The Tuesday ‘BushWhack’ing

Hope you had a nice Labor Day weekend… let’s get back to it.

• In the past, Labor Day marked the “unofficial” start of the presidential campaign… this year; not so much.
• A new book has “uncovered” dissent within the Bush(whacked) Administration… rather sad that some people needed a book to discover that. Journalist Robert Draper’s book, Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush paints a picture that not only did Karl Rove object to Bush picking Cheney as his VP, he also expressed concerns about Bush’s choice of Harriet Miers as a SCOTUS nominee. (Rather refreshing – if it’s true – that Rove had enough insight to not trust Cheney and doubt Miers’ abilities. Wonder how things would be different if Bush listened to him…)
• New York Times reporter Helene Cooper wrote that Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is trying hard to “rewrite her legacy” so it includes something other and something more than Iraq… and on Iraq, Rice’s friends and colleagues all say that Rice has accepted the fact that Iraq is a “stain” that she probably won’t be able to remove before she leaves office… (Wow… more refreshing insight coming from someone within the Bush(whacked) Administration…)
• “President” Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq over the long weekend and, not surprisingly, spun his surge and said that if the “continued gains” in Iraq could allow for a reduction of U.S. troops… (Riiiight… I, personally, think he’s spewing rhetoric in order to appease the masses… though I doubt most believe a single word he’s saying…)
• And have we mentioned? That a new book by Jeffrey Toobin says that Justice David Souter nearly resigned in the wake of Bush v Gore because he was so distraught over the decision that effectively ended the Florida recount and installed Bush as president. (Interesting… I imagine – and this is only my opinion mind you – that one reason he DIDN’T resign was because he knew Bush would have nominated his successor and Souter didn’t want to push the court back ever further than it already was with it’s disasterous decision in Bush v. Gore…)