Yep, I did a double take too.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has tapped a former top aide of his predecessor George W. Bush to a key post on a board overseeing government-sponsored international broadcasting.

Dana Perino, the first Republican woman to serve as White House press secretary, was appointed late Wednesday to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG).

Created in 1994, the BBG oversees all of the US government's non-military international broadcasting outlets, including Voice of America, Alhurra television, Radio Sawa, TV Marti, Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe. Read on...

Where to begin? I understand that President Obama campaigned on the idea of bipartisanship, but this is truly an insult. Forget that he is appointing an intellectual lightweight who ran cover for, and spread propaganda for the worst president in American history. Dana Perino stood before reporters and routinely lied to them and the world -- even defending the use of torture, calling it "effective, safe and legal."

And now President Obama believes that she has the integrity to hold a key position in an agency that oversees government-sponsored, international broadcasting?

Perino's appointment must be confirmed by the Senate, so it's not a done deal, but we have to make our voices heard. Contact your Senators and let them know your thoughts on the matter.

As Digby sez -- Perino is just a member of the club, playing the game.

Everything you need to know about the descent of the conservative movement into a hypocritical caricature is illustrated by two of its proudest constituencies: Republican deficit hawks and so-called "born again virgins." Having already violated the moral strictures they claim to hold dearest, each now asks the American people to join them in pretending their sin never happened. But unlike a generation of Republican leaders who built a mountain of national debt for the United States, the secondary virgins only screwed themselves.

The Republicans' shameless cynicism was perfectly captured by Vice President Dick Cheney, who in 2002 proclaimed, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter."

Not, that is, if a Republican is in the White House. But when Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office and the $1.2 trillion deficit George W. Bush left for him there, the GOP quickly changed its tune. While the national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan and doubled again under President Bush, House Minority Leader John Boehner in February decried the $787 billion emergency economic recovery spending as "one big down payment on a new American socialist experiment." By June, Boehner warned of the "crushing debt Washington Democrats are running up." And Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), Obama's aborted choice for Commerce Secretary, slapped the President last month, "we're basically on the path to a banana-republic-type of financial situation in this country." And, Gregg added:

"You can't keep throwing debt on top of debt."

Of course, throwing debt on top of debt is precisely what Gregg and his GOP allies have done for over a generation.

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Talking Points Memo notes that former SecState Condi Rice and former NSA Stephen Hadley are joining forces to create a" strategic consulting" firm. May I suggest that this is probably an even bigger farce than former FEMA Director Michael Brown's decision to start a consulting firm on disaster preparedness following his stellar performance during Katrina?

I really want to know what clients these two take on, so that I can relentlessly mock their stupidity for hiring the dynamic duo who brought us into the adventures of invading Iraq and Afghanistan without any idea of the resources required or any form of an exit strategy.

UPDATE: In the comments, jenne corrects me:

I think the Cheney "Keep America Safe" Institute is a bigger farce than both Brown and Condi's thingies put together.

OUCH. And touche'

I am sure that John Hannah, former deputy national security advisor to VP Dick Cheney, didn't mean to confess how badly the Bush administration screwed up Afghanistan before it turned over the mess to President Obama, but that's exactly what his post in the Foreign Policy Magazine's "Shadow Government" blog did. Spencer Ackerman provides a very appropriate take-down of the Hannah lecture:

Wherein the former foreign-policy aide to Dick Cheney attempts to exonerate the Bush administration’s complete and total fuck-up-itude on Afghanistan. Words fail. It’s hard to excerpt. But I’ll try.

“Eight years of drift,” according to Obama administration officials seeking to explain their lengthy deliberations over strategy and troop numbers. But, as Stephens suggests, the reality is a good deal more complex. The fact is that, after a period of genuine progress following the Taliban’s removal in late 2001, the situation in Afghanistan only began to deteriorate markedly between 2005 and 2006. Suicide attacks quintupled that year. Remotely detonated bombs more than doubled. Insurgent attacks nearly tripled. And the trends have steadily worsened every year since.

Yeah, except for that, it was all going so well!

The question is why?

An ideological inability to embrace the necessity of state-building? A defense secretary who refused to allow U.S. forces to perform peacekeeping tasks? Consistent and thorough underresourcing? A president who never treated Pakistan as a theater of the Afghanistan war? Or who reduced policy in both countries to two chiefs of state? A totally unnecessary additional war that you geniuses decided to launch?

