president bush

Change Has Come #4

On his first day in office, President Obama put former president Bush on notice. His administration just released an executive order that will make it difficult for Bush to shield his White House records--and those of former Vice President Dick Cheney--from public scrutiny by invoking the doctrine of executive privilege. Shortly after taking office, Bush handed down his own executive order, amending the Presidential Records Act to give current and past presidents, along with their heirs, veto power over the release of presidential records, which are considered the property of the American people.

"[Obama]'s putting former presidents on notice that if you want to continue a claim of executive privilege that [Obama] doesn't think is well-placed, you're going to have to go to court," says Anne Weismann, the chief counsel for Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW).

This one could really turn out to be fun down the road. I can only imagine what is going through Bush and Cheney’s minds right now.

Lou Dobbs has been foaming at the mouth nonstop over former border agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, who shot a Mexican drug smuggler in the buttocks and were convicted and imprisoned for it. Well Bush fed the base a little bit of out-going meat today:

On his last full day in office, President Bush commuted the controversial sentences of two former Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting a Mexican drug runner in 2005.

The imprisonment of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean had sparked outcry from critics who said the men were just doing their jobs and were punished too harshly. They had been sentenced to 11- and 12-year sentences, respectively.

Their sentences will now expire on March 20 of this year.

Ramos and Compean were sentenced in connection with the shooting of Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, who was shot in the buttocks while trying to flee along the Texas border. He admitted smuggling several hundred pounds of marijuana on the day he was shot and pleaded guilty last year to drug charges related to two other smuggling attempts.

But will Lou be happy (and the base)? I except them to sing a little joy for a few minutes over this, but then start complaining that the sentence was only commuted and not a full pardon. Of course their felony convictions still stick and they can no longer work as border agents again.

Laugh Out Loud Funny

Oh this is just a gem:

Rove, a former top White House adviser to President Bush, said on Fox News, "[Obama] should have, right from the beginning, been more forthcoming."

The same Karl Rove who insisted the President never had to disclose anything – rather it was on the outing of a CIA agent, lying us into war, his involvment in Abramoff, the mistreatment of our vets, torture, etc., etc., etc.

Melody Barnes – The Progressive

Ok I am impressed:

Melody Barnes, Domestic Policy Council served as chief counsel to Senator Ted Kennedy on the Judiciary Committee from 1985 to 1993. Want to get an idea of how progressive she is? Read this: In January of 2007, prior to President Bush's state of the union address, Barnes wrote this essay for the Washington Post, What a Progressive President Might Say:

Here at home there is urgent work to do to fight the historically high -- and growing -- gap between our richest and poorest citizens. While the mean income of households on the low end of the income spectrum -- the bottom 20 percent -- is just $10,655 a year, the income of the top twenty percent of households averages almost $160,000. That's 15 times as much. At the same time, according to the latest census figures, the middle class, beset with stagnant wages and mountainous debts, is shrinking. The sad fact is that one of our most cherished values as a society, namely equality of opportunity, is fading as a reality for far too many people...

Undoing The Damage

This is what happens when you have a President coming into office that understands the Constitution and doesn't treat it like a piece of toilet paper:

Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.

A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.

In some instances, Obama would be quickly delivering on promises he made during his two-year campaign, while in others he would be embracing Clinton-era policies upended by President Bush during his eight years in office.

Besides the problems of war and economy, Obama has the huge challenge of undoing all the damage Bush has done. It's good to see they are already focusing on that. With a Democratically controlled government, hopefully we can see new mechanisms put into place the protect us from having to go through anything like the last eight years ever again.

Protecting Food? What A Novel Idea!

This is change, we need. Actually it isn't as much change as it is undoing the damage of the Bush years:

The Food and Drug Administration, bedeviled by a salmonella outbreak and tainted medicine from China, is likely to monitor imports and fresh produce more closely under an Obama administration.

With President Bush no longer a roadblock, health officials also can expect new powers to control tobacco, from cigarettes to the recently introduced smokeless products called snus.

