Read Free Republic. Learn Something. Who knew?

There is a media theme going around (may have originated with the Democrats, or maybe Republicans are just saying it originated there) that Democrats believe that 2006 will be for them what 1994 was for Republicans -- scandal fatigue will end the Republican domination of Congress.

While I don't usually troll on Free Republic, I caught this observation that I think the Democrats would be wise to consider:

The media quickly forgets that in 1994 the Repubs coalesced around the Contract For America, a plan, a real plan, while the dems did nothing and do nothing but attack, attack, attack.

Interesting theory. And worth asking -- what are the Democrats offering right now except criticisms and attacks? How about ignoring the obvious and talking about what an ethical Congress, undistracted by scandal, could be accomplishing right now?

Just a thought.

Can you smell it now? Good.

Innocent until proven guilty, yada yada. Tom DeLay's indictment is the big news of the moment, but it would be a mistake to get drawn into arguments about whether DeLay is the victim of a partisan prosecutor. The larger story here is the increasingly noxious stench of corruption among Republicans, which isn't just coming from Tom DeLay.

Salon gives a partial list, with a brief squib about each, but its list is short and selective. [link]. Here, as a public service, is a more comprehensive list of significant Republicans indicted or implicated in a scandal where indictments were issued, all since George W. Bush was selected president in 2000:

Chuck McGee: Former Executive Director, New Hampshire Republican Party. Pleaded guilty to hiring GOP phone-banking operation to jam the phones of the Democratic get-out-the-vote phone bank on Election Day 2002. Sentenced to seven months in jail, fined $2,000 and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service. Apparently lacks real remorse, based on his statement at sentencing: “I made a mistake and I'm prepared to pay for that mistake. I look forward to serving my sentence and [I’ll] be back 2006 when I'll help some more good republicans get elected to office and I appreciate the support of my family and friends." [link]

Allen Raymond: Headed the now-defunct company GOP Marketplace. This is the company hired by New Hampshire Republicans to jam Democratic get-out-the-vote phone banks. Pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to make harassing phone calls. Sentenced to five months in jail. [link]

James Tobin: Former New England Political Director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (headed by Majority Leader Bill Frist), and former 2004 campaign chairman for New England. Indicted in federal court on four felonies accusing him of conspiring with McGee and Raymond to jam Democratic and labor union get-out-the-vote phone banks in November 2002. In August 2005, numerous news outlets revealed that the Republican National Committee, despite announcing a “zero-tolerance policy” for officials found to engage in vote tampering, has paid at least $722,000 for Tobin’s legal defense. [RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman issued the following statement: “The position of the Republican National Committee is simple: We will not tolerate fraud; we will not tolerate intimidation; we will not tolerate suppression. No employee, associate or any person representing the Republican Party who engages in these kinds of acts will remain in that position,” [link]

Shaun Hansen: Former co-owner of a defunct telemarketing firm hired by Allen Raymond to jam Democratic phone banks doing get-out-the-vote calls. Indicted on April 4, 2005. [link]

Lawrence Novak: Former Vice-Chairman of the Massachusetts Republic Party. Arrested September 13, 2005. Allegedly offered to launder drug profits for client awaiting trial on federal trafficking charges. Resigned party position the same day after he was arrested. [link]

Ernie Fletcher: Governor of Kentucky. Democratic Attorney General Gregory Stumbo was conducting an investigation into allegations that the Fletcher administration illegally hired, fired, transferred, promoted and demoted civil service workers on the basis of their political affiliation. As a result of the investigation, a special grand jury indicted nine of Fletcher’s aides on 48 misdemeanor and 22 felony charges. In response, Fletcher summarily pardoned all nine, even before any trial or convictions. But the pardon Fletcher signed didn’t stop there: it also summarily pardoned "any and all persons who have committed, or may be accused of committing, any offense up to and including the date hereof, relating in any way to the current merit system investigation." In announcing the pardons, Fletcher compared the severity of misdemeanor and felony charges to “illegal fishing”. [link] [Note that Fletcher’s pardons may come back to haunt him – because the pardons remove the possibility that the pardoned officials could incriminate themselves, they could be compelled to testify against Fletcher in any investigation of the governor, and would not be able to invoke the Fifth Amendment.]

