Daily Nonsense

If nothing else, the Bush administration will go down in history as having the longest list of meatiest scandals associated with it.  There is a sweet list of the largest scandals involving administration officials over at TPMmuckraker.  This list doesn’t address waterboarding, the Bill of Rights, the DoJ, Blackwater or any other entity or ideal, just the people involved.

TPM´s Great List of Scandalized Administration Officials

By Paul Kiel
December 31, 2007, 11:20AM

Boy, was it time for an update.

Late last year we decided to take stock of all the Bush Administration officials who’d been accused of corruption and/or resigned in the face of scandal. Although we had fun doing it, we altruistically started the project in order to help our friends at Powerline, who professed an inability to think of any Bush officials beset by scandal.

This year´s result, which built on Justin Rood´s original gem, is, like our catalog of the administration´s efforts to disappear information, a staggering monument to the Bush Administration. And it wouldn’t have been possible without TPM’s research hounds, Adrianne Jeffries, Andrew Berger, and Peter Sheehy.

A quick note on methodology. Since a complete catalog of administration officials who’ve been accused of some form of corruption or abuse of power would be endless, we tried to maintain a high standard for inclusion. Most of those below were the subjects of criminal probes, but we also included officials who were credibly accused of acts that, if not criminal, were a corruption of office (like the U.S. attorney scandal). And even then, such officials were only included if their accusers had them dead to rights (which is why Karl Rove didn’t make the cut). We also limited ourselves to officials who were either political appointees or whose actions were so political that they were effectively political appointees (like John Tanner).

Enjoy:

Indicted / Convicted/ Pled Guilty

* Eric G. Andell – deputy undersecretary in charge of newly created Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools (previously senior adviser to Secretary of Education Rod Paige) – pleaded guilty to one count of conflict of interest for using government travel for personal causes and was sentenced to one year of probation, 100 hours of community service, and fined $5,000.

* Claude Allen – Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy- resigned, pled guilty to shoplifting from Target stores.

* Lester Crawford – Commissioner, FDA – resigned in late September 2005 after only two months on the job. On October 17th, he pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts, making a false writing and conflict of interest. On February 27, 2007, Crawford was sentenced to to three years of probation and was fined $90,000.

* Brian Doyle – Deputy Press Secretary, Department of Homeland Security – Resigned in wake of child sex scandal. Doyle was arrested on April 4th, 2006 and pleaded no contest on September 19, 2006 to seven counts of use of a computer to seduce a child and sixteen counts of transmitting harmful material to a minor. On November 17th, 2006 Brian Doyle was sentenced to five years in state prison and ten years of probation. He will also need to register as a sex offender.

* Steven Griles – Deputy Secretary at the Interior Department – is the highest-ranked administration official yet convicted in the Jack Abramoff scandal. In March 2007, Griles pleaded guilty to lying about his role in the Jack Abramoff scandal. Sentenced to 10 months incarceration.

* John T. Korsmo – Chairman of the Federal Housing Finance Board from 2002 to 2004 – pleaded guilty in 2005 to lying to the Senate and an inspector general. He swore he had no idea how a list of presidents for FHFB-regulated banks were invited to a fundraiser for his friend’s congressional campaign. On the invites, Korsmo was listed as the "Special Guest." Got 18 months of probation and a $5,000 fine.

* Scooter Libby – Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff – resigned after being indicted for lying to a grand jury and investigators in connection with the investigation stemming from the leak of Valerie Wilson’s covert CIA operative’s identity. Convicted on four of five counts, making him the highest-ranking White House official to be convicted of a felony since the Iran-contra scandal. Sentenced to thirty months imprisonment and a fine of $250,000. On July 2nd, after a judge decided that Libby would remain in prison during the appeals process, President Bush commuted Libby’s sentence by removing the thirty months in prison.

[Thanks, TPMmuckraker]

Daniel Kurtzman of the San Francisco Chronicle has written a brilliant article that highlights some of the hilarious things that politicians have said this year.  Daniel also edits the political humor page at About.com.

The year’s most laughable political antics

Daniel Kurtzman
Monday, December 31, 2007

The late-night comedians may have made an early exit from the scene, but fortunately there was no shortage of political punch lines in 2007. From tapping toes and UFO encounters to prostitution scandals and $400 haircuts, it was a year in which politicians did their best to satirize themselves. As a salute to our nation’s fine public servants, here’s a look back at the year’s most memorable feats and foibles. The envelopes, please.

