Another Bush Fails To Make It Out Of A GOP Primary, This Time In Texas

In December we looked at Republican congressional candidate Pierce Bush, the grandson of George H.W. Bush who was planning to run against freshman Democratic backbencher Lizzie Fletcher in gramps' old Houston seat, but switched districts when Republican Pete Olson announced he was retiring (TX-22). Despite the lineage, of because of it, and despite the endorsement from Olson, Bush came in third last night.

Tuesday night's no-runoff winner on the Democratic side was Sri Preston Kulkarni, who came close to beating Olson in 2018-- 51.4% to 46.5%, helping persuade Olson that it is time to retire. It's still a red-leaning district in the Houston suburbs (primarily transitioning Fort Bend County) that was once Tom DeLay's base. The PVI is R+10 and Trump beat Hillary there 52.1% to 44.2%.

As of the February 12 FEC filling deadline, 3 candidates had raised over a million dollars-- Kulkarni plus self-funder Kathaleen Wall and Bush. These were the top GOP raisers:

• Kathaleen Wall- $3,257,886 ($3,245,467 self-funded)
• Pierce Bush- $1,088,159
• Green Hill- $395,740
• Troy Nehls- $299,650

The only 6-figure independent spending in the primary was $138,495 to run this pathetically ineffective ad by a Bush family sewer money PAC, Texans Coming Together.





It's worth mentioning that in 2018, Kathaleen Wall spent $6,206,351 of her own money in her losing race in TX-02. She is expected to spend as much in her runoff battle against Nehls. Other dynamics in the race is that Bush didn't live in the district and was successfully labeled a carpetbagger. His competitors turned the primary-- at least in part-- into a referendum of the Bush name, which Trump has basically destroyed.

Yes, Virginia, there IS an Alfalfa Club

Okay, so there's an Alfalfa Club -- but no Buckwheat Club, Darla Club, or Spanky Club? (Okay, the Alfalfa Club is now more than 100 years old, so maybe the Little Rascals' Alfalfa isn't actually their namesake.)

by Ken

It seems like only last Friday that we were saying bye-bye to the 2016 GOP front-runner, Willard Romney. Okay, I guess probably it was last Friday. And as part of the celebration ("Say good night, Willard"), here at DWT we had a special "Willard Goes Bye-Bye" Quiz, and among the questions were these two:

4. Willard made his announcement today, a day before arriving in Washington for an important annual event. What is that event?

(a) The annual dinner of the exclusive Alfalfa Club, where he is being inducted as a new member.
(b) The announcement of a new plan to return the Washington Redskins to NFL playoff contention.
(c) The announcement of a new plan to fund the government until the next shutdown threat.
(d) The blossoming of the cherry trees. (What, they're not? Are you sure? But my crack staff people said . . .)

ANSWER: (a) The annual dinner of the Alfalfa Club. (No, I don't know what the Alfalfa Club is. Do you really want to know?)

5. Which of the following members of the Alfalfa Club will be seated at the head table along with Willard? (Choose all that apply.)

(a) All seven Bush family members who are members.
(b) Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
(c) Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.
(d) Alfalfa from the Little Rascals.

ANSWER: (b) Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and (c) Indiana Gov. Mike Pence. None of the Bush family members will be attending. Carl Switzer, who played Alfalfa in the Little Rascals films, was shot to death under still-muddled circumstances on the night of Jan. 21, 1959.

I know probably some of you are still thinking I made this up, the so-called Alfalfa Club. Especially when you consider that the first thing that's always said about it -- presumably by people who are in on the gag -- is how "exclusive" it is. And yet it is purported to have seven (seven!) members of the Bush family on its rolls. Seven members of the Bush family? Could you really call that a "club"? It sounds more like a "pack," or a "mob."

And as long as we're on the subject of the seven Bush-family Alfalfites, how does it happen that all seven of them were known not to be attending Saturday night? Did the date, like, conflict with Bush-family NASCAR Nite? And you know, it can't be easy for Willard, the new Alfalfite, knowing that even if he can somehow manage to slip all five of his war-wimp sons into the club, they'll still be outnumbered by all those Bushes, 7-6. Man, that's a lot of Bushes. Groucho Marx said famously that he wouldn't want to belong to a club that would have him as a member. Who wouldn't want to belong to a club that had Groucho as a member. But seven Bush-family members?

Be that as it may, if you want to know everything a reasonable person could possibly want to know about the Alfalfa Club, the Washington Post's Emily Heil offered "Reliable Source" readers a primer, "What's the deal with the Alfalfa Club?," in anticipation of Saturday night's great event. And if you want to know more than a reasonable person could want to know, by all means check out Roxanne Roberts's referenced "Style" piece, "The Alfalfa Club: still a place for the powerful to see and be seen."


