A heartfelt and heavy week for the BHC as the Hubble Telescope gets short shrift from Bush, who stuffs a segregationist judge onto the federal bench and turns out to have even more creepiness in him than we've so far seen. Democracy might not be so good for women in Iraq, Fastow gets sent up the river, bigger fines for swearing and the Reps still don't like all that environmental protection crap.

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Moonraker

Recent days have seen Bush incessantly assailed, not by Democrats, but by hard and true conservatives, many of whom don't seem to want to be called Republicans anymore. A review of recent assaults:

-Former Nixon strategist, Kevin Phillips, comes forth with a new book, "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush", and lambastes the Bushes and their anti-democratic, evil ways.

-Former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil comes out in Robert Susskind's book, "The Price of Loyalty", to lambaste Bush on a number of issues, not the least of which are the pre-ordained invasion of Iraq and that Bush is a "blind man in a roomful of deaf people."

-The IMF, normally in the back pocket of the US Treasury, issues a report (see the BHC, Vol8) lambasting US fiscal policy and declares that a continuance of the current deficit spending could see a global financial crises.

-Six different conservative groups break ranks with Republicans, disgruntled with the profligate spending of the White House and the Republican led Congress.

-Defense expert and research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College, Jeffery Record, publishes a scathing critique of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and lambastes Bush and his associate warlords.

Ok, so Bush is being lambasted a lot here. Hmm, what to do...what to do...? Hey, everyone, let's go to the moon! and Mars!

We here at the BHC cannot quite fathom what other reason Bush might have for this policy non-sequitur. It seems completely within the realm of consideration that Bush actually is not aware of the fact that we have already been to the moon and that he just came up with this really cool idea. He may also believe he is the reincarnated spirit of JFK. More obviously, it is merely designed to deflect and distract, like so many of his other odd moves. Despite the obvious nature of the announcement, it still winds up working: "where the hell is this coming from? Hey, he's distracting me!"

One nearly immediate repercussion of Bush's flatulant pronoucement is the cruel reality that NASA has been forced to abandon the next and final Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, which was due to go up in 2006. With Bush's directive to reallocate NASA monies to go to the moon and set up a station, NASA's crowning achievement of the last 30 years has been assigned an ignominious and premature end. It is perfectly consonant with the rest of Bush's vast and horrible spectrum of delinquencies that the world's most productive scientific instrument should be summarily sentenced to an early grave by the most illiterate, unread, incurious dunderhead ever to occupy the White House.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/science/17HUBB.html

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Pickering Bickering

Bush further bolsters his dishonorable presidency by skirting Congress and appointing Charles Pickering to the Federal Appeals Court via the mechanism of recess appointment the day after he lay a wreath on the tomb of Martin Luther King Jr. Pickering has been repeatedly blocked from confirmation by Congress for being a well-known anti-abortion and anti-civil rights numbskull. In fact, his "landmark case" was a 1994 cross-burning which saw him likely violate the Code of Conduct for US Judges when he seemingly went to extraordinary lengths to help the defendants, whose act he downplayed as a "drunken prank."

This action will further increase the animosity between Bush and Congressional Democrats over his judicial appointments. But, obviously, Bush just doesn't care about that and never really has. He has managed to bend House Democrats to his will on almost every issue sent before them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23432-2004Jan16.html

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Mullah's Back in Town

Iraqi women used to enjoy the most modern and progressive legal protections in the Muslim world, which might not be saying much, but was certainly a far healthier situation than in, say, Afghanistan. The Iraqi civil code prohibited "marriage below the age of 18, arbitrary divorce and male favoritism in child custody and property inheritance disputes."

With freedom and democracy as the guiding principles, the US-lead Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) has just wiped them out. Iraqi women are enraged and for good reason. According to Kurdish Lawyer, Amira Hassan Abdullah, "this will send us home and shut the door, just like what happened to women in Afghanistan". Needless to say, that is not a happy future for any woman.

Even if US administrator Bremer vetos the move, which seems likely, once the Iraqi's do have control of the parliament or congress or scrum or whatever it is they wind up with, the issue is likely to reassert itself in a very ugly way and suddenly, to the women of Iraq, that whole democracy thing, in the hands of muslim fundamentalists, is going to be a bitter, bitter pill.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21321-2004Jan15.html

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Secret Arrests - A-OK

The Supreme Court this week refused to hear an appeal to release basic information about the hundreds of people being held incommunicado as "terrorist suspects", unaided by legal counsel. The decision is a pat on the back of the Bush Administration as they continue to dodge all efforts trying to make them behave like a normative US government.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9669-2004Jan12.html

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Black and Brown and All Over Dean

