ABQjournal: GOP: Rove’s Visit to ‘Pump Up Troops’ By Jeff Jones, Journal Politics Writer

White House political guru Karl Rove’s stealth visit to Albuquerque on Saturday brought in some Republican campaign dollars while rallying local volunteers, GOP organizers said.

However, Democrats claimed the real purpose of Rove’s visit— the details of which were kept secret from the media and general public— was to quietly help Republican Rep. Heather Wilson in her 1st Congressional District battle against Patricia Madrid.

“Bush sends right-hand man to N.M. to defend his right-hand woman,” said a news release Saturday from the camp of Madrid, New Mexico’s Democratic attorney general. …

“That’s shallow thinking,” Weh said of the Democratic claim that Wilson was the prime purpose of Rove’s visit. “I can honestly say that Karl Rove has an interest in— and a concern for— down-ballot campaigns run all over the country, and New Mexico is no different.” [mjh: yeah, Rove’s got money riding on Darren White versus Geraldine Amato.]

Nonetheless, Wilson’s battle against Madrid is one of the fiercest congressional battles in the nation and is the premier GOP race in New Mexico this year.

Weh really takes me back with that reference to Republicans as “the party of deep thinkers,” as they arrogantly call themselves. (Wait a minute, I’m still laughing.) The party headed by DUHbya. The party that gets “stay the course” from Henry Kissinger — unquestionably the smartest guy in the room, but, come on, how successful was he with Vietnam. At precisely the same moment BushCo insisted Iraq in no way resembled Vietnam (but, rather, post-WWII Germany, for god’s sake), they were slavishly following Dr. K’s comparisons to the mistakes of Vietnam (and he made his share).

The GOP, the party whose single mantra was “you’ll get my contribution to the common good when you pry it from my cold dead fingers” (well, until they destroyed the Estate Tax, the one tool that delayed the rise of an American Aristocracy — “Death Tax,” a brilliantly deep phrase that silences any discussion of its true worth). The party of skinflints who always find money for their own interests (wars without end, for example). The Party that manages every decade to find a cause to keep everyone frightened. Indeed, there are vile and ruthless terrorist we must fight. We may not need to turn our nation into Guantanamo to do it. But the use of the word “may” makes me a cut-and-run traitor to the Party of Deep Thinkers.

“Deep Thinking,” as practiced by those in control of the Republican Party is a kind of semi-conscious meditation in which all practitioners endlessly shout the same nonsensical clichés — the shorter the better to maintain focus. It is a binary approach that not only denies the existence of gray but of color, for that matter. Yes/no. Truth/Lie. This “thinking” is anti-science: start with your conclusions and spout anything as evidence.

As a philosophy, Deep Thinking puts spine before brains, resolve before reason. Nuance and diversity are tools of the devil, which is to say anyone they don’t like. Oh, they’re deep — and hostile to breadth or consensus. mjh

mjh’s blog Search Results for deep thinker
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Secret Reports Dispute White House Optimism By Bob Woodward, Washington Post Staff Writer

A powerful, largely invisible influence on Bush’s Iraq policy was former secretary of state Kissinger.

“Of the outside people that I talk to in this job,” Vice President Cheney told me in the summer of 2005, “I probably talk to Henry Kissinger more than I talk to anybody else. He just comes by and, I guess at least once a month, Scooter [his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby] and I sit down with him.”

The president also met privately with Kissinger every couple of months, making him the most regular and frequent outside adviser to Bush on foreign affairs.

Kissinger sensed wobbliness everywhere on Iraq, and he increasingly saw it through the prism of the Vietnam War. For Kissinger, the overriding lesson of Vietnam is to stick it out.

In his writing, speeches and private comments, Kissinger claimed that the United States had essentially won the war in 1972, only to lose it because of the weakened resolve of the public and Congress.

Portsmouth Herald Local News: Bush blasts his war critics By Jennifer Loven, Associated Press

At a GOP fund-raiser Thursday in Alabama, Bush said, “The party of FDR and the party of Harry Truman has become the party of cut and run.”

He also charged in Alabama that “some in Washington, some decent people, patriotic people, feel like we should not be on the offensive in this war on terror,” without offering any evidence of such remarks.

