George Bush sure knows how to pick 'em Here is the correct opinion on the ninnies and nitwits that George W. Bush has surrounded himself with, to help him with his task of wrecking the United States of America

Quick note ..... how many people from Bush's cabinet had to be recused in the ENRON mess?  How many has he stuck with, even when they were obviously stooges?

Karl Rove   Chief of Staff, leaker of Valerie Plame, political underhander, scumbag

November 2007: Utterly divorced from reality and still trying to spin all the evil bullshit he pulled, Karl Rove now says that it was CONGRESS that pushed the USA into the Iraq invasion too soon. WTF !!!! Does this evil f__k actually think anybody's going to believe that? 

August 2007: At long last, this evil asshole, whom even Laura Bush refers to as "evil," has quit. Karl Rove trotted out the old "I'm gonna spend more time with my family" routine. What, was he ignoring them before? Apparently he was, while he was busy f*cking up the country. And what about all the servicemen and women over in Iraq for no good reason, who would like to spend more time with THEIR families?

But what this dickless wonder did is run out on the disaster he helped create. This White House has seen so many resignations in the last year, as people scramble to NOT be there when the lights go out, that the staff was actually told, if you're going to leave, do it before Labor Day, or you're stuck. So Rove bolted. He created the mess that everybody there is fleeing, and he fled. INSTEAD OF CREATING A "PERMAMENT REPUBLICAN MAJORITY," he created a catastrophe that the GOP candidates are avoiding being attached to. Karl Rove is cutting and running. There's no other way to put it. Then he has the nerve to start picking on Hillary Clinton. What a pussy this guy is. His resignation wasn't a week old and he was again lying about not leaking Valeria Plame's name, prompting the magazine writer to whom he leaked it to say that Karl was full of shit, there on "Meet the Press."  Karl Rove helped usher in the worst presidency in the history of the United States. And then he cut and ran.

Karl Rover hasn't just been a political hachetman, creating attack ads and smearing good people. He's also pushed a lot of policy. He helped bring about the Medicare mess, the Iraq war. Supremely arrogant, and having screwed up by brashly injecting himself into processes rather than staying in the background, he has led Bush into a place in history where he will be remembered as a complete f_____g idiot. Rove has the blood of the hundreds and hundreds of American men and women who have died in Iraq, as well as the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have been killed as well.
 

March 2007: It's been revealed that Karl Rove, for some completely unexplained reason, had more to do with the firing of U.S. attorneys for political reasons that anyone else. And here's an UGLIER one .... Tim Griffin, a long-time Republican operative who worked for Rove in the White House, lobbied for months to replace the U.S. attorney in Little Rock. Harriet Miers, the unqualified boob who wanted to be a Supreme Court judge, was in on this plot. One of the things Griffin waved around as part of his credentials was a flattering letter written by Bud Cummins, the guy he wanted to replace. So Rove's friends are as scummy as Rove himself.

January 2007: The first defensive piece from Scooter Libby's trial is the assertion, backed up by subsequent witnesses and Cheney's own notes, that Libby was sacrificed in order to protect Rove. And so he was. In June 2007, he was given 2 1/2 years.

July 2006: Rove showed his complete stupidity in defending Bush's veto of stem cell research by saying that scientists prefer "adult stem cells" over embryonic cells in the lab. This is totally f***d.

January 2006: Rove speaks to the GOP "braintrust" and tells them that the way to win again in November 2006 is to stoke the fears of Americans. Sell them on FEAR. Make them scared of terrorists to get re-elected.

April 2006: Rove was FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY demoted. This incompetent asshole, who helped get the USA into Iraq, was finally pulled from day to day policy duties, and replaced with a KID. No kidding.

October 2005: Rove should have been indicted, or otherwise nailed, for his part in the outing of a CIA agent whose husband contradicted what Bush wanted everybody to think about Saddam Hussein's alleged afforts to buy uranium for making nuclear weapons.

September 2005: Rove at it again. He was personally in charge of the campaign to smear the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana, blaming them for everything that went wrong with the hurricane relief efforts, while it was Bush's boy at FEMA who got sent home for lying on his resume and doing a crappy job.
 

In 2002, the Bush administration back-stabbed one of their own. Former diplomat Joseph Wilson was sent to Niger to investigate whether Saddam Hussein had been trying to buy nuclear materials. Wilson found that he had not, and later poked holes in the administration's claims to the contrary. To retaliate, somebody in the Bush administration leaked the fact that Wilson's wife was a CIA operative, quickly ruining her ability to do her job. Idiot right-wing columnist Robert Novak printed her name, in fact. Rove insisted back in 2003 that he "wasn't involved" with this leak. In 2005, it appears that in fact he was, having spoken and emailed with a Time reporter. Rove says he didn't mention Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, "by name," but by identifying Wilson by name, and saying that the operative was Wilson's wife, he pretty much ID'd her. Scumbag!

Bush had said at the time of the leak that he would FIRE anybody who had leaked info. Well, now's the time to do it. Rove must go.

Back in the early 70's, as a GOP political operative sent to Illinois, he weaseled his way into a senator's campaign headquarters, stole a bunch of staionery, used it to print up fake invitations to a party at the headquarters, and handed them out to homeless guys, promising food and women. This tactic in fact worked, but the Democratic candidate won anyway. This is the kind of guy advising the president.
 

Bush pardoned this guy. WHY? Because Scooter was so obviously scared to death of jail that he likely would have talked. He was goign to jail for political shenanigans in the name of the Bush administration, then gout out of going to jail. Bush's guys pulled some illegal shit in Bush's name, and Bush got them all off the hook.

Scooter's bad enough a nickname, given to this gumball as a baby, but to keep that nickname all your life .... ouch. When GW Bush made the announcement that he was accepting the man's resignation, he even referred to him as "Scooter Libby." Unbelievable.

Libby reportedly told subordinates that he was going to "get" Joseph Wilson, in retaliation for Wilson's contradiction of intelligence claiming that Saddam Hussein tried buying uranium in Niger to make nuclear weapons. He lied to a grand jury about it, according to his indictment, and he faces jail time and massive fines. At the very least, it will be highly embarrassing for both Bush and Cheney, since Libby served (until forced to resign) as Cheney's chief of staff.

So much for integrity in the White House. This was supposed to be the administration that, as Bush put it in 2000, worried more about "what is right rather than what is legal."

February 2006: Scooter's grand jury testimony is partially released, and it indicates that he said that his superiors had authorized him to leak classified information. That would be CHENEY. 

FEMA

Michael Brown

September 2005: Amid all the confusion, red tape, and ridiculous recommendations coming out of FEMA, it's found that Mike Brown, praised only days before by a stupidly grinning Geroge W., had fudged his resume to a ridiculous degree. He had been appointed head of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) after serving as its lawyer. Previous to that, he'd been heading up a horse breeding association, that, no shit, ran into financial shenanigans. Perfect recruiting place for the GOP. Brown's previous emergency management experience had been a three-year stint  in the mid-seventies as assistant to the city manager of Edmond, Oklahoma, a town with fewer than 40,000 at the time. The position had "emergency oversight," but big whoop. Nobody reported to him, and the most positive thing his boss there recalls of him was that he always wore a suit, and sometimes wrote speeches for him.

Brown's confirmation hearing lasted less than an hour, and only four senators bothered showing up. No wonder he slipped through the cracks.

