Apparently, our government is looking to take a page from the longtime Republican playbook. The GOP has always looked to "starve the beast" when it comes to the federal government, to cut funding on various areas they dislike (EPA, social services, education, etc.) in hopes that they will shrivel and die. Now, it's reported they're looking to do this re democratically-elected Hamas, to cut off their aid in an effort to provoke change.

The Washington Post reminds us that with the first word of Cheney's shooting incident coming from a private citizen, that it's likely the first time in history that the White House has ever used a private citizen as a sort of official spokesperson. Don't forget, when this citizen approached Cheney about going public, Cheney didn't immediately stop her and explain that he or his people should do it. Instead, he gave her his blessing!

Despite rolling in record profits, oil and gas companies stand to gain billions more at the expense of US taxpayers -- to the tune of $7 bil. over five years. Bush claims his hands are tied, that Congress needs to change the law, but on the heels of his "we're addicted to oil" speech, why doesn't he forcefully and publicly request that the Congress change this law? Don't they listen to him anymore?

Despite public opinion regarding privatizing Social Security is scraping somewhere at 35-39% depending on the poll, Bush didn't let that stop him. He snuck a provision into the 2007 budget that would allow $700 bil. to be diverted away from the Social Security program and into private accounts, starting in 2010. Will of the people? Nope, King GW decrees what he wants.

"Grants to state and local governments for land and water conservation would be cut 40 percent, and money for the Environmental Protection Agency's network of libraries for scientists would be slashed severely under President Bush's proposed budget." The King rules "let them die of 'natural' causes." Thank you your Majesty! Oh, and note how the king stated something about the need for more scientists in his State of Union speech, but here we see funds being cut for those things science....

As is usually the case with these guys, Cheney's shooting incident is filled with nagging questions and fishy details.

McClellan said Monday that he was informed of the accident Saturday night but was not told that Cheney was the shooter until Sunday morning. Oh c'mon! This explanation is simply not plausible, period. Someone informs McClellan of this incident and yet withholds from him the nature of Cheney's involvement?? Karl Rove told Bush about Cheney's involvement in the accident on Saturday night -- but again, McClellan seemingly never got word.

McClellan said when he learned of Cheney's role in the incident at 6AM on Sunday morning, he urged the VP's office to get the info out "as quickly as possible." The story was released at approx. 4:30PM, or 10 1/2 hours later!

In an appearance on Monday, Bush ignored a question asked regarding this accident. Interestingly, Cheney was there also but he exited before reporters were brought in to ask questions. King GW Cheney, in action.

For more odd items surrounding this incident, click here.

Other points and questions:

1) What about the medical team that now follows Cheney around, like secret service agents? Is Cheney even well enough to go hunting? How do we know the accident isn't related to his health issues? Without clarity regarding these questions, how do we know if Cheney's even up to the task of performing day-to-day duties in a stressful job?

2) Recall that in 2004, Cheney poked fun when Kerry went on a hunting trip. Ahh, just delicious karma at work.

3) Mark this down as incident #3487 where they needed time to "bake" the story in the spin oven (thus the delay in its release to public). Can we trust anything that comes out of this administration?

Get ready for another attack:

US prepares military blitz against Iran's nuclear sites

Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites as a "last resort" to block Teheran's efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

How the budget deficit serves as a national security threat:

Another hazard is losing what Robert E. Rubin, Summers' predecessor as treasury secretary and my guru on this subject, calls "resilience." A deficit of 3.2 percent of GDP, which is what Bush predicts for this year, curtails the ability of policy-makers to respond effectively to the unforeseen and unforeseeable. The U.S. economy was able to absorb the shock of Sept. 11 without falling into recession in part because of Washington's use of fiscal as well as monetary policy in response. But when the budget is already deeply in the red, the "break glass in case of fire" box comes pre-smashed. In the event of another major terrorist attack or natural disaster, such Keynesian tools as tax cuts and stimulus spending will be much harder to deploy than they were in 2001, when the budget was still in surplus.

Many on the right will state that 3.2% of GDP is not a dire deficit, HOWEVER those same folks are highly prone to reminding us that everything changed after 9-11. As Rubin makes clear, due to the Iraqi occupation and the always impending possibility of another terrorist attack, a significant federal deficit is not smart if the goal is to be continuously prepared and ready.

As with many issues, this administration can't continue to have it both ways. If in fact everything did change after 9-11, than in this case a no-brainer modification should be that the government can no longer afford to carry large deficits. To do so is to jeapordize responsiveness to national tragedies and therefore put the public at risk. Instead, the government must remain nimble, ready to finance any needed measures that may be required stemming from future attacks.