I certainly don’t have an exhaustive answer…

May I offer one?

To summarize Hannah's three points, the US advisor to Karzai left in 2005 to go to Iraq on Bush's orders; NATO took over operations, largely because the Bush administration didn't want to put more US troops in Afghanistan and it wanted European troops there; and the Bush administration didn't hold Pakistan to any accountability to hold down its side of the border. It's interesting how Hannah forgets to mention that these were all key Bush decisions.

The most ironic part of his post is the ending, where Hannah says (paraphrasing his words), "yeah, we screwed it up pretty good and now it's going to cost a lot more than we anticipated, but hey, at least we'll stop those Taliban tribes from taking over Pakistan and stealing its nukes." What an incredibly lame and useless man this is.

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In recent days, Republican leaders have scored a series of political victories in their eternal quest for tort reform. Last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) told Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) that an onerous package of malpractice curbs he championed could save the government an estimated $54 billion over 10 years. That came on the heels of President Obama's latest offer to support limited tort reform as an olive branch to recalcitrant Republicans balking at his health care proposals, including funding for a $25 million pilot program.

But largely overlooked in the heated discussions of damage award caps, special health courts, expert panels and national compensation schedules is the inescapable truth that the medical malpractice system has only a negligible impact on overall American health care costs. Republican horror stories of a torrent of baseless malpractice suits producing "jackpot justice" that fuels rising premiums for physicians and patients alike while driving doctors from practice simply don't comport with reality. The overstated, overblown, over the top and often outright false GOP claims suggest that the Republicans' real target is not the flawed American malpractice system, but instead the nation's trial lawyers whose campaign contributions help bankroll the Democratic Party.

Here, then, is a look at Republican Malpractice Myths:

1. An Explosion of Malpractice Litigation
2. A System Plagued by Frivolous Lawsuits
3. Rising Damage Awards Key to Higher Malpractice Premiums
4. Rising Malpractice Insurance Rates Driving Doctors from Practice
5. Medical Malpractice Reform Would Save U.S. $200 Billion Annually
6. Defensive Medicine Costs $200 Billion a Year

For the details and data behind each, continue reading.

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Seemingly with each passing day, General Stanley McChrystal grows in the esteem of President Obama's conservative foes. After having savaged General Eric Shinseki for his pre-Iraq war testimony that the occupation would require "several hundreds of thousands" of American troops, Republicans have seized on McChrystal's public demands for more forces in Afghanistan as their latest battering ram to bludgeon Obama on national security. And as it turns out, McChrystal's inadvertent leak earlier this month regarding a classified CIA analysis puts him in the same company as Republicans John Boehner, Pete Hoekstra, Pat Roberts and, of course, Dick Cheney.

McChrystal in his leaked report and unprecedented public speech in London has put tremendous pressure on President Obama to quadruple the Bush-era commitment to the Afghan conflict. General McChrystal didn't merely announce that short of deploying as many as 60,000 more troops, the U.S. effort in Afghanistan "will likely result in failure." He also set out to demolish straw man alternatives to his escalated counterinsurgency plan, including:

"A paper has been written that recommends that we use a plan called 'Chaosistan', and that we let Afghanistan become a Somalia-like haven of chaos that we simply manage from outside."

But as Newsweek reported, that "paper" to which General McChrystal casually referred is almost surely a classified CIA assessment:

Two U.S. intelligence officials, who asked for anonymity when discussing a sensitive matter, say that the reference almost certainly comes from a recently published, and secret, CIA analysis titled "Chaosistan" (not "Chaostan"). Prepared by a "red team" of CIA analysts, the document, says one official, picks apart conventional analyses of the war and explains how forces inside Afghanistan--from hostile ethnic groups to intrusive neighbors to societal damage caused by past Taliban rule--work against the notions of a central Afghan government. The paper is not quite the policy proposal McChrystal implied it was, say the officials, since intelligence analysts don't generally recommend policy options.

Of course, the same Republican voices which lauded the leak of McChrystal's report and his UK grandstanding will doubtless remain silent now. Because while many in the GOP called for the prosecution of those behind the publication of the NSA domestic surveillance story, they themselves selectively leaked classified national security information for partisan political purposes.

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(Photo via an old Joe Scarborough post: Scarborough: "Is Bush An 'Idiot'?" )

In a post I did last week I was asking the whereabouts of George Bush. We now have a Bush sighting, and it's not about him defending Dick Cheney's lust for torture.