Brown's performance immediately after Hurricane Katrina was a disaster. At first, he told a TV reporter that FEMA hadn't responded faster because they hadn't been asked. He also admitted he was unaware that there were people stranded at the New Orleans convention center, momre than a day after those same people had been all over the f____g news.

The eternal idiot George W. went on TV, with Brown at his side, and said "Brownie, you're doin' a heckuva job." But, W., he really wasn't.

But a whole MESS of FEMA guys were appointed to the body because they'd worked on Bush's campaigns, which is what Bush calls "qualifications." Brown's own boss, the equally talent-free head of Homeland Security, personally took him off hurricane relief work on the Gulf Coast, at an embarrassing press conference at which Brown did no speaking.

A day later, Brown fell on his own sword and resigned. Apparently, he did this two weeks too late.

For the full story on all the idiots involved with the hurricanes, check this out.
 

Brown's replacement took the job after it was turned down by seven other people. This guy was well-known previously for having told the American people that they could protect themselves from a chemical attack by using duct tape and plastic sheeting.
 

Colin Powell.......

.......was a no-brainer as Secretary of State. Wonderful choice.  But y'know what?  He'd have made the better presidential candidate.  But they had him jetting around trying to make peace in the Mideast, and keep him too, too quiet.  He was the only smart one around.  When speaking to a young crowd in March 2002, he supported the use of condoms to cut down on disease and unwanted pregnancies.  The administration quickly distanced itself from those remarks, since they clash with the conservative agenda, even though they MAKE A LOT OF SENSE.  In April 2002, when Powell was the only one making sense of Mideast policy, the administration, including GW and Rumsfeld, screwed up by undercutting Powell, creating rumors that Powell might leave the cabinet.  September 2002, Powell once again broke with the administration with regard to Israel. 
         When they had to make the case for the Iraq war, the administration sent the only guy with any credibility to make ths case before the UN: Powell.  And there they made Powell piss away his credibility, citing Weapons of Mass Destruction that, as it turns out, didn't exist, which is exactly what the inspectors had already concluded. September 2005, and Powell says his appearance at the U.N., presenting the administration's flimsy evidence, as the low point of his career.
          Powell left when it became apparent to the entire world that he was the only guy in the cabinet who didn't blindly go along with the right-wing, partisan agenda.

September 2005: Powell joins the chorus ripping on the hurricane relief effort, at every level of the government.

Condoleeza Rice....... the security advisor who oversaw the biggest security lapse ever

Hey, we're so excited here at Correct Opinions that Condi Rice might run for president that we finally gave her her own page. Check it out.

All pertinent opinions from this page have been moved to that one. The management apologizes for the inconvenience, and urges you to get off your lazy ass and click the above link.
 

Donald "Sound Bite" Rumsfeld
 

Inside the clever head of Donald ("stuff happens") Rumsfeld ... wags a tongue that may on its own be responsible for having needlessly alienated more former friends of hte United States than any other instrument since the invention of the B-52 bomber.
                                                     -- The Economist
 

November 2007: New info on Rumsfeld's notorious "snowflakes," that endless avalanche of memos he sent to his staff, indicate how he acted along with Bush and Cheney to scare the hell out of the public in order to bolster support for the war.

October 2007: Rumsfeld was appointed as a "distinguished visiting fellow" at the Hoover Institution, a think tank located on the Stanford campus. There were plenty of protests by students AND faculty. One English professor describeded the appointment as "sad, ridiculous and contemptible."

Bush really did a number with Rumsfeld's departure. He got a bunch of GOP cronies to give Rummy a vote of confidence, then right after the 2006 mid-term elections, the dumbshit was gone, pissing off all those guys who kinked up their credibility by doing Bush's dirty work in standing up for arguably the worst defense secretary ever. 

Democrats who captured Congress in November 2006 were gonna make hamburger out of this boob ANYWAY, so it made sense. This still won't keep the Dems from shredding Bush on the Iraq disaster, much of which is Rumsfeld's fault, but it's a start. Rumsfeld has chronicallyl solicited opinions and followed none of them, ignored advice, ignored the results of a 1999 war game that predicted the very outcome the USA now sees in Iraq, ignored fervent pleas to keep the Iraqi army and police in place after the invasion, and treated highly respected military honchos like shit. He was a bozo BEFORE Iraq, and even worse AFTER. Because of Rumsfeld's idiotic policies, American men and women have died needlessly. Good riddance to this arrogant, incompetent asshole. In his farewell address, 8 Dec 06, Rumsfeld got a better going-away ceremony than General Shinseki, who got treated like shit after being forced out for the crime of saying it would take more troops than Rumsfeld was lining up to take and hold Iraq. And WHO turned out to be right?
 

Holy crap, Don is a complete boob

October 2006: According to the new Bob Woodward book, and confirmed by taped interviews, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card wanted Rumsfeld fired for his many missteps.  The big honchos in the military believed he was an idiot with no credibility whatsoever. So what did Bush do to correct the situation? Nothing.
 

September 2006: Major General John R.S. Batiste testifed on Capitol Hill that "Secretary Rumsfeld ignored 12 years of U.S. Central Command deliberate planning and strategy, dismissed honest dissent, and browbeat subordinates to build 'his plan'...[he] refused to acknowledge and even ignored the potential for the insurgency...Rumsfeld's dismal strategic decisions resulted in the unnecessary deaths of American servicemen and women, our allies, and the good people of Iraq."
 
 

Spring 2006: Six high-raking, retired general, including three who served under him in Iraq, declared that Rumsfeld should resign or be fired, IMMEDIATELY. These guys, who ought to know better than anybody else, said that Rumsfeld did not adequately plan for occupying Iraq, made wrong decisions at every turn, did not take the best interests of the troops in mind, and screwed up literally every single aspect of the Iraqi invasion. The ONLY people defending Rumsfeld are people who still work for Bush, and who still sweat their jobs. IN FACT, one of the chief complaints about Rumsfeld is that he threatens the job of anyone who disagrees with him.

MANY, MANY, MANY authorities and sources, including many major USA newspapers, the London Financial Times, papers in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and all throughout Europe, all said that either Rumsfeld should resign or be fired.  The Financial Times went so far as to say that if Bush didn't do the very obvious and relive Rumsfeld, then Bush himself didn't deserve another four years. 

BUSH, of course, didn't fire Rumsfeld. It took the changing of t he majority, and the fear of the inevitable, to make Rumsfeld disappear.
 

EVEN BEFORE THE IRAQ WAR, RUMSFELD WAS A SCREWUP AS DEFENSE SECRETARY:

The Defense Secretary claims that rogue, suicidal nations insane enough to launch missiles at the USA and risk annihilation would hesitate to launch those missiles if they thought there was a miniscule chance those missiles wouldn't make it, by virtue of an ABM system that will never fully function.  That's sheer genius.  This knucklehead also completely folded before a Senate committee wanting to know the substance of a military review that the administration was supposedly conducting but about which it's incapable of producing any information. 

       If not for his clever little quips during press briefings for the Afghan war, he'd still be considered a guy who doesn't know what the hell he's doing half the time. 

