Another rich white guy from the Nixon days

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--President Bush on Tuesday named Henry "Hank" Paulson as his new Treasury Secretary, as he seeks to lift his sagging poll ratings by handing over all of our money to a powerful Wall Street player.

The surprise announcement that the Goldman Sachs chairman would succeed John ("Not Tony") Snow at Treasury followed weeks of speculation that Bush was about to Decide Something and won strong initial backing from lawmakers eager to invest all of our money in high-yield airplane games.

Paulson, 60, is a former Nixon thug and heavy Republican bagman who presided over Goldman's insider trading scandal three years ago. He is poised to take the reins of an economy that grew at its fastest rate in 2-1/2 years during the first quarter, benefiting Exxon-Mobil's major shareholders and a couple dozen other friends of the Bush Crime Family, but shows signs of slowing as consumers run out of money.

"It looks like they got someone who will be an iron fist and, if any problems arise, will be able to step in and break some fuckin' legs," said Marc Summerlin, an economic consultant ignored under Bush in his first term.

It remains unclear whether Paulson will take a stronger role in originating economic policy than did Snow, who was seen by some as a meat-puppet reading from a White House script.

Paulson raked in more than $38 million in overall compensation last year, some of it legally.

Bush has been peevish when sober and violent when drunk as the civil war in Iraq, the destruction of New Orleans, exposure of the blatant and wanton corruption of his administration, the shredding of the Constitution and the obliteration of the middle class overshadowed what has been, for him, robust economic performance, and helped lower his approval ratings to 30 percent, or right around Michael Jackson territory. Republicans worry Bush's woes may leave them open to an ass-fucking in the November congressional elections.

Appearing in the White House Rose Garden with Snow and Paulson and a pitcher of margaritas, Bush praised the corporate thug's ability to explain complicated economic concepts in words even a wet-brained Texas Mama's boy can understand.

Paulson will be the point person defending Bush's tax cuts, which the president insists have made his people money.

"He will work closely with my Congress to restrain the spending appetite of my federal government and keep us on track to meet our goal of cutting my deficit in half by 2009," Bush said, smirking.

Currency strategist Ashraf Laidi of MG Financial of New York said the pick of a Wall Street figure of Paulson's stature might be seen as a desperate and senseless last-ditch shot in the dark to prevent the dollar slide from accelerating.

Referring to a U.S. push to prod China on trade and currency, Bush said Paulson will "help ensure that our trading partners play by our rules, don't fuck with our multi-nationals, and lend us a lot of money to invest in the stock market."

Some Republicans have complained that the job of Treasury secretary lacks the luster in the Bush administration that it had during the tenure of Robert Rubin and other Clinton-era Treasury chiefs who understood economics.

Signaling he wanted to change such perceptions, Bush said Paulson would "follow in the footsteps of Alexander Hamilton," the first Treasury secretary and a U.S. founding father, later shot by the Vice President.

Bush pays lip service to war dead, film at 11

ARLINGTON, VA. (AP)--President Bush, whose fearless part-time service in the cockpit of an obsolete fighter jet helped keep Texas secure from the Viet Cong, delivering a Memorial Day message surrounded by the graves of thousands of military dead, said Monday that the United States must continue fighting the endless and unwinnable war on terror in the name of those who have already given their life in the cause, or something.

The president spoke after laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

"The best way to pay respect is to value why a sacrifice was made," Bush said, quoting from a letter that Lt. Mark Dooley wrote to his parents before being uselessly killed last September in a random desert shithole.

Noting that some 270 fighting men and women of the nearly 2,500 who have fallen since the unrelated terror attacks of September 11, 2001, are buried at Arlington National Cemetery, Bush said, "We have seen the costs in the war on terror that we fight today."

"I am in awe of the men and women who sacrifice for the freedom of the United States of America," declared the president, who is also in awe of soulless corporate pirates like his dad, willing to trash the entire world in pursuit of extending their genetic material and untaxed wealth into the bloody intercontinental marketplace of the future. He nevertheless drew a long standing ovation from the hapless troops, families of the slaughtered and other dupes gathered at the cemetery's 5,000-seat white marble amphitheater.

"Here in the presence of veterans they fought with and loved ones whose pictures they carried, the fallen give silent witness to the price of liberty and our nation honors them this day and every day," he said. "Now watch this drive."

Frist: Never mind, nothing to see here

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--While House members are still angry about an FBI search of a congressman's office, the Senate's leader says the controversy has been "pretty much swept under the rug."

