October 17, 2015

2012 reporting on the Shrub AWOL story, going *way* past RATHER deep into Shrub corruption

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http://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/truth-or-consequences/

[font size=5]Truth or Consequences[/font]

May 2012 By Joehagan

.... And that (1996) is when a mysterious document began circulating in Austin that would serve as the Rosetta stone of the Bush National Guard controversy. The document, a single-page letter written by an anonymous author and addressed to a U. S. attorney, described an alleged secret deal struck between George W. Bush and Ben Barnes in which Barnes agreed to withhold the story of getting the governor into the Guard in exchange for Bush’s securing the GTECH contract against competing bidders.

The memo fingered a Bush aide named Reggie Bashur as the one who brokered the alleged quid pro quo: “Bashur was sent to talk to Barnes who agreed never to confirm the story and the Governor talked to (Miers) two days later and she then agreed to support letting GTech keep the contract without a bid.” And indeed, the previous summer, Miers had renewed the GTECH contract without a bid, against the wishes of state Republicans. ....

... One year after the fateful 60 Minutes segment aired, two FBI agents paid a visit to the Manhattan apartment of Larry Littwin, the former Lottery Commission executive director. If he were cleared to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the agents asked, what might he say about (Harriett) Miers’s invovement with GTECH during her time as chair of the commission? According to Jerome Corsi, who had resurfaced, post-Kerry, as one of Miers’s fiercest critics, what Littwin proposed to allege was quite a lot: that more than $160,000 in legal fees Miers collected from Bush in the nineties were a de facto payoff for maintaining the quid pro quo agreement with Ben Barnes and GTECH.

Regardless of the legitimacy of these allegations, White House officials were paying attention, in part because they were coming from the right. Miers’s nomination was already in deep trouble by the time Littwin emerged. But Corsi remains convinced to this day that the threat of Littwin’s testimony was the last straw for Miers. According to him, it was the GTECH deal, and not the CBS memos, that could have been the real smoking gun against Bush. “The day after they validated that Littwin was going to be called to the Senate Judiciary Committee, that’s when she pulled her nomination,” Corsi told me. ....

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June 14, 2015

Here's a link to Hillary's speech. Plus some probably irritating thoughts.

Actually, I sort of liked it for being serviceable but mostly loved the FDR setting and references.

Now, let’s clear the next year’s garbage out of the way: I care about the Democratic AGENDA, not the personalities (idols). I don’t worship her, OBAMA, the KENNEDYs, or several other past Democratic nominees. But any Dem short of criminality is better than any Repuke, and our system is WINNER TAKES IT ALL. All of our Dem nominees have been more intelligent, more NOBLE, more DECENT than any of their opponents, but noble LOSERS accomplish nothing. Only the WINNER gets to do anything, even if only NOMINATING thousands of judges and bureaucrats/grunts who make policy down the line.

As for Hillary, I was very strong for her in ‘08. But she was a bust. OBAMA totally flummoxed her out of nowhere. Let’s be clear: ANYBODY could have won against the Repukes that year because of George W. BUSH. ANYBODY. The Repukes have mocked OBAMA about “CHANGE” being non-existent and empty. Actually, obviously, the word “CHANGE” was code for: ANYTHING DIFFERENT FROM GEORGE W. BUSH. No other agenda was needed.

As for Hillary and my support today. If she’s the nominee (who else?) of course I will support her as I have every Dem nominee from every wing of the coalition. I don’t care about finding a candidate who fits a checklist of appropriate issues: If they don’t have the common touch to WIN, yammering over issues is as futile as a college bull session of "If I Ruled the World" or a medieval monk's thoughts on angels.

As for her personally, coming from me: She’s been around too many blocks, for starters. She irritates/grates me, her voice, her total lack of charisma. I was raised in a family of strong women and my first vote was for a woman, and yet I was antagonized that at her rally in ‘08, I guess it was supposed to be for women and “girls” only since they gave sidewise ugly looks at us males, like we weren’t supposed to be there. She’s a lousy candidate: She never saw OBAMA or anybody else coming; threw away millions on the same tired P.R. people who have lost campaigns for decades; mismanaged the campaign to end up in debt; she’s a RED MEAT TARGET for wingnuts. Very possibly, she MIGHT LOSE, which is the worst thing ever. If she wins, get ready for Fake Impeachment #2. If she loses, get ready for JEB CROW SHRUB, the worst ever.

I have hope that she is different from Bill in that in her lifetime of politics she knows how precious being in office is, to work for the agenda, instead of Bill's having wasted the winning with his hanky panky: What I learned from Bill was that, with a leader who has to be defended non-stop, all our precious energies are wasted on defending one individual instead of all of our energies, including the leader's, being spent on the agenda.