Here's how dumb this one gets : Rumsfeld  tried to rationalize the ABM system.  He said that it doesn't matter if it can actually work or not; rogue nations will think twice about launching a missile, because of the possibility that it might not make it here.  Okay, wait.  Some nutty dictator someplace, who just has to know that the penalty for launching a missile at the USA is instant vaporization, who would risk his whole country for a missile strike that couldn't possibly incapacitate us, would hesitate to send one over because it might not make it?  WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SMOKING, DON? Our own missiles, which would obliterate them, won't deter them, but a defense shield which won't work WILL deter them?

June 2001: Rumsfeld appears before a senate committee to explain the "review" the administration is conducting of the military, before it will recommend any of the massive increases it promised during the campaign.  No details of this "review" have ever been forthcoming, except, as the senators say, "by hearsay or speculation."  Rumsfeld invokes the phrase "I don't know" something like ten thousand times.  The headline in the Chicago Tribune reads  Rumsfeld's "I don't Know's" irk senators.  He had no answers, only a lying weasel for a boss.  And he still has no defense for the new ABM system they want. Then in May 2005, Rumsfeld decided to keep secret information used in deciding which military bases to close, even though it affects hundreds of thousands of jobs. Rumsfeld somehow thinks that everything he does is classified.

July 2001:  The missile defense test was a joke.  They knew when the missile would be launched and from where, they knew there would be a decoy, they pretty much everything when they launched the interceptor.  And still everything didn't go right.  One of the radar systems failed to engage.  Over 100 million for this test.

March 2002:   The Deputy Secretary of the Army, also heading up the Army Corps of Engineers, criticized the administration's intention to severely cut the Corps' budget, throwing 4500 people out of work and killing off projects which had already been committed to.  He was quickly fired. 
 
 

THEN CAME THE BOTCHED IRAQI PLANNING

November 2001:   Rumsfeld in a way has lucked out that there's a war on.  He temporarily salvaged his reputation with tough talk.  But it's terribly easy to do.  We have an obvious enemy, we have a tough-talking war minister, if you will.  If not for the mess in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld would have been remembered as a clueless puppet of a clueless administration.

March 2003:   General Shinseki testified before the Senate that it would take "hundreds of thousands" of troops to hold Iraq once it was defeated was countered, and his career was effectively ended, by Paul Wolfowitz.  Who turned out to be right?
 
 
 

REMEMBER THE PRISON SCANDAL?

May 2004:   Rumsfeld claims that the Iraqi prison abuses weren't necessarily against Geneva Conventions.  He said the Geneva accords are "subject to interpretation."  Uh, no, they're not.  All international parties pretty much agree we screwed up.

November 2005:   Standing next to one of his generals, Rumsfeld repeatedly said that soldiers who witness inhuman treatment of prisoners shouldn't stop it, only report it. The general repeatedly corrected him, saying, "No, sir, they have an obligation to stop it."

 
January 2006:   A number of reports, including coming out of the Pentagon, said that the entire U.S. military is stretched too thin. After the release of these reports, Rumsfeld said, "Anyone with an ounce of sense can see that it's the exact opposite." One day after Rumsfeld said this, General Casey, in charge of all multinational forces in Iraq, repeated that they were "stretched too thin."
 

It's plain to everyone that the abuses that have taken place in the Iraqi prisons run by our soldiers were ordered by somebody other than the dunderheads who actually carried out those abuses.  Already the evidence in various photographs points to military intelligence officers.  When asked if these abuses violated the Geneva Convention, Rumsfeld said that these rules are "open to interpretation."  NO, you dolt, they're not.  These are clear violations.  I can't believe they let him SAY THAT IN PUBLIC.  Then on May 15, 2004, the New Yorker magazine reported that Rumsfeld had actually personally APPROVED the nasty interrogations.

---


Paul Wolfowitz   Vindictive & crazed neocon, & lousy banker  Updated April 2007
 

This piece of shit was the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and the biggest hawk in the administration with regard to going after Iraq. Wolfowitz had it in his head, as did Bush and others, to invade Iraq long before 9/11. With absolutely no evidence linking Hussein and 9/11, and in fact with evidence indicating that Hussein specifically kept Al Qaeda OUT of Iraq, Wolfowitz led the other evil neocons in presenting Bush with a detailed invasion plan just ten days after 9/11. When army chief of staff Eric Shinseki said it would take hundreds of thousands of troops to maintain order in Iraq after a war, Wolfowitz pronounced him out of line and forced him out, humiliating him in the process.

Wolfowitz screwed up Iraq, then screwed up the World Bank .

Wolfowitz was also the first person to put forth the RIDICULOUS assertion that Iraqi oil would pay the costs of any war. Oh sure, invade another country, seize its assets, and sell them to pay for the invasion. Never going to happen. The world would call the USA either a thief or an extortionist.

Wolfowitz testified before the invasion that Iraq had no history of sectarian strife. In other words, he utterly ignored the example of Yugoslavia, where the different ethnic groups all hated each other, but were suppressed by an evil dictator. Once that guy (Marshall Tito)  was gone, everybody started shooting at each other. 

After thoroughly mucking up anything he had to do with the war, Wolfowitz was a liability, and so as usually happens in the Bush administration, if you screw up, you get promoted. Wolfowitz was made head of the World Bank. The mind boggles. An astounding thing about Wolfie's bio at the World Bank is that it mentions his role in the first Gulf War, but doesn't bother mentioning his odious part in the Iraqi invasion. The guy Clinton appointed to run the Bank had years of experience in, whaddaya know, banking. Wolfowitz had NONE. And what does Wolfowitz DO at the World Bank? Help finance projects in Third World countries that those countries can't afford to maintain after they're built. Who makes the money on the construction? Most often, it's the usual gang of crooks at Halliburton, Bechtel, and other well-connected GOP donors. His decision-making was so poor that the UK, a staunch U.S. ally, demanded he be removed from sole lending decisions.

Feb 2007, Wolfowitz showed up at some mosque, and displayed socks full of holes. He was sent many pairs of socks from sarcastic Muslims. This is a guy making $391K displaying his stupidity on behalf of the USA. But his tenure at the World Bank got even worse. He alienated most of the staff. At the same time bank employees in the Middle East were being told that promotions and raises were out of the question, Wolfowitz got his girlfriend there a gargantuan raise and a promotion that were way out of bounds. His personal press secretary was making a quarter-million, something a bank VP might make after a quarter-century in the business. In April 2007, it all came out, and Wolfowitz was being hounded to resign by bank directors, bank employees, and lendor nations. The European Parliament demanded he step down. EVERYBODY in the bank demanded he step down. But in typical arrogant fashion, typical for a Bushie, he refused. He finally had to cave, when the White House got wimpy on him.

Wolfowitz is pussy-whipped, saying that his girlfriend's "intractable position" caused him to get her a salary increase to avoid a lawsuit; then she dumped him anyway when it was all over. Poor guy.
 


Doug Feith, who used to be right behind Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, was another dickhead in charge of the invasion policy. General Tommy Franks once called Feith "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth." Feith was the guy who originated the policy of using mass weapons as the excuse for going after Iraq. In other words, we know what we want to do, now we have to figure out what we'll tell our citizens. The reasons came AFTER the decision, instead of vice versa. February 2007, a report by the Pentagon inspector general says that Feith specifically shaped the intelligence before the war, and manufactured a link between 9/11 and Iraq. Feith, Cheney, and Wolfowitz helped dummy up the data to make the bogus case for war.
 