President-elect Obama, a former smoker struggling to avoid relapse, is a sponsor of legislation giving the FDA authority to control, but not ban, tobacco and nicotine.

I guess to Bush, keeping Americans safe by protecting our food supply was nothing but big government. If we end up going four years without a major food recall, will people thank Obama for protecting them?

Bush Dissed By The DOJ

Last week Bush made an unprecedented request for the Department of Justice to investigate Ohio voter registrations. Something like this has never been done so close to an election. Well now it looks like the DOJ is ignoring Bush:

The Department of Justice will not require Ohio to disclose the names of voters whose registration applications did not match other government databases, according to two people familiar with discussions between state and federal lawyers.

The decision comes about a week after an unusual request from President Bush asking the department to investigate the matter and roughly two weeks after the Supreme Court dismissed a case involving the flagged registration applications.

For the DOJ to ignore this request shows that they must have some serious questions about it. My guess is that they are worried about the fallout it could create. Bush is on his way out and a lot of officials at the DOJ are looking to their futures. With the possibility of a Democratic controlled government growing greater by the minute, they also realize that congressional investigations will have more merit now, and a DOJ already embroiled in scandal from the U.S. attorney purge, which was a result of bogus voter fraud calls, has to play it very careful here on out.

How Palin Killed The Party

In an upcoming piece on McCain, New York Times Magazine reporter Robert Draper gives us this little insight into the whole Palin pick:

Having interviewed several of the Senator's chief aides, Draper details the process by which McCain ultimately chose his running mate (New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was surprisingly high on the list). And the decision may have been even more impulsive than initially thought. Gov. Sarah Palin, who had never been on the VP shortlist, was advanced at the last minute by Schmidt and Rick Davis, and was picked after a less-than-hour-long chat in with McCain at his ranch in Arizona.

(emphasis added)

The failure of the McCain campaign is going to be talked about for weeks to come, even past the election. The right wing talking heads are trying to spin this in a way to make Palin out to be the saint. They want to simply say "it's the economy and Bush", but that isn't the case so much. Look at this from the latest NBC/WSJ poll:

Now, Palin’s qualifications to be president rank as voters’ top concern about McCain’s candidacy - ahead of continuing President Bush’s policies, enacting economic policies that only benefit the rich and keeping too high of a troop presence in Iraq.

People are now saying Palin is more of a concern than McCain being tied to Bush's policies. That's a pretty damming conviction of lipstick queen.

What Would A President McCain Accomplish?

Following up on what I said in my previous post, something else has come to mind. John McCain is seeing a lot of Republicans in Congress treat him like Bush. That is to say they don't want to be seen with him. Add to that the fact McCain always talks about not being voted "miss Congeniality" in the Senate, proof that he isn't that well liked by his own party, and you are stuck asking yourself what he could accomplish as President.

The Democrats will still have control of both houses of Congress next year. Even the Republicans have admitted that, and are just trying to limit the damage now. For a President to accomplish much of anything he needs political capital. If his party is the minority in Congress he needs them to block legislation he doesn't want to be seen vetoing. He also needs to make sure he has enough votes to uphold any vetoes. But with McCain building a wall between him and congressional Republicans, he won't have the support he needs.

I can't remember another election where the nominee was so disliked by their own party. McCain says he's a maverick, but a President needs to be able to work with either or both parties in order to accomplish anything. A President McCain will most likely end up being a very lonely person in the White House and could actually be a lame duck when he takes the oath of office. With that said, a President McCain would be much the same as a President Bush.

McCain's Own Way Of Saying "Crusade"

The Boston Globe questions McCain's constant chastising of Middle East adversaries by saying they don't embrace our "Judea-christian values":

At the end of a long list of reasons to be suspicious of the Iranians, McCain declared: "And they sure don't share our Judeo-Christian values."

It seemed at the time to be an odd thing to say about a Muslim country. After all, even if there were no nuclear program, no oil, and no rabble-rousing president, Iran still wouldn't have Judeo-Christian values. And it's troubling to wonder if that alone would be a reason for suspicion.