Darrell Brock: Chairman of the Kentucky GOP. Indicted for his role in the Kentucky merit promotion scandal, and then pardoned by Gov. Fletcher. Although Fletcher later suggested that the Kentucky GOP should dismiss Brock, the party ignored his request, and Brock was allowed to keep his post. [link]

George Ryan: Former Governor of Illinois. Currently on trial in U.S. District Court on charges that he fixed state contracts and real estate leases in exchange for favors, gifts and loans. The federal investigation that led to Ryan’s indictment has garnered 73 convictions, including Ryan's campaign organization. [link]

Scott Fawell: Aide to Gov. George Ryan. Pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and will likely testify against Ryan. [link]

Bob Taft: Governor of Ohio. Indicted on four criminal misdemeanor charges that he failed to report a series of golf outings, dinners and other gifts. Taft’s indictment is part of a larger investigation into ethics violations that has rocked the state Republican Party. [link]Pleaded no contest and was fined $4,000. [link]

Tom Noe: Ohio GOP official and Bush Pioneer. Currently under investigation for possible fraud in connection with mismanagement of rare-coin investment fund on behalf of the Ohio Bureau of Worker's Compensation between 1998 and 2004. Also investigated for making possibly illegal contributions to the Bush/Cheney campaign, and for laundering money into Republican campaigns. [link]

John Rowland: Former governor of Connecticut. Pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to steal honest service in connection with $107,000 worth of vacations, work on his cottage and free flights from state contractors and others. [link] Sentenced to one year in prison and four months house arrest. [link]

Edmund Matricardi: Former Republican Party of Virginia Executive Director. Pleaded guilty to one count of felony wire intercept for listening in on a conference call between Democratic legislators and Governor Warner in 2002. Sentenced to three years’ probation and ordered to pay $5,000 fine. [link]

Gary Russell Thomson: Former Chairman, Republican Party of Virginia. Pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor charge of aiding and abetting the unauthorized publication of a wire communication, and was sentenced to two years of supervised probation and a $2,000 fine. [link]

Two others are not what I'd call "significant" Republicans, but just two examples of how the corruption isn't just at the top of the party:

Adam Taff: Two-time Republican Congressional candidate from Kansas. Indicted on August 17, 2005 on charges of converting political campaign contributions for his personal use and wire fraud in a deal to buy a home. [link]

Todd Riffle: Former aide to Governor Christie Todd Whitman (R-NJ). Indicted for unlawfully obtaining and/or disclosing personal information from a motor vehicle record and false-swearing. obtained the driver history abstract of gubantorial primary candidate from the state and signed a document saying he was aware that the abstract contained personal information and could not be used for certain purposes. Supplied the information to the candidate’s opponent in the primary. [link]

There are others, but there's only so much room on my blog.

So here's my question: taken together, my own short list includes the Republican party chairmen and/or their deputies in four states, plus Republican governors in four states, and assorted party hacks, all indicted or close to it. Add in, from Salon's list, Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, "Duke" Cunningham, Bill Frist, David Safavian and possibly Scooter Libby and Karl Rove, and you just have to start shaking your head. So when are (1) the Mainstream Media (2) the Democratic Party and (3) Republican moderates all going to wake up and smell the corruption?

Now would be good...

Another Quick Hit

Liz, at Spectator Sport, refers to this post, but it deserves as much airtime as it gets, particularly for those of us whom life has blessed with good fortune. The post is a list of what it means to be poor, truly poor, and it lays it out in short unflinching sentences.

I have never been poor, and likely my family will never really know poverty, but that's all the more reason to read what it is to be poor, and try to understand it on a gut level, and then to do what we can to help. Here is the list. [link]

Quick Hit

Survey USA, a national polling outfit, has been tracking daily changes to President Bush's approval/disapproval rating for the federal government's Hurricane Katrina response. [link] The survey, which has been tracking since August 31, seems to show that the President got no bounce from his speech to the nation last Thursday.

Daily Kos gets the hat tip for pointing me to this [link], but I poked around on the Survey USA interactive poll results, and found some interesting points that Kos didn't cover. For example, it's not news that black respondents have generally given the President very low marks (18% approval among blacks vs. 40% among all groups; 77% disapproval for blacks vs. 56% among all groups). But what explains the results for Hispanic respondents? Starting at 53% on August 31, the President's approval rating among Hispanics pretty steadily declined to 28% by the end of Labor Day weekend, then rebounded to 37% before eroding to 20% by September 11. The next day they spiked to 31%, then plummetted down to 19% the following day. By last Thursday, the numbers spiked again to 50% (31 points in two days!) but have since dropped down to 33%. Not being a statistician, I don't have a good explanation, but found it interesting anyway.