Under King George, corporate lackeys, i.e. lobbyists, either wrote the lax safety regulations or more often just scuttled them (in the name of free market enterprise).

So now with the mining accident backlash, these companies have come up with the brilliant idea to simply sue the government -- which in this case, they're effectively suing themselves! And guess who will pay if they win? Yup, we taxpayers. Thanks George!

Joe Klein points out how GW's naive, child-like, simplistic thinking continues to get this country into terrible situations, ones we'll be cleaning up and fixing for many years to come:

Bush's flashy love affair with democracy is a fallback position: it ascended when the original rationale for the war in Iraq—the threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction—receded. Bush was dismissive of "nation building" in his 2000 presidential campaign. By the 2004 race, however, a staple of his stump speech was, "Freedom isn't America's gift to the world. It's the Almighty God's gift to each man and woman in this world." A lovely sentiment, a beautiful line, a potentially disastrous policy.
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Democracy...demands that people take charge of their lives and make informed decisions. That takes time, the careful accumulation of the habits of citizenship. Bush's "gift" formulation sends exactly the wrong message; it leads people to believe that all they need is a purple finger and life will get better. The President seems a victim of that same delusion: he seems to believe that we can get away with promoting democracy through glorious rhetoric without doing the slow, expensive, heavy lifting of nation building.
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Bush's global-democracy, uhhh, crusade, is yet another triumph of spin over substance, a broad-brush carelessness that feeds off emotional election-day highs, flag waving and freedom rallies across the region but which has led, in every case, to severe hangovers.

From Afghanistan to Egypt, not one country that has had an election in the past year has emerged more stable as a result of the experience. In Iraq, three elections—the last one little more than a "census," in the words of Iraqi journalist Nibras Kazimi—have increased the probability of partition or civil war and installed a corrupt, Iran-leaning government of religious conservatives, which will undoubtedly remain in power when the new "permanent" government is formed. In Afghanistan, elections have brought narco-warlords to positions of significant power. Even the Potemkin elections in Saudi Arabia and Egypt resulted in the aggrandizement of religious extremists. There was the election—more a selection, really—of foulmouthed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, who has turned out to be far more radical than the ruling mullahs anticipated. And now Hamas in Palestine.

What a surprise:

Indicted Rep. Tom DeLay, forced to step down as the No. 2 Republican in the House, scored a soft landing Wednesday as GOP leaders rewarded him with a coveted seat on the Appropriations Committee.

DeLay, R-Texas, also claimed a seat on the subcommittee overseeing the Justice Department, which is currently investigating an influence-peddling scandal involving disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his dealings with lawmakers....DeLay was able to rejoin the powerful Appropriations panel — he was a member until becoming majority leader in 2003 — because of a vacancy created after the resignation of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif. Cunningham pleaded guilty in November to charges relating to accepting $2.4 million in bribes for government business and other favors.

In the GOP, when indicted you still get rewarded. In this case, in addition to landing a "coveted seat" on the committee that allocates $$$, DeLay gets to influence doddering half-wits as he now oversees an investigation that involves himself!

Hmm, you think he'll remain objective, cooperative and unobtrusive?

Any which way the wind blows....

Never be fooled that Tony Blair is a man of strong principles. He's simply a politician in the classic sense of the word: willing to go any which way to garner the most votes, while at the same time do whatever's necessary to shore up his strengths and minimize weaknesses.

How else do you explain his utmost cooperation in allowing Bush to ram-rod us into war with Iraq, no matter the outcome of the inspections, while at the same you have Blair siding with the global warming crowd -- namely because it's a hugely popular stand over there. On the one hand, he'll knowingly aid Bush in his evil, secretive dealings, and on the other he'll go completely opposite GW's stance on global warming if it will please a good number of Brits.

Are there any stoutly-principled leaders left in the world, who aren't despots or crazy authoritarian dictators?

Kevin Drum writes:

I'm also more tired than you can imagine of his [Gonzales] constant invocation of presidents from Washington to Roosevelt who authorized warrantless surveillance in wartime. All of that happened before FISA was passed in 1978 and is completely meaningless. And he knows it.

Indeed. Also, it used to be OK to not pay income taxes -- you know, before the creation and enforcement of such a tax.

Idiots, just idiots.

Despite 86 evangelical leaders signing on to lobby against global warming, and therefore Bush's misguided and in-denial policies, the King continues on with his complete disregard for Mother Nature:

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration will unveil a proposal Friday to sell up to 200,000 acres of national forest land in "isolated parcels" ranging from a quarter of an acre to 200 acres, much of it in California.

