LiberalLand

You can’t make this stuff up. It sounds like satire. President Bush told Mike Allen of Politico that he has a very personal way to honor the sacrifice made by soldiers and their families.

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

Bush made this very personal, very tough, very sacrificial decision in August 2003 after a bomb that hit the UN headquarters in Baghdad killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top UN official in Iraq.

“I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man’s life,” he said. “I was playing golf - I think I was in central Texas - and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, ‘It’s just not worth it anymore to do.’”

What a great man! What empathy for our fallen soldiers and destroyed families! No golf. How does he do it?  What’s he going to give up next, weekends at the ranch?

Membership has doubled since he’s been president. 

Democrat Travis Childers beat Republican Greg Davis for a congressional seat in Mississipi’s first district, the first time it’s gone Democratic since 1994.  Bush won that district with 59% of the vote in 2000 and 64% in 2004.  Denny Hastert’s Illinois seat went Democratic in March, after Hasert’s 20 year run, and Democrats took a Louisiana seat in early May, one long-held by Republicans.

John Hagee, whose comments about the Catholic Church did not sit well with many Catholics and, specifically, the Catholic League, issued a letter of apology, declaring:

“Out of a desire to advance greater unity among Catholics and Evangelicals in promoting the common good, I want to express my deep regret for any comments that Catholics have found hurtful,” Hagee wrote, according to an advanced copy of the letter reviewed by Washington Wire. “After engaging in constructive dialogue with Catholic friends and leaders, I now have an improved understanding of the Catholic Church, its relation to the Jewish faith, and the history of anti-Catholicism.”

The letter was sent to Catholic League president Bill Donahue, who previously released a list of grievances called “Veteran Bigot.” Hagee addresses some of his harsh remarks, saying,

“I better understand that reference to the Roman Catholic Church as the ‘apostate church’ and the ‘great whore’ described in the book of Revelation” - both terms Hagee has employed - “is a rhetorical device long employed in anti-Catholic literature and commentary,” he wrote.

Donahue issued this statement:

“The tone of Hagee’s letter is sincere. He wants reconciliation and he has achieved it. Indeed, the Catholic League welcomes his apology. What Hagee has done takes courage and quite frankly I never expected him to demonstrate such sensitivity to our concerns,” Donohue wrote.

Will the next stop on the Apology Express be the city of New Orleans or the gay community?

When you’re 18.  She claimed innocence when the Vanity Fair photos came out.  But there are photos circulating that appear as though the Vanity Fair shoot did not require much persuasion. Just a few weeks ago, she said she was embarrassed by the Vanity Fair photos. If she was embarrassed about those, how must she feel about these?

Mr. Family Values won’t attend family functions if his gay sister, Victoria Fossella, and her partner are present, reports the New York Daily News. Victoria’s brother, Staten Island congressman Vito Fossella, voted against funding adoptions for gay couples, and wanted housing funds held back from San Francisco until the city repealed its domestic partnership law. Fossella also voted for the Marriage Protection Amendment. Too bad he didn’t do too much to protect his own.

The interviewers get all the credit, but the bookers are the ones who have to arrange cars, put up with divas in some cases, do some handholding for high-maintenance guests, make sure all the green M&M’s are out of the green room dish, and know what the fine line is between being aggressive in pursuing a guest and risking being served with a restraining order. 

TV Week has a good run-down of some of the personalities producers deal with every moment of their working lives. Nuggets like:

The hardest to get:

Leading vote-getter: Vice President Dick Cheney. “He doesn’t give a s***. He’s checked out,” said one respondent. “I don’t know what he does all day,” said another.

Plays hardest to get:

Leading vote-getter: Former Clinton White House aide Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., once more visible on newsmaker shows and now “always uses the family excuse” to avoid appearing and stay behind the scenes. (”He is playing an inside game, not an outside game.”)

Also mentioned: Mr. (Howard) Dean (until late April); Sen. Kerry and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass. (”You have to go through this long, arduous process.”); some surrogates.

Leaves their best stuff in the green room:

Leading vote-getters: Senators “jockeying for position.” “They all do.”

Also mentioned: Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah; former presidential candidate New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (”He talks a good game and then thinks better of it on camera.”); Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Democratic candidate John Edwards.

Highest maintenance:

Leading vote-getters: Rudolph Giuliani (”Is [wife] Judith coming or is she not coming?”); Rep. Pelosi (”won’t come to the studio,” “wants the grandeur of her Speaker’s office,” “the queen-spare me”).