Other factoids -- women give the President lower approval ratings than men; the approval ratings go up the older the respondent is; and the Northeast Region overall approves of the President's performance less than other parts of the country. None of these, by the way, seems particularly surprising to me -- especially the one about the Northeast being out of step (by at least 9-10%) with the rest of the country.

If You Can't Trust Stars and Stripes, Who Can You Trust?

So here's an interesting snippet. There was a Republican talking point that the media was to blame for the administration's slow response to Hurricane Katrina. According to Michael Chertoff, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Richard Myers, and recently, President Bush himself, news headlines on the Tuesday after Katrina battered the Gulf Coast misled the government, since the news was reporting that New Orleans had "dodged a bullet." The Wall Street Journal [link], Wonkette [link] and others have ably debunked this, but none that I have seen focused particularly on General Myers.

Here's what the General said, ably repeating the talking point:

The headline, of course, in most of the country's papers on Tuesday were "New Orleans dodged a bullet," or words to that effect. At that time, when those words were in our minds, we started working issues before we were asked...

[snip]

And we started that before the magnitude of this tragedy was even understood by anybody at any level. And so that movement was moving -- working.

The Newseum gives the lie to the General's statement, since it shows dozens of front pages for Tuesday, August 30, 2005, and not one of them says anything remotely like what he said. [link] One newspaper in particular struck me, however, considering that it's Stars and Stripes, the "Department of Defense-authorized daily newspaper." Turns out that the enterprising reporters at Stars and Stripes managed to get the story right, on Tuesday morning, no less. Question for General Myers: what part of "Devastation" and "Hurricane Katrina Ravages Gulf Coast" suggest, even remotely, that New Orleans "dodged a bullet"? [And if he couldn't be concerned about Katrina's civilian impact, is it at least safe to assume that he was advised that a military base had to close? Maybe that could have been a clue that no bullets had been dodged...?]

I don't mean to be a stickler, but if the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff can't read any other actual newspapers out there, is it too much to ask that he at least read the house organ?

It Just Doesn't Ring True

Yesterday's New York Times had an article about Michael D. Brown, entitled "Casualty of Firestorm: Outrage, Bush and FEMA Chief". [link] In it, Elizabeth Bumiller reports that

One moment of realization [with respect to Brown's potential political liability] occurred on Thursday of last week when an aide carried a news agency report from New Orleans into the Oval Office for him to see.

The report was about the evacuees at the convention center, some dying and some already dead. Mr. Bush had been briefed that morning by his homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, who was getting much of his information from Mr. Brown and was not aware of what was occurring there. The news account was the first that the president and his top advisers had heard not only of the conditions at the convention center but even that there were people there at all.

"He's not a screamer," a senior aide said of the president. But Mr. Bush, angry, directed the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., to find out what was going on.

So apparently, the President was "angry" that Brown had not informed his boss, Secretary Chertoff, of key conditions on the ground. Instead, he has to find out from the media about something that has huge human connotations, and therefore huge political connotations, at a time when the press is already excoriating him for being out of touch.

Let us assume for a moment that the events actually occured as described. How then, do you explain Mr. Bush going out of his way to praise Brown very publicly the next day? And why would the President not only praise him, but do so in a way -- using a folksy nickname, "Brownie" -- that had to have been calculated to signal to the world that Brown was a part of the inner circle of trusted Bush folk? There was no reason that he had to do so -- he could very easily have praised FEMA as an agency, or praised the "work that FEMA is doing", or just said nothing about FEMA whatsoever. Instead, he chose to praise Brown. Remember, this is someone responsible for making the President "angry" enough that he assigned his chief of staff -- surely, a very busy man -- to find out what was going on.

I'm sorry, but it just doesn't fit. Either Mr. Bush wasn't really angry on Thursday, and the Bumiller story is fiction, or else he really was angry, but propped Brown up for political reasons. But the latter explanation doesn't make sense, since it seems to be a huge political risk -- clearly, the man isn't doing his job, so why would the President tie his administration's fate to Brown's? Better to let Brown twist, then "reluctantly" fire him as a form of political damage control, right? (Even a moderatle astute Democrat could see that one.)

Since I give the GOP (and Mr. Bush's handlers) alot of credit for political savvy, I can only conclude that what happened was that the President actually wasn't angry on Thursday and genuinely praised Brown on Friday. It was the obliviousness of "My Pet Goat" played out in slow motion all over again. ("Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.")