CQ has some excerpts from a new "inside the Bush White House" book coming out shortly, and what we find is Dubya was not much of a fan of Sarah Palin.

Bush also is quoted as saying Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was "being put into a position she is not even remotely prepared for" after McCain announced her as his vice presidential running mate.

“I’m trying to remember if I’ve met her before. I’m sure I must have.” His eyes twinkled, then he asked, “What is she, the governor of Guam?”

Everyone in the room seemed to look at him in horror, their mouths agape. When Ed told him that conservatives were greeting the choice enthusiastically, he replied, “Look, I’m a team player, I’m on board.” He thought about it for a minute. “She’s interesting,” he said again. “You know, just wait a few days until the bloom is off the rose.” Then he made a very smart assessment.

“This woman is being put into a position she is not even remotely prepared for,” he said. “She hasn’t spent one day on the national level. Neither has her family. Let’s wait and see how she looks five days out.” It was a rare dose of reality in a White House that liked to believe every decision was great, every Republican was a genius, and McCain was the hope of the world because, well, because he chose to be a member of our party.

When he says he's a team player all that meant was he didn't want to offend the wingnut base and their love affair with an unqualified VP choice. It's no surprise that he bangs McCain, but what will his loyal followers say after they read him attacking the teabagger Queen?

It is remarkable that there's nary a mention of George Bush, the chosen one and savior of our country by the conservative movement.

Given how things were from 2001 until the presidential campaign heated up, it's really quite stunning how George W. Bush is utterly missing from our discourse. The conservative movement was for that period all about elevating Dear Leader, and now he's just gone.

Some of it is because Dick Cheney has been so outspoken about his love of torture, but it's also the fact that Cheney had almost as much power as Bush himself. That was, until things started blowing up in GW's face.

In his new book, former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge confirms what most long suspected: the Bush administration manipulated the terror threat level for the President's political advantage. But while his long overdue admission is welcome, his suggestion that he resigned over the matter is laughable.

As ThinkProgress and others have passed along, US News reported that:

Among the headlines promoted by publisher Thomas Dunne Books: Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was "blindsided" by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

Just days before the 2004 election, Ridge claimed to wonder "Is this about security or politics?" when Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft wanted to raise the threat level in response to the newly released Osama Bin laden videotape. But Ridge's own statements that summer hurt his portrayal of himself as an innocent bystander steamrolled by the Bush propaganda machine.

When the New York Times called into question the dated and dubious intelligence behind a new terror warning on August 3, 2004, Secretary Ridge famously responded:

"We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security."

Sadly for Ridge, that pathetic defense followed his cheerleading for President Bush just two days earlier:

"We must understand that the kind of information available to us today is the result of the president's leadership in the war against terror."

Ridge's resignation was announced on November 30, 2004, only after George W. Bush had been safely reelected. Upon leaving, Ridge announced, "The president has given me an extraordinary opportunity to serve my country in this incredible period since September 11th, 2001." And as the New York Times Eric Lichtblau later wrote in his book Bush's Law, Tom Ridge offered to take a lie detector test to prove no manipulation of terror alters had occurred on his watch:

“Wire me up. Not a chance. Politics played no part.”

And so it goes. On September 1st, you can read Tom Ridge's apparent revisionist history for yourself. In the meantime, here's a look back at the Conservative Threat Level.

(click here to see Mark's very revealing video about the phony terror alerts back in the Bush years)

This is a big deal because it's coming from the horse's mouth. Tom Ridge admits in his new book what we've known for a long time and what has been reported years ago.

Former US homeland security chief Tom Ridge charges in a new book that top aides to then-president George W. Bush pressured him to raise the "terror alert" level to sway the November 2004 US election.

Then defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and attorney general John Ashcroft pushed him to elevate the color-coded threat level, but Ridge refused, according to a summary from his publisher, Thomas Dunne Books.

"After that episode, I knew I had to follow through with my plans to leave the federal government for the private sector," Ridge is quoting as writing in "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege ... And How We Can Be Safe Again."

Some of Bush's critics had repeatedly questioned whether the administration was using warnings of a possible attack to blunt the political damage from the unpopular Iraq war by shifting the debate to the broader "war on terrorism," which had wide popular appeal.
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He later publicly acknowledged that much of the information underpinning the new alert was three years old, stoking Bush critics' charges of political manipulation.

Ridge also charges that he was often "blindsided" during daily morning briefings with Bush because the FBI withheld information from him, and says he was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings.

