Who remembers "Travelgate"?

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

Ah, yes, the moral outrage and the finger-pointing and the "blame-game" of the Right when Clinton installed his cousin in the White House travel office. It was HORRIBLE and UNTHINKABLE that Clinton would depose a long-term civil servants with someone from Arkansas.
Let's dredge up some of those comments from Rush and the talking head bloviators.

That outrage from the Right has definitely subsided and disappeared altogether as we watch Bush dismantle almost all functions of the government from within and dole out critical positions as patronage plums. The only job qualification for this administration is loyalty to Bush. He truly seems to believe "l'etat c'est moi". The prelude for this fiasco with the FEMA head is the political appointee in the GAO (I think) who threatened the MediCare actuary with his job if he DID his job, which was providing Congress with a realistic actuarial study of the cost of the Medi-Care bill.

And of course, we now know how they have gutted FEMA with the long-term disaster planners to replace them with frat brothers, campaign workers and the like. VETTING? You've got to be kidding - "We don't need no stinking vetting!" They probably had an on-hand staff resume padder. I bet they chuckled when they reviewed each other's resumes. "Hey Mike, how about if we cut this horseshit stuff? Doesn't play well. I know, we'll put you in charge of disaster management for that place you did that internship with. One more spellcheck and we can ship this baby off."

Bush has created his own Baathist Party right here in the United States.In five years he took a country from, in his own words - peace and prosperity - to war, death and deficits. Cleaning out his administration would be cleaning another Augean stables - no, make that another Super Dome.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Republicans are the Power party, Democrats the Truth party.

Help Floodgate speak truth to power and wash some Republicans and Bush away.

[Divernan]

2. Excellent example - 1 cousin in a minor job vs.Allbaugh, Brown

and many more with no experience/training/knowledge or even
job ambition other than gutting and privatizing and then leaving to become "consultants" to make their personal fortunes.

[Vinca]

3. How many people died as a result of travelgate, Whitewater,

Monicagate? Maybe one - Vince Foster - by his own hand. What's the death tally for Dubya? Well in excess of 100,000.

[jmowreader]

4. Hercules cleaned the Augean Stables in one day

The Augean Stables were the property of King Augeus, the biggest cattle baron in Ancient Greece. Hercules (who killed his wife and children and was sentenced to serve Eurystheus for twelve years as punishment), was ordered to do ten Labors. He did two of them in a manner which did not please Eurystheus, so it was bumped up to twelve Labors.

Eurystheus told Hercules to clean the Augean Stables in one day.

Hercules cut a deal with King Augeus: he'd clean the stables in exchange for ten percent of his cattle.

Hercules cut two holes in the stable walls. He then dug trenches from the stables to two rivers. The rivers flowed into the trench and washed all the shit out of the stables.

When Augeus found out about Eurystheus he threw Hercules out of his kingdom, and when Eurystheus found out Hercules cut a deal with Augeus where he'd get paid for cleaning the stables he got pissed and said this didn't count as a Labor.

All we need is a handful of Republican representatives to knock a couple of holes in the wall and dig a few ditches. And we have backhoes now!

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

5. Thanks for your great summary (and I fixed my spelling error) nt