It would be my sincere preference that our political discourse not delve into who does and does not wear American-flag pins, with every presidential candidate’s lapel suddenly drawing sharp scrutiny.
That said, if we are going to go in this direction, we might as well highlight hypocrisy when we see it.
Discussing an interview in which Sen. Barack Obama said he had stopped wearing a flag pin on his lapel during the lead-up to the Iraq war, Sean Hannity said on his radio show: “[W]hy do we wear pins? Because our country was under attack.” He continued: “And to politicize once again the war to this extent. Well, who cares about the war? Are you proud of your country?” Yet while criticizing Obama for not wearing a flag pin, Hannity himself has not worn an American flag lapel pin on a number of recent occasions.
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw lapel pins.
Under the headline, “Bush hints at spending more on children’s health bill,” I think the AP is misreading the president’s weekly radio address a bit.
President Bush signaled a willingness Saturday to spend more than what he had recommended for a popular children’s health program, but provided no specifics on how much higher he would go.
The president on Wednesday vetoed legislation that would increase spending for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program by $35 billion over five years. Bush has called for a $5 billion increase. Several Republicans in both chambers have sided with Democratic lawmakers on the issue.
“If putting poor children first takes a little more than the 20 percent increase I have proposed in my budget for SCHIP, I am willing to work with leaders in Congress to find the additional money,” Bush said in his weekly radio address.
This may sound like renewed flexibility on the president’s part, but it’s not nearly that encouraging. Indeed, the day he vetoed the bill extending healthcare to low-income children, he told a friendly Pennsylvania audience, “I’m more than willing to work with members of both parties from both Houses, and if they need a little more money in the bill to help us meet the objective of getting help for poor children, I’m more than willing to sit down with the leaders and find a way to do so.”
The emphasis there is on “a little more money.” Bush is kinda sorta interested is striking a compromise, just so long as it’s very close to his demands. What Bush may or may not understand, though, is that the current, bipartisan S-CHIP bill is already a compromise measure. It’s exactly why it passed with such a strong majority, and why Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) ruled out compromising on the compromise earlier this week.
The AP report suggested Bush’s comments this morning were a “hint” at conciliation. If only that were the case.
Having watched the clip, via ThinkProgress, I suspect Bill O’Reilly was kidding, but am I the only one who finds his eliminationist rhetoric kind of creepy?
The details are still sketchy, but we know that Israel decided to attack Syria on Sept. 6, hitting a suspected nuclear site that may have been launched with help from North Korea. ABC News reports today that the Bush administration knew about the plans, but argued against the Israeli airstrikes.
In early July the Israelis presented the United States with satellite imagery that they said showed a nuclear facility in Syria. They had additional evidence that they said showed that some of the technology was supplied by North Korea.
One U.S. official told ABC’s Martha Raddatz the material was “jaw dropping” because it raised questions as to why U.S. intelligence had not previously picked up on the facility. Officials said that the facility had likely been there for months if not years. […]
Initially, administration officials convinced the Israelis to call off the July strike. But in September the Israelis feared that news of the site was about to leak and went ahead with the strike despite U.S. concerns.
Apparently, Condoleezza Rice wanted Israel to “confront Syria before attacking,” and according to the ABC report, there were some administration officials who were concerned about the “profound consequences” of “flawed intelligence.”
Jeez, a White House launches one disastrous war under false pretenses and all of a sudden they’re on pins and needles.
As for whether the Israelis actually hit a nuclear site in Syria, Kevin Drum considers the evidence and concludes “maybe there was some North Korean nuclear technology there after all.”
In response to the latest monthly employment report, the White House released a “fact sheet” yesterday bragging about the president’s record on job creation. It led Paul Krugman to take a closer look at Bush’s numbers as compared to his predecessor’s.
Over the whole of the Clinton administration, the economy added 22.7 million jobs — 237,000 per month.
Over the whole of the Bush administration to date, the economy added only 5.8 million jobs — 72,000 per month.
But, the White House says, the first two years of Bush’s presidency shouldn’t count because there was a recession and 9/11 affected the economy. It’s only fair, the president’s supporters say, to start counting since August 2003, and forget about his first 32 months in office.
Fine, Krugman said. Bush’s monthly average, using the cherry-picked timeline, still trails Clinton, 172,000 per month to 237,000 per month.
Krugman concludes, “Did I mention that the Clinton job boom followed an, um, increase in taxes?”