Here's what Ridge's book says:

Former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is releasing a book on September 1 titled, “The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege…and How We Can Be Safe Again.” U.S. News’ Paul Bedard reports that, in the book, Ridge reveals that he considered resigning because he was urged to issue a politically-motivated security alert on the eve of Bush’s re-election:

Among the headlines promoted by publisher Thomas Dunne Books: Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was “blindsided” by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush’s re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

This was first reported way back when by the Washington Post in 2004:

The mixing of anti-terrorism policy with the 2004 presidential campaign is becoming destructive. It is creating a vicious cycle of hype, skepticism and mistrust that puts the country's security at risk.

The dangers of politicizing terrorism were clear in this month's announcement about potential attacks on financial centers in the New York area and in Washington. When Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge disclosed the threats on Aug. 1, he faced immediate skepticism about whether the intelligence was valid. Sadly, the Bush administration had helped create this climate of public suspicion by overusing its elaborate, color-coded system of terrorism warnings. After a terrorism advisory by Attorney General John Ashcroft last spring was pooh-poohed the same day by Ridge, some people wondered whether these warnings were being used for political effect.

Bush used the terror alerts to win the election against John Kerry and it's a breach of his oath of office as far as I'm concerned.

And don't forget about the release of the Osama Bin Laden tape right before the election. As we were getting closer to Nov. 4th, Kerry was picking up momentum before this happened.

On October 29, 2004, at 21:00 UTC, the Arab television network, Al Jazeera, broadcast excerpts from a videotape of Osama bin Laden addressing the people of the United States, in which he accepted responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks, condemns the Bush government's response to those attacks and presents those attacks as part of a campaign of revenge and deterrence motivated by his witnessing of the destruction in the Lebanese Civil War in 1982.

John Kerry admitted as much on MTP:

Senator John Kerry said on Sunday that the attacks of Sept. 11 were the "central deciding thing" in his contest with President Bush and that the release of an Osama bin Laden videotape the weekend before Election Day had effectively erased any hope he had of victory.

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Yeah, we were right about the U.S. Attorney firings. (See above video, which is ten months old.) Even Karl Rove and Harriet Miers admit it now:

The dismissal of New Mexico U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias in December 2006 followed extensive communication among lawyers and political aides in the White House who hashed over complaints about his work on public corruption cases against Democrats, according to newly released e-mails and transcripts of closed-door House testimony by former Bush counsel Harriet Miers and political chief Karl Rove.

A campaign to oust Iglesias intensified after state party officials and GOP members of the congressional delegation apparently concluded he was not pursuing the cases against Democrats in a way that would help then- Rep. Heather Wilson in a tight releection race, according to interviews and Bush White House e-mails released Tuesday by congressional investigators. The documents place the genesis of Iglesias's dismissal earlier than previously known.

The disclosures mark the end of a two-and-a-half year investigation by the House Judiciary Committee, which sued to gain access to Bush White House documents in a dispute that struck at the heart of a president's executive power. House members have reserved the right to hold a public hearing at which Rove, Miers, and other aides could appear this fall.

House Judiciary Chairman John M. Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) Tuesday characterized the role of Bush White House figures in the firing episode as improper and inappropriate.

If nothing else, Republican Senator John Cornyn is an irony producing machine. During the Terri Schiavo affair, the former Texas Supreme Court Justice was at the forefront of the GOP campaign to intimidate and threaten judges. Now after his fierce defense of President Bush's regime of illegal NSA domestic surveillance, Cornyn is comically warning that the Obama administration has launched a sinister "data collection program" to promote health care reform.

Back in December 2005, Cornyn dismissed the New York Times' revelations of the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program. Regurgitating the same "Give Me Death" defense offered by colleagues Pat Roberts (R-KS) and Jeff Session (R-AL), Cornyn sneered:

"None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead."

Alas, that was then and this is now. Now, there's a Democrat in the White House, one who's trying to overcome Republican obstructionism on health care reform.

When the Obama White House on Tuesday asked Americans to help fight the disinformation campaign ("If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov"), Cornyn was quick to suggest a dark plot was afoot. As The Hill reported:

"By requesting citizens send 'fishy' emails to the White House, it is inevitable that the names, email, addresses, IP addresses and private speech of U.S. citizens will be reported to the White House," Cornyn wrote in a letter to Obama. "You should not be surprised that these actions taken by your White House staff raise the specter of a data collection program."

