Or, maybe Lautenberg arbitrary picked a 5 year low as his reference point. Otherwise, there wouldn’t have been a story because the stock has been down over that entire period, only recently inching above it’s previous high. :rolleyes:
Point being?
Not very interesting. What if he managed to prevent them from dropping into nothingness? He still profits, no? It just shows that it is very important to look at these things - personal interests and politics should be kept separate as much as possible.
So, if the stock goes up it’s his fault and he’s evil, and if the stock goes donw it’s his fault and he’s evil?
Frankly, the whole Halliburton canard is getting tiresome. Perhaps **rjung **is still being swayed by the debunked Kerry campaign ad:
There are plenty of reasons to question whether or not Halliburton is operating above board in its contracts with the US gov’t. The idea that Cheney is on the take is not one of them.
Crap, I slept in, did I miss anything??? Was there a terror allert? A terror ATTACK? I see the “breaking news” is that release of documents are imminent.
I don’t think Bush is smart enough to have cooked up a smokescreen. Rove is, but he was otherwise engaged. Be it curse or blessing, Bush is an extremely loyal person. My guess he could not bring himself to believe that any person in his inner circle would not by that virtue alone be able to get the Republican votes needed. A simple miscalculation on his part.
Regarding Cheney and Halliburton. It is true that Cheney cannot profit personally from their pillaging of the treasury. However, I do not find it implausible that their special treatment is due to his desire to do well by his former cronies in the company. Their preferential treatment and obscene charges are very much an affront to our morality. But they will not result in personal financial gain for Cheney.
Well, indictments are out and not a peep from the White House, which I must admit disproves my theory. I bow out humbly…
The point is that it accomplished nothing for the Republicans and actually hurt their position. The Democrats are in a better position to fillibuster now that they were before Miers.
Which is a lot more than many posters around here do when making “predictions” that don’t come true! You deserve acknowledgement for that.
That wasn’t really my point. I was just saying that stock not going up doesn’t necessarily mean there are no benefits. But the discussion was apparently direct financial gain for Cheney personally, in which case I admit that point isn’t relevant.
Accepted.
But say that Bush intention is getting a truly conservative candidate on the agenda, preferably one that would overturn Roe vs Wade if given the chance. The question then is not whether the Democrats will fillibuster, because they most definitely will. The question is whether he can get all Republicans behind him, and whether the Miers fiasco helped him to do it.
Though honestly, I think that he couldn’t care less. He probably just wanted to thank Miers for her services, or maybe he thought he knew that Miers would vote ‘the right way’ without Democrats suspecting that she would (somewhat suggested by his ‘trust me’, nod nod, wink wink behavior towards his fellow Republicans).
We’ll see.
Hey, the Whitewater “investigation” got started on a whole lot less.
Not really. If you read the factcheck article, you can see that there is nothing there. How could there be a “a whole lot less” than nothing? Having said that…
If the Democrats controlled Congress, I’d fully expect both Bush and Cheney to be vulnerable to impeachment. Not about Halliburton, but about the Iraq War in general.
Yeah, I hate guys that make predictions that don’t come true. But it odes seem odd that both Bush and Cheney made appearances during Fitzgerald’s news conference.
At the risk of sounding like a complete nut, I’ve decided to modify my original theory:
I was very suspicious of the Harriet Miers situation, as I mentioned in the OP. I have so little faith/confidence in the Bush Administration that even failures seem orchistrated and manipulated.
So when Miers seemed to resign at a time that was politically hot (re: indictments) I wondered if the situation was planned.
It was clear that her resignation failed to cover-over the Libby indictments, and my theory appeared to be shot; but there is a new story today–who will be the next nominee!
The smoke screen wasn’t Harriet’s resignation, its the next nomination. Having her pull out allows Bush to put forth a new nominee and let the news rip all over that, forgetting entirely about Libby or what ever else is going on.
Or maybe I’m reading into this a bit too much…
emacknight,
Perhaps but I think the Miers nomination is much more damaging to Bush than his VPs chief of staff being indicted. The big news in regards to that situation will be when he is either convicted, found innocent or pleas.
I guess but the people that he needs to convince on a conservative are the Democrats becuase of the fillibuster. He hurt his position on this becuase now he has to nominate an experienced judge or he will get blasted. An experienced conservative judge will have a paper trail and the Democrats will be able to find something to fillibuster on. This whole Miers situation was a disaster for Bush and I just don’t see how it helped him in any way.
Probably so. Think Occam’s razor. Bush is not smarter than he looks. When he does dumb things, it’s just because he’s that way. Some of us have known this for a while.
To me, the interesting story is why this is now becoming so obvious that everyone can see it. My theory is that Bush is getting lax in protecting his insiders from their dumb mistakes, thus his insiders are beginning to get lax about keeping Bush from making his own mistakes (which are a hell of a lot more spectacular). It’s building like a hurricane, but fueled by Bush’s ineptitude instead of warm, humid air. Look for an unstoppable cascade of chain reaction as everyone scrambles for cover.
It is going to be ages before anything happens with Libby, so the story will slowly die until the trial (next year) or the next indictment. (One can hope:) ) So there won’t be anything happening for the new appointment to cover up. And Bush is going to lose no matter what - either a rightie will be nominated, letting the press say he caved, or a relative moderate will, enraging the right. The only good thing is that I’m betting he nominates someone competent this time.
While I do not think Miers was set up to distract from Plamegate [that won’t be happening] I do think she was never intended to make it past nomination.
The mistake was in thinking she’d even get to the hearing. In such a hearing, she could have helped establish some frightening precedents for executive privilege.
Now that’s the sort of thing that might be necessary to deal with other scandals, the Plame affair included.
It is my thinking that Bush reached for somebody who would not cause a judicial fight. Harry Reid even claims to have suggested he choose Harriet. In nominating Miers, he overestimated the faith of the faith-based groups who support him in his choices. People change and Miers, who Bush knows very well, probably has. After all, Bush is a sober, born-again Christian where once he… wasn’t.
But yea, he certainly could have done better QA on Miers. That’s a sign of distraction and exhaustion.
Occam’s razor is nice, but dismissing Bush as dumb is actually an over-simplification. It’s very easy to call somebody dumb because he does not talk or think like you. But ask yourself this: Is he getting it done? I’d say he is. What is “it?”
Anything. He has gotten a hell of a lot done. As it happens, I don’t think most of it is at all good but he won’t be remembered as a weak tinkerer like Carter. He has wielded incredible power and the fact that he does stuff some folks don’t like or that he occasionally talks like a nimrod really doesn’t tell me anything conclusive about his intellect. I’ve never spoken to him. His power is on the wane and it’s a feature of his leadership style that he doesn’t know it yet. Johnson had the same problem. This despite what appeared to me massive strides in his “war on poverty.”
The White House has certainly lost cabin pressure. I agree with you here. But your characterization of ineptitude isn’t really instructive, in my opinion.
There has been a theory espoused that Harriet was nothing more than a stalking horse. She was put forward for the sole purpose of poking the hornet’s nest. Once the political winds were read, someone who fit the bill would be nominated.
And sure enough…