Bush announces new appointments for 24 aides and supporters (on Christmas Eve)

[underpants]

Source: CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Christmas came a few hours early for two dozen White House officials and supporters Wednesday, who were appointed to three- to six-year positions on government committees and councils.

The full list released by the White House – which includes Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Karl Rove deputy Israel Hernandez – after the jump.

The President intends to appoint the following individuals to be Members of the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts:
–Condoleezza Rice, of California, for the remainder of a six-year term expiring 09/01/14;



Read more: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/12/25/bush-an...

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Complete at link

[Liberal Veteran]

1. Asshole. It'll take decades to undo the damage he's done.

[quidam56]

14. The Damage Asshole has done to Appalachia

will take ten thousand years to undo (after we are gone) http://www.wisecountyissues.com Appalachia is Third World America.

[patrice]

2. Condi's payoff for engineering the Deaths of nearly a million INNOCENT Iraqis.

Oh the Irony, Kinda Sleazy leading the Arts . . . .

[Solly Mack]

3. A war criminal on the Board of Trustees of the JFK Center for the Performing Arts

America...how does it feel?

[underpants]

8. I don't know any of the names off the top of my head but I am sure this will be thoroughly reviewed

like thinkprogress and the like

[roody]

9. Feels like a boycott to me.

[Baby Snooks]

17. The Kennedys should protest it.

But of course they won't. The Bushes have honored them. They have honored the Bushes. It's called being civil to some. I call it being a hypocrite.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. This is a crime against common decency.

JFK is turning in his grave. If Rice were assigned the responsibility, his flame would go out.

[RCinBrooklyn]

5. Obama will probably appoint Rick Warren to pray for a change.

[Cleita]

6. This could backfire on them.

Having them up there in plain sight might make it easier to prosecute them when the time comes. I always try to look for an advantage in situations like this.

[roody]

10. We can keep it up with the bloody hands protest! Opportunity!

[GinaMaria]

23. Excellent thought

If you can find a way to turn challenges into opportunities, then a happy life is yours (didn't mean to sound like a fortune coookie)

[proud progressive]

7. you gotta be kidding me! even 'monkey brains' should know better

[1monster]

11. Jeb Bush did this in Florida on his way out. He made it impossible for the next

Governor to make any real changes in education. And then there was that railroad deal that screwed Floridians and no way out of that either.

The correct thing for the new appointees would be that they submit their resignations to Obama, but, since they are most likely Republicans, and Bush Republicans at that, I'm not gonna hold my breath.

[santamargarita]

12. And to think this un-elected sonuvabitch isn't even supposed to be there

It will take a long time to erase this stain on American history.

[cstanleytech]

13. This is why regardless how much the economy might go down during Obamas

first term we must work twice as hard to make sure he gets re-elected in 4 years so when these assholes time expires he can appoint people to fix the damage they almost will surely cause the nation.

[BrklynLiberal]

15. More timebombs and landmines for Obama...

[Baby Snooks]

18. Just making sure the agenda continues...

They are called grey eminences. They remain behind long after a president leaves office. Many of the current crop remained behind when Ronald Reagan left office. Doing their dirty work behind the curtains behind the thrones. Congress really should address this and ban any appointments during the last year of a final term. The appointments should be made by the president coming into office. Not the president leaving office. And part of the dirty work of course is covering up the mess left behind. That started with Nixon.

[BrklynLiberal]

20. With a Democratic Dongress, it would be great if they did that, and made it retroactive

to the last 6 months of prez shit-for-brains reign of terror.

[Baby Snooks]

26. What angers me most....

Many of these appointments are protected by Civil Service and so even if Congress said, whoa, wait a minute, it's too late. Appointments to the Kennedy Center are one thing. Appointments within various federal agencies are another.

[xxqqqzme]

32. so they get all those 'socialism' benefits they all whine

about. Hypocrites is right.

[October]

16. Don't they still have to answer to people?

I mean...

couldn't the Obama Administration appoint their supervisors/superiors? Couldn't they make it an awkward, uncomfortable or impossible place to work?

Just trying to think as to how to win one here.

[starroute]

19. Barry Jackson is one name that pops out at me

I was looking at him recently because he was friends from way back with the recently departed Mike Connell. Jackson was one of those shadowy Bush White House figures who generally flew under the radar -- deputy to Karl Rove, ran the Rove political propaganda unit grandly known as the Office of Strategic Initiatives, used an rnc.com email account.

Here are a couple of things I found online about his and Connell's early days:

http://www.madison.com/post/entries/309141

There was a national PR campaign to garner support for the Contras. During the mid-1980s, Barry Jackson was the chair of the Johnson County, Iowa, Republican Party. He handled an extensive rent-a-mob and dirty tricks operation, which chased then-candidate Tom Harkin around to disrupt rallies. During that period, I ran into Barry Jackson and Mike Connell at the Deadwood, an Iowa City campus bar. (Yes, the Mike Connell currently in trouble for hacking election computers for Karl Rove,) We were not friends, but enjoyed arguing. I invited them back to my home on Bloomington street, where we continued drinking and debating. During that session, Jackson bragged of his involvement of burglaries at several East-Coast CISPES (committees In Support of El Salvador) offices.


