PERRspectives: April 2006 Archives

April 2006 Archives

	Bitter Pills for Crawford, Limbaugh It was a mixed week for the Avenging Angel, punisher of conservative miscreants. Two evil doers of the right, Lester Crawford and Rush Limbaugh, found themselves in trouble this week for doing bad things with prescription pills. Sadly, only one faces the prospect of true justice. Dr. Crawford, the former head of the Bush FDA, faces a criminal inquiry for financial misdeeds and lying to Congress. Last fall, Crawford, a vet by training and a friend of big Pharma, reneged... more Posted on April 30, 2006 \| Comments (0)

	Snow Day in Washington As widely predicted, President Bush on Wednesday officially named Fox News regular Tony Snow White House press secretary to replace the departing Scott McClellan. Putting a card-carrying member of his conservative amen corner in front of the press may signal Bush's willingness to circle the wagons at the White House or to play to his base. As for the Dana Milbank of the Washington Post got it about right in his analysis on Countdown with Keith Olbermann last week: "I'm... more Posted on April 26, 2006 \| Comments (0)

	Rudy's Primary Problem As the 2008 Republican primaries draw near, the field of GOP presidential hopefuls is making its quadrennial journey to the extreme right. As USA Today, the New Republic, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, The Hill and even the Daily Show have reported, John McCain has already begun the trip to the "crazy base world" of the Republicans' religious right. But for Rudy Giuliani, the process of courting Christian conservatives is turning out to be a real drag. Jerry... more Posted on April 25, 2006 \| Comments (1)

	That's a Big No: Bush, Gas Prices and the Polls With gasoline prices skyrocketing around the country, a spate of opinion polls show that President Bush is running on empty with the American people. The new CNN/Gallup/USA Today survey puts Bush's approval rating at a dismal 32%. Perhaps even more glaring, a staggering 69% of respondents claimed that gas prices constituted a financial hardship. But if Bush is being punished for high energy costs, he has only himself to blame. This May 7, 2001 response by then press secretary Ari... more Posted on April 24, 2006 \| Comments (3)

	James Baker: Bush's Mr. Fix It Goes to Iraq As surely as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, James Baker III reliably appears whenever George W. Bush finds himself in trouble. As the New York Times reports, the growing Iraq quagmire is no exception. Baker, the Secretary of State under the President's father, will lead a congressionally mandated team to generate new ideas for salvaging the American adventure in Iraq and with it, extricate George W. Bush from another fine mess. Baker has long... more Posted on April 24, 2006 \| Comments (3)

	Scott McClellan's Greatest Hits White House press secretary Scott McClellan made it official today, tearfully announcing his resignation. McClellan's was a long overdue and merciful act of political euthanasia, ending what one analyst last year deemed "a persistent vegetative state." McClellan's sublime ignorance, awkward dissembling and limitless ability to take a punch made him the perfect mouthpiece for the scandal-ridden Bush White House. His rumored replacements, including Fox News anchor Tony Snow and one-time Iraq coalition provisional authority shill Dan Senor, simply don't offer... more Posted on April 19, 2006 \| Comments (1)

	Health Care Monopolies and the Massachusetts Model Last week, Massachusetts Governor and 2008 GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney signed legislation mandating that all residents of the Commonwealth acquire health insurance. But while many analysts are lauding the Romney blueprint, a new American Medical Association report on the entrenchment of health insurance monopolies shows one of the many pitfalls of the Massachusetts model. On its face, the Massachusetts law seems like an innovative approach to providing health care coverage for all. Akin to auto insurance, all residents must... more Posted on April 18, 2006 \| Comments (0)

	The GOP's Pulitzer Prize Winning Scandals The 2006 Pulitzer Prize awards were announced today in New York. If there is one common attribute many of the winners share, it is holding up a mirror to the scandals and corruption of the Bush administration and his Republican Party. The Pultzter Board recognized coverage of a broad range of Republican fraud, deceit and skullduggery, including the NSA domestic spying program, the CIA's secret prisons and the Jack Abramoff scandal, just to name a few. For example, Susan Schmidt,... more Posted on April 17, 2006 \| Comments (2)

	Katherine Harris Down 30% On this Saturday before Easter, one resurrection that looks increasingly unlikely is that of Katherine Harris. In a new poll from Ramsussen, the Florida Congresswoman and doyenne of electoral deceit finds herself trailing incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson by a staggering 30% in their Senate race. Harris' ill-fated Senate run was stillborn almost from conception. As I noted previously, the national GOP shunned her polarizing campaign from the start. In February, the trial of Duke Cunningham bagman Mitchell Wade revealed that... more Posted on April 15, 2006 \| Comments (4)

	General Agreement: Rumsfeld Fails the Aspin Test As the firestorm between the growing ranks of retired generals and the White House over Donald Rumsfeld continues to heat up, the Republican leadership in Congress remains largely - and predictably - silent. As I wrote back in December 2004, the Republican Party and its amen corner have decided that its 1993 "Les Aspin Standard" does not apply to Defense Secretary Rumseld and the Bush administration. That is, decisions that needlessly cost American lives in battle cost defense secretaries their... more Posted on April 15, 2006 \| Comments (7)