Winner of the George Orwell Award for Outstanding Achievement in Historical Revisionism:

Karl Rove, for claiming that Senate Democrats prematurely forced President Bush to go to war in Iraq when Congress passed the war resolution in 2002. It was the White House’s position, Rove insisted, that the issue should not have been politicized right before an election. On hearing that claim, Andrew Card, former White House chief of staff, laughed and said sometimes Rove’s "mouth gets ahead of his brain."

Runner-up: Bill Clinton, for claiming he opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, although fortunately in Clinton’s case, at least it was only his mouth that got ahead of his brain.

Best Debate Sound Bite from a Republican:

"In case you missed it, a few days ago Sen. (Hillary) Clinton tried to spend $1 million on the Woodstock concert museum. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I wasn’t there. I’m sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was tied up at the time."

- John McCain, referring to the years he spent as a P.O.W.

Best Debate Sound Bite from a Democrat:

"I mean think about it, Rudy Giuliani, there’s only three things he mentions in a sentence – a noun and a verb and 9/11, and I mean, there’s nothing else."

- Joe Biden

[Thanks, SFGate.com]

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Today in 1599, the British East India Company is chartered.

Today in 1857, Queen Victoria selected Ottawa as the capital of the British colony of Canada.

Today in 1999 – Boris Yeltsin resigns as President of Russia, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President.

Celebrating Birthdays today are Charles Cornwallis, Henri Matisse, Max Pechstein, Martin O’Meara, Simon Wiesenthal, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Sarah Miles, Andy Summers, Burton Cummings, and Bebe Neuwirth.

Celebrating Death-iversaries today are Richard Neville, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, Hank Williams, Alexander Popov, Roberto Clemente, Rick Nelson, and José Greco.

The consumer advocates over at The Consumerist have compiled a list of all of the toys recalled for lead in this past year and the total is shocking!

17,181,210 toys were recalled for lead contamination.  Note that this total has nothing to do with all of the other safety related issues.

The full list is HERE.

Today in 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was founded.

Today in 1879, The Pirates of Penzance is first performed.

Today in 1924, Edwin Hubble announces the existence of other galaxies.

Today in 2006, Saddam Hussein is executed by hanging.

Celebrating Birthdays today are Charles Yorke, Émile Loubet, Rudyard Kipling, Bo Diddley, Sandy Koufax, Davy Jones, Concetta Tomei, Tracey Ullman, and Heidi Fleiss.

Celebrating Death-iversaries today are José Rizal, Romain Rolland, Sonny Liston, Ling-Ling, Giuseppe Occhialini, Johnny Moore, and Artie Shaw.

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A grant of 2.1 million pounds ($4.17 million) has been awarded to a team at the Imperial College London for the development of a new surgical tool dubbed the ‘i-Snake’.  Essentially the i-Snake is a highly flexible, robotic tool which would allow for more complicated procedures to be done with what are essentially laparoscopic surgical techniques.  The minimally invasive methods used in laparoscopic surgery allow for a number of benefits over traditional surgical techniques.

i-Snake ‘will transform surgery’

Experts are developing a flexible surgical robot, known as the i-Snake, which they say could revolutionise keyhole surgery.

It could enable surgeons to do complex procedures previously possible only  through more invasive techniques.

A team at Imperial College London has been granted £2.1 million for the work.

They envisage using the i-Snake – a long tube housing special motors, sensors and imaging tools – for heart bypass surgery.

But it could also be used to diagnose problems in the gut and bowel by acting as the surgeon’s hands and eyes in hard to reach places inside the body.

The Imperial College team, which includes health minister and surgeon Lord Ara Darzi, will test the device initially in the laboratory before it is used on patients.

Minimally invasive surgery has obvious advantages – it can mean smaller scars, reduced hospital stays and shorter recovery times.

Surgeons are also looking at ways to avoid skin incisions altogether.

One approach is Natural Orifice Translumenal Endoscopic Surgery or Notes. This means operating in the peritoneal space through natural orifices or cavities, such as the bowel.

Lord Darzi said: "The unrivalled imaging and sensing capabilities coupled with the accessibility and sensitivity of i-Snake will enable more complex diagnostic and therapeutic procedures than are currently possible.

"The cost benefits that i-Snake will introduce include earlier, cheaper and less invasive treatment, faster recovery and procedure times and intangible benefits through an increase in patient care and quality of life."

Dr Ted Bianco, director of technology transfer at the Wellcome Trust, said: "Gone are the days when the surgeon’s knife ruled in the operating theatre. The future of surgery is in smart devices like i-Snake."

[Thanks, BBC News]

Today in 1845, Texas is admitted as the 28th U.S. state.

Today in 1911, Sun Yat-sen becomes the first President of the Republic of China.

