How Low Can The GOP Go?

Amid the never-ending flow of Republican scandals, this week the GOP has reached a brand-new low. The GOP has become so prone to it, that the number of scandals blur like the number of US casualties in Iraq.

Last month we saw the end of Round One in the CIA leak investigation (or Treasongate), leading to the resignation of Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby for obstructing justice. But that is just the tip of the iceberg, once one considers what has happened to this nation since the Bush Crime Family came to power five years ago.

In the last five years we have seen a nation at peace and prosperity fall into a never-ending war on “terrorism.” Since Dubya has taken the reigns, we have seen a large amount of Manhattan wiped out with the World Trade Center, one of the five walls of the Pentagon destroyed, and the entire city of New Orleans wiped out. Strangely, the President did stand on the rubble in New Orleans and declare a war on hurricanes.

In those last five years, Dubya has cut taxes (primarily on the top one-tenth of 1% of wage earners) by 3.9 trillion dollars, while adding nearly another trillion of spending in the federal budget. Meanwhile, the American middle class is becoming increasingly an endangered species, as good paying union jobs continue to flow to China, India, and Mexico, while every single year the US trade deficit has increased to a new high of $66.1 billion dollars in September of 2005.

In the last five years the US has waged two new wars, one in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. With the budgets bleeding red all over the place, the Pentagon has decided that instead of putting US soldiers on potato duty, that they’ll just contract that no-bid work out to Dick Cheney’s former company Halliburton…at ten times the price.

There’s been so much scandal and just plain bone-headedness in this administration, it’s almost enough to make you forget that the PNAC neo-con running Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad is now nothing more than the mayor of Kabul.

And one hardly needs to be reminded of the repeated lies and deceptions that brought us into the war in Iraq, that an individual known as “curveball”, an associate of Ahmed Chalabi, told the Bush administration that he personally knew that Saddam had WMD’s. Unfortunately, German intelligence knew that curveball was lying, and the CIA did too, after they gave him a polygraph test prior to our invasion, which he failed. Still, the Bush administration ran with his claims. The Downing Street Memo reminding us all that the Bushies were fixing the intelligence to the policy of invading Iraq, and a brand new Downing Street memo in the UK paper The Daily Mirror shows that the president wished to bomb the Arabic TV network Al-Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar. While Dubya’s apologists call the memo “outlandish”, one needs to be reminded that the US did bomb Al-Jazeera’s bureaus in Afghanistan and in Baghdad in 2001 and 2003, respectively. It’s enough to make one wonder if this President isn’t above nuking CNN or perhaps The Washington Post.

The Post might find itself first in line to that nuking after it reported yesterday that the Bush administration is considering getting the Pentagon to spy on American citizens. A little known Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity is preparing to investigate certain domestic crimes. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) said “We are deputizing the military to spy on law-abiding Americans in America.” Who said living in a police state isn’t fun?

With all this going on at the federal level, it’s hard to remember what is going on at the local and state level. Ernie Fletcher, the Republicans governor of Kentucky, when he was running for office in 2003, promised to cut the number of state-employed aids, which Fletcher called “make-work for friends”. But according to The Courier Journal the Kentucky governor has seen those number of aids increase, including a friend of his named Jimmy Holiday. You see, good ole Jimmy is a Transportation Cabinet employee, who was hired to answer phones on a state help desk. Unfortunately, Jimmy refused to do his job, so in an e-mail to a subordinate the Deputy Secretary of Transportation for the state of Kentucky asked, “So do we have another place to put him where he will work? Otherwise put him in a corner and we’ll ignore him.” Those Republicans sure do love to cut wasteful government don’t they? And in case you were wondering, yes, Jimmy Holiday is a registered Republican.

And in further local news, the Republican Governor of Ohio, Bob Taft, has been found guilty of ethics violations and has seen his approval ratings take such a drive that he wishes he had Dubya’s ratings. But the news isn’t all bad for Taft. The good ole Ohio governor was named “The Sexiest Man Alive” by the Log Cabin Republicans, making “Snotty” Scotty McClellan enraged in jealousy.

And speaking of “Snotty” Scotty, has anyone noticed that he’s stopped giving press conferences ever since he said a Marine veteran, Representative Murtha was siding with “the extreme left and Michael Moore”? You’ll remember that the vast majority of Americans want us out of Iraq (I suppose we’re ALL the ‘extreme left’ now). Since “Snotty” Scotty made the comment we haven’t seen hide nor hair of him in the last 20 days. Some insiders are thinking that Scotty is now toast, since he’s lost all his credibility with the press, especially for lying about Rove’s involvement in Treasongate. But I would wager to bet that a certain gay hooker (ahem! I mean reporter!) has at least seen Scotty’s hide recently.

And with the Reich-wing still going nuts over Murtha’s comments, tomorrow President Dubya is expected to make a major speech at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, in which he is to say that Iraqi security forces are doing “a heck of a job” and that we can now start withdrawing our troops. I will be eagerly awaiting the Bill O’Reillys of the world to call the Dubya a “cut and run” coward who is giving aid and comfort to the enemy, but I won’t hold my breath.

And with all of this insanity raging, Republican Representative “Duke” Cunningham of California resigned his post yesterday, admitting he took $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors. Cunningham said, “The truth is I broke the law, concealed my conduct, and disgraced my office.” Cunningham, 63, could face ten years in prison for that conduct. It would appear that a certain Texas Republican could learn a lot of Duke. Cunningham may have broken the law and broken his promise to defend the Constitution, but at least he admitted his guilt that will permit him to live with some amount of dignity.

And while Bush continues to push for even more Reich-wing nutcases to sit on the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land is beginning to show some strain. Yesterday, a basketball sized piece of marble from the façade over of the entrance of the Supreme Court fell, crashing onto the steps. One wonders if Pat Robertson will say that this was a sign from God, warning us that Bush’s nominees to the court are just too loony. I putting my money on not.