Today’s opining on the public discourse.

George W. Bush: clueless to the bitter end:

President and First Lady Bush recently sent Jewish community leaders invitations to a Hanukkah reception at the White House next month. But as the New York Post reports, the invitations “raised more than a few eyebrows” because the image on them was that of a “Clydesdale horse hauling a Christmas fir along the snow-dappled drive to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave”…

Laura Bush’s spokesperson said that detail had just “slipped through the cracks.” So did everything else, like defending the Constitution, governing sensibly, and understanding just what it is that a president is supposed to do.

George W. Bush: useless to the bitter end:

Ryan Avent considers what could have been.

[George W. Bush] very easily could have asked Congress to send him a stimulus bill, even a modest one, amid an intensification of what will likely be the worst recession in thirty years, if not longer. It would have made a difference. It would have made the season a little more bearable for the growing numbers of unemployed, and it would have made Obama’s task a little less daunting.

Instead, he’s spending his waning days weakening environmental rules, helping his cronies get jobs in the professional bureaucracy, and preparing his pardons. What a stupid, despicable man. History can’t judge him too cruelly.

I am, not surprisingly, sympathetic to this perspective. But reading it reminded me of something: for all the talk in far-right circles about Bush not being conservative enough, some of his most painful disasters came because he refused to stray from his conservative ideas.

This is probably a little too casual an analysis, but it seems this touches on one of the more glaring differences between Bush and Reagan — both instinctually backed conservative ideas driven entirely by far-right ideology, but Reagan reversed course when those ideas failed. Bush didn’t.

Bush is like an ox: when he gets settled into a routine, he can’t get out of it. He doesn’t seem to have the capacity for actual thinking, much less changing the thing that can loosely be termed his “mind.” It’s a good thing we only have another couple of months’ worth of this fucktard. I still have no idea why we elected such a fuckwit twice.

And he’s still doing his level best to ensure America can’t confront the climate crisis:

The Bush White House, though in the shadows of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition effort, continues to subvert the rule of law and impede action on global warming — in other words, Bush isn’t just pardoning turkeys. Last week, the White House emailed mayors asking them to oppose the Environmental Protection Agency’s draft proposal for greenhouse gas regulations. According to the Washington Post, the email by Jeremy J. Broggi, associate director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs reminded mayors to formally submit complaints to the EPA:

At the time, President Bush warned that this was the wrong way to regulate emissions. Chairman John D. Dingell called it “a glorious mess.” And many of you contacted us to let us know how harmful this rule would be to the economies of the cities and counties you serve.

Broggi, a young Dick Cheney protegé, also linked to a November 20 U.S. Chamber of Commerce blog post by Bill Kovacs that makes the absurd claim regulation of carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act “will operate as a de facto moratorium on major construction and infrastructure projects.” Broggi’s lobbying against his own government is nothing new — last year the Department of Transportation lobbied Congress to oppose global warming regulations.

To avoid action on global warming despite a direct order from the Supreme Court, Bush’s people have brazenly flouted their Constitutional obligation to faithfully execute the law, ignoring science, ignoring Congressional subpoenas, even ignoring emails from the EPA. Just as former attorney general Alberto Gonzales claimed the Geneva Convention’s ban on torture was “quaint,” EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson called the Clean Air Act “outdated” and “ill-suited” to the task of regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

However, it is the approach of the likes of George Bush, Stephen Johnson, Bill Kovacs, and John Dingell to the climate crisis that is “outdated,” “ill-suited,” and “a glorious mess” — not laws like the Clean Air Act.

Someone tell me again why we didn’t impeach this sorry son of a bitch.

I’m thankful for many things this Thanksgiving. One of them is that we will have a man with an actual brain and the ability to use it in charge. But there will, alas, be no end to stupidity and Republicon snivelling. Some of the enfants terrible are headed back to Congress:

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) reportedly told colleagues at a Senate prayer breakfast last week that she feels “lingering resentment toward Democratic senators who campaigned against her.” Collins reportedly confessed that that she had “trouble forgiving colleagues” who campaigned against her.

It marks an interesting twist in the tension between the two parties — now, it appears, Democrats are just too mean.

I’m afraid this is pretty silly. Members of one party, as a rule, want to help defeat members of the other party. This does not make them Big Meanies. If Democratic senators traveled to Maine to smear Collins with sleazy attacks and vicious personal lies, I could understand holding a grudge. But as far as I can tell, Dems primarily accused Collins of voting with Bush too much of the time. This hardly constitutes a cheap shot. Indeed, it happens to be true.

