A Farewell to Douchebags

(Sorry; I know I promised to stay away...)



It seems so apropos that Butterqueen Crowley is the first one you see.

They will be counting down in Crawford in a few hours...

I'm confused. Was Gerald Ford hanged?

I wasn't particularly troubled by his pardon of Richard Nixon, but to execute him for that seems overly harsh.

Perhaps I'm mixing up my mainstream media propaganda campaigns.

Why are the flags at half-staff for Saddam's passing? Is there a reason why January 2nd is being declared a federal holiday for James Brown? When will CNN go back to their regular programming: Britney's beaver shots and the latest in the life of Brangelina?

Maybe I ought to just stick to the bowl games, you say? Pass.

Now I'm really outta here until next week.

Post-Christmas postpourri

-- Thanks for the memories, Saddam. You were good for us -- some of us, anyway. Though like any other dysfunctional relationship, you weren't good to us, and that's why we had to find someone new.

-- As an ice shelf 25 square miles in size breaks off from the Canadian Arctic, Bush's former interior secretary, Gale Norton, takes a job at Shell.

I'm so old I remember when this kind of cronyism generated outrage.

-- In other science news, the National Park Service is not allowed to give an estimate of the age of the Grand Canyon so as not to offend religious fundamentalists. You can also buy a book at the national park which explains how Noah's flood created the canyon. Really.

-- We're going to watch the Rockets play on New Year's Eve, a tradition we started back when they were still playing at Lakewood Church.

See you next year.

You may have noticed

that John Edwards declared. It's been omni-blog-present.

He sent me the embed code for this YouTube of his announcement (me and about a hundred billion other people):



Before that, he sent me an e-mail -- dated December 23 -- asking me to tell him what I thought about his Possibly Running for President. It was just simple text; no flashy pictures, the same kind of e-mail I would send to you -- and he signed it "Your friend, John."

He also has links from his website to MySpace and Facebook and an RSS feed and a blog and podcasts and a contribution page at ActBlue. To say that he hired some web-savvy people in the past five days (after asking me if I thought him running for president was a good idea) is a little understated.

In the video above -- it's filmed in New Orleans' 9th Ward -- he even worked in a slam on "the McCain Doctrine" of increasing troop strength in Iraq.

I like John Edwards a lot; he's certainly in my top three prospects (the other two are Wesley Clark and Al Gore). In fact I think he will very probably be on the ticket in 2008. He has the unqualified support of the biggest dog in Texas Democratic politics, Fred Baron.

John Edwards has kicked off the 2008 race in earnest, and will factor strongly in the Democratic nominee's selection.

One way or another.

Yao-za

It's so f***ed I can't believe it
If there's a way I wish we'd see it
How could it work just can't conceive it
Oh what a mess it's best to leave it


-- Dinosaur Jr., "Freak Scene"

So right after I posted this, Yao breaks a leg. Then The Truth went down, T-Mac made a comeback but still has a bad sacroiliac, and AK-47 impersonated Rocky Balboa. J-Smooth caught a hernia, The Answer couldn't catch a flight to snowed-in Denver, and nearly everybody else in the NBA caught the flu.

Ron Artest has sore knees. Ray Allen has a new baby. Saddam is going to be hanged any day now.

Oh wait, he's not in the Association ...

"I am a Ford, not a Lincoln"

Nobody failed to get the joke.

Here's some from the WaPo on the passing of Gerald Ford, 38th President of the United States and the only one never elected:

In the 2 1/2 years of his presidency, Ford ended the U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, helped mediate a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Egypt, signed the Helsinki human rights convention with the Soviet Union and traveled to Vladivostok in the Soviet Far East to sign an arms limitation agreement with Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet president. Ford also sent the Marines to free the crew of the Mayaguez, a U.S. merchant vessel that was captured by Cambodian communists.

On the domestic front, he faced some of the most difficult economic conditions since the Great Depression, with the inflation rate approaching 12 percent. Chronic energy shortages and price increases produced long lines and angry citizens at gas pumps. In the field of civil rights, the sense of optimism that had characterized the 1960s had been replaced by an increasing sense of alienation, particularly in inner cities. The new president also faced a political landscape in which Democrats held large majorities in both the House and the Senate.