SO WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH THE ALFALFA CLUB?

Emily provides us with a handy Q-and-A (links onsite), explaining, "Here’s what you need to know."

Who are these people?

Some of the richest and most powerful people in the world. The Alfalfa Club is more exclusive than most of Washington’s social organizations, and unlike, say, the Gridiron (which is all journalists), the members come from all sectors. Among the some 200 members, there’s a good contingent of political types (from both parties, but mostly senators; House members are kind of considered plebs in this crowd), and a heavy presence from the corporate world.

To name a few: Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Marriott, Steve Case, Chief Justice John Roberts, White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Sandra Day O’Connor, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright and Vernon Jordan, per this excellent profile of the club by our colleague Roxanne Roberts.

What does the name mean?

The perhaps apocryphal story of the 102-year-old club’s founding goes something like this: It began as a celebration of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s birthday, and the name comes from the plant known for being “thirsty” (i.e., it likes to drink, just like some members of the club).

How do you get into the club?

Shocker — it’s invite-only! Openings occur when members die, and a group of the club’s senior members propose and approach prospective newbies. “Lobbying for admission is frowned upon,” Roberts says.

What happens at the dinner?

Each member brings two guests, who sometimes include a Hollywood type for novelty’s sake — but this is no celebrity-overrun White House Correspondents Dinner. There are funny speeches (that is, if you get inside jokes about Cabinet secretaries and the stock market) by the incoming and outgoing presidents of the club, as well as by a member held forth as the club’s mock presidential nominee.

Traditionally, POTUS shows up, though President  Obama has attended only twice: in 2009 and 2012. It’s all ostensibly off-the-record, though some of the quips and details inevitably leak.

Isn’t it just a bunch of old white guys?

Sort of, though diversity and the number of women in the club’s ranks has grown since ladies were first admitted in 1994, a move partly prompted by President Bill Clinton’s snub the previous year. Today, the roster includes businesswoman Catherine Reynolds, Sens. Kelly Ayotte and Dianne Feinstein, and Lockheed Martin chief executive Marillyn Hewson.

Alfalfa Club members apparently don’t care about looking like a bunch of elitist fat-cats, because they swear that’s not what the annual gathering is about. “Occupy Wall Street” protesters showed up in 2012 and glitter-bombed attendees, but the dinner-goers shrugged it off, Roberts reports.

WaPo caption: "The then-all male Alfalfa Club held their annual dinner at the Capitol Hilton in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 30, 1993. Members of the club are seen here socializing in the lobby of the hotel."

Any more questions? I don't know, maybe Groucho would have been impressed. Or then again, maybe not.

#

2013 in Review -- A Prayer to the Janitor of Lunacy,* Part 5: Everyone's a critic, including me

Some people really try my patience
(Bill-O, Howie Kurtz, E. W. Jackson, et al.)

[*TO MEET THE JANITOR OF LUNACY, SEE PART 1]



by Noah

What would any Quote of the Year contest be without one of the Republican Party's leading spokesweirdos, Bill O'Reilly? I think the most interesting question about this man is: Is he merely Archie Bunker with a TV show? Or is Roger Ailes broadcasting lunatic Republican propaganda from a remote insane asylum that's buried deep in a lead-shielded mountain somewhere. As the clip above shows, homophobia is not new turf for Bill-O.

This is a deeply disturbed man. Where must his head be to even think of this, let alone actually say it?

"Leahy, Leahy from Vermont. He wants gay illegal aliens. He wants gay illegals to bring their friends!"

He's ranting, fearfully, about Vermont Sen. Pat Leahy, and he sounds like he just awoke from a nightmare: gay illegals -- not just illegals but gay ones, and they're bringing in their gay friends! RUN!!!

I have no doubt that O'Reilly's attendants have to mop the sweat off his expansive bobblehead forehead during every commercial break. Gays everywhere!!! Is he peeing in his pants too? Hell, his chair probably sits above a drain in the floor of the studio.

This guy makes a pile of money saying such things nightly to his fearful, twitchy-nose, 80-year-old rodent audience -- a pile of money. But no amount of money can buy him time against reality or his ever-encroaching dementia. He is one with his audience. He is one with his angry, hate-stewed white-man party. The rest of us can only take comfort in knowing that 95 percent of his audience will be dead in 10 years. I try to be patient, but he is doing a lot of damage to society while we wait.