Even President Bush has resisted framing the war on terrorism as a clash of religions; his inexpert use of the word "crusade" early in the conflict set off a wave of criticism and backtracking. He's never repeated it.

This is yet another example of why John McCain is the most dangerous person to be President. His ignorance on the subject will put us into a "holy war". Somebody really needs to tell that war-monger to either learn about the world or shut the hell up.

But I Thought Bush Had No Control Over The Oil Prices?

That's what we been told for months now, but McCain seems to think differently:

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain yesterday credited the recent $10-a-barrel drop in the price of oil to President Bush’s lifting of a ban on offshore drilling, an action McCain has been advocating.

Really? So then why didn't Bush lift the ban months ago, instead of letting the American people suffer?

Of course we are talking about John McCain, a man who will say anything to get elected. So what really is behind the oil price drop? Things like a rise in inflation, as well as a slowing U.S. economy. Also demand for oil has dropped to the lowest level since January 2007. These are the factors causing the price drop, not some bullshit Republican position. Nice try on spinning McCain.

The WIng It Wingers

The biggest failure with the Iraq War has been the total lack of planning. The people who laid out good plans lost their jobs, and instead the administration has decided to wing the entire thing. That deadly mentality is continuing:

The administration lacks an updated and comprehensive Iraq strategy to move beyond the "surge" of combat troops President Bush launched in January 2007 as an 18-month effort to curtail violence and build Iraqi democracy, government investigators said yesterday.

While agreeing with the administration that violence has decreased sharply, a report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office concluded that many other goals Bush outlined a year and a half ago in the "New Way Forward" strategy remain unmet.

The report, after a bleak GAO assessment last summer, cited little improvement in the ability of the Iraqi security forces to act independently of the U.S. military, and noted that key legislation passed by the Iraqi parliament had not been implemented while other crucial laws had not been passed. The report also judged that key Iraqi ministries spent less of their allocated budgets last year than in previous years, and said that oil and electricity production had repeatedly not met U.S. targets.

(emphasis added)

Remember the whole idea of the surge was to get violence down so that goals could be met. Well we did get the violence down, but the goals are still not being met. What plan does Bush has to deal with this? None. What plan does McCain have to deal with this? None. We can call this a stalemate. The only option now is to tell Iraq they are on their own. They have not accepted our help, so we will no longer offer it. That is basically the plan of Obama and the next logical step in this quagmire.

McSame

The more John McCain tries to differentiate himself from George Bush, the more evidence surfaces that dictates the exact opposite. Huffington Post has a video up of McCain being interviewed on Meet the Press in 2005 where he said:

And on the transcendent issues, the most important issues of our day, I've been totally in agreement and support of President Bush.

Damn the intertubes and their bottomless vault of evidence!

Obama Leads McCain By 6 And Bush Still Sucks

First the good news:

Presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama holds a six point lead over his Republican counterpart John McCain, a new CBS News poll finds. Obama leads McCain 48 percent to 42 percent among registered voters, with 6 percent of respondents undecided.

Then the good news:

President Bush's approval rating is at its lowest level to date. Just 25 percent of Americans approve of the overall job Mr. Bush is doing as President, an all-time low for him and among the lowest approval ratings ever recorded for a President.

McCain = Bush is a great campaign strategy to run on this year. I'm curious to see how much more lower he goes when it gets around that Bush did lie us into war and we now have an investigation that proves it.

Nah - He's nothing like Bush

Except on issues that really matter to Americans, like warrantless wiretapping:

If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president's wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.

McCain's new tack towards the Bush administration's theory of executive power comes some 10 days after a McCain surrogate stated, incorrectly it seems, that the senator wanted hearings into telecom companies' cooperation with President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, before he'd support giving those companies retroactive legal immunity.

Screw the constitution and rule of law, the President trumps all that! That seems to be the mantra of the Republican Party anymore.