	Republican Terms Unlimited In 1994, the GOP rode the Contract with America and its call for term limits to an overwhelming victory in the midterm elections. Newt Gingrich, the architect of the '94 Republican Revolution, saw the term limits pledge as an essential ingredient to retaking the House. But in 1991, Gingrich called terms limits "a terrible idea." To no one's surprise, many of his Republican colleagues who took the pledge now agree with him. As CQPolitics reports, Tennessee Representative Zach Wamp and... more Posted on April 14, 2006 \| Comments (1)

	Top 10 GOP Sound Bites, Iran Plan Edition The tumultuous events of the past week have led to a complete shake-up of the Top 10 GOP Sound Bites. Rumored plans for military strikes against Iran, revelations regarding President Bush's authorization to leak classified national security information to target political foes and the resignation of Tom Delay have combined to send some newcomers up the rankings and drop some old favorites off the charts. Rocketing to number one is the thrash metal "Wild Speculation (Fantasy Land)" by George Bush... more Posted on April 13, 2006 \| Comments (4)

	Banana Republicans in Ohio Kenneth Blackwell, the Secretary of State and gubernatorial hopeful, has added his name to the long list of Ohio Republicans smote by the Avenging Angel. It was revealed that Blackwell, a central villain in voter suppression by the GOP during the 2004 election, bought stock in electronic voting machine vendor and GOP cash cow Diebold. Meanwhile, the man he's trying to displace, Robert Taft, may be disbarred for ethics violations involving CoinGate's Tom Noe. And Ohioans thought the Cuyahoga River... more Posted on April 12, 2006 \| Comments (0)

	Trailer Trash: Bush's Bogus Bio-Weapons Claims On May 29, 2003, President Bush proudly trumpeted the supposed discovery of mobile bio-weapons labs in Iraq, declaring, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction." As the Washington Post is now reporting, the President's claim was not only untrue, but the administration knew it was false at the time Bush uttered it. The Post piece is yet another devastating blow to the White House campaign to retroactively justify the invasion of Iraq. By May 27th, 2003, a team of... more Posted on April 11, 2006 \| Comments (4)

	The PlameGate Leak Resource Center As the scandal grows surrounding President Bush's leak of classified national security information to discredit administration critics, you can track all of the latest news, legal filings, statues, timelines and other key documents. Just visit: The Perrspectives PlameGate Scandal Resource Center.... more Posted on April 11, 2006 \| Comments (0)

	Perrspectives in the News With the revelations regarding President Bush's authorization to leak classified national security information and the resignation of Tom Delay, it's been a busy time in the liberal blogosphere. Increasingly, Perrspectives content is part of the coverage. Over at Air America Radio, the Randi Rhodes Show used the occasion of the Delay announcement to run in full my September piece about rampant GOP corruption, "Banana Republicans." The following day, her show also featured a link to the Perrspectives Plame/CIA Leak Scandal... more Posted on April 10, 2006 \| Comments (0)

	GOP Cornered by Bush Leak That President Bush authorized Scooter Libby to selectively leak portions of the highly classified October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate as part of a coordinated assault on Joseph Wilson and other debunkers of pre-war Iraq WMD claims should come as a surprise to no one. What is surprising is that at least one Republican has the courage and the honesty to acknowledge the hypocrisy and shamelessness of a President now revealed as "leaker-in-chief." Representative Ray Lahood, an Illinois Republican and staunch... more Posted on April 7, 2006 \| Comments (3)

	A Conversation with Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga Jerome Armstrong (founder of MyDD) and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (of DailyKos fame) are bringing their "Crashing the Gate" book tour to my home town of Portland. Their PDX itinerary on April 9th and 10th concludes with an event Monday evening to help Rob Brading unseat Oregon House Speaker Karen Minnis. Earlier this week, I had chance to catch up with Jerome and Markos in advance of their upcoming Portland trip. We discussed their book, the state of the Democratic Party... more Posted on April 5, 2006 \| Comments (4)

	Delay to Resign The Galveston County Daily News is reporting that Tom Delay will resign his seat this spring or summer. Coming just days after the guilty plea of his former aide Tony Rudy in the Abramoff affair, Delay has apparently decided not only to drop out of his reelection race, but to resign altogether. Delay cited troubling poll numbers as driving his decision. More likely, the collective weight of the Abramoff, Buckham, and TRMPAC scandals brought the Hammer down, so to speak.... more Posted on April 3, 2006 \| Comments (2)

	Condi Rice's Faux Apology Visiting England this week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice delivered a new twis on that staple of Bush administration communications, the faux apology. Speaking to an audience of British foreign policy wonks, Rice offered a seeming mea culpa for the situation in Iraq, "I know we've made tactical errors, thousands of them I'm sure." Any notion that Rice was breaking with the Bush doctrine of infallibility was extinguished with her very next sentence. "But when you look back in history,"... more Posted on April 1, 2006 \| Comments (1)