The Bush White House is surely twice as ethical this year as last. In July 2007 the WH staff included two "Ethics Advisors", each earning more than $100,000. That was the year in which a parade of top administration officials were telling Congressional hearings that they remembered nothing about their criminal conspiracies.
Since 2007 both Ethics Advisors have left the WH. Previously the two ethicists in 2006 had also moved on. Perhaps the work load is a problem. Sensing that something needed to be done, the WH has now doubled the number of ethicists on staff to four. The top salary has also shot up nearly 20%.
The improvement in the White House's ethical standards is apparent. Fewer and fewer administration officials are feigning memory loss. During the past year the WH favored a much cleaner solution to the problem of oversight by refusing to comply at all with Congressional subpoenas.
Presumably that's why the WH was able to eliminate the Office for Lessons Learned. Bush has learned all the lessons he wishes to learn.
Philadelphia sketch comedy group Secret Pants collected a number of quotes from the 1960's series Batman and a number of quotes from Dubya and challenged people on the street to guess which quotes were from whom.
McCain apparently isn't as tech ignorant as we think. Like most Republicans, he appears to be getting all his news from chain emails, because he's parroting the latest talking point that's been propagating down the pipe that brought previous bits of GOP misdirection.
Earlier, campaigning in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., McCain credited the recent $10-a-barrel drop in the price of oil to President Bush's lifting of a presidential ban on offshore drilling, an action he has been advocating in his presidential campaign.
See, we didn't even have to drill to lower the price of oil, we only had to talk about it. Which has to make you wonder why Bush didn't bother to remove the executive ban until after Republicans had decided to make oil the focus of their campaign. (Oh yeah, and how is it that Democrats kept oil companies from saving us when Bush left the executive ban in effect until now?)
"The worries about demand erosion in the U.S. and an economic slowdown are really pulling prices down," said Victor Shum, an energy analyst with consulting firm Purvin & Gertz Inc. in Singapore.
The Energy Department's report also showed that U.S. gasoline stockpiles jumped 2.9 million barrels last week, far more than analysts surveyed by energy research firm Platts predicted. The decline in crude inventories was less than forecast.
So congratulations to McCain, Bush, and the Republicans! They've reduced oil prices by wrecking the economy to the point where demand is falling. I guess that's one way to satisfy the supply/demand equation.
I am so mad right now I don't know what to do. For those unfamiliar with me, I live in a small, conservative, republican town in Georgia. I just had a HUGE argument with my next door neighbor. After seeing my new shiny Obama sticker on my van, she launched into an attack on me that was unprovoked and very unsettling. She asked me why he couldn't say the pledge of allegiance to which I replied, that is not true. I then explained the details of various lies and smears. She continued to bring up every smear out there from the pledge to the swearing in on the Koran. I told her she needed to check her facts as these had all been disproved. She then asked, "So if he is a Muslim, and did swear on a Koran, then would you still support him?" I explained that I would support him because a person's religion is not an important factor to me. Which is when she said, "I hope if he gets elected, that he is shot and killed within 24 hours!"
The Bush Administration is planning an end run to entice states into applying for abstinence-only funds that Congress has yet to authorize, and potentially tie the hands of the next administration.
Some Utah news, when even Obama is including Utah in the 50-state strategy.
One hundred sixty one years ago today, the members of the LDS church first entered the Salt Lake Valley. Today, it is the biggest, most widely celebrated holiday in the state.
Since I, like 30% of my state, am not LDS, I have never been very excited about celebrating this day. However, it's my baptism birthday and when my kids were little, I told them the parade and fireworks were for me. ;-)
More Utah news, including an item about Rocky Anderson, to follow:
The good news is that there is no good news, the bad news? Well, that’s the good news. Bush and McCain say that it is the surge that has brought relative calm to Iraq. Obama claims it was more due to Anbar awakening. Who is correct? Neither is correct, both are absolutely wrong.
While driving in my car the other day I was listening to WAMC-FM, Northeast Public Radio, as I always do, and the program aired was The Roundtable - a discussion of topics of interest to AMC listeners. The subject was the book "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder" and the interview was with the author Vincent Bugliosi.
As John McCain himself has said, the Republican Party has been acting like a drunken sailor. Recently, President Bush joked about it. It is obvious from their callous disregard of the damage done by their binge drinking, that both of these men are still in denial. Their unquenchable thirst for oil profits have left them with greedy hearts and unrepentant souls. While they laugh about the housing market, millions of families face foreclosure. They came into office with a robust and healthy middle class and they have feasted on these trusting citizens. As a result, their friends have become mega rich and the middle class has disappeared into the ranks of the homeless. The latest video shows us that the Republicans are still in denial about the damage done by their gluttony. They still resist any efforts to regulate or control their appetites for wealth and power. They need the 12 steps. They need an intervention.
I’ve been doing some serious retroflecting now that we’re nearing the end of the George W. Bush era, and I’m thinking that maybe we who consider ourselves to be environmentalists should actually be grateful to the man for the way that he’s dealt with climate change.
I don't know if there are many football fans here. I'm a huge Chicago Bears fan. Tough sledding last year but maybe we'll be back this season! Maybe not. I love the sport.
During the NFL draft this year, there was a sidebar human interest story. A guy named Caleb Campbell played at Army last year. He was drafted by the Detroit Lions this season, an NFL football team.
Just what is up lately with John McCain? One has to wonder if his campaign is sabotaging him on purpose. Surely it can't be the case that the candidate of a major American political party is completely without access to a basic fact checker?
After I helped give it wide attention yesterday, media commentators started weighing in on the brief video captured (probably via cell phone) at a private fundraiser in which President Bush joked about Wall Street getting "drunk" and making light of the U.S. housing crisis. Dan Froomkin at The Washington Post called it Bush's "YouTube Moment," which makes you marvel - yes, he has had relatively few of them, at least of the "whoops, that was private" variety.
Amazingly, earlier that same day - last Friday - at another fundraiser in Tucson, Bush, according to Daniel Scarpinato of the Arizona Daily Star had fretted about this eventuality. "So sensitive were Republicans about information getting out about the goings-on at the Tucson fundraiser . . . even W. himself," he wrote, "made sure to ask the 400 or so people at the event to turn off any recording devices. 'I don't know a lot about technology,' the president said, according to one insider, 'but I do know about YouTube.'"
At least he didn't say "the YouTube" or "the Tubes."
I almost fell out of my seat when I read this one. McCain claims Bush is to be thanked for lifting the offshore oil drilling ban, because it caused a $10.00 drop in the price of a barrel of oil.