Dick Cheney...... "vice-president for torture" and "a nefarious bastard"
 

.....himself was a crappy choice.  Not exactly a huggable kinda guy, he's full of dubious plumbing, and even had a heart attack during the recounts. The story is that one of the reasons he was completely invisible after 9/11 is that he had to be carried to the bunker, having had another heart attack.  June 2001: Cheney announced he was having a pacemaker installed.

January 2007: Cheney calls the idea that blunders in Iraq had hurt the administration's credibility "hogwash." So let's get this straight. Cheney doesn't think that all the f___kups in Iraq have hurt Bush's crediblity? So this fathead doesn't read newspapers? Cheney also said that Don Rumsfeld had done "a superb job." Cheney is guilty of what former gay hooker turned White House journalist Jeff Guckert would call being "divorced from reality."

October 2006: Because his party is getting its ass kicked over how poorly it has run the economy, the war, the border, and everything else, ON TOP OF the Foley scandal, he's only got one weapon left: scare the piss out of the public. He predicts "mass death in the United States" if Democrats take control of Congress. All he's got in his pocket is fear-mongering. Bottom of the barrel, pacemaker-boy.
 

      January 2002: Turns out Cheney met six times with Enron honchos regarding the country's lousy energy plan.  So while Cheney was hiding out during the war on terrorism, he wasn't available to talk about what influence Enron might have had on the cabinet, while Enron itself melted down under bankruptcy and scandal. 
       A couple of years back, Cheney, whose daughter is openly gay, said that we don't need any federal legislation regarding how people live their lives, and folks should be free to engage in whatever relationship they want.  But in winter 2004, he supported the president in a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. 
      His daugher, by the way, traded in on her celebrite and homosexuality to help Coors sell beer through gay bars.  And then she stabbed her friends in the back, supporting her dad in supporting the president.  Check out DearMary.com, which tried to convince her to not be such a goddamn hypocrite. 

Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff, said that Cheney and Rumsfeld kept Bush completely insulated, so that Bush was disconnected from post-war planning. He says that Cheney must have truly believed that Iraq was hosting terrorists, "otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot, or a nefarious bastard."

February 2006, Cheney shoots a companion during a quail hunt. Okay, it was an accident, but a stupid one. The guy with the gun is always the one with the burden of not shooting his buddies. But he didn't bother notifying anybody, and made a small thing into a big thing. If nothing else, he should have recognized the political problems it would create. It reinforces the notion that he's a crafty, secretive old scumbag. Eevn former supporters have hinted that he should go, since he's now more of a political burden than a practical resource for the president. 

This wasn't the first sleazy hunting trip Cheney's taken. He went duck hunting with Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, right before Scalia was to hear a case involving Cheney's super-secret oil policy, which was crafted along with oil company executives. The hunting trip was hosted by, of course, an oil company executive.
 

Dick Cheney says he's offended by Amnesty International's claim that the USA is a human rights violator. But the fact is, we ARE. We have in fact tortured five Iraqis to DEATH (the ones that we know of), and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal is just one of many terrible stories. The stories coming out of Guantanamo Bay for two years have also been horrendous. Cheney and the rest of the administration hasn't thought much about the Geneva Convention, so it's not surprising that Cheney can't see what the hell Amnesty International is talking about. Remember, this is an administration that made an Attorney General out of a guy whose office generated a memo saying that as long as it doesn't cause death, it's not torture, even if it's painful, even if it simulates drowning (they call it water-boarding, in which a guy who's tied to a table is turned upside down into a pool of water). We're the land of the free, we're supposed to set a higher standard for the rest of the world to follow. Bush says it, Reagan said it, but to this administration, those are just words, not guidelines.

When John McCain tried to pass legislation that would ban the use of torture, Cheney tried various ways to circumvent this. He even said that there should be an exemption for the CIA. He was labeled by one prominent figure as the "vice-president for torture."
 

Cheney was asked in 1992 why the US military only kicked the Iraqi army out of Kuwait and didn't bother taking our Saddam Hussein. His reply? "Once we had rounded him up and gotten rid of his government, then the question is what do you put in its place. You know, you then have accepted the responsibillity for governing Iraq. How many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is, not very damn many."
 

Somehow, Cheney, who hates conservation and loves big energy and oil outfits, managed to run up an electric bill at the vice-presidential residence of $136,000.  Since the building is technically owned by the Navy, Cheney wanted the Navy to foot the bill.  Recently, Cheney said "You can leave your lights on all night long, but you'll have to pay for it."  In this case, the taxpayers get to pay for it.  $136,000 ????  Is he plugging his pace-maker in at night? 

Even after leaving Halliburton, Cheney has continued getting money from them, with the appearance of total impropriety.  And what do you know, Halliburton got a no-bid, no-ceiling contract to provide services, gasoline, oil products, cafeteria services, you name it, in Iraq.  The rationale behind this was that Halliburton, to the exclusion of all the other companies available, was "uniquely qualified" to provide all this crap.  And what else do you know, they were quickly found to be vastly overcharging taxpayers for the oil products they provided, and they ended up (after initial denials of wrongdoing) reimbursing the government over $11 million. 

In June 2007, it was revealed that Cheney blocked a promomtion for a DOJ official who opposed the pressure on John Ashcroft, who was extremely ill in the hospital at the time, to authorize an illegal wiretapping scheme.

Miscellaneous morons who work for Bush
 

The fox watches the hens. Nancy Nord, the acting head ofthe Consumer Product Safety Commission, has turned down budget for more people (aka inspectors) right in the middle of a mess with endless recalls of dangerous imports from China. One can only guess why she would do this. She's all over the news in November 2007, with Dems and Republicans alike calling for her resignation. Like so many of Bush's appointees, she's a former insider in the manufacturing arena, and is far too cozy with them to be regulating them. She and her staff have taken dozens of trips to some really nice places, on the dime of lobbyists and other industry bigwigs. She started reviewing the travel policy, of course, once the media got hold of this info.
 

All the guys who hate women. Eric Keroack, Bush's choice to run Health and Human Services Population Affairs, says that women whohave sex outside marriage can't handle lasting relationships because they use up a particular hormone with all that hanky-panky. NO SHIT. He also calls premarital sex "germ warfare." He's an abstinence-only guy, despite the mounds of studies that show that abstinence education DOESN'T WORK. Alma Golden, Bush's family planning czar, opposes contraception and sex education. As former gay hooker-turned-phony-journalist Jeff Guckert would say, these people are divorced from reality.

Political hacks. Sam Fox, a St. Louis businessman who's always given loads of dough to the GOP, was nominated as ambassador to Belgium. He also once gave $50,000 to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a poorly-named GOP attack group that lied like hell about John Kerry's war record in a 2004 smear campaign. Fox said under questioning in the Senate that he didn't like these kinds of groups, and that he gave to it unknowingly, and that he only gave to those kinds of groups because the other side "was doing the same thing." So, as John Kerry put it, "two wrongs make a right." And what do you want to be that this guy, like so many of Bush's appointees, won't speak the language? March 2007, Bush withdrew the nomination. One of Fox's backers lamented that Fox was the victim of "a political vendetta," conveniently forgetting that his crime was FINANCING a political vendetta.

Charles Stimson, the Pentagon point man on policies for detainees, was DUMB enough to say on a radio interview that lawyers who defend suspects in Guantanamo should not be given any business by U.S. corporations. He even listed a dozen law firms that he thought American companies should avoid, because of their work for terror suspects. In February 2007, after his commetns were refuted by just about everybody, including the Defense Department, he resigned.

