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New Year - Same Ol', Same Ol'...
Author: BobR    Date: 01/02/2009 13:31:13

With the new year comes hopes and dreams of change and improvement. Such is the stuff of New Year's resolutions, psychic's predictions, and retrospectives, the latter seeming to indicate we have a clean slate with which to start over. For most people, however, this new year won't actually start until Jan 20th. Until then, we have to deal with the same old shit from 2008.

We can certainly count on the Bush Administration to obstruct justice and claim "Executive Privilege" right up to the very end. This time, it's Mukasey trying to protect Cheney:
The Justice Department this week released Attorney General Michael Mukasey's recommendation that President Bush invoke executive privilege in refusing to release to Congress transcripts of Dick Cheney's conversations with the FBI.

The seven-page letter (pdf), dated July 15, argues that disclosure of such records would hinder future presidents' ability to receive guidance from their advisers because Cheney's conversations detailed internal White House deliberations. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee requested the transcripts along with other documents related to its investigation into the leak of former CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity.

A bipartisan committee report has already determined the claim was inappropriate, and a separate report (pdf), that the committee has delayed voting on recommends holding Mukasey in contempt of Congress. It's unclear if the committee will ever vote on that report; a spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

I guess I should add that a Democratic-majority Congress will continue to wring it's hands and do nothing.

We can also count on Bush doing nothing (he stayed on vacation in Crawford while Israel got medieval on Hamas), while claiming to be "working hard":
President Bush in his New Year’s message to the nation vowed to keep working hard in the less than three weeks that he remains in office.

Bush, who has held several interviews in recent weeks that looked back at his presidency, used his last New Year’s message to “thank the American people for trusting me with the honor of serving our great country.
[...]
“Earlier this year, I promised that I would sprint to the finish of my time as president,” he stated. “We are working hard to keep that promise.”

Apparently he thinks the finish line is in Crawford, TX.

We can also count on FAUX News to carry water for the most brain-dead of the Republican party, if their New Years Eve coverage is any indication:
Throughout last night’s New Year’s eve broadcast, Fox News Channel allowed viewers to send in New Year’s greetings and wishes via text message. The messages were then scrolled across the bottom of the screen, replacing Fox’s normal crawling news headlines. While most messages were cordial, Fox allowed at least one racist message directed toward President-elect Obama to be broadcast. The message referenced Rush Limbaugh’s “Barack the Magic Negro” song:


Oddly, Bush's policies are being undone in the most unlikely of places. It was announced that Iraq is taking over the Green Zone, and our troops are essentially reporting to the Iraqi leadership. One of their first actions will be to close a base near the Iranian border used for staging dissident attacks on Iran:
Iraq plans to close a camp for Iranian dissidents who used to cross into Iran to mount assassinations and sabotage - a decision that has sharpened political differences between Baghdad and Washington.

Camp Ashraf, about 80 miles north of Baghdad, came under Iraqi control yesterday in a broad security handover that forms part of the US withdrawal agreement concluded late last year.

Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, led a delegation of defence and interior ministry officials to the camp last weekend, warning its 2,500 male and 1,000 female inmates that "staying in Iraq is not an option". The Iraqi government said it "is keen to execute its plans to close the camp and send its inhabitants to their country or other countries in a non-forcible manner".

US troops disarmed the opposition group known as the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) after the 2003 invasion. They removed hundreds of armoured vehicles donated by Saddam Hussein but kept the camp intact because some Bush administration officials allegedly saw the MEK as a potential tool for regime change in Iran.

The Shia-led government in Baghdad has forged close relations with fellow Shias in Tehran and rejects such ambitions. It insisted that the US/Iraq security agreement contain a promise that Iraq would not be used for attacks on Iran or any other country

So apparently Bush is working hard to replace a government antagonistic to Iran with one that is allied with Iran. Heckuva job there Bushie!

I wonder how FAUX News will report it?


 

79 comments (Latest Comment: 01/03/2009 02:32:35 by TriSec)
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