I wasn't aware that the late James Doohan had been nominated for an ambassadorship. Of course that wouldn't surprise me considering how good of a job the Bush Admin. does on their vetting process.
Chaos Theory: Bush & The Bolton Diversion As expected, President Bush Monday morning made a recess appointment of John Bolton to the post of UN ambassador for the United States. This, despite Bolton's inability to get Senate approval, his lie regarding his testimony in the Plame affair, and the possibility of his own involvement in a White House orchestrated smear campaign against the Wilsons. Bush's move, though, may be less about his famed loyalty or legendary intransigence, and more a diversion aimed at creating chaos. At this point, the Bolton recess appointment is a slap in the face of the American people and sends a dangerous signal to the world. The American people and the United Nations are about to receive a man who could not muster the support of 60 senators for a vote. His shockingly undiplomatic statements, his mistreatment of subordinates (especially those not reporting to him), and the White House's refusal to make key NSA intercepts available to the Senate left his confirmation rightly dead in the water. The timing of Bolton's elevation is bitterly ironic. On the very day of his ascension to the UN post, Tehran has announced it will resume the Iranian nuclear program and is awaiting a proposal from the EU Three, to whom the U.S. has outsourced its policymaking. Meanwhile, the Six Party Talks with North Korea are finally showing progress, in large part because of face-to-face meetings with the North Koreans, which the President and the UN-bashing Bolton steadfastly opposed. At the most critical juncture in talks about a denuclearized Korean peninsula, the man who singlehandedly scuttled negotiations back in 2003 with his "tyrannical dictator" and "hellish nightmare" comments is the chief American presence at the UN. This appointment, then, is about much more than "UN reform" or George W. Bush's fabled "conviction" or "loyalty." coming at a time of growing scandal in the White House, the Bolton move with its certain political firestorm is about diversion. In a nutshell, the President is intent on creating media chaos to take attention away from the mushrooming CIA outing scandal and the implosion of his second term agenda. Like the adroitly timed Roberts Supreme Court nomination, President Bush is deflecting political focus from his scandal-plagued administration and towards the usual vitriolic right-left conflict that will be played out in the press. Call it chaos theory or simply a smoke-screen. By whatever name, the President is banking we'll be discussing John Bolton and not Karl Rove. And there's nothing we can do about, not at least, til the mid-term elections of 2006. http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/000229.htm
if Bush is so "adroit" why is his agenda "imploding?" and do you disagree w/ the characterisation of Kim as a "tyrannical dictator" and his regime as a "hellish nightmare," or do you prefer the "nuance" of jimmy carter that allowed the menace that is NK's burgeoning nuclear arsenal to emerge in the first place?
What I had originally written would have probably gotten me banned, so I'll just say Bush scares me a hell of a lot more than Kim ever will.
i didn't think you actually ever "wrote" anything, just copied and pasted it from the comments section of d-kos.
I see, and Bush's strategy has made what progress in North Korea? He has supposedly developed more nukes using Bush's strategy. I don't see Bush having made much progress either.
See this kind of blind hatred is just over the top. You think Bush is scarier than Kim? You're crazy.