Chief of Staff Andrew Card. He was the guy who had to fall on his sword. GOP supporters had been urging Bush to shake up the cabinet. Bush said no, he was happy with the people he had. Then days later, Card resigned. This guy did nothing to protect his boss from mistake after mistake, obviously nothing to get him to fire the morons working for him, and couldn't avoid the Dubain ports mess.
 

The Secretary of the Army,  another guy who used to work at Enron and who benefited mysteriously from Enron stock while the rank and file were getting pummeled, decided to go around Rumsfeld and lobby for an expensive clunker of a weapons system, the 70-ton Crusader artillery unit which can't be moved to a battlefield very easily.  By screwing over his boss and pushing a DOA project, he's spotlighted himself as the Enron thing heats up.  Not smart.  And why are there so many oil industry types crawling around this administration? 
 

Bush's Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton, immediately made a great impression by announcing her desire to drill for oil in Alaska.  She was pretty much like James Watt, only with a lower profile. By the time she resigned in March 2006, she'd become a lightning rod for criticism, even without her own department. Her employees called the Western U.S. the "OPEC states," because of the pressure they were under from Norton (a former lawyer for mining timber, and oil companies, in yet another massive conflict of interest by the Bushies) to approve oil and gas permits. Norton worked hard to open up public lands for drilling, digging, pumping, and cutting. In her first three years on the job, she approved drilling permits in record numbers, increasing them over 70 percent since the Clinton administration. She also got caught up in the Jack Abramoff mess, like everybody else in the current GOP-controlled gummint.
 

Bush's Domestic Policy Advisor, Claude Allen, was arrested in March 2006 for a refund scam he perpetrated at Targets and other stores. He was pulling down $161,000 in his White House job, still committed petty thefts.
 

Another damned recess appointment: Julie Myers had been nominated as the USA’s top immigration official. But then she was told to her face by Senator George Voinovich that she was unqualified, which in fact she was. BUT ….. she’s married to the chief of staff for Homeland Security chief Chertoff, and is the niece of former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Richard Myers. So Bush plugged her in while Congress was out having a smoke.

Bush’s acting FDA chief can’t get approved for the full-time job because of accusations of personal impropriety, and his views on contraception. Remember, screw this health stuff, Bush’s religious base thinks contraception, even in an overcrowded world, is sinful.
 

Clueless ambassador: Bush named Karen Hughes, an old Texas crony, as his ambassador to the Arab world. She speaks no Arabic, and has no background whatsoever in the region. At her first stop, in Saudi Arabia, she  starts talking about freedoms for women, and is roundly ripped on by, hey, a roomful of Saudi women, who tell her she has no idea what she's  talking about. At another stop, she justifies the war in Iraq by saying that Saddam Hussein "gassed hundreds of thousands of his own people." The  audience quickly pointed out that Hussein has been accused of gassing 5000 people. Oops. 
 
 

Rod Paige, education. The No Child Left Behind Act was modeled after the work this clown did in Houston.  Subsequently, the Houston school districts have been found to be the worst cheaters when it comes to social promotions, not tracking their huge number of dropouts, and keeping kids back so they don't flunk the tests on which the districts are rated.  When the NEA disagreed with the No Child law, Rod Paige called the group "a terrorist organization."  He called our teachers TERRORISTS because they don't like a very unpopular law that many states are now challenging. 
 

MANUFACTURING / JOBS.  March 2004, Bush named a Manufacturing Czar, to oversee the creation of  jobs in the manufacturing sector.  Turns out the guy had downsized his own manufacturing outfit, and sent the jobs to CHINA.  Oops.  He was gone quickly. 
 

Christine Whitman, one of the worst public speakers ever and former head of the EPA, kept getting caught flat-footed when Bush announced new proposals that he doesn't bother sharing with her in the first place.  She went along with Bush's immediate post-campaign assaults on the environment.  June 2001: an environmental group, backed by several Congressmen, is suing the EPA for its failure to implement new standards on arsenic content in drinking water.   She can't read off a teleprompter to save her life, but somehow she's qualified to lead the EPA?   A couple of years ago, she gave one of the worst keynote speeches ever heard.  Wooden, untalented, and not well-loved amongst conservatives. 
     March 2002 :Whitman was dumb enough to say, in public, that companies which had been ordered to fork over fines and start cleaning up their polluted discharges should instead put off settling with government regulators pending appeals of other lawsuits. In other words, don't comply with government orders to clean up their messes.  A deputy chief of the EPA, in quitting over his perception that the administration has no interest whatsoever in any pullution standards which threaten Big Industry, cited Whitman's idiotic remarks as examples of why he quit. 
    Spring 2002 :Whitman was questioned about an administration-commissioned report on global warming, a report which contradicted the administration's stance on it, basically by saying that global warming was bad.   Since they couldn't sit on a report they had commissioned and paid for, they put it out, by burying it deep on the EPA's web site.  When asked about it, Whitman claimed she knew nothing about it at all. 
      Whitman eventually quit, and was replaced by yet another rubber-stamper. 
 

The original nominee for Labor Secretary, Linda Chavez, a former Reagan aide,  is roundly despised by the AFL-CIO, and they've come right out and said that.  Chavez also used to keep illegal immigrants at her home.  She dropped out of the process, saying the accusations that she's personally skirted labor and immigration laws are "distracting."  HERE'S SOMETHING ELSE VERY DIRTY ABOUT CHAVEZ : She's been a syndicated newspaper columnist for some time, appearing with her opinions on Gore and Bush on editorial pages of major newspapers all through the campaign, and never once disclosed to the editors of those papers that she was an unpaid advisor to Bush.  So she was in a unique position to influence people's thinking, with the aura of a columnist, and people in newspapers are supposed to be somewhat neutral, and here she was just a shill for Bush all along. Many editors have come out and said they would never have carried her column had they known.  At the very least, it should have appeared at the bottom of each column what she was up to, so people know to take her opinions with a grain of salt.  She may very well have shot a hole in her career, and rightfully so. 
 

Agriculture:  The nominee here once raised eyebrows by suggesting that farming areas that are NOT ethnically diverse are more productive.  Oops. In other words, black folks can't farm well. Double-oops.
 
 
 

Bush's Attorney-Generals, defending the right of the government 
               to f____k with the rights of its citizens
 

Many weeks after Alberto Gonzalez FINALLY got his lying, idiotic ass out of office, Bush finally nominated a new guy. The guy he settled on in October 2007 was retired judge Michael Mukasey. He seems affable enough, and even the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee were charmed. Looked like a shoo-in. And THEN the killer question came up that partially screwed Gonzalez: did Mukasey consider the practice of waterboarding torture? Quick reminder, waterboarding consists of strapping a guy down, putting a towel over his face, and pouring water over him until he feels like he's drowning. It led at least one major Al Qaeda guy to lie his ass off, as the Israelis have said torture victims will do, and provide all sorts of wrong info on the Daniel Pearl case. Mukasey answered that while he found waterboarding "personally repugnant," he couldn't define it as torture. He fell back on Rudy Giuliani's lame line about "it depends on who's doing it."  Really? If your own mom did it to you, wouldn't you still be suffocating? Mukasey managed to alienate all the Dems on the committee. Bush went into nutty rant mode, hinting that a failure to ratify Mukasey "in a time of war" would pretty much lead to everybody's death.
 

