Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Dead Man Walking

The whole Alberto Gonzalez affair has become a slow motion train wreak. No matter how your slice it his testimony before the Senate was abysmal. When the whole affair of the fired Attorneys first broke it looked bad for the Bushies but somehow it got worse.

Not that this was any surprise to the left blogosphere and correspondents who are not part of the corporate media hack-pack. Anyone paying attention can see the rot that started from the head and worked its way to the body of the government. From the 5-4 Supreme decision that got Bush elected to this latest installment of idiocy we have been forced to watch a President and administration that combined hubris and incompetence in staggering amounts. Bush seems to be a one trick pony a man who does politics and nothing else. Everything is subsumed in the drive to achieve temporary political advantage. Rove only feeds the need for political skulduggery.

Now that the Bush-Rove attempt to build the 51% “permanent Republican majority” has crashed and burned in the sands of Iraq, a large congregation of chickens has come to roost. It all began with Katrina. The fall out from “Brownie you’re doing heck of job” was first really big hit the Bushies took. Bush’s totally disengagement from the death and destruction of NOLA and the Gulf Coast hurt the Republicans where they live, in the conservative South. Then came the steady drip, drip, drip of Iraq. Then came the Foley and Cunningham cases. Duke Cunningham was found to be incredibly corrupt as was Jack Abramoff both involved in massive bribery scandals. Both convictions lead to further accusations of influence peddling, pay-for-play and suspect deals. But the final cherry on top was the Foley page scandal. Remember, the chair of the abused children subcommittee sending raunchy e-mails and otherwise hitting on underaged pages? That played real well with the homophobic "Christian" base of the Republican party. All of theses incidents and accusations caused an enormous backlash during the election of 2006. For once George W Bush got it right: that while individual local elections were close the whole election nationally was whipping for the Republican party and it’s leader.

With the Democrats now in power, the death spiral of the Bush administration has accelerated. With the power of oversight and armed with subpoenas Congress is uncovering more skeletons than a Dios de los Muertos procession in Mexico City. But the killer seems to be the link between the Attorneys firings and attempt to fix the election of 2006. In case after case there is a nauseating possibility that Republican federal prosecutors tried to subvert elections by pushing suspect corruption cases against Democrats. When a Conservative Republican appeals Judge tosses out your conviction because the original case was “less than thin” you are in a very bad place as a prosecutor. And then there is Ohio. Two Ohio elections officials are now in jail due to vote fraud. Seems some 100,000 votes got lost in the Democratic city of Cincinnati, remember 80,000 votes to Kerry in Ohio instead of Bush and Senator Kerry would now be president of the U.S.A. By the way Cincinnati broke for Kerry 80% to 20%, oops. So there is a very real possibility that the elections of 2000 and 2004 were both “stolen.”

Right now it’s all Alberto all the time. Every day Gonzo stays in office is slow death for the Republicans. But George W is not about to fire his No.1 enabler and protector period. Gonzalez knows where all the bodies are buried plus there is no person who can replace Gonzalez who will be acceptable to Bush and the Democratic Congress. So even though Gonzales was clubbed to death by both Republican and Democratic Senators like a helpless baby seal his dead and bloated political carcass is going to stink up the joint for while.