Just think how easy it would be to push this cretinous nutcase completely over the edge. Three busloads of gay Mexican disco-dancing mariachi bands in Mexican-flag hotpants and "VIVA LA WAR ON CHRISTMAS" muscle shirts, marching and dancing through his hospital suite in a conga line ought to do it, but I'd rather see it happen live some night right on TV during his show. We'd see foaming-at-the-mouth, purple-faced-screaming, crazed-eyed apoplexy. They'd have to put him down like a broken-down horse at the racetrack. That's a ticket I'd buy in a heartbeat, and I'd gladly forgo my senior discount for the cause.


RIGHT-WINGERS: NO SENSE OF IRONY,
OR JUST NO SENSE AT ALL?



OK, I've got Fox out of the way for today. (Not really, as you will see shortly.) Time to move on to the other Republican cable news outfit. Maybe they're not as wingnutty as Fox, but they're certainly working for the same master and goal. Many of you already know my feelings towards the Corporate "News" Network, aka CNN. Some call it Conservative News Network. Whichever. Same thing. I haven't watched the thing (to obtain true knowledge of world events, at least) since their blatant shilling for George W. Bush during the 2004 presidential campaign. I mean, Wolf Blitzer? I've seen more than enough brown-nosing assclowns during my own life in the corporate world. I don't need to turn on my TV to see him and the rest of the CNN crew kissing Washington's butt around the clock, with cloying, smarmy softball questioning that goes nowhere and gains us nothing.

Back in May, CNN managed to top even itself, this time with heaps of irony as Howard Kurtz, whom CNN at the time called their in-house media critic, went on his own show, the absurdly named Reliable Sources, to apologize to his readers, his viewers, and professional basketball player Jason Collins, who had recently come out. Collins was the first active player in any of the four major professional sports leagues in America to come out. He did so in an interview in Sports Illustrated.

I didn't set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport, but, since I am, I'm happy to start the conversation. . . . I wish I wasn't the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, "I'm different." If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I'm raising my hand.

No one wants to live in fear. I've always been scared of saying the wrong thing. I don't sleep well. I never have. But each time I tell another person, I feel stronger and sleep a little more soundly. It takes an enormous amount of energy to guard such a big secret. I've endured years of misery and gone to enormous lengths to live a lie. I was certain that my world would fall apart if anyone knew, and yet, when I acknowledged my sexuality, I felt whole for the first time. I still had the same sense of humor. I still had the same mannerisms and my friends still had my back.

Could a man be any more heartfelt and honest? And yet Howard Kurtz pounced. In his column in The Daily Beast, Kurtz got a whole lot wrong about the Collins story -- misinformation that unjustly cast a cloud on Collins' character. Among other things, Kurtz stated in the column that Collins had not mentioned a previous engagement to a woman in his coming-out interview in Sports Illustrated. For those of us who can read, however, there it was, right in the beginning of SI's feature. Facts be damned! There's a smear agenda to push!

The upshot was that Kurtz was fired by The Daily Beast. To his credit, he did go on his CNN show after the fact and put on the hair shirt, admitting his insensitivity and his "sloppy and inexcusable" errors. In other words, busted.

I apologize to readers, to viewers and, most importantly, to Jason Collins and his fiancé. I hope this very candid response can help me earn back your trust over time.

Hmmm, "over time." This is CNN we're talking about. Do we mean geological time? Well, none of us live that long. If you have a show called Reliable Sources, you might start by changing the name. Until you do, calling your show Reliable Sources is just sloganeering -- something akin to Fox saying they are "fair and balanced." Had Kurtz been on Fox at the time, his colleagues would no doubt have decried his firing by The Daily Beast. It doesn't take much to imagine the demented Palins or Hannitys bleating out "free speech, free speech." Instead, Fox simply saw one of their own kind and hired him away from CNN. It's not the first time Fox has used CNN as a farm team.


VIRGINIA IS FOR HATERS



During his campaign for Virginia lieutenant governor this year, Republican candidate E. W. Jackson compared Planned Parenthood to the KKK.

Planned Parenthood has been far more lethal to black lives than the KKK ever was, and the Democrat Party and their black civil rights allies are partners in this genocide.

Well, all righty then. The same lunatic also:

• once said that President Obama "sees the world through a Muslim perspective"
• believes that yoga will leave you vulnerable to Satan
• and finds civil rights for gay people to be "icky"

Oh, and homosexuality leads to pedophilia. I can't wait to here what this nutball thinks of rape. Given his party affiliation and his other statements, I think we know. All those cancer screenings that Planned Parenthood provided -- who needs them? Let 'em die, indeed!

I'm old enough to remember that before Reagan people like Jackson were cared for in institutions. Now they get radio shows and nominations from the Republican Party. That Reagan dude sure had him some vision! He foresaw a shortage of future Republican candidates. "What to do? What to do?" he said. "I know! We'll cut funding for mental institutions -- close the doors and let the crazies out into the public! Problem solved! The ones we don't run for office can just sit home and become Fox devotees, if not on-air talent!"