Bush's second Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez, finally split!!!!!  Why it took so long is anybody's guess. Bush will stick with somebody or something until long past their expiration date.

Weeks after he split, they were still finding more dirt on how the JD was run as a political rather than a law enforcement body. Gonzalez had completely f___d up the place.

Gonzalez came in under a cloud to start with. He had written a memo that essentially gave blessing to the use of torture in Iraq. When he was still just the idiot White House counsel, he tried to bypass the acting AG, who did not support new surveillance policies, and visited John Ashcroft in the hospital, where he was suffering with pancreatitis. Gonzalez hit up a very ill Ashcroft to get him to sign off. Ashcroft, to his credit (for once) refused to go along, and forced Gonzalez and Bush to change the policy to make it LEGAL. Gonzalez tried to make a very sick man break the law he was sworn to uphold. Yeah, this is the guy we want watching our freedoms.

Give Gonzalez credit, tho', for calling Texas judge Priscilla Owen, a virulent protector of corporate rights over those of individuals, the worst sort of activist judge. He obviously didn't like her, while they were colleagues in Texas. So what did Bush do? Nominate Owen for the federal court.

Cheney himself blocked a promotion for a DOJ official who tried to prevent then-counsel Albert Gonzalez from strong-arming John Ashcroft in the hospital to sign off on an obviously-illegal wiretapping scheme. The deputy AG at the time eventually resigned because of the Administration's chronic illegal bullshit.

Gonzalez filled his ranks with junior lawyers, 150 of them from a Grade D religious law school (run by Pat Robertson). Holy shit! He even gave two of these underqualified wingnuts the power to hire and fire in his name. This includes Monica Goodling, who hypocritically enough pulled the Fifth Amendment out before she was even called to testify in front of Congress. More than half og Goodling's graduating class failed the bar on the first try. In Congressional testimony, only secured after Goodling was given immunity, she contradicted the deputy AG, who subsequently said Goodling had things wrong. As is so typical in a Bush administration, the rats all stab each other in the back when thigns get rough. 

N.B.  .... Under Clinton, to keep the DOJ clean, only four White House officials (including Clinton) were allowed to speak with three DOJ staffers about pending cases. Under Bush, over 400 White House staff members could speak with 30 DOJ staff. Wide open.

June 2007: Several Hispanic groups that once vigorously supported Gonzalez, because he was the highest-ranking Latino ever in a presidential cabinet, now openly dump on him or won't speak of him any longer. Gonzalez even sat on the board of one of those groups that now says he's worthless. One group said he had been "a follower, not a leader," and others decried the fact that he had not vigorously pursued hate crimes against Latinos. Still others have pointed out that Latinos were aced out from elections because of GOP-sponsored voter fraud that was perpetrated by Bush supporters (and engineered by Karl Rove). 

GW Bush got so shook up over the very strong reaction by both Dems and the GOP to the unexplained dismissals of a bunch of  federal prosecutors, that he's agreed to sign proposed legislation on how they are appointed. It seems that various Republican congressmen called on these prosecutors, trying to ramp up investigations of Democrats in time to smear them for the 2006 midterm elections. Notably, Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico got his nose into places it didn't belong, and the Senate Ethics Committee is checking it out. Attorney General Alberto "Mr. Torture" Gonzalez has also caught plenty of heat, because ultimately it was on his watch. Arlen Specter even hinted that Gonzalez could be gone sooner than later too.

But the prosecutor stink wouldn't go away. Gonzalez spent more time covering his ass and explaining how these prosecutors who were fired in 2006 were let go for performance problems. And yet some of them had gotten very recent and very exceptional job performance ratings. Two of them were wacked, according to the Justice Department, for not moving quickly enough on voter fraud cases. These same two had gotten great reviews in this subject, and one of them had been used for training other attorneys on how to handle these cases. Patrick Fitzgerald, who prosecuted Scooter Libby and the governor of Illinois, was at one time rated as "mediocre" with specific references in this rating to his perceived lack of loyalty to the Bush administration. The idiots at the White House released emails about the mess, but there's a mysterious 16-day gap in those emails. And then the White House admitted there were as many as five million missing emails, many to and from Karl Rove, and that many of them likely pertained to the fired prosecutors. 

Gonzales himself LIED about it. He first claimed that he was unaware of the firings, that it was handled by others. But once the subject of subpoenas came up, suddenly it was discovered through the emails that he personally had signed off on the firings. When his own assistant Kyle Sampson, who resigned over the mess, testified in front of Congress, he said that Gonzales' comments about not being involved were "inaccurate."  Bush called them "resignations" but they were in fact dismissals. When your boss ASKS for your resignation, you've been fired. So what's the real story? Some of them weren't moving fast enough on cases involving Democrats, just before the 2006 midterm elections. This was a political hatchet job. Bush's A.G. let political considerations trump justice in the United States of America. And who helped propel these firings? None other than the infinitely evil Karl Rove. At first, the DoJ denied Rove had anything to do with the firings, but then the emails came out and said otherwise. In fact, one of the attorneys were specifically fired to make room for one of Rove's old assistants, who, as it turns out, also did all he could to suppress minority voting in 2004.

In Congressional testimony, both Dems and Republicans piled on, since Gonzalez can't get his shit story straight. Since the whole notion of performance has been shot down, then the only reason left for the firings MUST be political. But he keeps saying he "can't recall."  In fact, he says "I don't recall" way too much. April 19th, he said "I can't recall" an amazing 71 times. He said he had nothing to do with the decisions, then when that was contradicted by his own people, he said, "Oh yeah, THOSE firings," and then he said he had "limited" involvement. He says he doesn't recall key meetings regarding the firings.

Gonzalez said that while the firings were poorly handled, they were still justified, although he STILL can't explain exactly WHY they were fired. And as Chuck Schumer pointed out, since Gonzalez admittedly knew little to nothing about the performance aspect of the firings, how could he "testify that the judgment out to stand?"  You can't have it both ways.

Either he WAS in on the firings, meaning he corrupted his department for political purposes and should therefore be fired, or he was too goddamn stupid to know what was going on in his own department, and should therefore be fired. Just the fact that he had two weeks to rehearse what he would say in front of Congress, and fully knowing what the questions would be in advance, and STILL he couldn't manage to avoid making as ass of himself, he's too damn stupid for the job, and should be fired.

Either way, Alberto Gonzalez had to go.

OCTOBER 2007: It is found that almost immediately after becoming AG, Gonzalex signed off on torture methods, including the use of frigid temperatures, head-slapping, and simulated drowning. THEN they lied about it. Holy shit!
 

Bush's first Attorney General, John Ashcroft,  is practically a Son of the Confederacy who hates gun laws and women's rights.  A few years ago he was welcomed by Bob Jones University, which until recent years banned interracial dating, and Ashcroft has also been interviewed by a virulently segregationist magazine.  Ashcroft partly built his career fighting the desegregation of schools.  He also was named by another segregationist group as their top pick for president.   He makes some of his staff uncomfortable by insisting on prayer meetings to start each working day.  They're afraid if they don't participate (that sticky little thing called separation of church and state) that they'l be looked upon unfavorably. 