Which is surely why there erupted a political firestorm that threatened to engulf the President. And like 9/11 all over again, the President's spin doctors are furiously trying to recast him after-the-fact as a take-charge kind of guy. He wasn't hopelessly out of touch, he was misinformed by his underlings (just like he wasn't running scared around the country on Air Force One on 9/11, there were credible threats against him). And as soon as he found out, didn't he assign Andy Card to the case (just like he wasn't out of touch, he was advising Vice President Cheney on shoot-to-kill orders)? Hence an anonymous source tips Bumiller that the President was "angry" at Brown's failure to alert Chertoff to something that millions of us saw live on TV; not surprisingly, Bumiller bites and then regurgitates it without even a logic check, let alone any analysis (the extent of her analysis is "If Mr. Bush was upset with Mr. Brown at that point, he did not show it").

Of course, the problem with the spin is that the dates don't work -- Brown's failures were evident before President Bush's first trip to the region, and so obviously, the President had to be angry before then or risk looking even more out of touch. But then there's that pesky "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" comment. Hardly what you'd expect from the Boss the day after he learned that the complimentee was grossly incompetant.

And Bumiller is in no mood to debunk the timeline, either. Tellingly, after mentioning the "Brownie" comment, her article quickly shifts from Mr. Bush's public embrace of Brownie to how Brownie got hired in the first place (where, conveniently, a Democrat can share in the blame, since Brownie's confirmation hearing, which Senator Joe Lieberman ran, lasted all of 42 minutes). Of course, that leaves unanswered why Mr. Bush, if he was so "angry", felt the need to embrace Brownie.

Any investigative reporters out there want to look into it?

The Price We Pay (as of September 8, 2005)

According to the Department of Defense, the total number of American military (and affiliated civilian) personnel killed in Iraq since March 2003 is 1,890. 7,549 have been wounded but were able to return to duty within 72 hours, and 6,813 have been wounded but could not return to duty within 72 hours.

In case you're wondering, August was a particular gruesome month in Iraq, with at least one soldier (and usually more) killed each day on 28 of the 31 days of the month (Death took a holiday on only three days last month -- August 17th, 19th and 24th). Each of the soldiers had a name, and most of their pictures have been posted at Military City.com. [link] Here are some of them:

Sergeant 1st Class Charles H. Warren, 36, of Duluth, Georgia. Sergeant Warren was married with two children, Jackson (age 2) and Madeline (age 2 months). His daughter was born while he was in Iraq. Warren worked as a pediatric intensive care nurse in Atlanta, and had served in the National Guard for 16 years. [link]

Army Specialist John Kulick , 35, of Harleysville, Pennsylvania. Specialist Kulick had a daughter, Amanda (age 9). Kulick was a firefighter and assistant fire marshal for Whitpain Township, outside Philadelphia, and had joined the National Guard in September 2003. [link]

Army Staff Sergeant Victoir Lieurance, 35, of Seymour, Tennessee. Staff Sergeant Lieurance was married with four children, ranging in age from 23 months to 12 years. Lieurance worked for the Postal Service. {link]

Army Staff Sergeant Asbury Hawn, 35, of Lebanon, Tennessee. Staff Sergeant Hawn was married with two children, ages 4 and 12. Hahn worked in a Nissan manufacturing plant, and had joined the National Guard after a four-year stint in the U.S. Army. [link]

They will be sorely missed.

[By the way, astute readers will notice that the four servicemen listed here are all in their mid-30s, with young children. This is no accident, since I intentionally selected men not unlike myself to get some perspective on who these people are. Those of you who are under the age of, say, 45, might want to look at the list and see if you see people not unlike yourselves.]

Let the Shilling Continue

Bill Hemmer on Fox was interviewing a doctor at a shelter in Louisiana just before 1:00 p.m. today. The doctor (a volunteer from Arkansas) is asked "what do you need?" The doctor starts listing the medications that they need, but while the doctor is listing medications that they're short on or have run out of, Hemmer cuts him off and says, "I'm sorry to interrupt, we're going to go now to video tape of the President at the shelter this morning."

It wasn't even live? They couldn't have let the damn doctor finish listing medication that people need to survive. They had to cut in to show a video tape of the President? What the hell is wrong with these people?