But whe
n the trut
h hurts, Cons don’t buck up and face it like courageous human beings. They throw tantrums and start obstructing anything and everything in sight.

Such as health care reform:

The Washington Times fired off two separate editorials today criticizing incoming Health and Human Services secretary Tom Daschle’s Federal Health Board initiative and progressive health care reform. Universal health care “would also reduce consumer choice and drive many private insurers out of the market,” the Times claimed:

Although his board would technically have no say on the 68 percent of health care that is provided through the private sector, Mr. Daschle modestly adds: “Congress could opt to go further with the Board’s recommendations. It could, for example, link the tax exclusion for health insurance to insurance that complies with the Board’s recommendation.” Those last 19 words would spell the end of independent private-sector health care in America. [Tony Blankley]

It would result in massive increases in federal spending, higher federal taxes and taxpayer debt being passed on to our children and grandchildren. It would also reduce consumer choice and drive many private insurers out of the market, leaving all but the wealthiest Americans with little choice but to receive care from the resulting government monopoly. [Washington Times]

The attacks are certainly reminiscent of the conservative effort to mischaractarize President Clinton’s health care reforms. In 1993, the Heritage Foundation labeled Clinton’s plan “a massive top-down, bureaucratic command-and-control system that would meticulously govern virtually every aspect of the delivery and the financing of health care services for the American people.” An influential editorial published in the Wall Street Journal by the Manhattan Institute similarly described the Clinton plan as a “coercive” proposal that “takes personal health choices away from patients and families.” [Health Plan’s Devilish Details, WSJ, 9/30/1993]

Fifteen years later, conservative talking points — however consistent — still don’t match reality.

I’m having a heart attack from not surprised. You know, it would have been nice if once – just once – the Cons could act like grown-ups instead of stomping their feet and screaming until they can’t breathe just because the world doesn’t work the way they want it to.

While I’m wishing for things I’ll never have, I’d like a pony, too, please.

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

Looks like the Bush regime’s got itself stuck between a rack and a thumbscrew:

The Wall Street Journal reports today that the White House “isn’t inclined to grant sweeping pardons for former administration officials involved in harsh interrogations and detentions of terror suspects.” White House officials believe that the Justice Department’s torture memos make such pardons “unnecessary”:

Some Republicans have been pushing for President George W. Bush to grant pre-emptive clemency to officials who fear being investigated by Democratic critics. White House officials have countered that such pardons are unnecessary, these people say. The officials point to Justice Department legal opinions that supported the administration’s methods of detaining and interrogating terror suspects. […]

Some former Bush administration officials have argued against a blanket pardon for post-9/11 activities, saying it would be tantamount to an admission that the Bush policies weren’t legal.

So. They can’t pardon the people who tortured detainees because to do so would admit that their paper figleaf is a fiction. This leaves the way open for prosecutions later. While Obama doesn’t seem interested in pursuing criminal charges, at least we know that option will be open if we can convince him otherwise.

And he does indeed respond to pressure from bloggers:

A number of bloggers — most notably Glenn Greenwald, Digby, and Andrew Sullivan — have raised serious concerns about intelligence official John Brennan, who’s been rumored to be a possible candidate for either the CIA director or the Director of National Intelligence in the Obama administration.
Brennan’s critics accused him of supporting some of the Bush administration’s most offensive intelligence-gathering policies, including rendition and “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Obama, they said, even if he intended to move far away from those policies, should not make room for Brennan in his administration.
The criticism seems to have had the desired effect. Brennan has withdrawn from consideration for any intelligence post in the Obama administration.

[snip]

As for the broader context, Brennan’s withdrawal appears to be the direct result of blog coverage. For those who believe bloggers’ concerns are inconsequential, this is clear evidence to the contrary.
Most excellent. Brennan wasn’t the most outrageous choice Obama could have made, but he was, nevertheless, an apologist for the Bush regime and has no place in the next administration. I’m glad our objections made a difference.

It’s also good to see some folks on teevee using our time-tested strategy of point-and-laugh:

On CNBC this morning, Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist claimed that the current financial crisis facing America is rooted in the fact that Democrats took control of the House and Senate in 2006. “The economy’s in the present state because when the Democrats took the House and Senate in 2006, you knew that those tax increases were going to come in 2010,” said Norquist.

