Category Archives: Shrub Watch

Condi Rice: “I am not a lawyer, but…” – Condi Rice On Meet The Press

This is from the December 18, 2005 program of Meet the Press.

Here is a link to MTP Condi Rice video and mp3s Of Her Meet The Press Interview
it’s still uploading as of 3:30pm on sunday the 18th. If it’s close to then, it’s still uploading…
I’m just watching this mornings Meet the Press with Condi Rice. Tim Russert is drilling her accordingly on why G.W. Bush isn’t violating the same laws that Nixon violated when he authorized secret wire tapping.
She pauses, struggles with her answer for a moment (although she does get one out) and then she ends it with “I am not a lawyer.”
She says it again later. (“Again, Tim, I am not a lawyer.”)
Well hey. If you’re not a lawyer, I guess there’s no need for you to understand it completely.
Even if you are Secretary of State for the United States of America. You have people that handle that for you.
“I’m not going to talk about my role as National Security Advisor …which of course is not a constitutionally confirmed role.”
What does that even mean?
The bottom line is that Bush authorized some wire tapping (without getting a proper warrant) and she knew about it.
I’m way behind on this one guys. I just got here.
But I’ll have her interview for ya in a few 🙂
Oh wait. this is good:
Tim Russert: “Where in the Constitution does it say the President can eavesdrop, wiretap American citizens, without a court order?”
Condi Rice: “Tim. The President has authorities under FISA, which we are using and using actively. He also has constitutional authorities that derive from his role as Commander in Chief and his need to protect the country. He has acted within his Constitutional authority and within his statutory authority.”

Andy Rooney Gets Heavy – The Military Industrial Complex Has Taken Over The U.S. – Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961

This is from the October 2, 2005 program of
60 Minutes.
This contains the “Military-Industrial Complex Speech” by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961.
Andy Rooney’s really a stand up guy! One of the few on television these days to have the courage to tell it like it is.

Video – Andy Rooney On The Military Industrial Complex Taking Over The U.S. (6 MB)

Audio – Andy Rooney On The Military Industrial Complex Taking Over The U.S. (MP3 4 MB)
Dwight D. Eisenhower:
“We must guard against the aquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disasterous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”
Andy: “Well, Ike was right. That’s just what’s happened.”




Complete Transcription:

I’m not really clear about how much a billion dollars is. But the United States, our United States, is spending five billion, six hundred million dollars a month ($5,600,000,000.00) fighting this war in Iraq that we never should have gotten into. We still have 139,000 soldiers in Iraq today. Almost 2,000 Americans have died there. For what?
Now, we have the hurricanes to pay for. One way that our government pays for a lot of things is by borrowing from countries like China. Another way the government is planning on paying for the war and the hurricane damage is by cutting spending for things like medicare perscriptions, highway construction, farm payments, Amtrak, national public radio, loans to graduate students. Do these sound like things you’d like to cut back on to pay for Iraq?
I’ll tell you where we ought to start saving, on our bloated military establishment. We’re paying for weapons we’ll never use. No other country spends the kind of money we spend on our military. Last year, Japan spent $42 billion dollars, Italy spent $28 billion dollars, Russia spent only $19 billion. The United States spent $455 billion. We have 8,000 tanks, for example. One Abrams tank costs 150 times as much as a Ford stationwagon. We have more than 10,000 nuclear weapons. Enough to destroy all of mankind. We’re spending $200 million dollars a year on bullets alone. That’s a lot of target practice.
We have 1,155,000 enlisted men and women, and 225,000 officers. One officer to tell every five enlisted soldiers what to do. We have 40,000 Colen and 870 generals.
We had a great commander in WWII, Dwight Eisenhower. He became President, and on leaving the White House in 1961 he said this:

“We must guard against the aquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disasterous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”

Well, Ike was right. That’s just what’s happened.

The U.S. Spends 455 billion dollars a year on the military.

Daily Show Clips From May 9, 2005

These clips are from the May 9, 2005 program.
Actually, the blogging clip might be from the 10th. (Sorry.)