ASHCROFT WAS SO UNPOPULAR IN HIS HOME STATE, he lost an election to Congress to a DEAD MAN. The guy had perished in a plane crash. And still won. Ashcroft was subseqently hired by Bush.

     June 2001, Ashcroft announces his support for destroying gun purchase records after 24 hours.  So one measly day after somebody buys a gun, you won't be able to tell where it went or who had it. 
    December 2001 : Everybody is suspect in Ashcroft's new hunt for traitors in our midst.  He wants everybody in America to put everything they have on the table for inspection.  No database, no identity system, no anything is to be omitted from possible scrutiny.  EXCEPT the database used when doing background checks on gun buyers. That can't be used.  Why?  Because he's a right-wing, gun-loving, NRA-sponsored Christian Coalition nutjob.  Gun buyers are special people?  F___k  THEM!  They should be subject to the same crap as the rest of us.
     January 2002: Ashcroft is among the many Bush associates stained by the ENRON mess.  Ashcroft must actually be recused in the matter.  This is disgusting.

     March 2002: Ashcroft ordered that the bare breast on a statue at the Department of Justice be covered with a toga, even though it's been there for 70 years.  Maybe it was getting him hot and bothered.

     May 2002: Ashcroft has decided to totally corrupt any sane interpretation of the Constitution by saying it calls for individual ownership of guns, totally ignoring any mention of a "well-regulated militia."  He wants this to overturn any little bit of gun control legislation in place, and to appease the deep pockets at the NRA. 

      Ashcroft is just plain nuts, anyway.  He writes his own patriotic songs and hands out copies of the lyrics at meetings, so staff can sing along.  Ashcroft HAS HIMSELF ANOINTED WITH COOKING OIL whenever he starts a new job.  Even Clarence Thomas has performed the duty of anointing him. 

At one point, Ashcroft said that critics who complained that he was trampling civil rights "only aid terrorists."

Ashcroft wasted no time cashing in on his public service. Soon after leaving as Attorney General, he broke with all A.G. tradition and became a registered lobbyist, helping companies that sell homeland security types of products and software. In other words, he's helping companies cash in on the policies he put in place while working for the White House. SCUMBAG. 
 
 

Bush's  choice for head of Health and Human Services is staunchly anti-choice.  What Heritage Foundation luncheon did Bush recruit at? 
 

June 2007: Bush's nominee as new surgeon-general, James Holsinger, dislikes gays. He's even written papers on the "dangers" of gay sex in gory detail. He pushes therapy to make gay people straight. He's also, whaddaya know, the president of the United Methodist Judicial Council, and tried to get rid of a lesbian reverend in his church.

The Diplomatic Corps: Bush keeps selecting Big Contributors to serve overseas.  When the embassy got bombed in Kenya, it was an excellent diplomat who handled the situation, and in a very skilled way.  Bush, on the other hand, is sending a new representative to France who doesn't speak French.  But he gave a lot of money to Bush's campaign.  As of April 2001, Bush has appointed two dozen new diplomats, half of whom were big contributors.  Is there anybody out there that this clown isn't busy paying off? 
 

John Bolton   in charge of non-proliferation, he watched as Iran and North Korea went publicly nuclear
 

March 2005 : Bush nominated for ambassador to the United Nations one John Bolton, Bush's undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. Previously, Bolton opposed arms reduction, claimed that Syria and Cuba were producing biological weapons, worked as a paid researcher for Taiwan (supporting sovereignty just as China pushes back), and has opposed numerous well-intentioned treaties.  He once said, on videotape, that you could take the top ten floors off the United Nations and it wouldn't matter. There you go, just the guy to send there to make peace with the world. Bolton was essentially in charge of overseeing non-proliferation, and failed miserably (witness Iran and North Korea). So naturally, he gets promoted.

Plenty of testimony painted Bolton as a nutjob who goes ballistics on people, rejects intelligence when it doesn't fit his agenda, tried to get analysts to CHANGE their intelligence reports, and generally bullied the hell out of employees.

Always the rubber-stamper, Condi Rice thinks the guy is great.  At least, that's what she says. In the meantime, FIFTY-NINE former U.S. diplomats, including guys who served under Reagan, Ford, and Nixon (i.e. GOPers), sent a letter to the Senate, asking them to reject the guy's nomination. Colin Powell told senators he didn't like the guy. Former colleagues and underlings say he's a brute who tried to fire people whose analyses disagreed with the administration's agenda (sounds awfully familiar in the Bush era).

REPUBLICAN SENATOR George Voinovich of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called Bolton "the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be," and said that given his bullying tactics against underlings, Bolton would be fired if he was in the private sector.

Voinovich told reporters he planned to vote against Bolton in the full Senate, adding  "I have every faith in my colleagues. No one really is excited about him. We'll see what happens........After hours of deliberation, telephone calls, personal conversations, reading hundreds of pages of transcripts, and asking for guidance from Above, I have come to the determination that the United States can do better than John Bolton." 

Bolton was finally forwarded to the Senate, WITHOUT A RECOMMENDATION FROM THE COMMITTEE. 

A couple more points about BOLTON ...... his job is to stop the proliferation of weapons, especially nuclear weapons, among other countries. He's doing a LOUSY JOB.  And after a month-long set of meetings on this subject, the US team was called "completely unprepared." In other words, Bolton screwed up again.
 

June 2005: SEVENTY-SIX classmates of Bolton's from Yale wrote to Bush, saying that Bolton is unqualified. "We are embarrassed and ashamed that the Bush administration has nominated someone so manifestly unsuited to represent our country at the United Nations," they said in their letter. "As his classmates, we do not believe that Mr. Bolton has exhibited the values of civility, light and truth which our shared institution represents."

BTW, Bush graduated from Yale in 1968.
 

August 2005: Bush appointed Bolton during a Congressional recess, to avoid the embarrassment of watching people from his own party rip the guy.
 

SO HERE IS THE UPDATE ON BOLTON'S ACTUAL PERFORMANCE AT THE UNITED NATIONS:

John Bolton has proved to be FAR WORSE than even his harshest critics (including me) could have predicted. As Bush's United Nations ambassador, he's made a train wreck of international relations, and the ambassador's office itself.

As soon as he took the job, he wanted a copy of everybody's resume, scaring hell out of thestaff. He told them he would personally sign every piece of communication. And he became an instant bottleneck on all the diplomatic meetings that the staff would normally conduct, by effectively killing their discretionary funds.

The USA's closest allies have been in agreement with Bush on reforming the United Nations. But Bolton has chosen to piss them off by trying to stifle the U.N. budget, to force changes, EVEN THOUGH THE USA WAS ALREADY GETTING SUPPORT.

Bolton insisted on going through the reform documents line by line, so he could bully his way to getting whatever he wanted on every single detail. The result was that a whole bunch of other countries decided to do the SAME DAMNED THING. This meant having to bargain with a bunch of ratty ass little countries, dragging out negotiations and having to give ground on lots of petty shit. Bolton's former job, at which he utterly failed, was overseeing
disarmament and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. His ham-handed style over reforms led to non-proliferation language being stripped out of the reform docs. The ultimate result was that the USA's proposed reforms all got tossed on the back burner.

