Bad News for the impsons
March 16th, 2007Walter Reed Hospital — which, you’ll recall, is the nation’s largest military hospital, as well as a dump — has been scrutinized of late for its poor conditions and that has put severe pressure on the Republicans (I’m stunned that they haven’t blamed Clinton yet, but I guess I don’t watch Fox News).
Today, there’s more scrutiny: they’ve got a VIP ward, now under investigation. And I ask, “What kind of hospital has a VIP ward?” Is that where soldiers who happen to be political donors go? That’s nonsense. No hospital, anywhere, should have “VIP rooms,” much less a military hospital run by the American government for its military.
In bigger news, the Attorney General and the White House have been shown to have known and plotted, politically, to rid the nation of ninety three US Prosecutors. Ouch. That reeks of the Soviet Politburo to me but it’s no surprise when the President attempts to circumvent democracy anymore.
I’m just frustrated by the fact that the media treats it all with kid’s gloves. Here, Bush turned to Fred Fielding of Nixon and Reagan to help Gonzalez “negotiate” some sort of peace with the Democrats in Congress who are rightly indignant at the Republican behavior.
It was hardly a social call when Fred F. Fielding, the new White House counsel, turned up Wednesday afternoon on Capitol Hill. He had come to negotiate with Democrats, who are investigating whether politics played a role in the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors and demanding testimony from Karl Rove and other top aides to President Bush. But Mr. Fielding’s real task is even bigger and more delicate: to serve as the point man for the White House as it decides the future of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, a longtime Texas friend and confidant of Mr. Bush.
In bringing Mr. Fielding back to the West Wing this year, Mr. Bush turned to the kind of consummate Washington insider he disdained when he first came to town, a Republican who remained prominent in the capital as presidents of both parties have come and gone. Now, occupying a job he held under Ronald Reagan more than 20 years ago, Mr. Fielding, 67, is the White House front man in a high-stakes showdown with the new Democratic majority on Capitol Hill even as he scrambles behind the scenes to determine what his new colleagues knew and when.
Soft-spoken and slightly rumpled, he was polite but did not reveal much on Wednesday, lawmakers said. He stayed 20 minutes, just long enough to hear Democrats make their case that Mr. Bush should not assert executive privilege to keep his aides from talking. He left without a hint of what he might do, and said he would report back to them on Friday.
The bold is bullshit. It’s such a load of bullshit, it’s unbelievable bullshit — Bush disdained insiders? Oh honeybabe. Just because he said once or twice, “I’m an outsider!” doesn’t make it true in the least, so let’s not parrot that bullshit around. The second reason this whole thing bothers me is, Bush is turning to the people who covered up Iran-Contra and tried to with Watergate; he is turning to people who were his father’s keeper.
It’s just not the way a President should act. At all.