The sentencing memorandum on behalf of Mitchell Wade is in, and there’s some indications that he’s told some stories about yet more Republican office holders who accepted illegal campaign contributions. Among those office holders is Katherine Harris, she of the Florida vote recount that was so pivotal to giving us the failure that is George Bush in 2000. Seth Hettena has the story, as does Politico. Here’s a bit from Seth:

Mitchell Wade, the man who bribed Randy “Duke” Cunningham and then did much to speed the congressman’s spectacular fall, is asking a judge to sentence him to a year of home detention for all the help he provided the government. Prosecutors don’t dispute that Wade was helpful, but they believe that four years in prison is more appropriate for $1.8 million in bribes.

Would Cunningham ultimately have been convicted without Wade? Probably, but Wade made it happen much, much faster. He was debriefed 23 times by government investigators and supplied them a searchable electronic database of 150,000 documents, including the infamous “bribe menu.” And Wade’s cooperation didn’t stop with Cunningham. He provided damaging evidence against several others, including his testimony at the bribery trial of his former boss, Brent Wilkes, who’s now serving time in prison.

A 42-page sentencing memo filed by Wade’s attorneys says he aided the government in its investigation “of at least five other members of Congress” who were under investigation for “corruption similar to that of Mr. Cunningham.” These no doubt include Virgil Goode and Katherine “Pink Sugar” Harris. Wade wanted to open facilities in their districts and made $78,000 in “straw” contributions to grease the wheels. Neither Harris nor Goode has been charged with wrongdoing.

Prosecutors drop tantalizing hints about an even bigger, ongoing investigation. Wade was debriefed in 2006 and provided “moderately useful” background information in another “large and important corruption investigation” that also has not yet resulted in any charges.

“Large and important corruption investigation?” Man, this Duke Cunningham, Wilkes, Wade thing is the gift that keeps on giving. Sure, we all expect that there will be Republicans who escape the culture of corruption web they wove, but I’m sure we’re all hoping Katherine Haqrris gets caught in this one. This would be true justice in pursuit of voter fraud, eh?

George Bush, in a few words about the legacy he feels his Administration leaves the nation, had a few words to say earlier this month. The interview was done by Bush’s sister as a part of NPR’s StoryCorps feature. The New York Times has a little feature on the exceprts of the interivew that have been posted at the White House web site. I’ll comment on those White House bits:

Q How do you want to be remembered, and what are you most proud of?

THE PRESIDENT: I would like to be a person remembered as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process. I came to Washington with a set of values, and I’m leaving with the same set of values. And I darn sure wasn’t going to sacrifice those values; that I was a President that had to make tough choices and was willing to make them. I surrounded myself with good people. I carefully considered the advice of smart, capable people and made tough decisions.

Is he saying that his values included torture before he was elected? That those values included spying on Americans, included putting politics before justice, included appointing friends to positions of vital importantce and then standing there while a Brownie completely fucked up his job? Is Bush saying that his values measure Ashcroft and Gonzales and Rumsfeld and Brownie and all the incompetents he brought in as “smart? One thing can be certain about the Bush Administration, that he faced some severe challenges. The way he responded to them was to send the constitution to the shredder, attack others at random, and then alienate our allies around the world. There’s no value there that I’d be proud of, but Bush evidently follows a different notion of “values,” such as here, the very next sentence of the interview:

I’d like to be a President (known) as somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace. . .

Evidently freedom for Bush is a value that far outweighs the torture of thousands and the deaths of tens and tens of thousands of innocent men women and children in Iraq. He doesn’t mention any deaths in the interview. Perhaps senseless death fits just fine into Bush’s sense of freedom. It is claer also that Bush has had seven years to confront terrorism, and here we have a massive terrorist attack in India just a week or two after he makes this statement.

The man claims his values have been consistent and he hasn’t bent to political winds. To my mind that means Bush’s values were defective from the get go. I imagine I’ve got many Americans and peoples throughout the world who would agree.

Is he going to run against the Dinosaur Arlen Specter? Will Pennsylvanians get to see a real live celebrity coming to their town to campaign? Will someone finally make the single bullet theory a campaign issue? Will Tweety be able to keep his big yap shut and act like a politician, or will that even cancel out his celebrity? All good questions, and the web is in a tizzy the last few days over the possibility of Chris Matthews gearing up to run for Senate in 2010 in PA. Sorry, I’ve been more productive those last two days yawning and such. Is the latest news from the center of the state of PA, Patriot News? I suppose so:

Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” isn’t ready to say he’s running for the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania, but he continues to talk with top Democrats about the possibility.

Matthews met with state Democratic Party officials this week to talk about challenging Republican Sen. Arlen Specter in 2010. He met with Democratic State Committee Chairman T.J. Rooney and executive director Mary Isenhour in Washington, D.C., to discuss the logistics involved in a Senate run.