Cornyn asked Obama to cease the program immediately, or at the very least explain what the White House would do with the information it collects.

"I am not aware of any precedent for a President asking American citizens to report their fellow citizens to the White House for pure speech that is deemed 'fishy' or otherwise inimical to the White House's political interests," Cornyn said.

Of course, this is just the latest data collection myth spawned by the right-wing noise machine this week.

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Oh, if only it were so.

Raw Story:

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has called for both a criminal investigation and a blue-ribbon panel to look into "Bush administration abuses of power and misconduct."

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) told the National Press Club Friday that both avenues should be pursued because a criminal investigation would be done in private, while a blue-ribbon "9/11-type" panel would work publicly and would create a public record of the Bush administration's actions.

Conyers also slammed former Bush administration officials who are refusing to testify before the judiciary committee. He rejected the notion that "executive privilege" prevents Bush White House officials from answering questions before Congressional committees.

"Wait a minute," he said, "you don't know what questions we're going to ask."

"If we ask a question that you think can't be answered, we can set it aside ... but the blanket [notion that] anybody near the White House doesn't have to come to a hearing, that wouldn't wash at my son's freshman class at Moorhouse College in Atlanta much less with me."

Since Attorney General Eric Holder is considering appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush/Cheney torture regime, I thought it might be helpful to post this statement released by George Bush himself back in June of 2003. Perhaps it might serve as motivation for both President Obama and Attorney General Holder. President Bush himself called for the prosecution of those who torture, so why hesitate to hold him accountable? (see bold text below)

Keep this in mind as you read it -- Abu Zubaydah had already been waterboarded over 80 times in August of 2002 and Kalid Sheik Muhammed was waterboarded some 183 times in March of 2003 and we still don't know the full extent of their torture program.

Statement by the President
United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

Today, on the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the United States declares its strong solidarity with torture victims across the world. Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere. We are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law.

Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit. Beating, burning, rape, and electric shock are some of the grisly tools such regimes use to terrorize their own citizens. These despicable crimes cannot be tolerated by a world committed to justice.

Notorious human rights abusers, including, among others, Burma, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Zimbabwe, have long sought to shield their abuses from the eyes of the world by staging elaborate deceptions and denying access to international human rights monitors. Until recently, Saddam Hussein used similar means to hide the crimes of his regime. With Iraq's liberation, the world is only now learning the enormity of the dictator's three decades of victimization of the Iraqi people. Across the country, evidence of Baathist atrocities is mounting, including scores of mass graves containing the remains of thousands of men, women, and children and torture chambers hidden inside palaces and ministries. The most compelling evidence of all lies in the stories told by torture survivors, who are recounting a vast array of sadistic acts perpetrated against the innocent. Their testimony reminds us of their great courage in outlasting one of history's most brutal regimes, and it reminds us that similar cruelties are taking place behind the closed doors of other prison states.

The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy. I further urge governments to join America and others in supporting torture victims' treatment centers, contributing to the UN Fund for the Victims of Torture, and supporting the efforts of non-governmental organizations to end torture and assist its victims.

No people, no matter where they reside, should have to live in fear of their own government. Nowhere should the midnight knock foreshadow a nightmare of state-commissioned crime. The suffering of torture victims must end, and the United States calls on all governments to assume this great mission.

President Obama on Tuesday marked the historic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq's cities by noting, "The Iraqi people are rightly treating this day as a cause for celebration." Alas, for former Vice President Dick Cheney, not so much. Cheney, who four years ago declared the insurgency in its "last throes," on Monday warned of new attacks. Of course, back in December, he praised President Bush for signing the very status of forces agreement that mandated the American pullback this week.

In an interview with the Washington Times, Cheney offered the latest line of attack in his never-ending campaign to claim that President Obama had made the nation less safe. Regarding this week's milestone required by the SOFA signed by George W. Bush and Prime Minister Maliki, Cheney declared himself "concerned" by General Odierno's statements regarding the redeployment:

"What he says concerns me: That there is still a continuing problem. One might speculate that insurgents are waiting as soon as they get an opportunity to launch more attacks. I hope the Iraqis can deal with it. At some point they have to stand on their own, but I would not want to see the U.S. waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point."

If Cheney was gripped by such fears, he certainly wasn't voicing them when President Bush inked the agreement last year. On December 14, 2008, Bush in his press conference with Maliki announcing the pact specifically addressed this week's benchmark:

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