But wait, that's not all! Just in case you don't believe that Republicans are completely insane, there's this: Virginia Republicans proudly announced, on June 13th, that their new state-party black-outreach director would be a man named Joe Ellison, a man who just happens to believe that voodoo causes earthquakes! No wonder they keep saying that all beliefs are valid. What's next? I can tell you this much: If voodoo really worked, I'd have a house full of Republican voodoo dolls and a whole lotta pins.

Epilogue: In November, Jackson got 44.54 percent of the vote

This means that nearly a million Virginia Republicans bought into Jackson's utter lunacy, despite the fact that he is an African-American. It musta been a very hard decision for Republicans to make. It just goes to show that, if a man believes that yoga makes you vulnerable to Satan and civil rights for gays is "icky" and all the rest, then skin tone doesn't always matter to Republicans. Perhaps we can point to this as progress in Virginia. The state has apparently moved from "whites only" to "whites preferred."

Fortunately, Jackson's Democratic opponent, State Sen. Ralph Northam, pulled in 1.2 million votes. Still, in a world without lunacy, would it have been that close?


TODAY'S "QUOTE OF THE YEAR" NOMINEES

1. Sen. Rand Paul (KKK-KY) discusses misinformation as a form of cheating in med school


"I never ever cheated. I don't condone cheating. But I would sometimes spread misinformation. This is a great tactic. Misinformation can be very important. . . . So that's my advice. Misinformation works."

That, folks, is why Rand Paul is a Republican Party natural and a darling of Republican pundits too.

2. Sandy Rios, American Family Association radio host, vies for the "Hostess with the Leastest Integrity" title

Sandy went a long way toward establishing her claim by using September's tragic Kenyan mall massacre as an opportunity to attack President Obama by going once-more-unto-the-breach of birther psychosis. She covered several of the points that Republicans love to blather about -- e.g.," Muslim," "Communist," "born in Kenya." And notice how she dwells on President Obama's "Kenyan lineage without mentioning the white half. Nope. All that matters to Republicans is the black half.


"The implications of this are pretty frightening, and of course it's interesting that this is the country from which our president hails. This is his lineage. We know his cousin Raila Odinga is a Muslim communist. It's just amazing. I think he's the prime minister right now."

Well, Miss Sandy, it's amazing when you think at all. Perhaps Obamacare can get you the care or at least medications that you need -- and at a lower price!

3. Barbara Bush -- old battleaxe, Marge Simpson look-alike, and mother of much evil spawn


"We've had enough Bushes."

Well said! We certainly have. We still don't know if our country will recover from the disaster that was George Dubya. If America votes for another Bush, it will be proof that our country has a death wish, and China will rejoice.

4. John Stossel, World Champion Assclown

Here he is in his natural habitat, Fox and Friends, discussing why government benefits just aren't needed.


"Think about the Depression. That was before there was any welfare state at all. How many people starved? No one."

I love how Steve Doocy responds, "Good point," and the other geniuses nod in agreement. Now that's great television! Like I've said, watching Fox is like peeping in on an insane asylum.

5. Dave Carney, top adviser to Texas Attorney General Gregg Abbott, who is the Republican candidate to succeed Rick "1-2-?" Perry as governor of our biggest Loon State

Cheering the results of Colorado's recall elections, Carney twitted out:



This, mind you, came from the man who ran Rick Perry's campaigns from 1998 to 2012. Truly, this man knows intelligence when he sees it, no?

6. Megyn KKKelly, Fox's new Hannity

"Santa is just white...Jesus was a white man too."

Why is it so important, even crucial to Republicans, that Santa and Jesus be white? Jon Stewart, as usual, puts it all in proper perspective.

NOAH'S 2013 IN REVIEW --
A PRAYER TO THE JANITOR OF LUNACY*

Part 1: Take a bow, Repugs! (*including Nico's "Janitor of Lunacy") [Monday]

Part 2: Remember when Reagan cut funds for insane asylums? (Storms, guns, bombs, free stuff, and the secret gay life of Obma: Some top Republican lies of 2013) [Tuesday]

Part 3: No Cruz control (Rafael "Ted" Cruz in his own words) [Wednesday]

Part 4: A great anniversary approaches! (Nixon's resignation) (plus more "Quote of the Year" nominees) [Thursday]

Part 5: Everyone's a critic, including me -- Some people really try my patience (Bill-O, Howie Kurtz, E. W. Jackson, et al.) [Friday]

Part 6 (and last): In the words of Dan Quayle, "What a waste it is to lose one's mind" (Exploiting tragedy for a buck; Miss America's not American?; "Quote of the Year" winner) [Saturday]

And don't forget Noah's recent --
"Need a last-minute Christmas gift suggestion?" [12/22]
"50 Years Ago Today: The Beatles" [12/26]
"A Tale of Two Popes -- the one in the Vatican and the one in North Carolina" [12/27]

#

Family Of Secrets-- Best Book On The Real Story Of The Bush Family: Part 3

Over the past couple of weeks, I've laid out short summaries of the chapters in Russ Baker's marvelous book about the Bushes, Family of Secrets. The first batch were here and the second installment was here. This evening I want to finish up with the last 9 chapters and the conclusion.