Isenhour said she left that meeting convinced Matthews has not made up his mind about running.

This story of Chris Matthews coming back to PA to run for Senate is capturing the hearts and minds of nearly everyone. Man! Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake and Huffington Post is giving advice on how Tweety could beat Specter. Quinnipiac has run a poll pitting Matthews against Specter. Fivethirtyeight.com is running a story about how Chris Matthews is staffing up for a Senate run, and Talkingpointsmemo is running a story with a Matthews nondenial denial about staffing up. There’s a frenzy going on, and if I were smart I’d just stay out of it.

I’ll settle on a yawn. First, the PA Senate seat isn’t so important. Arlen Specter will be running for his last term in office, he’ll be in the minority and during a Democratic Presidency to boot. I don’t mean to praise Mr. Specter any, but the Republican Party has changed mightily since he first ran for Senate, and while he’s not been all that mavericky, GOP values are not Specter’s values. One imagines that he’s tired of having felt the whip these last few years as the Republicans forced him into line time and time again. All this is to say that I’d not concentrate any national money here in an effort to unseat Specter, as there are plenty of other Republicans I’d rather see get the boot. Sure, SPecter has done some dispicable things while Bush is in power, but now a Democrat is in power, and I fully expect Specter to turn into the wind a bit. All this is to say I don’t see this seat as a huge priority.

Matthews? Why would we want Matthews as a Senator? He hardly makes a good TV talking head. If it weren’t that Matthews was a God in comparison to his counterparts over at FoxNews, we’d think Matthews was some kind of numbnut hick who couldn’t report work a pile of crap. Matthews has already got the world in the palm of his hands anyway, what with the Chris Matthews Show and Hardball. He’s the darling of all the talking heads and the heir to the Russet mantle. Why the heck would he want to go to the Senate, assuming he could beat Specter?

OK, ok, I know Matthews has a long history in politics, that he wrote speeches for Carter, worked for Tip O’Neill, b lah, blah, blah! Yeah, I’ve watched Hardball enough that I know the stories by heart. A strong bio does not make a candidate, a hot gossipy news story, or even anything all that interesting. There is a simple bottom line.

Look, Arlen Specter huffed and puffed and threatened to stand in the way of the Bush Administration spying on American citizens. Then he backed down and let the Bushies abuse our sivil rights. Bad Boy, Arlen. Tweety won a Media Matters of America Award for “Misinformer of the Year” in 2005. It’s not like we’d be replacing Specter with the higher priced spread or something. In fact, this would be like replacing day old white bread with day old whole wheat. Still day old, still not all that much nutritional vale, and both of them would be squashed by poltiical pressure as easily.

This is a stupid issue for all sorts of folks to be getting excited about.

It’s only a few days now until the Republicans sit down and vote for a new Chair of the RNC. There are several candidates to choose from, but I’m beginning to think Katon Dawson of South Carolina has the inside track. Yes, he’s been named one of the 25 scariest conservatives. There are those in South Carolina that thought Lindsey Graham so liberal they wanted to draft Dawson to take on Senator Graham. Though even right wing extremists have trouble with Katon awson having been a member of a Whites Only Club 12 years before noticing the policies of the club, I’m not thinking that will disqualify him among the GOP base. As I have noted before, and as Jesus’ General notes as well, Katon Dawson is now the favorite of Donald Wildmon, that extremist right wing religious mullah whack job who runs the American Family Association. Katon Dawson just may have the momentum to become the next GOP Chair, and I’m here to say that may keep the GOP in the wilderness of politics much longer.

To some degree Katon Dawson is saying all the right things on his way to changing his image so that he can at least fool Republicans into thinking he isn’t an extremist right wing whack job. Here’s how he puts his priorities to CNN:

“I am running to serve as chairman of the Republican National Committee because I’m ready to help lead our party’s turnaround,” Dawson said in a prepared statement. “We need to turn around our fortunes in many regions of the country. We need to turn around our grassroots organization, our fundraising, our use of technology and new media, and our candidate recruitment. We must move forward with the confidence that our message of optimism, hope, and freedom still resonates in the hearts of our fellow Americans.”

Of course that’s about as white bread a Reagan-esque policy viewpoint as there is. Still, the guy seems awfully clueless. He claims the GOP has a message of “optimism, hope and freedom,” when the fact is that there are only small regional pockets of the US who actually believe that. In this last election the GOP brand carried the negative attack, as is usual, with pride. Negatives are welded to the GOP brand, and that leaves little room for optimism and hope. As to “freedom,” there are surely Americans who believe the contradictory notion that spying on Americans and torturing others helps make freedom possible. That segment of the population is already part of the GOP membership. the rest of us are not fooled.