Today in 1937, the Irish Free State is replaced by a new state called Ireland with the adoption of a new constitution.

Celebrating Birthdays today are Charles Goodyear, Andrew Johnson, Pablo Casals, Ed Flanders, Mary Tyler Moore, Jon Voight, Stanley Tookie Williams, Nancy J. Currie, and Jude Law.

Celebrating Death-iversaries today are Thomas Becket, Christina Rossetti, Grigori Rasputin, Carl Spitteler, Paul Whiteman, Jean-Claude Forest, and Earl Hindman.

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As we draw ever closer to the New Year we are inundated by many ‘Best of’s..).  Brooke and I watched our first Keith Olbermann Oddball special this week and there was the Louis Black Last Laugh 2007.

Rolling Stone – The 100 Best Songs of 2007, Popular Science – Best of What’s New ‘07, the list goes on.  But two lists recently publish have gotten my attention.

First is IBM’s list of 5 innovations that will change our lives in the next five years.  You can read their press release HERE.

Second is The Futurist’s Magazine’s Top 10 Forecasts for 2008 and Beyond.

Both are worth a read. 

Here is a very interesting article about how the two front running Democratic hopefuls are dealing with the vile assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Clinton, Obama Seize on Killing
Reactions Illustrate Their Key Differences

By Anne E. Kornblut and Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 28, 2007; Page A01

DES MOINES, Dec. 27 — News of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination came just hours before Sen. Barack Obama delivered what his campaign had billed as the "closing argument" in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday, forcing his campaign to scramble to incorporate the Pakistani opposition leader into his message of change.

For his chief rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Bhutto’s death helped underscore the line she has been driving home for months — about who is best suited to lead the nation at a time of international peril. In her comments Thursday, Clinton described Bhutto in terms Obama (D-Ill.) could not: as a fellow mother, a pioneering woman following in a man’s footsteps, and a longtime peer on the world stage.

The differing reactions of Clinton and Obama to the assassination crystallized the debate between the two just a week before Iowans will decide the first contest in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

[Thanks, Washington Post]

I haven’t really posted in the last few days, just some Internet bargain sites and a little bit of Today in History.  The reason I haven’t posted is because the topics that I’ve been posting about have been making me really, really angry.  And I’m pretty tired of being angry.

We all know that the current administration has ruined our economy, our reputation in the world political arena and the belief that the common man holds in the political system.  We have headlines that shout-out about CIA conspiracies, trigger-happy cowboy contractors, the 3000% (three thousand percent) profits VP Cheney enjoys from his Halliburton stock, malfeasance, crony-ism, cover-ups and the suspension of truth justice and the Bill of Rights.  I’ll just continue to pray that true justice will prevail and that those involved will be convicted of the war crimes they are guilty of.

It’s all so wearying.

I think that the time has come for me to analyze just what it is that I’m trying to accomplish with this blog.  Although I think it is very important that everyone concern themselves with the local, state and national political machines, I don’t think I’m going to continue the commentary on the current administration like before.  I’ll continue to post references and pointers to articles about some of the things that concern me, but I think I’m pretty much done with the negative commentary about Bush, Cheney and Mukasey.  There are much more articulate people writing about them, I think I’ll leave it to them.

Today in 1065, Westminster Abbey was consecrated.

Today in 1612, Galileo Galilei was the first astronomer to observe the planet Neptune, although he thought it was a star.

Today in 1846, Iowa was admitted as the 29th U.S. state.

Today in 1981, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, the first American test-tube baby,  is born in Norfolk, Virginia.

Celebrating Birthdays today are John Molson, Woodrow Wilson, Stan Lee, Jacques Mesrine, Edgar Winter, Denzel Washington, and Linus Torvalds.

Celebrating Death-iversaries today are Ashikaga Yoshiakira, Robert Roy MacGregor, Eduard Strauss, Maurice Ravel, Sam Peckinpah, and Susan Sontag.

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Today in 1831, Charles Darwin, aboard HMS Beagle, left Plymouth, England on what became an historic expedition to South America that made his name as a naturalist.

Today in 1932, Radio City Music Hall in New York City opens.

Today in 1945 the World Bank is created with the signing of an agreement by 28 nations.

Celebrating Birthdays today are Jacob Bernoulli, Louis Pasteur, Sydney Greenstreet, Marlene Dietrich, William Masters, Mick Jones, John Amos, and David Knopfler.

Celebrating death-iversaries today are Hyacinthe Rigaud, Charles Lamb, Stephen F. Austin, Gustave Eiffel, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Fock, and Billy Wright.

