Blog Archive: May, 2007

I have mentioned here before that our conservative friends reveal themselves best when they accidentally speak the truth.

Note here Glenn Beck's web site, in which the spittle-flecked radio ranter who inexplicably was given a show on CNN assembles data points on the imminent demise of what fellow ranter Bill O'Reilly calls, with admirable candor, the "white, Christian, male power structure."

The site is a series of links to articles, under headlines like "Agents of Terror," "Iran and our Enemies," and "Border and Culture"--the "Perfect Storm," he calls it.

He advises us:

[T]hink of these in the context of another Hollywood blockbuster—“A Beautiful Mind.” Remember that scene where Russell Crowe has pasted up a number of newspaper stories and is making associations and drawing connections between them by running strings from one story to the next, and then that story to another, and so on? You could easily do the same with the stories here. It’s not a great leap to see a certain synchronicity between them.

You know: the scene meant to establish that the Russell Crowe character had succumbed to paranoid schizophrenia?

Further dispatches from the kafkaesque bowels of the Padilla conspiracy trial. Read about his alleged al-Qaeda "application form." And the government's other boffo evidence against him: his references to vegetables in seven phone conversations.

A wiser man than I gives us things from the E. coli bacillus's point of view.

President Bush today is getting a fresh round of favorable headlines for announcing this ahead of next week's summit of the powerful G-8 nations:

By the end of next year, America and other nations will set a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases. To help develop this goal, the United States will convene a series of meetings of nations that produce most greenhouse gas emissions, including nations with rapidly growing economies like India and China.

Sounds nice, almost like he wants one of them Kyoto treaties. Except that on Wednesday, Reuters reported:

President George W. Bush is under pressure from European allies to give ground on climate change at next week's meeting of the world's richest countries, but policy experts say prospects for a breakthrough are slim.

The sticking point is Bush's longstanding opposition to measurable goals for reducing emissions of the greenhouse gases that spur global warming. ...

As negotiators try to hammer out the final language in a communique, the United States has blocked an emerging consensus in favor of firm targets.

Gristmill's David Roberts also makes that point in his blog today, and adds:

Two things are accomplished by setting things up so that China and India have veto power over a final agreement: 1) you won't get any binding targets, and 2) you establish that China and India are obligated to pledge greenhouse gas reductions equal to the U.S. and other developed countries, despite the fact that the developed countries are responsible for the vast bulk of the greenhouse gas already in the atmosphere, and still far exceed China and India in per-capita emissions. The last thing Bush wants is for the world to agree that the developed countries owe a greater commitment based on economic and social justice concerns.

So we could have a major breakthrough right now, establishing firm targets for the eight nations that contribute nearly half of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. But instead, the White House is proposing more talking, while making it sound like a bold proposal. That way, when nothing of substance comes out of the G-8 summit, Bush can avoid being blamed for being obstructionist.

Another trademark greenwash from the Bush administration.

Today, President Bush is getting a fresh round of favorable headlines for announcing this ahead of next week's summit of the powerful G-8 nations:

By the end of next year, America and other nations will set a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases. To help develop this goal, the United States will convene a series of meetings of nations that produce most greenhouse gas emissions, including nations with rapidly growing economies like India and China.

Sounds nice, almost like he wants one of them Kyoto treaties.

Except that yesterday, Reuters reported:

President George W. Bush is under pressure from European allies to give ground on climate change at next week's meeting of the world's richest countries, but policy experts say prospects for a breakthrough are slim.

The sticking point is Bush's longstanding opposition to measurable goals for reducing emissions of the greenhouse gases that spur global warming.

...

As negotiators try to hammer out the final language in a communique, the United States has blocked an emerging consensus in favor of firm targets.

So we could have a major breakthrough right now, establishing firm targets for the eight nations that contribute nearly half of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

But instead, the White House is proposing more talking, while making it sound like a bold proposal.

That way, when nothing of substance comes out of the G-8 summit, Bush can avoid being blamed for being obstructionist.

Another trademark greenwash from the Bush administration.

UPDATE: More from Gristmill's David Roberts.