Chapter 15 : The Handoff

Despite his image as a spoiled goof-off,  George W. Bush was deep into the political and intelligence machinations of his father. The strange companies that W. ran or participated in bear the markings of covert intelligence activities.

The first of these was an international business that W. doesn’t talk much about. The second came over a summer during his years  at Harvard Business School. W. was supposed to be serving out his part-time Air National Guard obligation.  Instead he showed up in Alaska to work at a firm whose owner admits it did intelligence-related work.  This job never made it onto W.’s  thin resume.

After graduation, W. followed his father’s example, and headed to Texas, supposedly to seek his fortune in the oil industry.  The substantial funds that poured into his first venture did not seem to come from the people who signed the checks.  In any case, the ventures failed to make money for the investors, whoever they really were.

George W. took time out from business to mount his first Congressional campaign. Again, vast sums poured in, from family friends around the country and from  financial, oil, military and intelligence interests. With the campaign underway, W. met and quickly wed Laura Welch, whose claim that she did not know W. during his troubled National Guard days seems in doubt. 

After losing the election, Bush returned to the oil industry in a venture financed in part by figures connected to the Saudis and the Shah of Iran. When this venture too failed, he was rescued by wealthy Cincinnati businessmen, one of whom he will as president appoint to his foreign intelligence advisory board.

Chapter 16 : The Quacking Duck

W. keeps failing upwards. When the business that rescued his oil venture fails, it in turn is scooped up by yet another company. W. ends up with better compensation than ever, despite the new entity’s general lack of profits.  This new company, Harken Energy, is funded through mysterious offshore entities and figures tied to  corrupt dictatorships. Though investors make little, W’s involvement sets him up financially, and thus enables him buy into the popular Texas Rangers baseball team.

This alchemy remakes W. as a “success,” and paves the way for him to become governor of Texas and then president.  Evidence suggests that W. benefited from insider information when he sold his Harken stock, but an SEC inquiry while his father was president went nowhere.

Behind Harken is a fascinating story. Among the investors are the billionaire George Soros, assorted Saudis, figures tied to the Shah of Iran, the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and the South African apartheid regime, a Swiss bank, a Little Rock-based investment house with intelligence ties, and the endowment of Harvard University. In fact, Harvard’s endowment fund risked tens of millions of dollars on this strange company; and this story leads to the secret life of one of its most powerful alumni, and to a large-scale gold-smuggling operation begun during the Pacific Campaign in World War II-- apparently designed to fund unauthorized US covert operations worldwide. 

Chapter 17 : Playing Hardball

George W. Bush’s resume for the first three decades of his adult life was defined by embarrassing public failures and private activities that were equally problematic. But careful repositioning as the “managing director” and front man for the Texas Rangers baseball team transformed him into an attractive candidate for political office. A look at the role of the Bushes and their friends in the ownership of sports enterprises-- not just baseball but also golf, tennis, horse racing, yachting and more-- shows that this is hardly the first time the family and friends have exerted influence through America’s pastimes. 

To assure a profit from the Rangers, Bush and his investor group relied on inside connections, favoritism,  and arm-twisting. The deal for a new stadium involved the government taking of private  land and increased taxes on local citizens, all of which contradicted positions that Bush will trumpet later. Bush’s eventual profits-- which set him up for life-- were subsidized not just by local taxpayers but by his influence-seeking partners as well.

Chapter 18 : Meet the Help

To ensure his early political success, Bush is surrounded by a team that blocks every attempt to dig deeply into his background and character.  His retinue embodied traits-- moral turpitude, viciousness and secretiveness-- that would later come to define his White House.

W.’s team guides him through win-win issues that are popular with Texas voters and big donors as well. He also does favors for major  backers that hurt the public but aid his own upward climb. These include curbs on class action lawsuits, which allow the weak and the poor to wrest justice from powerful economic interests. Bush also turned over management of the University of Texas’s vast financial resources to the investor who bought his shares in the Texas Rangers.

