearing on the legislation at which time the bill will either live or die. If the administration dangles enough out there to make it look like they are going to do something then the bill will be seen as unnecessary. If they can get through 30 days with that, the bill goes away and so does Louisiana’s best chance for recovery.Don’t trust that in 30 days Bush will will put any of that $18 billion to buy out home owners. If that was the intent they would have said so now.

I know you would want to do something worthwhile to help the Louisiana victims of Katrina. This is your chance. The Baker bill is very popular in Louisiana. People want it because it is essential to recovery. Without the Baker bill everything that 200,000 homeowners had will be worthless. Absolutely worthless. They will face foreclosures and walk away from their former lives with nothing. And developers will buy the land up cheap and make a killing. (one of the most prominent developers is a Bush pioneer and leader of the NOLA rebuilding commission…. Read about this after the jump)

I spoke with Rep. Baker’s office and and to help they urge you to call your representatives and ask that the bill be brought to a vote. Please call your reps. and the White House. Use this link to Call or Email your representatives in Washington (Just Enter your zip code. You will get an email and an info link for all your rep, senators and White House. Phone numbers are at info links)

Hold Bush to his promise of rebuilding NOLA.

Continue reading “Game On Bitches…………”

From Holden: On Wednesday we were told he didn’t really mean it. One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America’s dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn’t mean it literally. Apparently no one told him he didn’t mean it before his appearance in Minnesota yesterday. Now, people say, well, if you can get the technology and you got the cars, how come it takes until 2025 to reduce — significantly reduce dependence on the Middle Eastern oil? Well, the … Continue reading Someone Forgot to Tell Chimpy

From Holden: The Scene: January 31, 2003. George Bush, desperate to launch a war of aggression against Iraq, meets with a supportive Tony Blair at the White House. The Problem: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had done nothing to justify an attack. Bush’s Solution: Paint a US Air Force U2 spyplane with the UN’s signature skyblue color and fly it at low altitudes over Iraq to provoke an atttack. No, really. PRESIDENT BUSH had plans to lure Saddam Hussein into war by flying an aircraft over Iraq painted in UN colours in the hope he would shoot it down, a book reveals. … Continue reading Plane Stupid

Go help Rex ruin John Boehner’s day. Seriously, they knock off our majority leader and we allow theirs to run uncontested? Does that sound like us? I don’t think so. Go help them find a candidate to make this critter nervous. A. Continue reading Yo, Ohio First Drafters

From Holden: What will Little Scottie say? His own brother went before the Senate Special Committee on Aging yesterday and admitted that the Bush Assministration fucked up their Medicare drug plan. A top Bush administration official acknowledged Thursday that the Medicare prescription program was too complicated for many of its intended beneficiaries to understand and said simplifying it was a top priority. “Simplification is absolutely the next step in this process, now that we’ve got the benefit in place,” Medicare Administrator Mark B. McClellan said during a Senate hearing on problems the program has had since its Jan. 1 introduction. … Continue reading Incompetence Personified

From Holden: Ronnie Earle is on your ass. Prosecutors investigating former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on felony conspiracy and money laundering charges are seeking bank records for the Texas Republican Party. District Attorney Ronnie Earle issued a subpoena Thursday ordering Frost Bank to produce monthly statements and signature cards from August 2002 to January 2003 for accounts connected to the party or the Texas Republican Congressional Committee. Continue reading Watch Out, Republicans…

From Holden: The Labor Department counted 193,000 new jobs created in January, well below the anticipated number of 250,000. They revised December’s number up to 140,000 jobs from the originally reported 108,000, but the new December figure is still below the level of job creation needed to account for the number of people entering the labor force. Continue reading Another Disappointing Month For Job Creation

From Scout: That’s according to WaPo’s E.J. Dionne who rips Bush and chides Dems to seize the moment……. It comes to pass when an incumbent president signals that the energy is rapidly draining from his political project. The opposition, if it possesses any sense and creativity, has an opening to move the country in a different direction. President Bush’s State of the Union message on Tuesday was an “Is That All There Is?” speech. The Democrats should be sued by one of their own trial lawyers if they fail to seize their opportunity. Snip Then there was Bush’s line about … Continue reading Fresh out of ideas…..

From Holden: Today Scottie played dumb — he’s a method actor, I hear. Q Okay I just have one question. In the roll out on the State of the Union, you know, and all the trips that he’s taking, how much does politics — the midterm politics play in the deciding where we’re going, where he’s going? MR. McCLELLAN: Well, the President is traveling around the country, and talking to the American people in greater detail about the initiatives he proposed in the State of the Union. As the President said and as I emphasized just a minute ago, the … Continue reading Today on Holden’s Obsession with the Gaggle

From Holden: Today the good people of Minnesota were inflicted with Chimpitis. Unfortunately There Will Be A Solution Congress over here, and people say, vote for me, I’m going to make sure the benefits grow faster than the rate of inflation. Listen, Social Security was meant to supplement income, retirement income, initially. And so what I’m telling you is there’s a solution to be had. Unfortunately, the atmosphere in Washington appears that there will be solution because there’s too much politics. People Need To Be Doused With Incense People need to be incented to make right choices with their bodies, … Continue reading Your President Speaks!