April 4, 2015

Alas poor KERIK, unrequited love (not Judith REGAN, it's GHOULIANI), just all "love and respect"

It's... "ENORMOUS"!1

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http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bernie-kerik-plenty-love-rudy-giuliani-article-1.2173066

[font size=5]EXCLUSIVE: Cast aside by Rudy Giuliani, former NYPD commissioner Bernard Kerik still has 'enormous love and respect' for former mayor[/font]

....“I don’t think anybody, any mayor, has done anything for the city like he did. None,” Kerik told a crowd of several hundred people Thursday night at the launch of his new book, “From Jailer to Jailed.” ....

As The News reported Sunday, Kerik said Giuliani — at the time prepping to run for president — stopped calling him, and returned a bronze statue of a horse that he’d given him as a gift on behalf of his young daughters.

Giuliani was their godfather. ....

“I have an enormous amount of love and respect for the man, and for what he did for New York City ... I want to make that clear.”

Kerik said that U.S. Rep. Peter King, a Long Island Republican who was at the party, visited him every few months, and that the Manzo family of “Real Housewives of New Jersey” fame helped take care of his kids while he was behind bars.

Also at the party was former Westchester County D.A. Jeanine Pirro, Mitchell Modell, Geraldo Rivera, and Kerik’s, brother Donald Kerik.

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But this gives me an excuse to re-run my eyewitness account of WINGNUT HOT SEX involving KERIK and whoever:




http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022916431

Where to start with KERIK -- well, might as well be with the bit from Cindy ADAMS's 05-29-13 social note to the effect that Bernie taught a LIFE CLASS while in prison and he'll be happy if his wisdom helps keep ONE dude from returning to prison. Did he give himself extra credit for auditing himself so that HE! won't be one of the returnees?!

But for youngsters, a Brief History: Bernie was GHOULIANI's police comish on THE 9-11, and shot to supposed "leadership" and Security fame in that VOID of same when pResident Shrub was lost for three days, and when Shrub-CHEENEE had to create SOMEthing to appear responsive, besides Color Codes, they needed a Security tsar, and GHOULIANI sponsored this Bernie dude, who then had to be withdrawn because he was on the road to PRISON!

Nay, but the most fruitful chapter involved one Judith REGAN, who was a protégé herself, her mentor somebody bigger than GHOULIANI, Rupert MURDOCH of NewsCorp/Faux Propaganda Network, who gave her her own publishing imprint, "REGAN Books" that was responsible for LIMBOsevic's first book and a slew of other wingnut crap. She was known for devil-wears-prada horrifics of temperament, one time challenging her staff to be creative by screaming at them, "Why do women like Bill CLINTON?! Because they WANT TO FUCK HIM, THAT'S why!" Finally, she crashed and burned around the time of a title, "If I Did It" ascribed to O.J. SIMPSON.

But while she was in full blossom with MURDOCH, she even scored a half hour interview show on Faux on Saturday nights, where she would interview other wingnuts and excoriate Dems/Libs. Scathingly. But one of her authors was this selfsame Bernie, who had (supposedly, since you never know who writes O'LOOFAH's books either) penned his biography. The hook was that this totally macho man, TOUGH, the most testosterone filled life form EVER! told in this book the SENSITIVE, heart wrenching story of having been abandoned by his disturbed mother, who puzzled the boy by not showing up to claim him at a hearing, and he found out years later she had been confined or something .

Fine. But the really "good t.v." was what, to an insightful eye like that of moi, was going on in this interview. Well, it was hard to see the screen sometimes, due to there being some kind of steam or film clouding up the camera lens. La Judy and Bernardo had an eyelock, more hers than his, that was more secure than GHOULIANI's office. As she teetered in her chair, body all taut and rigid, her eyes pierced him, wingnut heart breaking over his sad sad story. But then they shifted, inevitably, to 9-11, and she asked him, intensely, "Where were you when you first heard?!" As lawyers say, never ask a question you don't already know the answer to. So he shyly let his head duck down a bit then looked up at her with puppy dog eyes and said gruffly, toughly, but sensitively, "Stepping out of the shower. (Pause, pause.) After working out."

Whoa! the smoke alarms went off louder than the Emergency Broadcast System! Like Frida KAHLO's self-portrait with Diego RIVERA's face imprinted on her forehead, Bernie's presumably nekkid image was just PALPABLE on Judy Judy Judy's area where Frida had her unibrow.

At that time, none of us knew anything beyond the public information about these people, but I SENSED something was UP with these two. Much later, sure enough, it appears that the publisher-author relationship had another depth and plumb to it, yes, WINGNUT HOT SEX, because why should workplace sex be for Bill and not bipartisan?! But not only that, their love nest for their Wingnut Hot Sex sessions was no place other than an NYC apartment paid for by the City as a rest-up place for First Responders or clean up crews of the WTC site. That's all right, those people were probably too busy to need a rest-up apartment anyway, and no sense letting things go to waste.

Meanwhile, in all these years since 9-11, GHOULIANI has been collecting filthy lucre all over the globe, Mexico City anywhere, for giving whatever his expertise is on Security against terrorism, along the lines of how to walk down the street with dust and powder on you and then how to insert and enunciate "nine eleven" into any conceivable topic with inconceivable frequency.