In a recent OpEd piece in Politico Katon Dawson again says almost all the right things. I’ll give him credit for knowing what the right values are that just might win back votes for the Republican Party. But when Katon Dawson gives other interviews, the result isn’t so inclusive and sane. In a June interview with Soren Dayton of The Next Right, Katon Dawson does just that when asked to comment on attracting African American voters. From The Next Right:

I asked if increased African-American turnout would create a problem for some legislative seats, and he responded, again, quite confidently, “we should win some seats we would not win normally,” due to “partial birth abortion, gay marriage, which are the pillars of the Democratic platform.”

One would expect a question about African American turnout to focus, perhaps, on African Americans, especially in South Carolina, a state where that turnout for Barack Obama was a key to his primary victory. Oddly, Katon hit the answer that must come every time Donald Wildmon pulls the string, that gay marriage and partial birth abortion, the divisive issues that failed Republicans this year, are still what the GOP should depend upon. Most telling is that Katon Dawson claims these issues are the “pillars of the Democratic platform.” Yes, lying and demonization through lying are right up Dawson’s alley. The actual facts here are that Democrats never campaign on either issue.

This is a Darwin moment in the making for the Republicans, and it may be very telling as well as ironic. The wing of the GOP that doesn’t believe in Darwin, led by such as Donald Wildmon and his fellow extremist Christian mullahs, is threatening to deal a death blow to the GOP by continuing with the same old same old divisiveness. OK, we in the Democratic Party can cheer a bit at such a development, but it is fascinating, almost like watching one of those videos where a guy hits himself in the nards with a rake or something. These Republicans just don’t seem to get it.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. None of the writers here are women, at least since somegirl stopped active contributions. but the gender analyzer says there’s a 78% chance this blog is written by women. Not so decisive a reading of www.rove.com (58% chance of being a written by a woman. Hmm, not sure what to make of that. Whitehouse.gove is 77% manly, and perhaps the result with the most fun and interesting result is the response the gender analyzer gives when you plug in www.eschatonblog.com:

An error occurred
Sorry, we can only classify web pages written in english

Ah well. Happy Thanksgiving.

Have a good Turkey Day, folks.

Where to start, where to start. OK, Happy Thanksfiving. I head down to start on dinner in a bit, and am looking forward to a quiet and early meal, around 1:00. After we will head to the stadium and start partying at the tailgate there, where there’s sure to be more turkey. This is the season of eating dangerously, after all.

The incompetence? That would be George Bush’s staff sending out an invitation to American Jewish leaders to come to a reception at the White House in order to celebrate Hanukah. They sent the invitations on cards with a picture of the White House Christmas Tree being delivered. Yes, today’s incompetence is brought to you by the White House. From the New York Post:

The president and the first lady invited leaders of America’s Jewish community for a Hanukkah reception at the White House next month - but raised more than a few eyebrows by putting a picture of a Christmas tree on the invitation.

The message reads that the couple “requests the pleasure of your company at a Hanukkah reception,” written beneath an image of a Clydesdale horse hauling a Christmas fir along the snow-dappled drive to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

And, no, it is not a Hanukkah bush. A close look at the wagon reveals the message “White House Christmas Tree 2008.”

In the background, the White House windows are festooned with Christmas wreaths.

Those cards could very well become collectors items. Gee, a memory of the most incopetent Presidency ever. . . I’m betting collectors everywhere are hunting down the cards. Of course, some Americans are happy with Bush, so happy they want to secede and name him President for Life. But we’ll refrain from talking about whack jobs for now.

Hey, he’s got Bill Frist and Lamar Alexander in his pocket, does Hank Williams, Jr., or so it is reported by Country Music Television. The word out there is that Hank Williams, Jr. is going to run for Senator Corker’s seat in Tennessee in 2010. No word on whether he will be using this picture for campaign material.

My goodness. Yeah, Williams is bound to appeal to the base there in Tennessee, but the Republicans sure are scraping the bottom of the barrell here. It isn’t just the hard partying image Williams has nurtured for 30 years that they might want to avoid at all costs. It isn’t even those pictures of Hank with naked women, or the videos that are bound to come out of extreme drunken fans at his concerts. The guy seems nuts to me! How could a party be so irresponsible as to run a nut for Senate? I mean, come on! The guy reworked his song that celebrates drug and alcohol abuse, as well as family, “Family Tradition,” into a song of praise for the McCain/Palin campaign — that isn’t what I’d call good political instincts.

To set the record straight, Real Clear Politics is reporting that there’s been no decision made as to whether Hank will actually run for the Senate in Tennessee:

It was reported recently that country music singer Hank Williams Jr. plans to run for a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee in 2012 — the next time a Senate seat is up in the state. An intriguing notion to say the least, but no announcement has been made yet, according to Williams’s publicist.

When reached for comment by RealClearPolitics, a spokesman for Williams’s publicist, Kirt Webster, said Williams “has talked about it, but no announcement has been made.”