In our previous episodes, we learned about the conservative son of a millionaire who is advertising a book on how you, too, can become the son of a millionaire make yourself rich; and the conservative son of a millionaire who told the endearing little story about how he deployed his charm used the fact that his daddy ran the fourth biggest car company in the U.S. to court his wife.

This third installment is about that selfsame son of a millionaire, who happens to be a presidential candidate. Speaking at a business school graduation dinner, he said:

"It takes chutzpah, I believe, to buy a company from somebody else."

It reminds me of my dear old granddads, both of whom came across the ocean tired, poor, yearning to breath free, then had the chutzpah to buy a business from somebody else start their own damn businesses, you pretty-boy twit.

What America's half-billion dollar embassy in Iraq is going to look like.

In our previous episodes, we learned about the conservative son of a millionaire who is advertising a book on how you, too, can become the son of a millionaireget rich; and the conservative son of a millionaire who told the endearing little story about how he deployed his charmused the fact that his daddy owned the fourth biggest car company in the U.S. to court his wife.

This third installment is about that selfsame son of a millionaire, who happens to be a presidential candidate. Speaking at a business school graduation dinner, he said:

"It takes chutzpah, I believe, to buy a company from somebody else."

It reminds me of my dear old granddad, who came across the ocean tired, poor, yearning to breath free, then had the chutzpah to buy a business from somebody elsea href="http://www.bondedmessenger.net/">started his own damn business, you pretty-boy twit.

It's been a busy day here at The Big Con. But when I get to sniffin' out conservative conning, I feel a certain wind beneath my wings.

I've been reading up on the latest Republican presidential candidate, and in an article in the new Weekly Standard

The conference call began around 2:00 pm. Ken Rietz, a top executive with Burson Marsteller and a close adviser to Thompson, welcomed the participants."

Kenneth Rietz. I knew I'd heard of that name before.

I used my MacIntosh's function that lets you search for any string of characters that's on your hard drive. I found what I was looking for in my "Watergate" file. The following is a quote from my favorite book about the Nixon presidency, Jonathan Schell's The Time of Illusion (page 221):

In Washington, a taxi-driver was hired by the
Nixon reelection committee to join the Muskie campaign. He was taken
on as a volunteer, and was eventually assigned the task of carrying
the Senator's mail between his Senate office and his campaign
headquarters. On the way he would give the Senator's campaign
documents, including internal memoranda and drafts of speeches and
position papers, to a Republican operative whose code name was Fat
Jack and who held a post in the Office of Economic Opportunity. Fat
Jack would photograph the papers in a downtown office rented for that
purpose, and would pass the film along; for the first few months...to
Kenneth Rietz, director of the youth division...and then, after Rietz
withdrew...to E. Howard Hunt on a Washington Street corner.

A current Republican presidential contender has a Watergate spy as a "close advisor": surely interesting, and perhaps even relevant to the character of the candidate.

But it only rose to the level of a Big Con post when I looked up Kenneth Rietz's name in the digital archives of the Washington Post, and came on the following Jack Anderson column from December 19, 1975:

REAGAN HIRES FORMER NIXON 'SPY'

Ronald Reagan has signed on a key member of a Nixon campaign 'spy' team, Kenneth Rietz, and assigned him a major role in his campaign...

One of his undercover operatives, a George Washington University student, was paid $100 a week to infiltrate a peace vigil at the White House and set up the demonstrators for arrest on drug charges.

Nixon's right-hand man, H.R. Haldeman, was so pleased with the results that he began grooming Rietz to be the next Republican national chairman. Rietz actually was preparing to take charge of the 1974 Repubican congressional campaign when his spy activities hit the headlines. He resigned under fire.

The conservative movement gave him a home. Reagan made him the chief California organizer for his 1976 presidential campaign; for a time, Rietz's house was Reagan for President headquarters in California.

Apparently, he's been thriving in conservative politics ever since. Imagine that.

Refer to the post below. The AP reports that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has a new policy on Mad Cow disease, based on the following concern:

Arkansas City-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows. Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too.

Let's have some fun and pretend what the world would be like if other people thought like the Bush administration thinks. Here's my entry; you can propose your own in the comments.

Chicago-based singles-bar habitué Lewis P. Smith wants to get an AIDS test. More successful Chicago studs fear that move because, if Smith gets tested and advertises his sperm as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too.