I KINDA FIGURED THIS WAS GONNA HAPPEN...
Snave's note: I have always felt that Bush views Congress and the Senate as a couple of obstacles to him getting his way. I have never felt that he is a person who likes the idea of checks and balances. Maybe he was joking when he said "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." But I doubt it.
I vote for the Congressional and Senatorial candidates I want to see representing me in Washington, D.C., and if my candidates don't win, I still want whoever gets elected to look out for the interests of all the constituents in my state. When a president does something like this, regardless of their political party, it makes my blood boil. I believe he is disregarding the people of the country by causing their votes (and the efforts of their duly elected members of the Congress and Senate) to not mean anything; he ignores everyone, and imposes his own will.
Anyway, I'll cut the rant short and show you the first few paragraphs of an article about what he plans to do re. sending John Bolton to the U.N. Enjoy it, if your stomach can handle it:
"Bush plans to sidestep Senate on Bolton"
Sources: President to make recess appointment of U.N. ambassador
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush intends to announce next week that he is going around Congress to install embattled nominee John Bolton as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, senior administration officials said Friday.
Bush has the power to fill vacancies without Senate approval while Congress is in recess. Under the Constitution, a recess appointment during the lawmakers’ August break would last until the next session of Congress, which begins in January 2007.
Two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the president had not made the announcement and Congress wasn’t in recess yet, said Bush planned to exercise that authority before he leaves Washington on Tuesday for his ranch. The House recessed on Thursday and the Senate’s break was scheduled to begin later Friday.
The rest of this sad story can be read at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8758621/ .
11 Comments:
The bastard makes recess appointments all the time. If he can't get someone in the honest way, that's how he gets them in.
Remember all the fuss about Charles Pickering, and tehre was another one who was really terrible as well.
He's a dictator. It's a simple as that. Fortunately not everyone responds to dictators though, and it takes a while to displace the entire media and a giant bureaucracy, etc.
No, dictators don't have fixed terms and term limits, Congressional and judiciary oversight to keep them in check, or a whole host of other strictures against Bush's power. In short, recess appointments allow President Bush to have his way for a short while, with the knowledge that eventually, he will have to answer to Congress. As for Bolton, I agree with him that there are significant problems with the UN and their penchant for mismanaging things. I'm just not convinced that he's the best person to go about cleaning it up.
Mandelbrot- He is definitely not the person to clean up the UN. The highlights of his resume are lying about WMDs and experiencing violent temper tantrums when he doesn't get what he wants.
You don't have judiciary oversight if you pack the judiciary. Nor do you have this balance of powers you refer to if you rule by recess appointments and executive orders.
And we might balance of powers if we had had a clean election, but we won't look into that because that might be inconvenient.
Exactly.
Sheryl, clean elections? The question was visited in regards to the 2000 and 2004 elections, and has been answered. The elections were as clean as they've ever been. In 2000, there was no evidence whatsoever to support claims by the Democrats of malfeasance in Florida. I find myself disappointed but not surprised that when some people aren't getting their way, this question is revisited. It's over. Bush won in accordance with the laws in place at the time of the elections. Get over it and start thinking about 2008, and possibly think about getting candidates who aren't such asshats.
Second, Marquis, violent temper tantrums? If that were a disqualifying trait for the holding of high office, that would eliminate several members, many high ranking, on both sides of the aisle from Congress. Furthermore, Bolton reiterated the stated positions of the last three presidents, one of whom was William Jefferson Clinton, and was working based on intel provided by both domestic and foreign sources. This could well have been a case of having intel that was too good, in that we may have been being fed the same information that was being fed to the upper echelons in Saddam's regime. If so, that would not be a first. For that, I cite the CIA's surprise at the fall of the Soviet Union.
I'm no fan of Bush, but I think that for the last two elections, he was the better of two awful choices. I'm looking forward to 2008 when, perhaps, we may have better candidates from both sides of the aisle. On the other hand, I'm not exactly holding my breath on that front.
My opinion: I think the religious right has too much influence on Bush and the GOP leadership for Bush to be considered a better candidate than Gore or Kerry in the last two elections.
Gore honestly makes a far better professor than a politician, and seems far more comfortable as the former rather than the latter. At any rate, America needed a change after the Clinton presidency, and Bush was, unfortunately, all that was left. Furthermore, Gore showed the personality of a cardboard cutout. Combine that with Clintonian logic, I could not in good consicence vote for Gore in 2000. Therefore, Bush got my vote in 2000.
Senator Fonda, er, Kerry, on the other hand, perjured himself in 1971 in front of the Senate in regards to the behavior of our soldiers in Viet Nam. Having had relatives who served in that war, there was no way in hell that he was going to get either my or their votes, as I considered his behavior back then and his later cynical use of his service in Viet Nam as a campaign post to be displays of the deepest possible dishonor. I'd rather have someone I only barely respected in the White House over someone I don't respect at all, which is why I voted for Bush in 2004.
I don't have to like a person to vote for him/her. I just have to think he/she is better than the next guy or be in the mood to cast a protest vote. Be assured that sometimes, I do feel the need to take a very hot shower afterwards.
Sure, it isn't always effective (see the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections), but I tend to look beyond the individual if I can, and look at who is pushing his or her candidacy (that is, what groups are influencing the candicacy), and at the person's views.
I look at the individual, as it is that individual, not any stated beliefs or influencing groups, who will ultimately be making the decisions. While the latter may hold some influence, I'd much rather someone with whom I honestly disagree in office than someone who panders to get my vote. In short, integrity matters more than platforms to me, except in extreme cases. In my view, the current President barely edged out Gore and significantly edged out Kerry.
Sure, I look at the individual as well, and I agree that it is ultimately the individual who will make the decisions... but without looking at platforms (for which the candidate is chosen to represent his or her party in the election, after all), or which groups have big influences on his or her campaign (I don't know about you, but I find the marriage of religious fundamentalism and politics to be a bit scary), I feel I would be making an uninformed vote.
The way the media operates nowadays, I think too many Americans vote for "form" and not enough for "content", like it is mostly a personality thing. Most candidates seem to be mostly "form" with little "content" these days, so I merely try to look past the veneer the candidates wear in the media. Character is important, but there are other things out there that can drive a candidate besides his or her character.
Now, back to the original topic: Bush went ahead and appointed Bolton. How about that!
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