Senate Majority Leader Bill ("Katzenjammer") Frist said Sunday he had been threatened with water-boarding by Attorney General Alberto ("Torture Boy") Gonzales and quickly concluded that the FBI acted appropriately.

"I no longer think it abused separation of powers," Frist said on Fox News Sunday. "I think when there's allegations of criminal activity by a Democrat, the American people need to have a law enforced."

Frist, (R-TN), was responding, perhaps definitively, to the search conducted May 20-21 in the office of Representative William Jefferson, (D-LA).

FBI agents carted away computer and other records in their pursuit of evidence that Jefferson accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for helping an exiled Nigerian prince to acquire an undisclosed number of millions from a government bank there. It all began as an unsolicited e-mail solicitation, so you just never know.

It was the first time in the history of Congress that a warrant had been used to search a lawmaker's office instead of burglar tools at midnight.

House Speaker Dennis ("Chins") Hastert, (R-IL), and Democratic leader Nancy ("Antsy") Pelosi of California responded with a rare joint statement, protesting that the FBI had not notified them and that the search violated their sense of entitlement and inviolability.

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which plans a hearing Tuesday on the constitutionality of the search, said the FBI overstepped its authority. Representative James ("Shit-eyes") Sensenbrenner, (R-WI), idiotically compared the search to a Capitol Police raid of the Oval Office.

"This debate is not over whether Congressman Jefferson is guilty of a criminal offense," Sensenbrenner said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press. "Obviously he's guilty: he's black, and he's a Democrat, and he cannot use the constitutional immunity of Congress to shield himself from that or any evidence of that. But it is about the ability of the Congress to be able to get paid without worrying about someone dropping a dime."

Hastert complained directly to President Bush, demanding that the FBI return the materials, and was told to go fuck himself. Bush then ordered that the documents be sealed for 45 days until congressional leaders could be blackmailed into agreeing with the Justice Department on what to do with them, a move that Frist said he supported "to get this off the front page."

"I think we've seen it pretty much swept under the rug now, I hope," Frist said Sunday. "I trust our Republican Department of Justice."

Before Bush's compromise, the showdown last week led the desperate House leaders to threaten budgetary retaliation against the Justice Department, according to a senior administration official invented to spread the story. Justice officials, including Attorney General Gonzales, raised the prospect of resigning if the department were asked to return the documents, but everyone knew that was bullshit.

Hastert: We are mad as hell, et cetera...

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--House Speaker Dennis ("Chins") Hastert demanded Wednesday that the FBI surrender documents it seized and remove agents involved in the weekend raid of Representative William Jefferson's office, before they get cocky and try it with a Republican.

"We think those materials ought to be returned," Hastert said, adding that the FBI agents involved "ought to be pistol-whipped just for thinking they can fuck with Congress."

The Saturday night search of Jefferson's office on Capitol Hill brought Democrats and Republicans together in rare election-year accord, with both parties protesting agency conduct they said violated the Constitution's separation of powers doctrine and made everyone terribly nervous about keeping cash around the place.

Democrats, meanwhile, sought to wean Jefferson off the House's most appealing teat.

"In the interest of upholding the high ethical standard of the House Democratic Caucus and preventing the American public being distracted from a shitload of Republican bribery scandals, I am writing to request your immediate resignation from the Ways and Means Committee," wrote House Democratic Leader Nancy ("Antsy") Pelosi in the one-sentence correspondence.

Jefferson had no immediate comment but said the day before that he would die in a hail of bullets before he would surrender the seat. He has not admitted any wrongdoing, despite an FBI affidavit that said agents had found $90,000 and a human head in the freezer in his house.

"I will not give up a committee assignment that is so vital to New Orleans at this crucial time for any uncertain, long-term political strategy like cleaning up the sinkhole of corruption that is the House of Representatives," Jefferson said Tuesday. "If asked, I would respectfully suggest that you get out the kneepads, Nancy."

Republicans, meanwhile, were being careful to express their panic and outrage over the possibility that massive corruption could lead to legal action without appearing to defend a Democrat, their natural enemy in the wild Potomac swamp.

A day earlier, Hastert (R-IL), complained about the raid personally to President Bush, who couldn't believe this fat little bastard would have the balls. Other House officials have predicted that the case would bring all three branches together at the Supreme Court for a constitutional showdown in which dozens of lives could be lost.

In April, Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., personally told Bush that "the president doesn't have a blank check" during a discussion of Bush's illegal and unconstitutional warrantless domestic wiretapping program, which is evidently more expensive than anticipated.