What I remember Ford for was the "WIN" buttons he advocated for the nation. He wore one pinned to himself. WIN stood for "Whip Inflation Now."

This of course demonstrated Ford's understanding of monetary policy. Even my dad -- no financial whiz himself -- laughed at the idiocy of a lapel button helping the nation's economic ills.

More excerpts from the NYT:

He was a man more fundamental than flashy, more immutable than immodest. He served undefeated through 13 elections to the House of Representatives and rose to be its Republican leader, yet in 25 years in Congress he did not write a major piece of legislation. He was overwhelmingly confirmed as vice president, the first to be appointed under the 25th Amendment, yet he owed his selection by Nixon to the likelihood that he would prove inoffensive in the job.

The Warren Commission. Ford is at right.

Ford's presidency was an extension of his own political personality: reactive rather than activist, instinctive instead of intellectual, humanistic but within the fiscal limits of conservative dogma.

(Jerald) terHorst, the biographer, puzzled over the seeming contradiction between the president's personal and professional philosophies: "The problem with him — he doesn't like to be kidded about it — but the fact is, this guy would, if he saw a schoolkid in front of the White House who needed clothing, if he was the right size, he'd give him the shirt off his back, literally. Then he'd go right in the White House and veto the school lunch bill."

John Hersey, after spending a week in close observation of the president, wrote in The New York Times Magazine of April 20, 1975: "What is it in him? Is it an inability to extend compassion far beyond the faces directly in view? Is it a failure of imagination? Is it something obdurate he was born with, alongside the energy and serenity?"

Chief of staff Dick Cheney and Ford '76 chairman James Baker with the president (announcing his bid for re-election from the golf course). Again, a personal aside:

Ford ran for election in 1976, narrowly defeating a vigorous primary challenge from former California governor Ronald Reagan. During the election season in 1975 Reagan gave a speech at a dinner restaurant in Beaumont, Texas where I worked as a busboy. I had been promoted to waiter solely for the occasion since we were short-staffed, and just minutes prior to the event we all struck for an extra .25 an hour (management caved to our demands). I was 16 years old, an active Optimist Club oratorical contest participant, and as the old actor addressed the two hundred attendees for 45 minutes, I stood at the back of the room and listened, enrapt.

The room was completely still. No one coughed, not one fork clinked against a plate.

That was the night I became a Republican. Reagan fell short of the nomination of course, but my first presidential ballot was cast in 1976 for Jerry Ford.



Rumsfeld, Ford, Cheney. From the AP:

When Agnew resigned in a bribery scandal in October 1973, Ford was one of four finalists to succeed him: Texan John Connally, New York's Nelson Rockefeller and California's Ronald Reagan.

"Personal factors enter into such a decision," Nixon recalled for a Ford biographer in 1991. "I knew all of the final four personally and had great respect for each one of them, but I had known Jerry Ford longer and better than any of the rest.

"We had served in Congress together. I had often campaigned for him in his district," Nixon continued. But Ford had something the others didn't: he would be easily confirmed by Congress, something that could not be said of Rockefeller, Reagan and Connally.

And this:

While Ford had not sought the job, he came to relish it. He had once told Congress that even if he succeeded Nixon he would not run for president in 1976. Within weeks of taking the oath, he changed his mind.

He was undaunted even after the two attempts on his life in September 1975. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a 26-year-old follower of Charles Manson, was arrested after she aimed a semiautomatic pistol at Ford on Sept. 5 in Sacramento, Calif. A Secret Service agent grabbed her and Ford was unharmed.

Seventeen days later, Sara Jane Moore, a 45-year-old political activist, was arrested in San Francisco after she fired a gun at the president. Again, Ford was unhurt.

And this:

In office, Ford's living tastes were modest. When he became vice president, he chose to remain in the same Alexandria, Va., home — unpretentious except for a swimming pool — that he shared with his family as a congressman.

After leaving the White House, however, he took up residence in the desert resort of Rancho Mirage, picked up $1 million for his memoir and another $1 million in a five-year NBC television contract, and served on a number of corporate boards. By 1987, he was on eight such boards, at fees up to $30,000 a year, and was consulting for others, at fees up to $100,000. After criticism, he cut back on such activity.