From Holden: New Majority Leader here. Continue reading Cheney Has The New House Majority Leader In His Pants

From Holden: This… Diplomatically, Mr. Bush’s ambitious call for the replacement of 75 percent of the United States’ Mideast oil imports with ethanol and other energy sources by 2025 upset Saudi Arabia, the main American oil supplier in the Persian Gulf. In an interview on Wednesday, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Turki al-Faisal, said he would have to ask Mr. Bush’s office “what he exactly meant by that.” Lead to this… One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America’s dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national … Continue reading Cause and Effect

From Scout: A violent thunderstorm hit the hurricane-ravaged New Orleans area early Thursday, undoing repairs and creating new damage at Louis Armstrong International Airport and in the Lakeview neighborhood still reeling five months after Katrina struck Aug. 29. Might be a good day to record Pat Robertson’s show. Continue reading What will Pat say…

From Holden: Hurricane Katrina and the Bush Assministration’s response to the disaster usually fall into the domain of our newest First Drafter, Scout. But after reading this article, especially Scottie-wannabe Dana Perino’s statement in bold at the end of the excerpt, I just had to post it myself. Responsibility for the government’s bungled response to Hurricane Katrina extends widely but begins at the top of the Bush administration, which failed before the storm to name a White House, homeland security or other senior aide in command of the looming disaster, congressional investigators reported Wednesday. Four years after the Sept. 11, … Continue reading The I Didn’t Do It Kid Strikes Again

From Scout: From Stars and Stripes…. On Coups…… WASHINGTON — The former commander of Multi-National Corps-Iraq said Tuesday that U.S. agencies other than the Defense Department need to be more engaged in Iraq if that country is to succeed in rebuilding. Lt. Gen. John Vines, speaking before a Defense Department conference on military health, praised the work of Defense Department personnel in Iraq but said there is “far less cooperation” between other U.S. agencies and their Iraqi counterparts. “We have to develop capacities in these other ministries for the government to be coherent,” he said. “A worst-case scenario to me … Continue reading Coups and Corruption……

A quick tutorial for Democrats appearing on the Sunday Shows.
Listen up. Some of y’all clearly don’t understand how not to make asses out of yourselves on TV. You allow the interviewers to trap you with the results of push-polls, requests to denounce things, dithering, and apologizing for shit that isn’t your fault. But it’s okay. First Draft is here to help.
Come inside and learn as I assume the personae of several frequent Press the Meat punching bags to show how to answer leading and insulting questions from the likes of Tweety, Timmeh and others. Click “Read More” to find out how to be a sex machine with all the Democrats in less than 30 soundbites.

Continue reading “Tutorial”

From Holden: Today Chimpy took his cornpone to the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. He Sucked During President One of the interesting things about the presidency is we get to entertain a lot, and my favorite — the favorite folks to entertain are the people that Laura and I grew up with. I like my buddies from West Texas. I liked them when I was young, I liked them then I was middle-age, I liked them before I was President, and I like them during President and I like them after President. But Does He Know Where He Is? I … Continue reading Your President Speaks!

From Holden: Nope, Chimpy’s multiple wars have definitely made us less safe. Washington’s attempts to bring security to Iraq and Afghanistan are not only making life harder for local people, they are breeding more terrorists, warn international security experts. Under its anti-terrorism agenda, the U.S. has centralised power and security in post-conflict Iraq and Afghanistan, which ironically creates perfect conditions for terrorists and criminals. “There is a great fear that unstable states and post-war societies provide an ideal breeding ground for terrorist training and activity,” said Albrecht Schnabel, a senior fellow with the Research Programme on Human Security in Bern, … Continue reading Not Safer

From Scout: Photographers covering the White House are sick and tired of being shut out and given handouts…. While the practice of providing news organizations with staged photos of events involving the president goes back decades, veteran shooters at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue say it has become almost a regular occurrence with the Bush Administration. A review of Associated Press archives found that during the entire eight years of the Clinton administration, only 100 handout photos of events were released to the press. During the first five years of Bush’s presidency, more than 500 have been distributed. The key is that … Continue reading All the Bush World is ah Staged….

From Holden: Cue Nelson Muntz! Tom DeLay’s legal defense fund is in the hole by 1/2 a million dollars! Embattled U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay raised more money for his legal defense in 2005 than ever before but still owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to lawyers, according to documents released Tuesday. DeLay, fighting an indictment in Texas on charges of illegal fundraising while facing scrutiny by federal prosecutors in Washington for his ties to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, raised $181,851 between Oct. 1 and the end of the year. That amount brought the total raised for his legal defense fund … Continue reading Poor Tom DeLay. And When I Say Poor, I Mean Poor!

From Holden: So, Palestinians held a free and fair election, but Israel does not like what it heard when the Palestinian people used their voice at the polls. So what do they do? Steal from the Palestinian Authority, of course. Israel froze this month’s transfer of $45 million in tax rebates and customs payments to the Palestinian Authority while it reviews its options following the Hamas victory in last week’s parliamentary election, the government said Wednesday. “The transfers will be on hold” while the issue is being reviewed, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. “The expectation is that automatic … Continue reading Democracy In Action

From Holden: Yet another Ohio Republican (this one the state Attorney General who happens to be running for governor) is accused of corruption in Ohio. Democrats called on federal and county prosecutors to investigate a lawyer’s assertion that Attorney General Jim Petro personally demanded campaign contributions in exchange for state legal work. The requests came after The Plain Dealer quoted Akron lawyer Jack Morrison, a prominent Republican, saying that Petro had warned him that his firm would lose legal business because it supported a rival candidate — but could earn some of the business back through future donations. [snip] Ohio … Continue reading A Normal Day In Ohio

From Holden: Which SOTU statement was the most ironirc? a) “Addicted to oil” b) “Man-animal hybrid” Vote in comments. Continue reading A First Draft Poll