According to Norquist, the stock market collapsed because “we’re in the middle of responding” to tax increases that haven’t actually happened yet:

NORQUIST: Well, the economy’s in the present state because when the Democrats took the House and Senate in 2006, you knew that those tax increases were going to come in 2010. The stock market began to collapse as soon as you recognized that those old tax rates were coming back. So, we’re in the middle of responding to those tax increases.

David Sirota, who was on the CNBC show as well, notes that Norquist’s absurd argument was laughed at and immediately rejected by the host and the other guests on the show. The Financial Times’ Chrystia Freeland pointed out that “the stock market is collapsing because the U.S. and global financial system is in crisis.”

This, I think, should be the ongoing method for dealing with far-right fuckwits. Especially when the arguments are this egregiously stupid.

I guess Norquist won’t be tapped as one of the conservative bloggers meant to elevate the discourse of the “rightroots:”

The Washington Post ran an interesting, 2,300-word item today on conservative blogs and their future within (alongside?) the Republican Party. As far as leading conservative activists — online and off — are concerned, the right is far behind the left when it comes to online presence, and there’s apparently a renewed push to do something about it.

As that process begins in earnest, I’d encourage them to consider this fine post from Outside the Beltway’s James Joyner. He argued the other day that, despite his conservative beliefs, he finds “most of the best analytical blogs are on the center-left,” and fleshed out his reasoning yesterday.

Part of the reason I’m drawn to the center-left blogs, including those cited above, Kevin Drum, Steve Benen, and others despite disagreeing with them while finding it increasingly difficult to find center-right blogs worth my time is that the former are much more likely to get beyond the debates of the 1980 election. There’s almost no serious analysis of health care reform, urban planning, education, and many other issues that regularly crop up on the best lefty blogs on their conservative counterparts. If we read about those issues at all, they’re framed as if Ronald Reagan were still aspiring to high office: Say No to socialism! Abolish the Department of Education! Government IS the problem!

[snip]

So, where are the right-of-center counterparts to Yglesias, Klein, and company?

I’ve long wondered the same thing. For more than two years, I was the editor f
or Salon
‘ “Blog Report,” featuring posts from the left and right. It led me to read dozens of conservative blogs every day, and I quickly realized that when it came to depth and seriousness of thought, the two sides weren’t close. (James Joyner, who is both thoughtful and knowledgeable, is a noticeable exception.)

Indeed, to help drive the point home, earlier this year, Erick Erickson, RedState’s editor, acknowledged that the “netroots” have an advantage over the “rightroots,” but attributed it to an asymmetry in free time, since conservatives “have families because we don’t abort our kids, and we have jobs because we believe in capitalism.”

This is largely the kind of thinking that dominates on conservative blogs. They can’t quite get to policy disputes or serious analysis, because they’re too busy mulling over the implications of liberals joining forces with Islamofascists, the United Nations, and Mexican immigrants to execute some kind of nefarious plot.

It’s going to be a long while before poor Mr. Joyner can stop reading Steve Benen et al, I’m afraid.

And it’s going to be even longer before we get any sort of acknowledgement of reality from their current grand poobahs:

Last night on Hannity and Colmes, Karl Rove vigorously defended his role in the White House as the Bush administration’s political guru. “The politics and policy are constantly banging into each other in decisions that are made inside the White House. That’s just the way it is,” he said. When Colmes asked him if that presented a “conflict of interest,” Rove insisted that, under Bush, “policy won out” over politics:

COLMES: Is that a conflict of interest though? The intersection of politics and policy? I know you’ve been criticized in the past of combining the two, as if when one conflicts with the other, maybe the country suffers, and it should be about policy regardless of the politics involved.

ROVE: Well, at least in the White House I was in, policy won out, but you had to be aware of the political fallout of what you were going to do in order to contain it and deal with it. You bet. But to — but first and foremost if — the president I worked for, George W. Bush said, you know what, let’s do right, and the politics will take care of itself. It didn’t mean you were blind to it, but it didn’t mean that you needed to focus first and foremost on what you thought was in the right interest of the country.

Needless to say, it didn’t take Think Progress and Steve Benen to pop that little balloon.

You know, it would be nice, just for a change of pace, to have political adversaries that were just a wee bit less ridiculous.