January 24, 2015

Will it stick?!1 Vanity Fair: Jeb Crow Shrub elitist arrogant prick, stoner, goofy, slob, freak.

How did Jeb Crow Shrub get pegged as "the smart one"? Entitled goofiness is in the family genes, start with Poppy. And Shrub's goofiness is well documented. Then take a glimpse at "Access Hollywood" where one Billy BUSH is on display. And recently at a doctor's waiting room I looked at a business/financial magazine I wouldn't otherwise ever see and there was a profile of one Jonathan BUSH, as a flaky nutty bozo cashing in as CEO of some kind of healthcare (Athenacare?) company, cashing in on OBAMAcare, the family m.o. being feeding at the public trough - with company conferences full of costumes and booze.

I haven't delved into the Jeb Crow Shrub psyche beyond a scattered detail about his business dealings with 1stGenExile/CIA Cubans, milking Medicare, involving boarding private planes with suitcases full of cash. And Neil Shrub's Savings and Loan bailout from the public. And Poppy fuming at reporters, "My boys have a right to make a living!1"

Yet Jeb Crow Shrub has somehow built an image of being sober and thoughtful. Now it's clearer why he didn't have a meltdown over his kids' (Jeb George Pee Shrub now officially elected in Texas) crashes with the law, since it's a family marker.

Also, for such an elitist family, he comes across as having the hinterland's chip on the shoulder toward "Eastern elites."


Photograph by Jeff Mitchell. The author's article “Brother Dearest,” published in the July 2001 issue of Vanity Fair.

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http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2015/jeb-bush-bad-behavior-andover
6:45 PM, January 23 2015
[font size=5]Revisiting Jeb Bush’s Bad Behavior at Andover[/font]
By David Margolick

Perhaps because it seemed Jeb Bush could never be president—his brother had just been elected and, even then, the thinking was that two Bushes would be quite enough—his classmates at Andover reminisced quite freely about him with me in 2001, when I profiled him for Vanity Fair.

“There was a kind of arrogance to him,” one of them told me, describing Bush’s membership in a “clique of wealthy kids.” “I remember him smoking a lot of dope,” he added. ....

LeBoutillier urged reporters to investigate the matter further, comparing it to the widely-reported story of a young Mitt [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]Romney pinning down a gay student[/FONT] at his Michigan prep school [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]and cutting off his blond bangs[/FONT], which for some reason he’d found offensive. “If that event is worthy of the front page of the Washington Post,” wrote LeBoutillier, “then [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]the Jeb Bush Illegal[/FONT] Drug and [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]Liquor Distributorship[/FONT] is certainly something the voters—especially GOP primary voters—have a right to know before they begin to choose a 2016 candidate.” ....

Jeb steered clear of politics—no mean feat during the Vietnam era. “I don’t recall his ever being particularly interested in anything we did,” recalled Andrew Bridges, who headed the Progressive Andover Republicans. Like many of Bush’s classmates, Bridges sort of liked the guy. But others disagreed: one told me he was “slightly snarly and spoiled.” “I wouldn’t associate ideas with Jeb,” said Peter Halley, who became an artist. “He was laid back—a little bit [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]goofy[/FONT].”

Andover back then was a thoroughly cliquish place, divided neatly into “jocks,” “nerds,” “freaks,” and “zeroes.” Bush was hard to pigeonhole—he was captain of the tennis team and was friendly with several black students—but was also, improbably (as one classmate called him) “a budding hippie.” “If you found him sitting, it was further toward the [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]freak[/FONT] end of the dining room,” Lincoln Chafee, later a United States senator and governor of Rhode Island, told me in 2001. “He was kind of a [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]slob[/FONT], actually.” ....

Though they had more pressing matters to discuss—like how they can run for president simultaneously without knocking one another out—perhaps Bush and Romney swapped prep school stories during their powwow in Utah this week. But while Romney famously forgot the hair-cutting episode, Bush seems to have some insight into his former preppie self. [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]“I was,”[/FONT] as he once put it, [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]“a cynical little turd at a cynical little school.”[/FONT]

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January 11, 2015

Leave it to the French.

No sarcasm here. And no historical negative contrasts with other French events. This just itself on its own, an epic showing of unity and brotherhood (for now, whatever). Complete with participant-passersby in tri-corner hats and blue-white-red streamers in the wind. And American under-participation. In Vietnam when my ship pulled-in to the Army base down the river, we were allowed Liberty at the Army bar until 7 P.M. It was a race between us Americans and whatever Australians were in from their own land front: Whoever got there first won control of the bar:: If us Americans, everybody had separate tables of 2s and 3s in separate conversations. If the Australians, they pushed all of the tables together into one long banquet table, soon everybody (them, not us) singing something like "Waltzing Matilda" and swinging their drinks in the air in time. Something about joining together instead of holding apart. We never learned, if we "won" we always kept the tables separate.