Alright, enough partying…let’s get it on! In keeping with the conclusions of Sy Hersh’s recent New Yorker piece, Cheney stops by Imus before the inauguration to rattle the saber at Iran (using Israel as the bad cop.) I can see it now — Iran: We’re really pretty sure this time they’ve got WMD. Update: Iran rattles back.
Category: GOP
Sponge-worthy?
Tinky-Winky may keep Jerry Falwell up at night, but apparently it’s Spongebob Squarepants that haunts the dreams of James Dobson, founder and head of right-wing freak show organization Focus on the Family. (Must’ve been that David Hasselhoff cameo.) At a inaugural function this week, Dobson castigated a new tolerance promotion video featuring Spongebob, Barney, Winnie-the-Pooh, and other children’s characters of suspect orientation as “pro-homosexuality.” Said Dobson’s #2, “We see the video as an insidious means by which the organization is manipulating and potentially brainwashing kids…It is a classic bait and switch.” Um, yeah, ok…fight the power, y’all.
So Help Me God.
As the Bushies warm up the teleprompter, the Washington Post attempts to explain why most inaugural addresses are boring, Chris Suellentrop surveys some of the lousier efforts over the years (with help from this Library of Congress exhibit), and David Greenberg looks back at the last great one (Kennedy, 1961). Somehow, I have a sneaking suspicion that Dubya’s evocation tomorrow of “The Ownership Society” isn’t going to make the A-list.
The Halftime Score.
Monica who? On the eve of Dubya II, Salon‘s Peter Dizikes offers a short but comprehensive list of this administration’s scandals thus far. Thirty-four and counting…not that you’d know it from watching the evening news.
The Final Tally.
“The Committee for the Study of the American Electorate reported yesterday that more than 122 million people voted in the November election, a number that translates into the highest turnout — 60.7 percent — since 1968.” The Dems didn’t do so hot that year, either, but then we had Tet, Chicago, and the murders of both RFK and MLK. How are we going to answer for 2004? Also, “[t]he report noted that although turnout reached new heights, more than 78 million Americans who were eligible to vote stayed home on Election Day. The group estimated that Bush won just 30.8 percent of the total eligible voters.“
Twisting Armstrong.
After pressure from Democratic commissioners and congressmen, Michael Powell’s FCC announces an investigation into Armstrong-gate. Well, what do you know? I guess they’re just killing time until someone makes the mistake of showing more scantily-clad (non-cheerleader) women at an NFL football game.
No Right-Wing Flunky Left Behind.
By way of a friend of mine, the Dubya education department gets busted subsidizing conservative commentator Armstrong Williams for good press on NCLB. I mean, really, wasn’t Fox News enough?
Dubya’s Man at Justice.
“Alberto Gonzales has paved the way of his own advancement with memos that are intellectually slovenly, that impute definitive powers to the executive, and whose attempts at shirking the basic moral precepts of international humanitarian law are not very skillful. If he is confirmed as attorney general, our nation will be shamed, shunned and endangered.” As the Gonzales hearings begin on Capitol Hill, Salon does an able job of exposing his egregious yes-man tendencies in both the torture memos and, previously, in managing Governor Dubya’s execution sprees. Update: Yet, the Dems roll over.
All the Hammer’s Men.
Just when it seemed the House GOP might be doing the right thing on the ethics question, the truth comes out — Boss DeLay’s boys have decided to work the system rather than explicitly subvert it. Case in point, the imminent ousting of DeLay opponent Joel Hefley (R-CO) from the House Ethics chair. “‘I’m not naive enough to not know that there are some folks that are very upset with me because they think we were too harsh with DeLay,’ Hefley said.”
The Other Shoe Drops.
Surprise, surprise. “The Bush administration has signaled that it will propose changing the formula that sets initial Social Security benefit levels, cutting promised benefits by nearly a third in the coming decades, according to several Republicans close to the White House.” Administration officials claim the deficit caused by this “price-indexing” change — pegging first-year benefits to inflation rather than the rise in wages — will be made up by, you guessed it, “personal investment accounts,” a.k.a. the Bush privatization plan. Funny how Dubya neglected to mention this cut only a few weeks ago…I doubt the plan was formulated over Christmas.