That this story actually made the light of day is a measure of the kind of desperate straights the Republicans are in. Very, very desperate.

A Bush aide, Felipe Sixto, resigned last March amidst some serious rumors that there were some financial improprieties involving the USAID money he administered while he was working for the Center for Free Cuba. When he resigned last March Mr. Sixto was serving as Special Assistant to President Bush for Intergovernmental Affairs. He has now been indicted. From the Washington DC Examiner:

On Thursday, Sixto was charged in federal court with stealing thousands of dollars from the nonprofit agency. The alleged theft occurred from March 2005 to January 2008, while Sixto, a 29-year-old graduate of American University, worked at the Center for a Free Cuba and after he went to work for the White House in July 2007, court documents said. Sixto was charged via criminal information, which typically signals that a plea agreement is in the works.

As TPM notes, this is theft of taxpayer dollars. Seems to me that’s a whole lot worse than the usual Bush Administration crime of tragic misuse (Iraq) of taxpayer dollars.

According to reports, Ann Coulter’s jaw had been wired shut. The Post-Chronicle has the story. Evidently this is the result of a fall she suffered last month.

I know it isn’t fashionable in liberal circles to pray for miracles and to give thanks for them, but this just might be an exception. Dr. Manhattan calls it “karma.” Page Six notes that “the mouth that roared has been wired shut.”

I’m thinking this is a Hallmark Thanksgiving Special in the making. And I’ll drink to that at Drinking Liberally tonight. Yes indeedy.

Duncan Black over at Eschaton yesterday noted that Roger Simon of Politico interviewed a GOP Senator and gave the guy anonymity. Duncan wondered why one would do such a thing, and clearly Duncan’s was merely a rhetorical question. He knows as we all know that Simon wants to preserve his cozy friendships in the GOP, and if the name of the GOP Senator got out, he surely would be guilty of ridicule for the contradictions and whackjobiness of his words. He was discussing the state of the Republican Party, and what they had to do to become a national party again, and the Senator’s prescriptions are a mess of whackjobbery. So we’ll highlight a few of them, quoting from Simon’s Politico article. First, a bit on the immediate future of the GOP and on Sarah Palin:

“I don’t think we have learned much from the election in terms of what people want to see,” he says. “We have the same gridlock.”

By the “same gridlock,” he means that party hard-liners, both Democrats and Republicans, will remain in control of the machinery of Congress. And that means more of the same. It means more politics as usual — especially in his party.

“We need someone who speaks from the center,” he says. “Sarah Palin is not the voice of our party.”

This part seems sane. The Republicans will need to be seen as a party that brings solutions rather than the party of incompetence, war and economic disaster. And while Sarah Palin might rile up the base of her party, she’s not the standard bearer for solutions. For a minute it seems this Republican Senator is sane. Check out, though, the turn to the religious right he begins to take when talking about courting hispanic voters:

And the Republicans are very, very worried about the Hispanic vote. They see the African-American vote as largely gone, but the Hispanic vote was a possibility in future elections. If only Republicans knew how to appeal to Hispanic voters.

“We have to become much more attuned to the rhetoric and issues that Hispanics care about,” the senator says. “We have to talk about education, family, and moral issues like gay marriage and abortion.”

“The perception among Hispanics is that the Republican Party is the party of the rich,” he says, pausing. “And, in many ways, it is.”

He’s evidently not rejecting Sarah Palin because she represents the extremists on the religious right. this guy is actually, just moments after noting that the Republicans need to bring pragmatic solutions to the voters, decides that the tried and true wedge issues are important. This is the sort of narrow thinking of the past that makes me happy about Republicans. He swings more to the whack job wing of the party later in the story, but not in the sense of endorsing the extremist Christian agenda. No, this Senator brightens in tone when he thinks of the disasters Bush and the Republicans have given Obama. He sees hope:

There is a bright side. Now that the Democrats control the White House and Congress, they will get blamed for everything that goes wrong.

“Things can turn,” the senator says, growing less glum. “These are pretty tough times to be in charge. These are pretty tough times to have power.”

The contradictions from this guy, where he claims Palin is wrong for the party then picks up her wedge issues, even praises her, are enough for this guy to hide his identity from the Radical Right Wing Mullahs of his party, but that last bit is enough to make him want to hide his name from the entire nation. He is supposing that the Bush disasters, the economic and foreign policy woes Republicans present to the Obama Presidency, are good for his party. He thinks they will rise from the ashes of defeat precisely because nobody, not even Obama, can cure our country of the ills inflicted on it by Republicans. Sure, that’s wishing America ill for partisan gain right there, you betcha, and that kind of cynicism has no place in politics, except it is likely the thought of most of the leadership of the disloyal GOP.

Anonymity? This guy wanted the anonymity in the interview because he was afraid to be ridiculed for what he thinks passes for ideas.