There seems to be a constant series of examples in history that reflect what we are living through this week: from Psistratus in Athens to Caesar in Rome to the Duke of Lancaster in 15th-century England to Napoleon to Lenin and Hitler and now to Karl Rove, a multitude of fellows have harnessed populist outrage to their own carriage in order to seize power.  That outrage, changing the metaphor, flows into the furious stream into which Boehner and McConnell and Palin launched their boats last night.

 
Glenn Beck and Karl Rove and Swift-Boat financier Bob Perry who is sending hundreds of thousands to Susana Martinez, are not just trying to prevent New Mexico from, for example, participating in the new health care exchange that will bring competition for the first time into health insurance coverage. Their goal is not nearly so limited.  These men, Beck and Rove, and women like presidential contender Sarah Palin, and senate contender Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, are not about now. They are explicitly--they say so outloud--about reversing all the gains of the 1930s New Deal and even before. They want to forget the passion and suffering that brought about a century of liberal reform.

How quick Karl Rove was to criticize the left and go home without signing any books in Beverly Hills when members of Code Pink dared to confront him.  

Considering what Karl Rove has done in his political career beginning when he was still in his teens, disrupting a book signing rates as minimalist activity.  This man has an extensive track record of which he is proud beginning with the days when he emulated the tactics of his idol Richard Nixon.

Rove launched his dirty tricks activities when he handed out handbills to the downtrodden, particularly of the inebriated variety, encouraging them to attend a campaign headquarters opening for Alan Dixon in Illinois when the future U.S. Senator was running for secretary of state.

Then there was that occasion when Rove reported that he found a bug in his office when he was seeking to lift the sagging campaign of his lackluster Texas gubernatorial candidate Bill Clements against Democrat Mark White.  

With Karl Rove arrogantly proclaiming not only that he did nothing wrong, but that he is very much on the correct side of history, it is interesting to look back and see how he would fare in accordance with the standards of his first political hero, Richard M. Nixon.

As a young man growing up in Salt Lake City, Rove adhered strongly to the Nixon Vietnam position.  He accepted Nixon's position of demonizing opponents of the Vietnam War, including questioning their patriotism.

After Nixon's death progressive historians asserted that Nixon and his administration's foot soldiers demeaned true patriotism by embracing a narrow standard wherein, if they failed to support a flag waving posture operating lockstep within Nixon's narrow dogma relating to Vietnam, they were labeled as unpatriotic.

Like so many of Nixon's stalwart young supporters, including of William Kristol, Dick Cheney and others, Rove had no stomach for traveling to Southeast Asia and fighting for a cause he verbally supported.

It is interesting to note that Fox News, the media arm of the Republican Party, has signed up Sarah Palin as a commentator.  This should be a good fit for an obvious reason.

Fox and the Republicans have a distinct tendency to fuzz up the facts and Palin with her wild, off the top of her head commentaries on global warming, international affairs, or virtually any other issue one could name makes her a fitting prospect to follow in the tradition of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.

One issue that the Republicans are notably fuzzing up is Harry Reid's unfortunate comments about his belief as to why Barack Obama would make a successful presidential candidate.  They definitely displayed racial insensitivity and he had every reason to apologize.

So now Michael Steele, the Republican National Committee's chairman and an African American himself, is shouting "double standard" from the rooftops.  

With all the recent talk about a different John McCain and all the mud being hurled in the presidential campaign, someone unfamiliar with the history of the Republican Party in the post-World War Two years might think that something new is occurring.  Even a cursory look at the record reveals a familiar story.

After Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman established the New Deal and Fair Deal respectively along with confronting the Nazi and Fascist menaces in winning World War Two, a Republican Party hungry for victory as the fifties beckoned used the Cold War against the Soviet Union to advance their presidential aims.

The era of McCarthyism-Nixonism was launched.  While grand smears were launched questioning the patriotism of loyal Americans and targeting those who opposed them, a party that had been out of power for twenty years achieved the presidency under World War Two military hero General Dwight David Eisenhower.  

As perceptive journalists said at the time, the apolitical Eisenhower took the "high road" and his aggressive vice presidential running mate Richard Nixon traversed the "low road."

Recent revelations from the upcoming book by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan cite the increasing need to confront the impeachment issue immediately.

Congressman Robert Wexler of Florida has vigilantly pursued the necessity of impeachment hearings and of holding government officials, beginning with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, accountable for potential "high crimes and misdemeanors" under mandate of no less than the U.S. Constitution.

As so many continue to point out, this duty to pursue commission of high crimes and misdemeanors by those charged with upholding the U.S. Constitution violates that document and deems it necessary for them to answer such charges.  There is a duty to pursue such acts of grievous misconduct and, when the facts warrant, remove the responsible parties from their positions of power.

McClellan reveals that Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney lied about their roles in revealing the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, actions constituting an obstruction of justice.  

Did The Rooster Call Up the Sun or Did Rove Get the Last Laugh?
The only certainty my grasshoppers is that the cherry blossoms of spring will become the turd blossoms of summer

Karl Rove also known as "Turd Blossom" in that colorful native patois spoken by the Texas Chicken hawks announced today that he is leaving the rapidly sinking Scow of State that is the Bush administration effective the end of August.