I saw Duhbya deliver that line with a kind of weary sorrow, as if the decline of a once great party really moved him. The deceitful bastard lousy actor. Too bad the party of Eisenhower and Raygun can’t find competent leadership anymore; the party of lie to win. mjh

Moyers on America
Capitol Crimes
Wednesday, October 4, 9:00pm
CHANNEL 5 (KNME)

Debut: Bill Moyers examines issues in the news, ranging from political corruption to the future of the Internet. First up: a look at the Jack Abramoff scandal, detailing how the lobbyist rose to power in Washington, D.C.

Report Says Rove Aide Accepted Abramoff Gifts By James V. Grimaldi and Susan Schmidt, Washington Post Staff Writers

A top aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove passed along inside White House information to superlobbyist Jack Abramoff at a time when she was also accepting his tickets to nine sports and entertainment events, according to e-mails released yesterday in a bipartisan congressional report. …

White House contacts with Abramoff have been the focus of heated interest in Washington since he pleaded guilty to fraud and conspiracy charges earlier this year. Although the committee report documents that Abramoff’s lobbying team billed their clients for more than 400 contacts with White House officials over three years, it remains unclear what results Abramoff obtained. …

She told Abramoff and his associates that she passed messages and documents to Rove, but the committee report did not confirm that she had done so. On Feb. 21, 2001, Ralston e-mailed Abramoff lobbyist Todd A. Boulanger: “Thanks for breakfast. I showed KR the binder. . . . He gave the binder to Mehlman to read cover to cover and to be prepared.” Ken Mehlman was then the White House political director.
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mjh’s blog Search Results for Abramoff

It is interesting to hear the feeble spin from Conservatives on this recent intelligence report. You see, if we hadn’t invaded Iraq, everyone would be upset over something else we did. Hmmm. That’s the defense of a teenager: if my folks weren’t pissed at me for wrecking the car, they’d be pissed about something else. Even when that defense is true, it’s pathetic. The Neocons (and future cons, it seems) stole the car and drove it off the cliff. Now, they just don’t understand why everyone is so pissed off.

Oh, but better to fight them there than over here. Well, no duh. But maybe destroying Iraq to save it isn’t the best lesson of Vietnam. Al Qaeda did nothing to advance their cause in attacking us over here — NOTHING. We’ve done everything to advance the cause of senseless destruction by attacking everyone over there. But any discussion of strategy or tactics or goals is out of the question to those in power. And that is why they will lose that power, no matter how much they try to frighten us. mjh

Part of Iraq Intelligence Report Is Released By Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Bush administration yesterday released portions of a classified intelligence estimate that says the global jihadist movement is growing and being fueled by the war in Iraq even as it becomes more decentralized, making it harder to identify potential terrorists and prevent attacks.

The war in Iraq has become a “cause celebre” for jihadists, breeding resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and drawing new adherents to the movement, the assessment says. The growth in the number of potential terrorists is also being fed by corruption, slow-moving political reform in many Muslim countries and “pervasive” anti-American sentiment, according to the report.

The jihadist movement is potentially limited by its ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam and could be slowed by democratic reforms in the Muslim world, says the document, which reflects the collective judgment of the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies. In addition, it asserts that if jihadists are perceived to be defeated in Iraq, “fewer fighters would be inspired to carry on the fight.”

Still, terrorists with experience constructing roadside bombs and other deadly devices in Iraq “are a potential source” of leadership in attacks elsewhere, the report says.
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Sobering Conclusions On Why Jihad Has Spread By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writers

The overall estimate is bleak, with minor notes of optimism. It depicts a movement that is likely to grow more quickly than the West’s ability to counter it over the next five years, as the Iraq war continues to breed “deep resentment” throughout the Muslim world, shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and cultivating new supporters for their ideology.

FRONTLINE: coming soon: return of the taliban | PBS
coming Oct. 03, 2006 at 9pm (check local listings)

(60 minutes) FRONTLINE reports from the lawless Pakistani tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and reveals how the area has fallen under the control of a resurgent Taliban militia. Despite the presence of 80,000 Pakistani troops, the Taliban and their supporters continue to use the region as a launching pad for attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan. Off limits to U.S. troops by agreement with Pakistan’s president and long suspected of harboring Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, the area is now considered a failed state. President Pervez Musharraf tells FRONTLINE reporter Martin Smith that Pakistan’s strategy, which includes cash payments to militants who lay down their arms, has clearly foundered. In a region little understood because it is closed to most observers, FRONTLINE investigates a secret front in the war on terror.