A couple of weeks ago a non-news event surfaced that Karl Rove, the evil genius behind the Idiot-That-Is-Bush, was looking around for a publisher.  Hoping to cash in on his perceived fame as ‘The Architect’ he was met with a distinct lack of interest by the major book publishers.  In the end he was able to get $1.5 million from Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster known for it’s mediocre conservative catalog including:

• It’s Not About the Truth: The Untold Story of the Duke Lacrosse Case and the Lives It Shattered
• Upstream: The Ascendance of American Conservatism
• Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States

There’s an interesting post about it and a wonderful contest to help name the book itself (satirical exercise).

Rove’s book gets marked down — before it’s written
Posted December 22nd, 2007 at 4:23 pm
by Steve Benen

A few weeks ago, word surfaced that Karl Rove was shopping for a book publisher, and was poised to make a cool $3 million. He is, after all, Karl Rove. He’s The Architect. As the greatest political mind of the decade, his book is bound to be awesome.

Or so the theory went. In reality, of course, Rove’s not quite the legend he thinks he is, and interest in his book was tepid, at best. One recent report noted that Rove made the rounds with of publishers with a power lawyer at his side, and quickly found that there would be no bidding war. An executive at one of the houses said, “It’s very, very slow.”

Rove ended up with his deal yesterday, but it’s not exactly a blockbuster.

GOP strategist Karl Rove has agreed to write about his years as an adviser to President Bush in a deal worth over $1.5 million with former colleague Mary Matalin’s conservative imprint at Simon & Schuster, officials said Friday.

Rove, the architect of Bush’s 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns and one of the most influential political advisers of his time, signed the deal with Threshold Editions, the imprint’s publisher and executive vice president Louise Burke said.

“All of us at Threshold are thrilled to publish the book from the man who had the president’s ear for two terms,” Burke said.

One publisher was particularly uncharitable, saying Rove “doesn’t have the personality” to land a major deal.

That may very well be part of it, but I think there’s a more realistic explanation for Rove’s book deal getting marked down.
There’s no doubt that Rove has been witness to some extraordinary events, but his book is bound to be a dud. I can think of at least four reasons.

First, he’s tragically dishonest, and everyone, everywhere, knows it. In fact, I’m fairly confident I can summarize the book now: “Bush was extraordinary; his critics were awful; and the media was unfair.” There, I just saved book buyers $29.95.

Second, Rove had all kinds of dirt he could dish, but publishers realize that he’s far too loyal a sycophant to ever make his former boss look bad. He’s the original “loyal Bushie”; the idea of him writing a juicy tell-all is absurd. The book is bound to be hagiographic.

Third, Rove’s genius has been wildly exaggerated, and interest in his insights has waned in light of his failures. In 2000, he pulled out all the stops to help Bush win the New Hampshire GOP primary, where McCain won by double digits. On Election Day 2000, it was Rove’s idea to keep his candidate in California in the waning days, instead of campaigning in key battleground states. Bush lost California by a wide margin, and Rove’s strategy practically cost his candidate the election. More recently, Rove’s single recent responsibility was overseeing the Republican Party’s 2006 election strategy — and Dems won back both chambers of Congress in a historic victory. If congressional Republicans stopped taking him seriously as a credible political strategist in 2007, who’s going to take his book seriously in 2009?

And finally, there’s severe Bush fatigue. I suspect the vast majority of the nation, and even a strong number of Republicans, are anxious to see the end of the reign of error known as the Bush presidency. The idea of a fomer White House deputy chief of staff reflecting, in a sycophantic style, on eight years that most of us will prefer to forget, doesn’t exactly scream, “best seller.”

That said, I open the floor to a little game: come up with a name for Karl Rove’s book. The possibilities are almost endless.

[Thanks, The Carpetbagger Report]

Additional Reading:

• Rove’s Memoirs find a publisher
• Threshold Takes Rove Memoir
• Karl Rove Inks $1M-Plus Memoir Deal

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Today is the first day of Kwanzaa as well as Boxing Day, and St. Stephen’s Day.

Today in 1898 Physicists Pierre and Marie Curie announced the discovery of a new element, naming it radium.

Today in 1620 the Pilgrim Fathers land at what becomes New Plymouth in Massachusetts.

Today in 1933 the FM radio is patented.

Celebrating Birthdays today are Yi I, Charles Babbage, Mao Zedong, Richard Widmark, Ugly Dave Gray, Caroll Spinney, Abdul "Duke" Fakir, José Ramos Horta, Chris Daughtry, and Lars Ulrich.

Celebrating death-iversaries today are Frederic Remington, Melvil Dewey, Harry S. Truman, Amber Reeves, Curtis Mayfield, and Gerald Ford.