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/28/122458/646

Connell was part of Jackson's crew at the University of Iowa in the early 1980s. I was there and remember then them well. Connell isn't the only computer jock out of that crew. Former Iowa State Rep and GOP chair Steve Grubbs is now the CEO of Victory Enterprises. Grubbs was initially a member of the Maranatha shepharding cult.

In 1984, Jackson was leading a College Republican dirty tricks squad against Dem Candidate Tom Harkin. The Republican incumbent, Roger Jepsen, was a joke. He was channeling funds from the South Afikan BOSS to Iowa Right-To-Life. That financed a traveling rent-a-mob and phone-bank scams through Per Mar Security and Research. They stole a student election at the University of Iowa and stripped the left groups of funding, did black bag jobs, and sent thugs to attack anti-aparthied demonstrations.

One of the funny things, they had to scramble to cover the stink when one of their guys, skipped to Bahrain with all the proceeds from the homecoming buttion sales. Little gangster do grow up. Now we have a major problem in America.


On edit: Israel Hernandez was another of those White House staff members -- but also a long-time Bushie, as I recall.

[underpants]

24. Interesting. Thanks for the insight and research.

I think we all knew that they had something counter to the public good at hand

[starroute]

27. Israel Hernandez started working for Bush in 1994 as his body man

He was another one with an rnc.com email account. Served as an assistant to Rove in that office run by Barry Jackson, then was named an assistant secretary of commerce. Oh -- and he helped suppress Bush's DUI record and was also called to testify in the Plame case.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Hernandez

Before joining the Department of Commerce, Hernandez worked in the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives. He was the Deputy Assistant to President George W. Bush and Special Assistant to Senior Advisor Karl Rove. During the Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential campaign, Hernandez was the contact person between the White House and the Bush-Cheney campaign. . . .

Hernandez is openly gay.


http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Israel_Herna...

Israel Hernandez was nominated May 26, 2005, by President George W. Bush as Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Director General of the United States and Foreign Commercial Service. Immediately prior to his nomination, Hernandez served as Deputy Assistant to the President in the Office of the Senior Advisor, Karl Rove. Hernandez was confirmed by the Senate on October 7, 2005. . . .

Former Rove aide Hernandez and Susan B. Ralston, Special Assistant to the President & Assistant to the Senior Advisor Karl Rove, testified before a separate federal grand jury "about grand jury testimony given on July 13 by Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine," David Johnston reported in the August 3, 2005, Washington Post. . . .

"When George W. Bush got the itch to run for Texas governor, 22-year-old Israel Hernandez was the first guy he hired - to tote his bags, keep his Sharpie pen and dole out a steady supply of Altoid mints," the Associated Press reported May 9, 2002.

"Hernandez began serving the Bush family in the early 1990's, first as traveling personal secretary of sorts to gubernatorial candidate Bush, next as a live-in aide who often tended to the teenage twin daughters and then as a loyal 'foot soldier' who assumed full responsibility for an incomplete jury questionnaire that helped suppress the revelation of then Governor Bush's 1976 DUI offense.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45237-20...

As in many workplaces, a good relationship with the boss seems to pay off. Israel Hernandez, who served as Bush's "body" man in Texas, attending to the governor's corporeal needs, now earns $141,000 as senior adviser Karl Rove's deputy.

[samplegirl]

21. The criminal chain must be broken

and people need to be filled with dissent!

[GinaMaria]

22. i think there was an article about this a while back

It talked about this sort of thing being a 'strategy' to embed or entrench (neither of these words are right, but I hope you understand) conservatives in the government and slow Obama down or out right undermine him. This is all they have left after failing so overwhelmingly in the last election. Sounds a little desperate doesn't it?

[underpants]

25. Not just slowing down but entreching sudden change to a slow moving system

They are flooding the agencies with, basically, sleeper cells as they already have at Justice, Interior, and Homeland Security (they got to establish that one)

[GinaMaria]

31. How difficult would it be to fire them or

reassign them to work that shuts them out and minimizes any damage they hope to inflict? There has to be a way to contain this. There's a record of who is given what post, correct? It will be tedious but not impossible. I think this may be an opportunity to expose the CONS. They are quite weak right now, having damaged their 'brand'. These are missteps on their part, imo. I think or at least hope these actions will be extra nails in the repuke coffin.

[SharonAnn]

28. The term you want is "burrowing in".

[GinaMaria]

30. Thanks!

Wish I had a prize to give you. That was driving me crazy.

[williesgirl]

29. This shouldn't be permitted to happen so late in anyone's term. rec'd