Daily Show Clips From May 9, 2005

Mirror of these clips (Please use it! 🙂 (thanks Guan!)
another mirror of these clips. (Thanks Matt!)
Metadata that goes with these clips (you can tell which is which from the filenames):
CNN’s stupid blogging segments – where people actually just read from blogs verbatim, as if it’s news.
A movie about Texas’ freaked-out cheerleading censorship law.
Bush’s visit to Russia – Putin on 60 minutes. (daily1.mov)
Samantha Bee covers the online gambling craze.
How Arnie’s Screwing Over California Educators (and therefore California Education)
The Roadless Area conservation rule that Clinton signed into law before he left, and how the repubs are going about overturning it.

Powell Gives UN Ambassador Nominee Bolton A Behind The Scenes Thumbs Down

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This is the kind of thing that really frustrates me about Colin Powell. Just like his coming out with what’s wrong with the Shrub War after the election, instead of during the election, when it could have really helped.
Now he’s talking to senators in private about what a loose cannon John Bolton is.
Why can’t he come out and say what he knows publicly? He could blow this guy out of the water with two sentances. He could save us from the horrible fate of letting this war monger lead the nation into
WW III.
Some of you will think I’m overreacting, but I truly believe that I am calmly stating one likely possibility. Granted, it’s already a possibility, with this administration in power, but it’s a far more likely possibility with Bolton as our UN Ambassador.

Powell Plays Behind the Scenes Role in Bolton Debate
By Jim VandeHei and Robin Wright for the Washington Post.
(via
t r u t h o u t)

Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell is emerging as a behind the scenes player in the battle over John Bolton’s nomination to the United Nations, privately telling at least two key Republican lawmakers that Bolton is smart, but a very problematic government official, according to Republican sources.
Powell spoke in recent days with Sens. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), two of three GOP members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who have raised concerns about Bolton’s confirmation, the sources said. Powell did not advise the senators to oppose Bolton, but offered a frank assessment of the nominee as a man who was challenging to work with on personnel and policy matters, according to two people familiar with the conversation.
“General Powell has returned calls from senators who wanted to discuss specific questions that have been raised,” said Margaret Cifrino, a Powell spokeswoman. “He has not reached out to senators” and considers the discussions private. A Chafee spokesman confirmed that at least two conversations took place. Bolton served under Powell as his undersecretary of state for arms control, and the two were known to have serious clashes.
Powell has stayed out of the confirmation fight in public, but influenced it in direct and indirect ways, according to several Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill. It is not Powell’s style to weigh in strongly against a former colleague, but rather direct people to what he sees as flaws and potential problems, they say. Powell’s views are highly influential with many Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill.
Those who know Powell best said two recent events provide insight into his thinking. Powell did not sign a letter from seven former US secretaries of state and defense supporting Bolton, and his former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson recently told the New York Times that Bolton would be an “abysmal ambassador.”

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Roosevelt Endorses Shrub Social Security Overhaul From The Grave? — Keith Olbermann On The Shrub’s Revisionist History

The Repubs’ latest fabrication is that Roosevelt himself personally endorsed private accounts, and presumably the cuts in benefits that go with them.
According to Roosevelt’s grandson, James Roosevelt Jr., who is a former Associate Commissioner on Social Security, the quote was taken completely out of context. Keith Olbermann had him on the show to clear things up. The two of them go over the quote in question with a fine-toothed comb and provide the larger context in which it appears.
(see below for full quote within context)
Even a simple reading of the quote makes it clear that Roosevelt envisioned private accounts in addition to regular benefits, for those who could afford to invest in them, so they would have additional benefits later. (Not as a replacement for the current system.)

Video – Keith Olbermann and Roosevelt’s Grandson Call Bush Roosevelt Claim A Fraud (14 MB)

Audio – Keith Olbermann and Roosevelt’s Grandson Call Bush Roosevelt Claim A Fraud (MP3 – 9 MB)


Transcription:
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, father to the New Deal and, at minimum, mid-wife to the Social Security system, would have endorsed President Bush’s plan to partially privatize it. Our third story of the countdown, that is the claim anyway of at least three conservative commentators and several Republican congressman, but it turns out, those guys pretty much just made it up…
At the risk of doing a little too much reading, just to put it on the historical record, let me read the entire quote from which those quotes were pulled (portion of quote misused by Brit Hume and others is in italics):
“In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles. First, non-contributory old age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is of course clear that perhaps 30 years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amount received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supported annuity plans.”

