Lobbyist Logic

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I know you have all been worried at my seeming recovery from my obsession with Ed Gillespie. But worry not–the dearth of Gillespie posts was mostly explained by my travel schedule (which gets really bad again this week, then gets better), and not any disinterest in the guy who took over after they fired Bush’s brain.

And this, I guess, is the kind of logic you get from the Lobbyist-in-Chief with which they replaced Bush’s brain, from this NYT article chronicling how glum Republicans are at their diminishing (political) fortunes.

At the White House, administration officials urged CongressionalRepublicans to try to remain positive and ride out the current turmoil.Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to Mr. Bush, told the visitors,according to multiple accounts, that had Republicans sided withDemocrats on the health program, they would have opened themselves towithering criticism from conservatives and been in a worse positionthan they are now.

Let’s see… "had Republicans sided with Democrats" on the S-CHIP vote. I wonder how Representatives Tom Davis, Heather Wilson, and Don Young feel about that assertion, since they were among the 45 Republicans in the House who voted for S-CHIP? Perhaps it’s no accident that Tom Davis is one of the Republicans quoted as Read more →

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Senate Minority Leader Fuels the Flames

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ThinkProgress got the email that Mitch McConnell’s staffer claimed he had not sent out.

Seen the latest blogswarm? Apparently, there’s more to the story on thekid (Graeme Frost) that did the Dems’ radio response on SCHIP. Bloggershave done a little digging and turned up that the Dad owns his ownbusiness (and the building it’s in), seems to have some commercialrental income and Graeme and a sister go to a private school that,according to its website, costs about $20k a year ‹for each kid‹despite the news profiles reporting a family income of only $45k forthe Frosts. Could the Dems really have done that bad of a job vettingthis family?

Gosh. You think maybe the mainstream press, which claims to pride itself on its accuracy, will admit that this smear was not solely blog-driven?

Don’t answer that.

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Chuck Grassley Agrees with the Netroots

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Like many of us, Grassley argues that if you bring an issue that has widespread support among the electorate up for a vote often enough, you will eventually convince intransigent Republicans to vote for it.

Grassley said if he were the Democrats, he would send the SCHIPexpansion to a vote every three months, along with campaignadvertisements accusing Republicans of abandoning children. That way,pressure would mount either on Bush to sign the bill or on HouseRepublicans to override the veto.

Of course, Grassley is referring to SCHIP and not the Iraq War. But the comment–and the article more generally–is worthwhile nonetheless. For Grassley states clearly that the Bush Administration is willing to sustain awful policy outcomes to make an ideological point.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and White Houseaides agreed that Bush’s opposition to the legislation stems not fromits price tag but from far larger health policy issues. The White Housewants to use the issue of uninsured children to resurrect thepresident’s long-dormant proposals to change the federal tax code tohelp the uninsured, adults and children alike, Grassley said, callingthat a laudable goal but unrealistic politically.

[snip]

Asked if Bush was holding the children’s health bill hostage, Grassley said, "Yes."

The reporter should have posed that last question Read more →

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Medicare Giveaways!

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No, not to the seniors enrolled in Medicare, silly! To the private insurance companies. Yet another GAO report has found yet another contracting scam that BushCo is ignoring.

Private insurance companies participating in Medicarehave been allowed to keep tens of millions of dollars that should havegone to consumers, and the Bush administration did not properly auditthe companies or try to recover money paid in error, Congressionalinvestigators say in a new report.

What’s remarkable about this though, is it is at least the third incidence where–when faced with accounting improprieties from a corporation working with the government–the Bush Administration refuses to ask for the money back.

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Speaking from Cancer

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Update: Here’s Murray’s own take.

It almost seems like Howie didn’t have the heart to do it, to insinuate that Murray Waas’ past struggles with cancer influence his current reporting. But true to his smarmy self, Howie musters up several suggestions that the cancer has compromised Murray’s reporting.

For a reporter whose specialty is digging out secrets, Murray Waas has been keeping one about himself for a long time.

[snip]

It’s hard to say where the line should be drawn when it comes to suchan intensely personal disclosure. Did Waas’s near-death experience, andsubsequent complications, affect his journalism? How could such asearing experience not change your outlook on work and life?

[snip]

Waas acknowledges that the disease influenced him in the late 1980swhen he was writing for the Boston Globe about the collapse of Floridahealth care facilities where some cancer patients had died. "I wrotethat as someone who my family and doctors thought was certainly goingto die from cancer," he says. "Is it relevant to my work when I reporton national security, foreign policy or politics? I don’t think so."

But the lines are not so easily drawn. In one of several conversations,Waas says his near-death experience made him more determined to reporton how the country got into both Persian Gulf wars, with theirlife-and-death stakes. After watching on Capitol Hill when the Gulf Warresolution was approved in 1991, Waas interviewed two men at theVietnam War Memorial who said two of their friends had died in that warand questioned why the United States was getting into another one. Hesaw in this "the mirror image of my own life" — the unresolvedquestions about why his cancer was missed — and vowed to fullyinvestigate the war.

As someone who has a pretty good understanding of where Murray’s coming from, let me just tell Howie to fuck off.

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