In a charm offensive, Bush adopts the tagline of  “compassionate conservative,” which state and national press readily embrace.  He assembles a crew of black and brown advisers-- some with sketchy backgrounds-- and presents himself as a  “uniter not a divider.” Bush’s handlers turn him into an instant “rancher” to scrub him of association with the Eastern elite that his father never overcame.  They also use falsified academic results from the Texas public schools to portray W. as an educational reformer.

Chapter 19 : The Conversion

George W. Bush never would have won the presidency without the support of the evangelical Christian Right. His well-publicized conversion as a born-again Christian served both to appeal to this bloc, and also to wipe the slate clean on the sins of his past.

Bush’s conversion story has never been questioned.  But Doug Wead, the political-religious consultant who taught the Bushes how to use the Christian Right to win, here provides a blow by blow. Poppy was slow to grasp the import, but W. got it instantly-- and was far more adaptable. The timing of key memos suggests that Bush’s conversion had at least an element of political calculation-- and probably a large one.

The moneyed circles of which the Bushes are part, including the Rockefellers and Dulleses, long understood how public involvement with religion conferred honor upon their enterprises. But none came close to George W. Bush in mastering the inflections that could win over the religious masses. Planted anecdotes established an inspiring back story that explained how a self-centered hedonist turned his life around.  These included a probably fanciful conversation on a beach with the evangelist Billy Graham, complete with echoes from the Gospels, and the deliberate seeding of an almost Scriptural account of his redemption from demon rum.
Wead recounts W.’s  single-minded focus on results. He asserts that W.-- in contrast to his father-- was the most decisive man he ever met. Wead also shares stories of W’s confiding how he learned to manipulate the press. According to Wead, the purported rift between father and son was deliberately exaggerated; W. was a confidante on both high-level campaign decisions and extremely sensitive covert matters.

The Bush camp planted spies in the campaigns of opponents and used political covert ops to destroy those opponents. Wead further reveals how the Bushes panicked when they learned he had taped candid conversations with W. The result was a standoff: the tapes were locked away in a safe to which there are only two keys-- one held by Wead, the other by George W. Bush himself. 

Chapter 20 : The Skeleton in W’s Closet

At a televised debate during George W. Bush’s Texas gubernatorial campaign, a local tv reporter asked how he had gotten into a coveted Air National Guard squadron while thousands of his contemporaries were turned away and had to go to Vietnam. The reporter was surprised by the furious reaction from Bush’s handlers. Their concern, it turned out, was less about how Bush had gotten into the Guard, than about how he had gotten out.

For W. to succeed politically, he had to contain  a devastating secret-- that he had walked away from his Vietnam-era military service two years before it was up.  Desertion would not just have been a political liability but a federal crime as well. Once Bush was elected governor, his team went to work cleaning up the paper trail. Records disappeared; other, more helpful documents somehow materialized. Witnesses were co-opted or silenced. Anonymous allegations would surface that Bush had rewarded the silence of a former Texas Lt. Governor who knew details of Bush’s military record with a multi-million dollar lobbying contract. When a National Guard consultant, Bill Burkett, came forward to claim he had seen evidence that Bush’s Guard records were being suppressed-- and that the Guard under Bush was corrupt-- he began to face harassment that would destroy his career and his health.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, W. agrees to cooperate on a campaign biography with Mickey Herskowitz, an experienced journalist, ghost writer and family friend.  Herskowitz will eventually be ousted by Bush’s handlers, who are uncomfortable with the author’s inclusion of potentially embarrassing remarks from Bush. But years later, the ghostwriter tells Baker what Bush told him: that he felt his accomplishments were embarrassingly limited, and that he had few ideas of what he would do as president. He actually admitted that he had not finished his military service, and claimed  that he had been “excused” from duty.  Bush also told Herskowitz that in his view a great leader never admits a mistake.

Chapter 21: Shock and…Oil ?

Why did George W. Bush invade Iraq? Bush’s ghostwriter Herskowitz sheds new light on the question. It was an idée fixe in the mind of presidential candidate Bush that if he were elected in 2000, he would invade Iraq and drive Saddam Hussein from power.

This was long before the alleged justifications in the wake of 9/11. According to Herskowitz, GOP advisers had long counseled W. that a successful president  must also be seen as a heroic Commander in Chief, which requires launching and winning a war.

Bush’s simplistic notion dovetailed with the more sophisticated objectives of neocons and oilmen. The claims of revulsion and outrage  at the atrocities of Saddam were less than honest. Little-known testimony by former American officials revealed that the US was working with Saddam Hussein as far back as 1959. Saddam cooperated with US covert efforts that year  to overthrow another Iraqi leader.