FRONTLINE: coming soon: the enemy within | PBS
coming Oct. 10, 2006 at 9pm (check local listings)

(60 minutes) Five years after the attacks on 9/11 and the massive, multibillion-dollar reorganization of government agencies which followed, FRONTLINE and New York Times reporter Lowell Bergman investigates the domestic counterterrorism effort and asks whether we are any better prepared to prevent another catastrophic attack. Relying on interviews with high-level sources in the U. S. government, Bergman reveals ongoing interagency rivalry as well as troubling flaws in what has been the largest reorganization of the government in half a century. The documentary focuses on who is the real enemy within the United States and whether we are prepared to defeat him.

FRONTLINE: coming soon: the lost year in iraq | PBS
coming Oct. 17, 2006 at 9pm (check local listings)

(60 minutes) In the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein, a group of Americans led by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III set off to Baghdad to build a new nation and establish democracy in the Arab Middle East. One year later, with Bremer forced to secretly exit what some have called “the most dangerous place on earth,” the group left behind lawlessness, insurgency, economic collapse, death, destruction–and much of their idealism. Three years later, as the U.S. continues to look for an exit strategy, the government the Americans helped create and the infrastructure they designed are being tested. FRONTLINE Producer Michael Kirk follows the early efforts and ideals of this group as they tried to seize control and disband the Iraqi police, army and Baathist government–and how they became hardened along the way to the realities of postwar Iraq. The Lost Year in Iraq is based on numerous first-person interviews and extensive documentation from the FRONTLINE team that produced Rumsfeld’s War, The Torture Question and The Dark Side.

GOP Scandals Dog Ohio Candidate By Jim VandeHei and Chris Cillizza, Washington Post Staff Writers

In a year when Republicans are battling low poll numbers nationally, there are few places where the GOP brand is more scuffed than in Ohio, where, since President Bush’s election-night triumph here two years ago, national and local scandals have polluted the political atmosphere for GOP candidates.

A poll released this week by the Columbus Dispatch indicated Democrats could sweep races for U.S. Senate as well as Ohio governor, auditor, treasurer and secretary of state. This would be a remarkable turnaround after 16 years in which Republicans have enjoyed uninterrupted control of the governorship and dominated most statewide races.

Save Yourself, Blame Bush – washingtonpost.com By Joe Scarborough

I can’t help but feel sorry for my old Republican friends in Congress who are fighting for their political lives. After all, it must be tough explaining to voters at their local Baptist church’s Keep Congress Conservative Day that it was their party that took a $155 billion surplus and turned it into a record-setting $400 billion deficit.

How exactly does one convince the teeming masses that Republicans deserve to stay in power despite botching a war, doubling the national debt, keeping company with Jack Abramoff, fumbling the response to Hurricane Katrina, expanding the government at record rates, raising cronyism to an art form, playing poker with Duke Cunningham, isolating America and repeatedly electing Tom DeLay as their House majority leader?

How does a God-fearing Reagan Republican explain all that away?

Easy. Blame George W. Bush. …

Republicans on the Hill [have done] little more than rubber-stamp Bush’s domestic and international agenda because lawmakers were intimidated by his power and his popularity with the Republican base.

Even when the administration would not give generals the troops they needed to win the war in Iraq, Republican leaders did nothing. When the president refused to veto a single spending bill while the deficit spiraled upward, Republican leaders looked away. And when chaos was reigning in the streets of New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast in Katrina’s horrific aftermath, Republican leaders remained mute.

That silence — proof that it is better to be feared than loved in politics — has had devastating results. The United States is more divided than ever, our leaders are despised around the world, our fiscal situation is catastrophic and congressional approval ratings are the lowest ever. Since nothing sharpens the mind like a political hanging, Republican leaders in the Senate and House are finally considering doing what effete newspaper editorialists have suggested for years: throwing Bush overboard.

Of course, the mere suggestion makes some Republican loyalists shudder. Being a faithful follower of Brother Bush has long been synonymous with loving Jesus, supporting the troops and taking a stand against sodomy. But no more. Many of the conservatives who put Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich in power are counting the days until Bush goes to Crawford for good. Some mutter that their leader’s governing style looks more like Jimmy Carter’s every day — and among that crowd, there is no harsher insult.