I’d only add that U.S. News recently asked Rudy Giuliani about this in an interview about economic policy. The magazine said, “The Democrats are going to say, ‘We raised taxes in the ’90s, cut the deficit, and the economy boomed.’ Why not try and rerun the ’90s instead of cutting taxes?”
Giuliani responded, “Because we have actually done more job creation by lowering taxes than by raising taxes.”
Reality shows otherwise.
After a long battle with breast cancer, Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R-Va.) died this morning. She was 57.
Davis is survived by her husband, Chuck, two grown sons, and a granddaughter.
It’s tough to keep up on the rules dictating political debate right now — is criticism of U.S. generals allowed? — but Slate’s Fred Kaplan has a good piece on Gen. Peter Pace’s departure as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kaplan argues, persuasively, that Pace’s involuntary exit marks the end of the “Rumsfeld era.”
Pace was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff the last two years. Gates decided not to renew the general’s term, despite Pace’s request for another. The public rationale was that Gates wanted to avoid “very contentious” confirmation hearings. There’s clearly something to this. Not only was Pace the last senior official still associated with early decisions on the war (he was the JCS vice chairman at the time of the invasion), he also recently said in public that gays shouldn’t be in the military because homosexual acts were “immoral.”
But the larger import of Pace’s forced retirement — the message that many officers heard clearly, whatever Gates’ intention — is that the sorts of generals who behave as Pace did the past few years are no longer desired in the Pentagon’s inner sanctum.
Pace was a decorated Marine who by all accounts fought valiantly in Vietnam and treated his troops well. But when he entered the Pentagon, he adapted all too eagerly to the ways of the “political general.” By statute, the chairman of the JCS is supposed to offer independent military advice to the secretary of defense and the president. Yet Pace became, in essence, a suck-up. His underlings mocked him, behind his back, as “Perfect Pete.” He was exactly the sort of chairman that Rumsfeld wanted — and, apparently, Gates does not.
I guess the “Pace for President” effort may have a little trouble getting off the ground.
The caricature of the president’s aides suggests a West Wing full of loyal Bushies who believe their boss is always right, embrace an unnerving denial, and who make their own reality. But what about when some of these staffers leave the White House bubble?
The WaPo’s Peter Baker took a lengthy look today at some longtime Bushies who recently joined the exodus out of the White House, and are now in the midst of some painful soul-searching. Not surprisingly, the disaster in Iraq appears to weigh heavily on their minds.
Meghan O’Sullivan, the former deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan, and former Bremer aide, admits that she has nightmares about conditions in Iraq. Peter Wehner, who was White House director of strategic initiatives, says his role in shaping Bush’s war policy has led some of his former friends to stop speaking to him.
More dramatically, Baker quotes one former senior official as saying that “nearly everyone who has left the administration is angry in some way or another — at the president for making bad decisions, at his staff for misguiding him, at events that have spiraled out of control.”
And then there’s Karl Rove.
The truth, he said, is that he really did leave to spend more time with his wife and college-age son, even if that has left him feeling guilty about leaving Bush. “I told the boss, ‘I feel like I’m deserting you in a time of war,’ ” he said. “But you know, my wife is right. My wife is a two-time cancer survivor. How much time can I ask her to wait? I don’t feel sorry for myself.”
This was a recurring theme in the course of an hour-long conversation. He is not depressed, he said more than once. “Hey, man, that was my life,” he said. “It’s not my life now. One of the reasons I don’t think I’m depressed is I’m always looking forward.”
Rove probably didn’t mean it as a concession, but it’s interesting that he avoids depression by not reflecting too much on his White House service. If I were in Rove’s shoes, and I shared in the responsibility for shaping this presidency, I suspect I’d feel the same way.
About a month ago, during a debate for Republican presidential candidates, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) was asked about Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and some of the other scandal-plagued members of the GOP caucus. “[T]hat’s one thing about our party: When our guys have problems like this, they leave — they leave the Senate or they leave the House,” Hunter said. “When the Democrats have problems like this, they often make them chairman of — of their respective committees.”
It was an odd thing to say, given that reality points to the opposite being true. For example, consider the latest report from Bob Novak.
In a secret meeting Wednesday of the House Republican leadership, Minority Leader John Boehner ruled that Rep. Jerry Lewis of California will continue as the party’s ranking member of the Appropriations Committee while under federal investigation on ethics charges.
That widened the gap between Boehner and reform-minded House Republicans, including members of the leadership. Under investigation for sponsoring questionable earmarks, Lewis remains a major Republican spokesman in Congress. He led the Republican debate Wednesday on Democratic procedures for handling President Bush’s veto of the expanded State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
The culture of corruption lives on.