The sale is part of a National Forest Service plan to raise $800 million over the next five years to pay for rural schools in 41 states, offsetting shrinking revenues from sale of timber from national forests. The Bureau of Land Management also plans to sell federal lands to raise an estimated $182 million over five years...."I am outraged, and I don't think the public is going to stand for it for one minute," said Wilderness Society policy analyst Mike Anderson. "It's a scheme to raise money at the expense of the national forests, the wildlife, recreation and all the other values that Americans hold dear. It's the ultimate threat to the national forest."....Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., attacked the plan as "crazy," saying: "Here the administration wants to pass more tax cuts for the rich, and to pay the bill, they want to sell off public land - our nation's natural heritage."

Screw it, Reagan said trees pollute, right?

And even more cronyism (no way did it stop with the "Brownie" debacle):

WASHINGTON - State Department officials appointed by President Bush have sidelined key career weapons experts and replaced them with less experienced political operatives who share the White House and Pentagon's distrust of international negotiations and treaties....It's thrown the agency into turmoil and produced an exodus of experts with decades of experience in nuclear arms, chemical weapons and related matters, according to 11 current and former officials and documents obtained by Knight Ridder.

No sooner did the meager promises come out of the King's mouth regarding his new found religion about oil=bad and committing to alternative energy did we then learn of this:

The Energy Department will begin laying off researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the next week or two because of cuts to its budget.

A veteran researcher said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol. Those are two of the technologies that Mr. Bush cited on Tuesday night as holding the promise to replace part of the nation's oil imports.

Yeah, that sounds about right: promise X & Y or even Z, and then cut or simply ignore it behind closed doors. It's what King GW & Co. do and frankly no one holds their feet to the fire regarding the abysmal tactic -- certainly not the passive, woefully uninformed public.

Bob Herbert:

The big problem for Bush & Co. — the thing that makes the president and his apologists apoplectic — is the mere fact that this domestic spying program has come to light. Investigations are under way to determine who might have leaked information about the supersecret program to The New York Times, which disclosed its existence, and others.

This is not a time for Congress or the media to bow before the intimidation tactics of a bullying administration. This is a time to heed the words of a federal judge named Damon Keith, who reminded us back in 2002 that "democracies die behind closed doors."

Kevin Drum offers up a quote from Matt Yglesias who basically asks why if this NSA matter is so legal in this administration's view that they don't contest it to the Supreme Court, esp. now that the Court is stacked in their favor.

I suppose a good point, but the more immediate one that merits repeated emphasis is GW willfully broke the law to begin with, period. If they believed FISA was unconstitutional, they should've contested it before breaking the law.

It's similar to the Iraq situation, let's not lose sight of things. Whatever eventual outcome becomes a realty in Iraq is secondary to the fact that GW used lies and distortions to get us their in the first place. This fact does not change even if Iraq were to eventually become a pristine democratic nation.

And apparently the public isn't bothered by the illegal wiretappings because of the "T" word. Attach "terrorism" to anything and you get a free pass. It's magical!

But I wonder what the public's reaction would be if GW proposed a national ban on key ingredients in a Snickers bar or a Big Mac, supposing those ingredients hypothetically funded Al-Qaeda? Bets are we'd see all-out bedlam in this country, riots in the streets. Pathetic.

From Mike Malloy:

"Refineries cut production to protect gasoline profits." This after reporting several quarters of record-breaking profits. I suppose it's one way to cut our "addiction."

"U.S. sides with Iran, Sudan to bar gay groups from UN." So America lines up with two of the more reprehensible governments in the world.... Is it any wonder? King GW will always lob a revolting favor to the religious right in this country any chance he gets. Must keep that zombie vote locked up.

"A source inside the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation told Insider magazine that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has ordered the shredding of documents and public records, a clear violation of Florida law.... A source in the FBI confirmed that public records are being destroyed on orders of Jeb Bush. The source said the governor may have taken that action in response to the continuing criminal probe of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the federal investigation of the 2001 gangland murder in Miami of Gus Boulis, owner of the Sun Cruz casino boat." It seems these Bush brothers are all alike. They'll do whatever's necessary -- even if it's illegal -- to save their ass.

Some segments from an editorial in yesterday's LA Times:

By and large, it isn't a lack of technology that keeps the nation so dependent on oil. It's the lack of will to use it. Engineers have produced a basket of new technologies for making cars burn less gasoline, yet fuel standards for passenger cars in this country haven't changed in more than two decades, and fuel economy has barely budged.... Advances in solar energy have made it less expensive and more reliable, yet only California is making a significant bid to exploit the power of the sun.
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Bush also talked about investing in zero-emissions coal plants. Yet, after a former EPA administrator said the technology existed to reduce mercury pollution at coal-fired plants by 90% within a few years, the Bush administration issued far weaker regulations.