Also mentioned: Mr. (Ralph) Nader (”bizarre,” “won’t be picked up at home”); Gov. Romney

Easiest to deal with:

Leading vote-getter: Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is “always very accommodating.”

Also mentioned: “People who have been around for a long time,” including Sen. Biden, Rep. Charles Rangell, D-N.Y.; Sen. Dodd; Sen. Specter (”He comes on and makes his point,” “always interesting”); and Gov. Huckabee (”very low-key,” traveling often with “only a one-person entourage even as candidate”).

A quick survey of one of my producers says this is all mostly true.

h/t Think Progress.

Mitt Romney told Wolf Blitzer that McCain being Bush III “isn’t going to stick.” But McCain surrogate Congerssman Roy Blunt of Missouri said, “I think that’s a good thing.”

Or is it just that too many Democrats are?

Doug Goodyear was chosen by John McCain to manage the Republican convention in Minnesota this summer. The problem wasn’t just that Goodyear’s company was making millions lobbying for corporations like ExxonMobil and GM, even though that should have been enough of an issue for the supposedly anti-lobbyist McCain.  An even bigger problem, as revealed by Newsweek,  was Goodyear’s lobbying for the military junta in Burma, a government condemned by our own state department for human rights violations.

Another issue: DCI has been a pioneer in running “independent” expenditure campaigns by so-called 527 groups, precisely the kind of operations that McCain, in his battle for campaign-finance reform, has denounced. In 2004, the DCI Group led a pro-Bush 527 called Progress for America, which was later fined (along with several other 527s on both sides of the political divide) for violating federal election laws. Goodyear, however, says that DCI is “not in the 527 business anymore.”

Now, Goodyear is gone, “setting a new land speed record for shortest time lapsed between the ’story breaks’ and ‘ax falls’ phases of a political scandal.” 

Here’s how Goodyear explains his Burmese involvement: “It was our only foreign representation, it was for a short tenure, and it was six years ago.”   I guess that makes it okay.

The president discussed this weighty matter during his Saturday morning radio address.

“Today is my daughter Jenna’s wedding day,” he said. “This is a joyous occasion for our family as we celebrate the happy life ahead of her and her husband Henry. It’s also a special time for Laura, who, this Mother’s Day weekend, will watch a daughter we raised together walk down the aisle.”

But just as well that I’m not going.  My food taster is off today.

Say it!

Of course, that was in 2000.

Bush tried to smooth things over-at a South Carolina debate in early February-the result was less than promising. During a commercial break, Bush grasped McCain’s hands and made a sugary plea for less acrimony in their campaign. When McCain pointed out that Bush’s allies were savaging him in direct-mail and phone campaigns, Bush played the innocent. “Don’t give me that shit,” McCain growled, pulling away. “And take your hands off me.”

Not that a two-faced Bush liked McCain, either.

“I love you, man,” Bush said to his rival, whose skin nearly wriggled off in discomfort. Soon Bush would be saying something quite different in private. “There’s a reason all those colleagues of his in the Senate support me and not him,” Bush told a friend in January. “They think he’s sanctimonious, and they’re right.”

Crooks and Liars has more, including the big “did he or didn’t he” question. McCain either did or did not vote for George W. Bush, and clarity is not forthcoming. According to West Wing actor Richard Schiff, this all came out at a Beverly Hills party shortly after the 2000 election at the home of Candice Bergen.

“Someone asked, ‘What do you think of Bush?’ ” Mr. Schiff recalled. “My recollection, and I have to qualify this, because I’m not 100 percent sure he used this word, but my recollection is that McCain said that Bush was dangerous and he didn’t trust him. Then this person said, ‘Why did you support him?’ And McCain said, ‘It was my obligation as a Republican to support the Republican candidate.’ And the person said, ‘Did you vote for him?’ And McCain said, ‘No.’ “

Bradley Whitford tells a similar tale.

“He was going on and on about how horribly unqualified and untested Bush was, how the campaign had attacked his family,” said Whitford, a registered Democrat. “Someone said, ‘If he’s so terrible, why did you support him?’”

McCain replied that as a member of the GOP, Whitford added, he always intended to back the party’s nominee. Then, the actor said, someone asked McCain whether he had cast a vote in favor of Bush.

“He put his finger up to his lips, shook his head and mouthed, ‘No way,’” Whitford said.

Even though these stories contradict what McCain told Bill O’Reilly on Thursday, it confirms what Huffington relayed earlier in the week. McCain did have a slip of the tongue, however, when O’Reilly first asked if he voted for Bush, and the answer was “Of course not.” But then maybe he was telling the truth.

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