December 2008 - Posts
Blago Gone Wild:
"People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. I've earned everything I've got." Substitute the word Governor for President... And, in our fifth story on the Countdown, you pretty much have not what Richard Nixon said 35 years ago last month...But what Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich said today. Of course, the Governor spiced it up with a passage from Rudyard Kipling's famed poem "If"... And perhaps all you need to know about Blagojevich is, he bailed out of the stanza just before Kipling warned "don't look too good, nor talk too wise." CONTINUED >>
Warren Peace:
As outrage flies over Obama's selection of right wing evangelist Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at that inauguration...Words spoken exactly two weeks ago tonight, would seem in retrospect, prescient. "The Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped."The speaker... was Rick Warren. In our fifth story: if Warren represents people to whom agreement with their religious beliefs is the only measure of right or wrong...How can Obama gain anything from their side?And if, in preaching their evangel, Warren compares gay marriage to incest and pedophelia...How can Obama gain anything from his own side? CONTINUED >>
Safety Versed:
Forget President Bush's self-chosen, would-be legacy of keeping America safe after the 9/11 attacks -- though, tragically, not during. His actual legacy...The one with staying power. Might just be in how people -- the world over -- are now protesting abuses of power. Our fifth story on the Countdown: "This shoe is for you!" Flying footwear... officially the new political equivalent of flipping the bird. CONTINUED >>
The Other Shoe Drops: Having lied about the intelligence during the run-up to the War in Iraq... Having lied about the intelligence after the invasion when no Weapons of Mass Destruction were found... How ironic would it be if -- in our fifth story on the Countdown -- Vice President Dick Cheney, by refusing to join the Bush revisionist chorus and refusing to insist the war might not have been inevitable -- were now the only one telling the truth?
CONTINUED >>
Sole of a Nation: The official White House transcript of the joint news conference by President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki in Baghdad reeding nothing more than "audience interruption." Also, that it happened just after the president said that although "the war is not yet over ... it is decisively on its way to being won." Our fifth story on the Countdown: Mister Bush's final trip to Iraq -- perhaps his entire legacy in that country -- likely to be remembered for that "audience interruption." An Iraqi correspondent for a Baghdad t-v network... Throwing first one of his shoes... Then the other... At President Bush's head. Iraqi television journalism: Left shoe and right shoe: Fair and balanced.
CONTINUED >>
Epic Bail: This is Friday, December 12th...38 Days until the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. And 56 years next month since Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent General Motors President Charles Wilson to the Senate for confirmation as Defense Secretary. A senator asked Wilson whether he could make decisions that might be adverse to G-M Wilson replied, "I cannot conceive of one because for years I thought that what was good for our country was good for General Motors." Our fifth story tonight, the end of an era, as we learn that Senate Republicans are now willing to kill GM, regardless of whether it's good for our country, in order to kill the union of G-M's workers. The White House today announced that it will take steps to prevent both GM and Chrysler from failing... possibly dipping into the financial-sector bailout funds... the available batch having left, approximately 15 billion dollars-- almost exactly the amount that was in...the bill that fell short in the Senate last night, despite backing from the House and White House and a majority of the Senate.
CONTINUED >>
Countdown has obtained a memo entitled "Action Alert - Auto Bailout," and sent Wednesday at 9:12am, to Senate Republicans. The names of the sender(s) and recipient(s) have been redacted in the copy Countdown obtained. The Los Angeles Times reported that it was circulated among Senate Republicans. The brief memo outlines internal political strategy on the bailout, including the view that defeating the bailout represents a "first shot against organized labor." Senate Republicans blocked passage of the bailout late Thursday night, over its insistence on an immediate union pay cut. See the entire memo after the jump.
CONTINUED >>
Arrested Developments: The Governor Rod Blagoya-vitch scandal in Illinois has now grown so massive that even President George W. Bush has sat up and taken notice. In our fifth story on the Countdown: The White House, today saying that President Bush thinks the Blagoya-vitch situation is "very serious"... and that the charges he is facing are "astounding." No comment on whether Mr. Bush will accept the evident favorite for a name for the scandal: G-Bay.
CONTINUED >>
Own a Piece of History: Even in Illinois, where votes cast by dead men are the stuff of legend...Even in Illinois, where a horse path once built by a corrupt Chicago mayor cost a million dollars...Even in Illinois, where three of his six elected predecessors wound up going to the penitentiary... Even in Illinois, when Governor Rod Blagoya-vitch was arrested today with trying to sell the right to succeed the President-Elect in the Senate, and trying to muscle the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Cubs...Even in Illinois -- in our fifth story tonight -- there rings out, one single question, raised in unison on a million lips... Is this guy the dumbest SOB on the planet, or what?
CONTINUED >>
Roadblockheads: After a weekend in which it appeared a mini-bailout of the auto industry was imminent... Two monkey wrenches in the assembly line. Our fifth story on the Countdown: is taxpayer help for Detroit being held up by one state that relies on money from foreign auto-makers? And by one final effort by the Bush Administration to kill or cripple... a union?
CONTINUED >>
In The Line of Firings: If even the man he will replace has just broken the strained, agonized, tortured refusal of his White House employees to ever use the word, and called this a Recession... Then, in our fifth story... we're screwed."Today's job data reflects the fact that our economy is in a recession," said President Bush, after that data arrived -- 533-thousand more workers laid off last month. Not his fault, of course..
CONTINUED >>
Three Car Pile-up: In the jargon of our time, the phrases "Car Salesmen" and especially "Used Car Salesmen" are not exactly compliments or assurances. So, in our fifth story on the Countdown: what would you call three men who went back to Capitol Hill for the second time in a month trying to again sell America on saving their industry at a huge public cost? Used Car Bailout Salesmen?
CONTINUED >>
Lame Duck and Cover: They have now begun fabricating the platform on the White House steps on which that inauguration will be conducted. Meantime, inside -- in our fifth story on the Countdown -- the current President, having long argued that history would vindicate him, evidently no longer leaving that to chance... Now personally fabricating the story of his eight years of rule.
CONTINUED >>
State and the Union:
Abraham Lincoln managed to appoint to his cabinet, four of his rivals for the 1860 Republican Convention. Barack Obama has now made one of his, his Vice President... another his Secretary of State... a third likely to become his Secretary of Commerce. But in our fifth story on the Countdown: as he rolled out his national security team this morning, the President-Elect could now out-Lincoln Lincoln... He also has a Secretary of Defense fresh from the Bush Administration... An Attorney General and a U-N Ambassador from the Clinton Administration... A head of an Economic Recovery Advisory Board out of the Carter and Reagan Administrations... And a National Security Advisor who appeared at at least one campaign event for the Senator he defeated in the election last month. This is not the dream of Doris Kearns Goodwin's publishers come true -- another "Team Of Rivals"... This is bordering on... a Coalition Government. CONTINUED >>