GW's solution is never to implement or encourage the use of what is already available, but instead to conduct more research. It's a stall tactic that on the surface sounds good to most Americans. (How can you not like more research?) Unfortunately, such proposed funding is inevitably cut to shreds -- and no one is the wiser.

From this week's TNR editorial:

At one point in the speech, Bush proclaimed,“Keeping America competitive requires affordable health care”—which is true enough. (Just ask General Motors.) But it so happens that Bush is about to sign a bill that will cut spending on Medicaid, the program that offers health insurance for those too poor or sick to get it on their own. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that tens of thousands of Medicaid recipients, the majority of them children, will lose coverage as a result of the cuts. Meanwhile, this same bill preserves a $22 billion Medicare subsidy for the insurance industry that had earlier been targeted for elimination. Granted, it’s not surprising that Bush failed to mention these things.
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For the Bush administration, talking about health care is an end in itself—something you do when the pollsters say voters are worried, then quickly stop once you’ve gotten a few nice headlines.

Exactly, Karl Rove in action.

Three things define this administration: 1) empty rhetoric, 2) headline-grabbing ploys, and 3) special interest giveaways. That's it in a nutshell.

Are you proud yet?

Today is one of those days where after reading Kevin Drum's blog, I am reminded again that it's by far the best of its kind on the net.

Some of his must-read entries: yet another leaked memo from Downing Street, shenanigans with Iraq war funding, gifting to big pharma companies, and blatant deception regarding cost estimates of the new Medicare plan. It's all good.

Tom Krattenmaker in USA Today:

Just 17 months ago, President Bush and the Republican Party seemed to be riding a divine tide. At the GOP convention in the summer of 2004, religious rhetoric flew through the air like streamers and confetti. The GOP was being cast as "God's Official Party." Typifying the spirit of the campaign season, one alternate convention delegate, Judith Manning, declared to the press, "President Bush supports God, and God supports President Bush, absolutely."
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Dubious at the time, the God's-on-our-side rhetoric is looking even less credible now, after more than a year of frequently bad news for the president and his administration.
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Tellingly, the president and his political brethren aren't invoking the divine as frequently or boldly these days. It's reminiscent of high-profile athletes who are eager to cite God in moments of triumph, but rarely invoke religion after an embarrassing failure or big loss.
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To a large degree, religious-talking Republicans have brought the hypocrisy charges on themselves in their rush to position their party as God's chosen. It hasn't taken long for events to demonstrate how silly God's-on-our-side political rhetoric can end up looking when things go south.
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It's hard to argue against those who would summon universal ideals from the great religious texts in the pursuit of justice. But that's a far cry from what we've seen in recent years, where officeholders, candidates and political operatives have played the God card in a craven bid for electoral advantage, and where one party, the GOP, has all but co-opted conservative Christians to help carry out a not-so-holy partisan agenda.

By all accounts, the GOP has no problem with hypocrisy. Not a one loses sleep at night. No shame. None.

The New Republic has some terrific commentary on the SOTU.

Ryan Lizza writes, "His 'addicted to oil' line will garner lots of headlines, but his actual oil-independence plan is so modest--tens of millions of dollars in a two trillion dollar annual budget--that it is barely worth mentioning." That's the fool-ya, play with words that Bush (Rove) use frequently. They'll state a $300 million increase in clean energy research -- which sounds HUGE to Joe Shmoe -- but really it barely pushes the needle when compared to the size of total federal outlays and when you look at the amount of $$ granted as corporate subsidies.

Lizza: "In the surprise of the night, conservatives became Bush's target.... Bush's isolationist-bashing was really aimed at the growing ranks of Buchananite Republicans. In fact, later in the speech he took a second swipe at them on immigration: 'We hear claims that immigrants are somehow bad for the economy--even though this economy could not function without them. All these are forms of economic retreat, and they lead in the same direction--toward a stagnant and second-rate economy.'"

Of course, this slap against many right-wingers had Bush finally (and rarely) uttering some truth. Is this a hopeful trend?

Also in TNR, James Forsyth writes about this same unexpected attack on Republicans. He reminds that at the 2004 GOP Convention, a NY Times poll "found that 48 percent of delegates didn't really endorse the idea that America should 'try to change a dictatorship to a democracy where it can.'" In other words, nearly half are against nation-building -- or what GW originally ran on in 2000.

By the way, the Washington Post pointed out that while Bush implored we should cut our dependence on foreign oil, "since Bush took office, net foreign imports have risen from 53% to 60%." More empty rhetoric.