Saddam was not the only US friend to fall out of favor. The Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega had a longstanding relationship with George W. Bush’s father dating back to when the latter served as CIA director. George H.W. Bush turned on Noriega when he failed to collaborate in operations against the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime.

As for the so-called Coalition of the Willing that created a pretense of broad international support for the invasion of Iraq, there are several back stories. One is the pressure-- including surveillance-- applied to allies before they relented and joined the effort. Another, involving oil and intelligence, explains the unexpectedly close relationship between Republican  Bush and his chief war partner, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair of the more liberal Labour Party.

Chapter 22 : Deflection for Reelection
 
SUMMARY: This chapter details the campaign of propaganda and intimidation to support the Iraq invasion, destroy Bush’s opponents, and ensure his re-election.

DETAIL: When it becomes clear that the public has been sold a bill of goods on Iraq, Democratic candidates emerge to oppose Bush for re-election, and reporters start sniffing around his National Guard record. In response, the Bush forces move quickly. Their counter-campaign will involve subterfuge, disinformation, misdirection and the destruction of critics and opponents –the dark arts of the intelligence trade. Many reporters accept  misleading answers as truth. Dubious sources are produced, yet their credibility problems are not explored.

The Bush team soon takes counteroffensive to extreme lengths, and deflects public scrutiny from Bush to his critics. It is one of the most elaborate domestic covert operations ever conducted.

In the end, Bush’s opponent John Kerry is tarnished by a supposedly independent group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Bush’s most visible national media questioner, Dan Rather, is destroyed by embracing what are later characterized as fake documents, but no one asks where those documents came from or who was behind them. In the final stretch of the 2004 campaign, the media are too cowed to question. 

Chapter 23 : Domestic Disturbance

The Bush enterprise benefited from a wide and chronic gap between the public’s perception and reality. When people looked at the family, they typically saw a genial, largely rudderless Poppy, and a more determined, principled, and deeply religious W. 
 
Campaign themes stressed the younger Bush’s apparent moderation. The talking points were compassionate conservatism and an ability to work with adversaries; a patrician concern for the environment; a desire to shrink the federal government but only so as to empower people to control their own lives and destinies; an aversion to liberal-- and costly-- nation- building exercises abroad.  

But the reality was something else entirely: a taste for wars aimed at the acquisition of natural resources and the preservation of class prerogative, abetted by secrecy, intimidation, and the darkest arts of the intelligence establishment (both psychological and covert ops). W. differed from his father largely in terms of his bumptious, in-your-face aggression, and his failure to camouflage his moves.  

Instead of operating mostly in the shadows, as the elder Bush had done, W. and his team concentrated on blocking the flow of information about everything they did. Virtually their first order of business was to ensure that embarrassing secrets from the past remained under lock and key. There was an assault on open government laws, and a determination to reclassify documents already released. Data was slanted for political purposes, records were destroyed, elaborate chains of blame-shifting became commonplace.

While the administration sought to protect its own secrets, it wanted to know everything about everyone else. In the wake of 9/11, a million Americans were put  on a watch list; and the administration claimed practically unlimited authority to snoop on ordinary citizens. Color-coded terror alerts were sounded to keep Americans on edge. The vigilance was suspended, however, when it came to chemical plants and port facilities, where the administration found the inconvenience to corporate owners unduly costly or unnecessary.  

While talking about making government smaller, Bush and his team rerouted public dollars to their own friends and preferred projects. Most of the cuts came in benefits to the most vulnerable. A host of cronies were hired to regulate their old bosses in industry. W. followed the example of his father and took care of retainers who had kept his secrets.  He made his longtime aide Alberto Gonzales the Attorney General and tried to get his personal lawyer Harriet Miers onto the Supreme Court.
 
The epitome of all this was Bush’s Federal Emergency Management Agency.  FEMA’s failures during Hurricane Katrina under an inexperienced and vain director are well known.  Less known are the checkered pasts of the small-time GOP operatives whom W. appointed to head this crucial agency-- mainly on the basis of their loyalty to himself.
 
Chapter 24 : Conclusion
 
Throughout this book, Baker reveals how so many of our basic assumptions about recent American history are wrong. This is no accident. Our perceptions and our opinions are the result of the information we receive. Nobody understood that better than the Bushes and their team. And nobody was better at controlling and influencing that information flow.
 
Falsehood becomes “conventional wisdom” by sheer repetition, and the media through its passivity becomes an accomplice. From this springs a paradox: it is those things we take most for granted about which we may be most deceived. 
 
