The Hollywood Liberal

Hang in there, America: Competent leadership is just 600-plus days away

McClatchy
Excerpt
As of May 28th, there were 602 days left until Jan. 20, 2009, and the end of our long national nightmare as President George W. Bush and his Rasputin, Vice President Dick Cheney, shuffle off to their necessarily well-guarded retirement homes and onto the ash heap of history.

So much of what they talked about doing in a new century and a new and different world never came to pass. So much of what they did to grow the power of the presidency and prune the constitutional safeguards crafted by our Founding Fathers, they never talked about.

The American people have turned their backs on George Bush and his dreams of planting the seeds of democracy in Mesopotamia at the point of a gun and seeing them spread like kudzu across the Middle East.

He’s failed in his quest for victory in Iraq and for a world put in order by a new and stronger United States, and his brash blundering into a dangerous land has made us all much less safe.

The president’s approval ratings are below his knees, sinking to 28 percent in one recent poll, and he cannot recover short of the kind of miracle that parts seas and feeds the multitudes.

The war that was never ours to win by military means – the only button this president who never learned war ever learned how to push – is lost. Bush and Cheney and the rest of their cronies and co-conspirators are toast.

The question is: How did such ordinary-looking men – seemingly unable to carry out even the smallest non-political tasks of governing – succeed in doing such extraordinary and lasting damage to our country, our military and our body politic in so few years?

Disoriented Bush team in Inquisitor Waxman’s sights

Cron.com
Excerpt
On the day presidential senior adviser Karl Rove administered a tongue-lashing to a Republican congressman, disturbing news about his former executive assistant was spread on Capitol Hill. GOP House members learned that Susan Ralston is requesting immunity to testify before Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman’s investigating committee.

She was an assistant to Jack Abramoff, Washington superlobbyist and Republican fund-raiser, in 2001 when he recommended her for the top job with Rove as he entered the White House. As Rove’s gatekeeper, Susan Bonzon Ralston became special assistant to the president and the highest-ranking Filipino-American in the administration. For Waxman, she is a link between the disgraced, imprisoned Abramoff and Rove, a principal political target of the Democratic-controlled Congress.

As House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman, Waxman is tirelessly making life miserable for a confused administration during George W. Bush’s last two years as president. Bringing down Rove ranks high on Grand Inquisitor Waxman’s agenda. But Ralston appears to be seeking immunity for self-protection rather than nailing her former boss, and she could be a blank fired by the fierce political marksman from Westside Los Angeles.

Rove, the hard-edged architect of two victorious presidential campaigns, was in the Democratic cross-hairs long before Republicans lost control of Congress. Democrats were bitterly disappointed when he was not indicted in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case (when Ralston was among the grand jury witnesses). They have targeted Rove in investigating the dismissal of U.S. attorneys, and the Waxman committee sought testimony from Ralston about Rove’s e-mails. She was deposed behind closed doors last month prior to her request for immunity.