The New York Times sums things up pretty well with it's editorial about Bolton, Bush, and the UN... August 2, 2005 Ambassador Bolton If there's a positive side to President Bush's appointment of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations yesterday, it's that as long as Mr. Bolton is in New York, he will not be wreaking diplomatic havoc anywhere else. Talks with North Korea, for instance, have been looking more productive since Mr. Bolton left the State Department, and it's hard not to think that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's generally positive performance in office is due, in part, to her canniness in dispatching Mr. Bolton out of Washington. But the appointment is, of course, terrible news for the United Nations, whose diplomats have heard weeks of Senate testimony about Mr. Bolton's lack of respect for their institution and his deeply undiplomatic, bullying style of doing business. Senator George Voinovich, the Ohio Republican who became one of Mr. Bolton's strongest critics, said yesterday that he planned to send the new ambassador a book on how to be an effective manager. It couldn't hurt, but this may be the first time a world superpower has used its top United Nations post as a spot for the remedial training of a troublesome government employee. Mr. Bush had been unable to get Mr. Bolton's nomination confirmed by the Senate, so he waited until Congress left town and used his constitutional power to make recess appointments. This is a perfectly legal tactic, though one that has seldom been used to fill this kind of position. A recess appointment is particularly dicey for a major diplomatic post, where a good nominee should carry an aura of personal gravitas and legitimacy. The problem here from the beginning has been that Mr. Bush clearly has little respect for either the United Nations or international diplomacy in general. There is plenty to complain about at the United Nations, but real work happens there, and it requires the services of men and women who know how to wring agreement out of a group of wildly different and extremely self-interested representatives. The president has not just sent the United Nations what Senator Christopher Dodd accurately termed "damaged goods." In Mr. Bolton, he has selected goods that weren't appropriate for the task even before the Senate began to hold hearings - when Mr. Bolton's reputation was still in one piece. The United Nations could certainly be improved, but Mr. Bolton is a poor candidate for a reformer. To make the institution better, the Bush administration would first have to show that it has a vision of what the U.N. could be. That vision has to begin by accepting the fact that nations other than the United States have a right to have a say, and sometimes take the lead. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/opinion/02tue1.html George W. Bush has, yet again, shown his contempt for the American people. His stubborn incompetence, endearing to his supporters in a bizarre way that is inexplicable to most of the rest of world and to ever increasing numbers of Americans, shines through yet again. One has to wonder just how much longer the dishonesty and criminal stupidity of this man and his small group of advisors, joined at the hip by their fellow extremists running the Republican Congress, will be tolerated in our country. Surely not beyond the midterm elections. I'm predicting a sea-change that will shatter the Republican majority. Republicans that I have known for years, some that left the Democratic Party to vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980, cannot wait to vote Democratic in '06. They have had enough. It is past time to throw these bums out, and out they will go. Keep D&D Civil!!
I predict minimal losses if not gains for the GOP in both the house and senate. With the nomination of 2 conservative judges to replace 1 conservative and 1 liberal, not to mention the likely elevation of Scalia to Chief Justice, this is a golden age for the Republican party. Everyone thought that Bush would lose in '04, and we saw how that worked out. You are severely underestimating the GOP election machine and overestimating liberal America, IMO.
Yeah! I'm the one who's crazy! Let's see... Who's the one who started an unprovoked war against a sovereign nation? Who has their finger on the world's largest nuclear arsenal and is building MORE? Who's the one making cowboy threats to other nations if they don't bend to our will? Believe me; my eyes are wide open compared to the likes of you. In fact, you're right! There is something that scares me more than Bush and that's the lock step apologists that believe that this joke of a president can do no wrong.
Sandra DAy O'Conner was far from liberal. There are those on the far right who would call her a liberal, but her judicial record is most definitely not liberal.
Depends on how you look at leaders. Kim may be potentially more dangerous, but he hasn't done any damage to our nation. Bush has most certainly done more damage to our nation, and American principles, and so seems more likely than Kim to harm the U.S. Potentially frightening Kim wins. Realistically frightening, Bush is scarier. The only difference is that I have hope that we can correct the damage done by Bush over time.
Here's what the Democrats did to Miguel Estrada: Estrada withdrew his name twenty-eight months after being nominated. During the confirmation struggle, Estrada’s wife miscarried; in November, 2004, she died, of an overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills. The death was ruled accidental by the medical examiner. Rove said that Mrs. Estrada had been traumatized by the nastiness of the process. Reid told Rove that he empathized with Estrada, but said that the Republicans’ treatment of President Clinton’s nominees—more than sixty were never voted on by the Judiciary Committee—had created victims, too. Rove, according to Reid, replied, “We need to sit down and talk about this,” adding that the ugliness of the confirmation process had reached a new low. link - http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/050808fa_fact
Those evil democrats. How dare they force Estradas wife to drink heavily and take too many sleeping pills. That woman deserves zero responsibility for what she did. It is all those mean Democrats fault. How can we blame her? All she did was abuse alcahol and take too many sleeping pills from her own hand. Afterall the Democrats questioned Estradas record. I bet the Democrats are thinking of questioning some of Dick Cheney's decisions as a VP in order to make him start drinking and taking sleeping pills. It is diabolical but with the knowledge that investigating a person's practices and record could actually kill them, we could take over the world. I think it is sad that Estrada's wife had problems. I think it is plain silly to blame her problems on a political party.
FB you are a ****ing moron to excuse the Democrats role in this. Like most lefties, you have no sense of decency.
A case study of a brain destroyed by Bush Derangement Syndrome. You and your ilk are scarier than Osama Bin Laden.