The growing gap between perception and reality cries out for energetic investigation, independent analysis, and perhaps most of all, an acute alertness to the techniques of the intelligence game and their role in our politics and daily dialogue. This suggests what may be the number-one unreported political story of our era: how American democracy itself has become a casualty of the psychological-warfare operations developed decades ago, purportedly for use against an enemy that no longer exists, and now turned, with dire consequences, on the American people and our system of government.

UPDATE: Win A Free Copy

I'm going to sleep. When I wake up tomorrow, I'll look at all the contributions that come in on this brand new Blue America page and I'll put all the donors' names in a hat-- regardless of the amount-- and pick one to get a brand new copy of the book.

BRAVE NEW BIZARRO WORLD-- A BUSH SCHOOL OF PUBLIC SERVICE!

By NOAH


During the course of any given day, just about any absurdity is liable to flash across my computer screen, either via friends who appreciate my perverse sense of humor or through my own searches on the googles, as so-called President Chimpy would pathetically try to say. Yesterday was no different. I received a very special notification from a company that calls itself the Princeton Review. The company apparently has nothing to do with the vaunted ivy league mind prison named Princeton University, but, since it is in the business of preparing high schoolers for things like the dreaded SAT tests, and, informing kids about schools they may want to check out, I guess naming themselves after a highly regarded-- albeit, not by me-- university seemed like a great marketing ploy. Yes, sign up now and maybe even your child can go to a school like Princeton.

Way too many decades ago, I myself was told that I could go to any school I wanted, if only I would get serious and apply my self. This was after some "achievement" test score came in and, well, it seemed to indicate that I was smarter than my usual grades. Until that point, hell, they didn’t even talk to me. Well, I was a serious kid, but I was also a slacker way before the word entered today’s parlance. That my superduper, top of the heap of learning high school prided itself on sending huge numbers of innocent children to ivy league schools only meant that I was a source of constant consternation for my teachers and alleged guidance counselors. One of my favorite teachers even once told my mother that I made "valiant efforts to keep awake" in his class, and his was a subject that I liked, English.

So, today, the notification from (trumpets please) the PRINCETON Review brought a lot of things back to me, but, there was much, much more. I quote from the missive:

"In a little more than a decade, the BUSH SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC SERVICE at Texas A&M University has made remarkable strides toward becoming one of the leading public and international affairs graduate schools in the nation. In its short history, the Bush School has had a significant impact in the public service arena through research and the development of public servants and PRINCIPLED leaders."

I have to stop there. Have we slipped into some alternate universe? It’s more than my keyboard or you, the reader, can probably bear. I have always claimed that we live in the BIzarro World of Superman comics fame. BUSH SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT??? And PUBLIC SERVICE??? Significant IMPACT? PRINCIPLED? At last, the current scary state of our beloved country is explained! There is a BUSH MADRASSA that has been sending out their evil automatons to impact, i.e. wreck the world! It’s all becoming clear. It shoulda been so obvious! All the while, they have distracted us by having their media slaves attempt to convince us that the world’s problems are all caused by Islamic fundamentalists when they also secretly compete with the terrorists, to do their best, too, to screw things up for the billions of us that have to live with the results of their treachery. But, of course, we already knew that.

Folks, it’s official. We now live in a world that has completely given itself over to parody. Parody of existence itself has become the norm, the reality. Look at it. We have a world where a senile, corrupt "Supreme" Court can tell us that Dubya is President and the media say "yes, you bet, and what a great job he will do". We live in a land where 50 million people will vote not once but TWICE for a thug who has failed at every single thing he has ever done, whether it was not being able to find oil in Texas, trading away the one slugger (Sammy Sosa) that might have brought his baseball team a pennant, or take a record surplus and an economic boom and, like King Midas In Reverse, turn it into a bust of the biggest deficit the world has ever seen.

We were once the biggest creditor nation. We now pour money that could have gone for real Homeland Security, education, and health care into the coffers of the likes of Blackwater and Halliburton in the name of a failed war that we were lied into. Now, that’s what I call government! Now we are the biggest debtor nation, borrowing way, way too much money from China, turning almighty dollars into dimes while the world switches to euros, leaving us in the dust. All hail the BUSH SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT & PUBLIC SERVICE! SERVICE! Well done! Jeb fixes those pesky elections. Neil raids banks, ridding them of troublesome taxpayer dollars! Daddy did such a great job in Chile! Grandaddy provided cash for Hitler! What a family! What a school! Yea BUSH SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC SERVICE! Millions thank you, as they are left to hold weekly garage sales just to "put food on their families!" What’s next? The Jeffrey Dahmer School of Nursing? The Martin Borman School of Jewish Studies? The Michael Vick School of Veterinary Medicine? Let’s get real. Get off the parody drug. How about THE DICK CHENEY SCHOOL OF WAR PROFITEERING?