Once More into the Breach

Considering how instrumental Chief Justice Rehnquist was in installing Mr. Bush as President in the first place, it seems downright poetic that his death this evening may end up saving the Bush legacy by deflecting the pundits' attentions away from flatfooted federal disaster planning. Good for Fox News's Sunday morning shows; bad for the rest of us.

Bullshit.

President Bush said in an ABC interview with Diane Sawyer that "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." [link] This is the same President who proudly told Tim Russert that he doesn't read newspapers.

That's a shame, because if he had read the Times-Picayune a while back, he'd have seen that that exact scenario had been anticipated:

"Another scenario is that some part of the levee would fail," [Jospeh] Suhayda [a Louisiana State University engineer who is studying ways to limit hurricane damage in the New Orleans area] said. "It's not something that's expected. But erosion occurs, and as levees broke, the break will get wider and wider. The water will flow through the city and stop only when it reaches the next higher thing. The most continuous barrier is the south levee, along the river. That's 25 feet high, so you'll see the water pile up on the river levee." [link]

Actually, it's a shame that the President and FEMA Director Michael Brown didn't read the entire five-part series, since it was strikingly prescient. Turns out that a lot of things that actually came to pass were not only "anticipated", but spelled out explicitly. Here are some excerpts that could have been written this week:

Amid this maelstrom, the estimated 200,000 or more people left behind in an evacuation will be struggling to survive. Some will be housed at the Superdome, the designated shelter in New Orleans for people too sick or infirm to leave the city. Others will end up in last-minute emergency refuges that will offer minimal safety. But many will simply be on their own, in homes or looking for high ground.

Thousands will drown while trapped in homes or cars by rising water. Others will be washed away or crushed by debris. Survivors will end up trapped on roofs, in buildings or on high ground surrounded by water, with no means of escape and little food or fresh water, perhaps for several days.

...

Stranded survivors will have a dangerous wait even after the storm passes. Emergency officials worry that energized electrical wires could pose a threat of electrocution and that the floodwater could become contaminated with sewage and with toxic chemicals from industrial plants and backyard sheds. Gasoline, diesel fuel and oil leaking from underground storage tanks at service stations may also become a problem, corps officials say.

A variety of creatures -- rats, mice and nutria, poisonous snakes and alligators, fire ants, mosquitoes and abandoned cats and dogs -- will be searching for the same dry accommodations that people are using.

Contaminated food or water used for bathing, drinking and cooking could cause illnesses including salmonella, botulism, typhoid and hepatitis. Outbreaks of mosquito-borne dengue fever and encephalitis are likely, said Dr. James Diaz, director of the department of public health and preventive medicine at LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans.

...

New Orleans would face the future with most of its housing stock and historic structures destroyed. Hotels, office buildings and infrastructure would be heavily damaged. Tens of thousands of people would be dead and many survivors homeless and shellshocked. Rebuilding would be a formidable challenge even with a generous federal aid package.

...

A large population of low-income residents do not own cars and would have to depend on an untested emergency public transportation system to evacuate them.

...

"I don’t have a question about the fact that a lot of people are not going to leave, not just the 100,000 who don’t have private transportation," said Terry Tullier, acting director of New Orleans’ Office of Emergency Preparedness. "We think we’re going to do our people a terrible disservice if we don’t tell them the truth. And the truth is that when it happens, a lot of people are going to die."

Those who remain should not expect to find safe shelter, officials say. Few buildings in the area can withstand the forces of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. "We don’t have structures that can handle wind and water at those velocities and at that water height," Maestri said.

...

In an evacuation, buses would be dispatched along their regular routes throughout the city to pick up people and go to the Superdome, which would be used as a staging area. From there, people would be taken out of the city to shelters to the north.

Some experts familiar with the plans say they won’t work.

"That’s never going to happen because there’s not enough buses in the city," said Charley Ireland, who retired as deputy director of the New Orleans Office of Emergency Preparedness in 2000. "Between the RTA and the school buses, you’ve got maybe 500 buses, and they hold maybe 40 people each. It ain’t going to happen."

...

A similar plan in Monroe County, Fla. -- the Florida Keys -- failed during Georges when drivers opted out. "The problem is that we may have the buses but we don’t have the drivers," said Irene Toner, director of the county’s emergency management office. "In Hurricane Georges we had 25 people on our bus-driver list and only five showed up." [link to the series]

"I don't think anybody could have anticipated the breach in the levees"? Respectfully, Mr. President, that's bullshit. You just didn't want to listen.