Joe Klein On The Daily Show – The Shrub’s Social Security Plan Explained

This is from the February 3, 2005 program.
In this clip, Time magazine’s Joe Klein talks about the State of the Union address and the truth behind the Shrub’s Social Security overhaul: it’s all about benefit cuts, not increased payments due to shrewd investment of private accounts.
Joe Klein On The Daily Show (Small – 12 MB)

Audio of Joe Klein On The Daily Show (MP3 – 8 MB)

Joe Klein:
Here’s the cool thing about Social Security. Yesterday, before the speech, the White House explains it the “torters,” the private investment accounts, and here’s the way it works:
You put your money in your own private investment account. And then, when it’s time for you to retire, you give a whole lot of it back to the government so that they can dribble out little benefits to you that are the equivalent of Social Security as it now stands.
Jon Stewart:
That’s really what this plan is?
Joe Klein:
If you make more than a designated amount, you might get a little bit extra. Yes.
Jon Stewart:
That’s it?
Joe Klein:
It’s an annuity.
Jon Stewart:
But here’s what I don’t understand…
Joe Klein:
It’s really remarkable.
Jon Stewart:
But how does that save Social Security? Because the government still has to dish out the same amount of money, no?
Joe Klein:
Well, they’re going to lower our benefits it was they’re gonna actually do, and the President said he would last night.

Shrub Prepares To Cut Funding To Those That Need It Most


Bush to Propose Billions in Cuts
Farm subsidies and food stamps are among the targets in the 2006 budget plan, to be sent to Congress on Monday. Opposition is building.
By Joel Havemann and Mary Curtius For The LA Times.

President Bush will propose a 2006 budget Monday that, despite record spending of about $2.5 trillion, will call for billions of dollars in cuts that will touch people on food stamps and farmers on price supports, children under Medicaid and adults in public housing…
In addition to the cuts proposed in the 2006 budget, Bush is expected to ask Congress to approve in principle many billions of dollars in additional, unspecified cuts…
The lower-income Americans who benefit from food stamps and Medicaid do not typically provide the Republican Party with many votes or campaign contributions.
The proposed budget will give states less flexibility to include working poor families with children as beneficiaries, sources said.

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Newsday Editorial On The Shrub’s Judicial Strategy To Overturn Roe v. Wade


ROE V. WADE AT CROSSROADS: Abortion foes are just one Supreme Court justice away from victory
In Newsweek.

Anyone who thinks abortion rights aren’t in serious jeopardy should consider the plight of Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
Specter has been a Republican for 40 years. He’s in line to become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in January. He has voted to confirm every single one of President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees. Despite that record, angry conservatives are determined to block his rise to chairman. Why?
Because Specter supports abortion rights. And because he had the temerity to state the obvious: That Bush would have trouble winning Senate confirmation of any Supreme Court nominee who is notoriously anti-abortion rights. That’s a simple mathematical fact.
It takes only 51 of 100 Senate votes to confirm a judicial nominee. But it takes 60 votes to cut off debate and move to a confirmation vote. Come January, there will be 55 Republicans in the Senate. Do the math. That’s not enough to derail a determined Democratic filibuster. Specter said he was alluding to that numerical reality when he made the remark that has haunted him all week.
But conservative foes of abortion rights have been emboldened by the perception that they provided Bush’s margin of victory Nov. 2. They aren’t of a mind to tolerate even the barest hint of resistance to their agenda, which is reversal of Roe v. Wade. That would be a tragedy. It would strip women of the right to control their bodies and turn the clock back to the grisly days of back-alley abortions.
Bush has a choice to make. Option 1: He could opt for polarizing political warfare by nominating anti-abortion absolutists for the top court. He could push for a change in Senate filibuster rules to deprive Democrats of that time-honored tactic and rely on raw political power to beat back all opposition. Option 2: Do what he promised during the campaign – impose no abortion litmus test for judicial candidates, while nominating people who will strictly interpret the Constitution rather than legislating from the bench. That’s the better course…
Replacing Rehnquist, a solid vote against abortion rights, isn’t likely to alter the court balance. But that balance could tip decisively should any one of the abortion-rights supporters leave the bench. That includes Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, as well as swing voters David Souter, Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy, whose positions on abortion are less black and white.
The nation may be approaching a legal sea change that could end or sharply curtail a woman’s right to abortion. But change that profound should be approached through reasoned debate, not a political beat-down.

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