His reason for leaving, taken verbatim from the official Washington departing rats exit speech is of course, to spend more time with his family.

When asked by one of the fully interchangeable talking heads of the White House press horde if he was being forced out, TB replied, "that sounds like the rooster calling up the sun" which I believe is another expression in that curious Pecos dialect that these birds use among themselves. Only Molly Ivins could decipher and translate the curious Texas Pig Latin these guys speak in private. I miss Molly.

Happy Fourth of July! Enjoy a good movie today...  everything is posted here too!

Karl Rove and Robert Mueller cautioned the public against a new email scam set to emerge


Washington, DC (Rotters) - In a joint announcement this morning FBI Director Robert Mueller and special presidential assistant Karl Rove confirmed that over 140,000 of Rove's personal e-mails had been maliciously deleted from Republican National Committee servers by botnet programs apparently uploaded by spammers. Mueller stated that he had contacted Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and was working closely with the Justice Department in investigating the possibility of charging a group of arrested spammers with violations of the presidential records act, a 30-year-old law which mandates the archiving of all presidential correspondence.

There is an ad currently running on Comedy Central for David Spade's show in which the comic says that Michael Jackson is having a 50 foot robot of himself built which will roam the desert shooting laser beams from it's eyes. He then asks the viewer, "Wouldn't we be more shocked if he didn't?"

Looking around the net this morning and perusing a few of the thousands of "will Bush pardon Scooter?" stories, that ad kept popping into my mind.

I think that Bush will pardon Scooter, I will be shocked if he doesn't, the real question, for me, is when?

You can be sure the question is being discussed in hushed tones in the West Wing this morning, but the hand wringing is audible out here in the heartland.

"Obviously, there'd be a significant political price to pay," said William P. Barr, who as attorney general to President George H.W. Bush remembers the controversy raised by the post-election pardons for several Iran-contra figures in 1992. "I personally am very sympathetic to Scooter Libby. But it would be a tough call to do it at this stage."

In the West Wing, Pardon Is A Topic Too Sensitive to Mention
By Peter Baker - Washington Post

Nothing prompts Karl Rove to salivate faster than the prospect of a new protégé.  It was reported that Rove waxed enthusiasm from the first time he met George W. Bush, loving his "swagger" and recognizing what he perceived as a natural and engaging charisma that he believed he could take all the way to the presidency.

Despite Rove's enthusiasm he recognized that he could not accomplish this feat independently.  The important thing about promoting an incurious and inarticulate buffoon-like figure such as Bush to the presidency was a willingness to please the neocon power structure and that he did.

To invest Bush with the kind of manufactured machismo that typified Ronald Reagan, who had earlier been fine-tuned by the corporate establishment all the way to the presidency, some early steps were taken.  

Like Reagan, Bush developed a "man's man" image by becoming an instant cowboy as arrangements were made for him to purchase his Crawford, Texas ranch, the first step toward becoming the Lone Star State's governor, an important pivotal position en route to Washington.

Has the Republican Party's favorite smelly ogre lost his magic touch in his latest sequel?



Washington, DC (Rotters) - Critics are united over condemnation of the latest efforts from the smelly ogre that everyone loves to hate. "Karl the Turd" was released with all the fanfare that the Bush administration and its corporate sponsors could muster, but it's tried and true formulaic writing appears not to be resonating with the American public.

Compared to the body counts in Iraq and elsewhere, this may seem like nitpicking.  But unlike the USA firings or the Energy Policy meetings or the leaking of classified information, inappropriate use of computers at work is something most people understand.  It's no joke.  I have fired people for:

a) using unauthorized personal devices on secure networks
b) transmitting confidential information over unsecure channels
c) violating procedures for maintaining network integrity
d) using government networks for personal business

These policies and procedures exist for a reason.  How many people reading this have found their name on spam lists because someone put you in their address book and then got compromised?  Why anyone associated with this kind of flagrant actionable abuse of resources is still working at the White House, let alone has a security clearance, is beyond me.  Speaking of security.... What about those Blackberry's?

In these days of spin control language distortions are such a popular pastime that it is becoming increasingly impossible to separate distortion from reality, which is what the spinmeisters of propaganda and discontent are seeking to achieve.

The interesting documentary film "Bush's Brain" adapted from the book of the same name by veteran Texas political journalists James C. Moore and Wayne Slater is interestingly divided up between those who clearly see through Karl Rove, the film's subject, and those who do not wish to do so.  Many in the latter category have become Rove enablers and sycophants of the most repellent variety.

After watching this revealing film I thought it advisable to look up the word genius in the dictionary to learn its actual definition.  According to the Random House and American Heritage editions genius is defined as a gift for creative and intellectual activity.  The psychological definition is also mentioned involving individuals who score above 140 on a standard IQ test.

Among the Rove admirers who equate his political activities with "genius" an early triumph was discussed extending back to Rove's early days in the College Republicans.