Hastert kept up the weak, irregular drumbeat after the FBI's raid of Jefferson's office.

"My opinion is that they took the wrong path," Hastert said after Bush had him removed from the White House. "They need to back up, and then we need to stand there for a while, making small talk."

White House officials said they did not learn of the search until after it happened, and that no one could have predicted it. They pledged to work with the Justice Department to soothe the fears of crooked Republican lawmakers.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales tried to strike a conciliatory tone, saying, "We have a great deal of respect for the Congress as a coequal branch of government, although we don't really think of them that way." But he also defended the search: "We have an obligation to the American people to pursue the evidence where it implicates Democrats."

Justice Department officials said the decision to search Jefferson's office was made in part because he refused to comply with a subpoena for documents last summer, but mostly to draw the public's attention from the impending indictment of Karl Rove.

White House: Troop cuts a childish fantasy

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--The White House on Tuesday ridiculed the idea of major troop withdrawals from Iraq anytime this decade. "We're not going to sort of look at our watches and say, 'See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya!'" said White House Channel anchorman Tony Snow, his teeth flashing.

The establishment of another government in Baghdad again this week has stirred talk of troop reductions by the United States and Britain, the two major partners in terms of collateral investment in Iraq. But with the insurgency's last throes still going strong, both the White House and Pentagon indicated it may be too soon to make decisions on troop cuts.

"The conditions on the ground tell us that our job's not done," Snow said, his hair perfect. "And by 'our,' I mean, of course, 'their.'"

At the Pentagon, Brigadier General Carter Ham told reporters that no one here ever knows anything until it's too late too stop it, and he cautioned against expecting major reductions before half-trained, part-time, under-equipped Iraqi troops with divided loyalties show they can handle the insurgents we created.

"We want to do it as soon as we can but you can't do it too fast," said Ham, who is deputy operations chief for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He cautioned against "rushing to failure, like when it was decided to invade."

British Prime Minister Tony ("Poodle") Blair, Bush's chief business partner in the Iraq venture, visited Baghdad on Monday and agreed with the country's newest leadership that Iraqi forces would start assuming full responsibility for fighting blindly in a three-sided civil war next month or the month after, certainly by the end of the year, one hopes, beginning a process leading to the eventual withdrawal of all coalition forces not permanently deployed there.

British media quoted an unidentified old fogey traveling with Blair as saying coalition forces should be out within four years, but probably won't be. Blair and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declined to set a timetable for that withdrawal, but made a date for lunch.

"We are there at the request and behest of the Iraqi government, a valued subsidiary," Snow said, his eyes shining. "We'll stay only as long as the Iraqi government wants to stay there. But at this point, we are not going to harness ourself to an artificial timetable, what some of you might call a 'calendar' or 'schedule.'"

Blair will be in Washington for dictation from President Bush on Thursday and Friday about Iraq and other subjects, such as the impasse with Iran over its nuclear program and steroid use in baseball.

The U.S. has about 132,000 troops in Iraq; Britain has about 8,000. Both Bush and Blair have dropped in the polls as the cakewalk has extended into its fourth year. Bush's approval rating is the lowest of his presidency, but he doesn't care much.

"As we've robotically chanted all along, when Iraq stands up, we'll stand down," Snow said, moonwalking elegantly. "And whether that actually means anything, we're going to find out. We've also said 'conditions on the ground' and 'troop withdrawals' and that sort of thing, because those phrases poll well. And that, and that alone, is going to be the ultimate factor.

"The most important thing to do is to make sure that we have laid the basis for a successful, self-governing, peaceful and stable Iraq. That's why we overthrew the government, disbanded the army, and littered the countryside with ordnance in the first place."

Defense Secretary Donald H. ("Hammerhead") Rumsfeld is holding three days of meetings at the Pentagon this week with the heads of all the major war-fighting commands. These are regularly scheduled meetings that focus more on long-range investment schemes than on relatively dull issues like U.S. troop levels in Iraq.

Rumsfeld was pressed at another pointless Senate hearing last week to say whether the American public could be assured of a major U.S. troop withdrawal by year's end.

"I can't promise it," Rumsfeld said irritably, adding that he nonetheless is hopeful that it will happen. "Goodness gracious, yes, that would be super."

General Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who also testified, was asked whether U.S. troops could be withdrawn completely from any of Iraq's 18 provinces within the next three months.

"You must be on glue, sir," Pace replied.