Ford was also the subject of parody for his clumsiness, both physical and verbal. Chevy Chase made his initial fame by portraying the president as a chronic stumblebum on 'Saturday Night Live'. LBJ described the House minority leader as unable "to chew gum and walk at the same time", a phrase that entered pop culture as the generic description of an idiot.

But Ford very likely was the perfect man for the job in August of 1974, when the United States was suffering its most extreme constitutional crisis. Even Ford's pardon of Nixon, which cost him re-election, was viewed in hindsight as the tonic for the nation's psychological ills.

Godspeed to Gerald Ford and prayers of condolences to all of his family.

"If you strike the king, you must kill him"

The Speaker of the Texas House gets a challenger. Muse and many others led with the news that broke on Christmas Eve.

Rick Casey has these insights:

There is a consensus that if the vote for House speaker were secret, no plotting would be necessary. Craddick would be a former speaker soon after the session opens Jan. 9. But it is a record vote. And nobody wants to take a chance on publicly opposing Craddick unless it's clear he will lose.

The speaker not only can deny opponents any meaningful committee assignments, he can also make sure none of their pet legislation sees the light of day. So, as the saying goes, if you're going to plot against the king, you'd better bloody well kill him.

Tom Craddick became the first Republican speaker in Texas history, replacing Pete Laney when the GOP became the majority in 2003. Since that time his tenure has been pocked with controversy: record state budget deficits, corrosive political machinations regarding congressional redistricting, an inability to find a solution to public school financing -- the list goes on. But what really has him in trouble is his iron-fisted rule. Casey again, also with the whip count:

"Craddick is very good at breaking arms," said one House member. "That's why if it's going to pop, it has to be at the last minute, when spouses are present and many of the members have their children sitting in their laps. The only time you can neutralize the speaker is when it's done in front of a thousand people."

...

Needed are enough Republicans — 10 or more moderates and conservatives — to join the overwhelming majority of the House's 69 Democrats to deny Craddick the 76 votes he needs for re-election.

Why would Republicans do that? What has Craddick done? Here are some of the things that are cited:

• He failed at what is considered the first job of a speaker: to protect his members. When the state Republican Party ran polls to see how vulnerable some moderate Republicans were, Craddick did nothing to stop it. Then San Antonio billionaire James Leininger spent more than $2.5 million to target five moderate Republicans in the primary because they had voted against school vouchers. Leininger-backed candidates won two of the five races.

Craddick gave lip service to supporting the incumbents, but it is widely believed he could have sent signals that such a bald attack on incumbents was not considered civilized behavior and would make it harder for Leininger to get a hearing next session.

• He pressured members to vote "against their districts" on key issues. One technique: his lieutenants would gather around members who voted wrong and suggest that their button had malfunctioned. Not-so-subtle threats of, among other things, well-funded opposition in the next primary were sometimes conveyed.

Among Republicans who lost to Democrats or more moderate Republicans were Kent Gruesendorf, who chaired the education committee, Houston's Martha Wong, who lost partly because of her votes on children's health insurance, Todd Baxter and Toby Goodman.

"Tom has been one of the best Democratic organizers we've had in a long time," said one Democratic member. He noted that the Republican margin in the House has shrunk by half in the four years since Craddick was elected speaker.

• Craddick's relentless drive in 2003 to champion Tom DeLay's mid-decade congressional redistricting destroyed a long-standing bipartisan culture in the Legislature. Members on both sides of the aisle have talked about a decidedly unpleasant loss of collegiality. "It's not fun anymore," said one member. "It's mean."

The speaker's most recent legal dilemma comes by way of a judge's order that he produce an appointments calendar from his campaign office to determine whether it contains references to state business -- a no-no in Texas.

Neither Governor MoFo nor Lite Gov. Dewface are pals with Craddick. In fact, the only friends he seems to have are corporate lobbyists. Indeed, there are few Speakers that have avoided corruption scandals just in my lifetime (Laney is exceptionally noted, serving at a time when the Texas was going from blue to red and he was forced to work with rabidly partisan conservatives). Gus Mutscher, Bill Clayton, Gib Lewis -- again, the list is lengthy. They seem to get fouled by one-party rule and lengthy terms, though Craddick has gone bad in record time.

I'll be in the gallery in the Capitol on January 9, watching to see if the Republicans can kill the king.