In October 2005, Bolton leaked "secret" info on talks that Rice was having with Syria. This leak effectively ended those talks, and Syria even ended up deying talks were taking place. It was Rice herself, in a rare victory for US diplomacy, who got Syria to cooperate with the investigation into the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister. Bolton had nothing to do with it. Rice even popped in to meet with Kofi Annan, the U.N. Secretary-General, bypassing Bolton altogether.

Bolton has hopelessly complicated negotiations on just about everything. September 2005, he dragged out talks for EVERYBODY by messing up the World Summit. His idiot defenders would say, "Oh good, it's not business as usual at the U.N." And that would be true, if his reasons for screwing things up were worthy. But one boneheaded play of his was to rip out of the Summit's summary statement all mention of the U.N.'s goals for eliminating poverty. Bolton made this decision largely on his own; even the State Department tried backing away from his position. Rubber-stamper Condi Rice herself had to intervene to get Bolton unstuck. The next day, Bolton backed off, and dummy in charge Bush himself had to restate the USA's commitment to fighting poverty.
 

Pressed by the press

Scott McLellan was a boob as press secretary. Short, pudgy, unconvincing. Ultimately he had to go. He was a lightweight, only along for the ride because he'd worked for Bush in the governor's office in Texas. He had no credibility left, especially after getting called out on vouching for "individuals" in the administration who assured him they were uninvolved with the Valerie Plame leak (and who were later proved to BE involved). He was just a Pillsbury Doughboy for the White House, lying through his teeth
as ordered. Off to the speakers' circuit, to try to validate his wasted life before the party faithful.

McLellan was replaced by a rightwing shill from Fox "News," Tony Snow. To his credit, Snow has on occasion blasted Bush. It's a weird pick. It was tough on Snow, because he had  to reconcile his past criticisms, which were occasionally nasty, with his newfound Kool-Aid drinking, AND his pandering. He has in the past called Bush's leadership "brilliant." Holy crap! Snow started a fresh new approach with reporters, actually admitting when he didn't know something. "I don't know" actually came to be a welcome change from "here's some bullshit." But after many months, just about all Snow could ever say was "I don't know." Because he couldn't justify the bullshit he was supposed to say, and nobody was letting him off the hook anymore.
 

Homeland Security 
 

July 2006: A report these idiots put out shows that they’ve listed an insect zoo, a bourbon fest, a kangaroo conservation center, and a bunch of other bullshit even AMERICANS don’t know exist, as potential terrorist targets. In Indiana, they’ve listed a petting farm, a Mule Day parade, a popcorn factory, and “a beach at the end of the street.” But they didn’t bother including the Empire State Building, the Status of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, or Times Square, among other obvious targets. How many goddamn clowns still work at HSA? Haven’t they weeded most of them out by now? Holy crap!
 

When Tom Ridge, the color code guy, left Homeland Security, one of his deputies thought HE was going to get the job, and when he was passed over, he left in a huff. Rudy Giuliani, who's only done two things right in public life (cut crime in NYC and looked tough for the cameras on 9/11), pushed his business partner Bernard Kerik to take Ridge's job. THEN it was found out that Kerik had a housekeeper/nanny with a questionable immigration status.

Kerik was already of questionable judgment, having said that "another 9/11 was likely" if John Kerry were to become president. But just five years earlier, he'd been in serious financial troubles over a condo he owned, and in 1998 a New Jersey judge had issued an arrest warrant against Kerik resulting from various lawsuits and unpaid bills. He'd also somehow made $6 million from options in the company that makes Tasers, without having invested any of his own money, so he was also being scrutinized for that. Kerik ultimately withdrew his name from the Homeland Security gig, but it's yet another example of Bush scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of moral values.

Ridge was also notable for his remarkable suggestion on fighting a poison gas attack: plastic sheets and duct tape. In the event you were alerted in time about airborne toxins, you could just wrap up your house in plastic and tape it all into place. Just frigging brilliant.

Face it, the color coding thing is STUPID. Nobody knows what the colors mean, and then when they change the security level and give you the color, they tell you what the color means THEN. So what's the point?
 

The new guy in charge is Michael Chertoff. His prime qualification for the job is that he's a rabid right winger. He served on the Whitewater Commission, which was a political witch hunt that failed to find that Clinton had done anything wrong int he real estate market. He helped write the Patriot Act, and he's a longtime member of the Federalist Society, whose aim is to push the judicial system more to the right. He hates asylum-seekers, and was responsible for helping round up hundreds of immigrants who were later released for having done nothing at all. 
 

Brian Doyle, a deputy schmuck at HSA, got caught soliciting sex online from a cop posing as a 14-year-old. 
 

Stewart Simonson, in charge of fighting bioterrorism and bird flu, is a legal hack. He was running Amtrak when he got tabbed to take over the bioterror and bird flu thing. You'd think that after the Michael Brown / FEMA disaster, they'd have given this more thought int he White House.
 

The CIA

If George Tenet was such a dummy, and should have been blamed for so many lapses, as the White House claims, then why did the head of the agency get a big ass award from Bush? Here's why. It was a payoff, to get him to keep his mouth shut about all the shit Bush and company did in massaging intelligence to fit their invasion plans.

And if Porter Goss, unqualified and cranky, was such a good idea, why did so many analysts quit under his regime? Why was he allowed to name an old buddy to an exec position, only to see that guy mixed up in the Randy Cunningham mess? And why did Goss quit / get fired with so little fanfare? Bush hinted that Goss had only been around for a "transition," but face it, he got shit-canned.

Another bad Bush appointee.

Conservatives have been smacking their lips and wringing their hands for the chance to see W. put people on the court who would do their bidding. This means getting rid of Roe V. Wade. Really, that's all it means. They are single-minded, clueless individuals who don't give a rat's ass about any other issue, period.

So Bush wowed 'em all with his first choice, John Roberts, the new Chief Justice. Who is this guy, that Bush picked to take over from the very arrogant William Renquist (the goofball who designed his own robes, the ones with the goldbars)?

John Roberts, during his committee hearings, answered virtually no questions. He kept saying he couldn't give specifics, he cound't get into the details of any one case, he didn't wanna take anything out of context, blah blah blah. Senator Joseph Biden finally told him, "We are rolling the dice with you." Meaning, since we can't get any answers, we have no idea what kind of justice you'll be. Biden even scolded Roberts at the end of one session with, "That's fine, continue to not answer any questions."

NEXT, Bush nominated, to replace the retirning Sandra Day O'Connor, Harriet Miers. She has served as the White House counsel. She's a cipher, at best. Bush said, "She is the best candidate available." His personal lawyer, in other words. 

Miers ran a Texas (of course) law firm when it was sued for malpractice. She once called Bush "the most brilliant man I ever met." JESUS CHRIST!

Miers sucked in the White House staff prep meetings, she sucked during meetings with senators, and she couldn't handle basic questions on Consitutional law. In other words, she was a CRAPPY candidate. Bush stuck with her for a time, but even members of his own party shit on him for it. Bush refused to give up any paperwork on her. She just plain WASN'T QUALIFIED. So in the end, she fell on her sword and withdrew. Since Bush has no balls at all, he replaced her with another nominee, Judge Alito, a hardcore conservative guy. In other words, the base is bitching, so I'd better suck up to them again.

One more ridiculous Miers note: After her Court nomination got shot to pieces, Bush actually inquired as to whether he could get her an ambassador's post. Jesus Christ! Once again, Bush tries to reward incompetence with a promotion, just like Wolfowitz.