Howard Dean came under attack, or rather, another attack by fellow Democratic candidates for not having any "black or brown" people in senior policy positions in his Vermont Governor's administration. Yeah, Vermont. The BHC forsees the next step in an escalating critique which will produce some invective toward the state of Vermont itself, for not having more "black and brown" people...anywhere.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8326-2004Jan11.html

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Endangered Endangered Species Act

The chairman of the House Resources Committee, Richard Pombo (R-Ca), is bugged by the Endangered Species Act, as it continually interferes with all good Americans' property rights. He has spent considerable effort in trying to undermine the law and it's purpose by trying to simply rewrite it but could never get it to the House floor. His newest tack is to redesign the law one small piece at a time. Says Pombo:

"I think it's just a lot easier and a lot more practical to break it down"

Is it really appropriate that the chair of the committee for environmental policy be worried that the Endangered Species Act infringes on "the rights of farmers and homeowners". Silly question. Of course it isn't and it will assumably not surprise our readers to learn that Pombo himself is a rancher and land owner, which is perfectly in keeping with the rest of Bush's cabinet assignments: former lobbyists, shills and CEO's of industries appointed as chief regulatory officers charged with the oversight of those very industries which once paid them. There is hope though, as even moderate Republican's are concerned and trying to build a coalition to block this immodest effort by Pombo. Laughably, Pombo critiques the current law's requirement that the "best science" be used in classification and calls for "sound science" instead, as though these two qualifiers must be vastly different. Like their "solid intelligence", we can imagine what the Bush administration means by "sound science": science which sounds good to them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11279-2004Jan12.html

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Fastowin' the Line

Former Enron CFO, Andrew Fastow, pleading guilty to two felony charges, will serve 10 years in prison without parole and agreed to aid prosecutors in nailing former Chairman, "Kenny-boy" Lay and ex-CEO, Jeffrey Skilling. Also agreed: if prosecutors are not satisfied with his cooperation in their investigations of Lay and Skilling, he can and will be brought up on 96 other felony charges which could see him getting out of prison about the same time George Bush lands on Mars. And this was a plea bargain. Ouch!

Stay tuned to this one. It will be very interesting to see if anything comes of this considering Lay's connections to the House of Bush.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/business/15enron.html

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Pentagon Pounding

In a continuing smack, Pentagon auditors have called for an investigation of Halliburton's fuel overcharging in Iraq. The Defense Contract Audit Agency requested that the Defense Department's inspector general drill down further into this muck. Naturally, Halliburton continues to deny any wrongdoing and in an amazing slight of hand, actually tries to claim that the auditors may have broken the law in finding and using an internal Halliburton document discussing the issue. With the former CEO, Dick Cheney, firmly entrenched in the White House, Halliburton seems more than emboldened in their stance, which is something like, "we're right and good and true. Anyone investigating us is wrong, quite possibly a felon and certainly unpatriotic." All those lefties in the Pentagon just won't leave a good, true American company alone.


http://www.boston.com/dailynews/015/wash/Pentagon_auditors_ask_for_furt:.shtml

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Obscene and Not Heard

Michael Powell, chair of the FCC, has just asked Congress to increase by a factor of ten, the amount the commission can fine broadcasters for "indecent or obscene programming." The FCC's definition of "obscene" has never extended much beyond swearing and nudity and, indeed, this recent move was partly a result of the NBC broadcast of Bono swearing at the Golden Globe Awards last year. So, bloody violence and mayhem are still "family viewing" while boobies remain impossibly horrifying.


http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/01/14/fcc1/index.html

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Oh, The Drudgery

Matt Drudge (could there possibly be a better name for this guy?) sarcastically scolded Al Gore for giving a speech on Global Warming on a winter's day. Citing a really cold day in January as evidence that all this global warming talk is just a bunch of hoo-ha, Drudge provides an solid glimpse into the mind of a poorly educated dumb-ass. Like we need more of that.

http://www.drudgereport.com/agwarm.htm

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Just Plain Creepy

Many of us are well aware of the creepiness of George Bush. Recently, though, he has plumbed new depths during this past Americas Summit in Monterey, Mexico. When the BHC saw this, we had to check that we weren't mistakenly reading a story on The Onion. But no, and the BHC believes that The Globe and Mail is a little less fictional than the Onion. Apparently, Mr. Bush met a Mr. Scott Reid, senior strategist for Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, and took quite a fancy to him. Bush began asking Mr. Reid what he did for the PM and when Reid deigned to answer, Bush said...you ready for this?

"Well, you got a pretty face," he told the surprised Mr. Reid. He wasn't done. "You got a pretty face," he said again. "You're a good-looking guy. Better looking than my Scott anyway."

Now, "my Scott" could be referring to Press Secretary, Scott McClellan but, maybe not....

Yeesh, gotta go wash.

http://globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040116/REID16/

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No, seriously, we've got to wash after that last one.