Turd Blossom is leaving.

Karl Rove, who masterminded President George W. Bush's two White House victories but was slammed by opponents as a divisive figure in U.S. politics, said on Monday he was resigning and heading home to Texas.
The political strategist, known as "The Architect" for guiding Bush from the Texas governorship to the presidency, but also known as "Bush's brain", which makes me think he must have left years ago, is the latest aide to quit as the clock ticks down on Bush's second term.
"This closes the chapter where George Bush and Karl Rove thought they were building a new Republican majority that would last a generation. That is clearly off the table," said Cal Jillson, a political analyst at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Bush himself reportedly has another nickname for his pal: "Turd Blossom".

Rove helped create a climate of bitter divisiveness and remains under suspicion for his role in administration scandals.
A special prosecutor investigated him on allegations of leaking covert CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity in a scandal linked to the Iraq war, but he was never charged and Bush gave him unbending support.
Democrats in Congress have also had Rove in their sights as they look into why nine U.S. prosecutors were fired. The Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed him over the issue, but Bush cited executive privilege to reject it. Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been trying to force Rove to testify before the committee about Rove's role in the firings of eight United States attorneys.
"Mr. Rove's apparent attempts to manipulate elections and push out prosecutors citing bogus claims of voter fraud shows corruption of federal law enforcement for partisan political purposes, and the Senate Judiciary Committee will continue its investigation into this serious issue," Leahy said.

Rove's political legacy is a binge of hate-filled niche campaigning, polarization and short-term expediency. If you're interested in learning more about some of the really nasty tactics Rove used, I highly recommend the movie "Bush's brain".

Just a few examples of rove's "tactics":
In 1986 Rove ran the texas gubernatorial campaign of , just before a crucial debate, Rove claimed that his office had been bugged by Democrats. The police and FBI investigated and discovered that the bug's battery was so small that it needed to be changed every few hours, and the investigation was dropped. It is widely suspected Rove had bugged his own office to garner sympathy votes in the close governor's race.
In 1994 Rove ran the Alabama Supreme Court race of Harold See, who was running against Mark Kennedy, an incumbent Democratic justice. A former Rove staffer reported that "some" within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile. Kennedy won by less than one percentage point.
In 1993, Rove was the adviser of George W. Bush in his successful campaign to become governor of Texas. In this campaign he used push-polling, a tactic Rove is well known for. Rove has been accused of using supposed pollsters to call voters to ask such things as whether people would be "more or less likely to vote for Governor Richards if [they] knew her staff is dominated by lesbians."
During the bitterly-contested 2000 Republican primary, allegations were made that Rove was responsible for a South Carolina push poll that used racist innuendo intended to undermine the support of Bush rival John McCain: "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?"
Rove has played a significant role in shaping policy at the White House. One oft-cited example is that terror warnings were regularly made at times when John Kerry's ratings rose during the 2004 presidential election.
On August 29, 2003, retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV claimed that Rove leaked the identity of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA employee, in retaliation for Wilson's op-ed in The New York Times in which he criticized the Bush administration's push for the war in Iraq.

Politics is a dirty business, but Karl Rove dragged it into the septic tank. It will be up to the new (and no doubt Democratic) administration to start cleaning up from January 2009 on.
Rove leaves behind an everlasting stain in the underwear of politics. Turd blossom indeed.

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Hypocrite in charge

What George Bush told staffers during a swearing in ceremony for White House staff back in January 2001:

"[We] must remember the high standards that come with high office. This begins with careful adherence to the rules. I expect every member of this administration to stay well within the boundaries that define legal and ethical conduct. This means avoiding even the appearance of problems. This means checking and, if need be, double- checking that the rules have been obeyed. This means never compromising those rules. No one in the White House should be afraid to confront the people they work for, for ethical concerns, and no one should hesitate to confront me as well. We are all accountable to one another. And above all, we are all accountable to the law and to the American people."

What George Bush actually does in 2007:

President Bush commuted the prison term of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, facing 30 months in prison after a federal court convicted him of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators.

Bush said that he thought the sentence was "too harsh".

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald (a Bush appointee) disputed the president's assertion that the prison term was excessive. Libby was sentenced under the same laws as other criminals, Fitzgerald said. "It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals," the prosecutor said.

A White House official notified the trial judge, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, of the decision. Walton, a Bush appointee who served in the White House under the president's father, had cited the "overwhelming" evidence against Libby when he handed down his sentence.

The commutation does nothing to prevent Libby from appealing his conviction. And if the appeal fails or is still in process at the end of Bush's term, there is nothing to prevent the president from granting Libby a full pardon before he leaves office.

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Fixing something you broke by breaking it even harder.

Our beloved President announced his "new way forward in Iraq" this week. Something he started thinking about right after the November election in which he, according to his own words, received a good "thumping". I'm sure it was pure coincidence that he didn't seem to think there needed to be a "new plan" until then.

The new plan can be summarized as follows:
I'm not listening to anyone. I'll do what I want, because I'm the decider. neener neener neener.

The president totally ignores his people, the result of the election and the Iraq Study Group (Baker group) report with this plan:

• According to many political analysts the Iraq war was the #1 reason for the huge loss of republicans in the November election.
• According to an AP poll Seventy percent of Americans oppose sending more troops to Iraq. Just 35 percent of Americans think it was right for the United States to go to war, another record low in AP polling and a reversal from two years ago when two-thirds of Americans thought it was the correct move. Other polls showed a similar result.
  
• The Iraq Study Group Report stated: “The United States should immediately launch a new diplomatic offensive to build an international consensus for stability in Iraq and the region. This diplomatic effort should include every country that has an interest in avoiding a chaotic Iraq, including all of Iraq's neighbors.” Instead the president chose to chide Iran and Syria in his speech again: "These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq." Not a very good start for diplomacy if you ask me.
  

Sending 21,000 additional troops into Iraq will bring the amount of troops to the same level they were 2 years ago. Oh yeah, we were doing sooooo much better back then.
A defense official said that the 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, would move first into Iraq under Bush's plan. The brigade, based at Fort Bragg, NC, is now in Kuwait and poised to head quickly into the country.

Local Bush lapdog Robin Hayes supports the "surge" of course:

"The Iraqis themselves need to step up their commitment to securing their own country," he said, "and (I) want to see a plan that uses our troops to ensure this happens at a faster pace."

How are you going to motivate someone to work harder by doing the work for them?

The real reason for this "plan" to me seems to stretch this clusterf@*# out into 2008 and leave the clean up for Bush's successor.

There was also a very remarkable sentence in Bush's speech:

"Victory will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship."

No ceremony on the deck of a battleship..hmm..what does that remind me of?? oh, I know, this one maybe? :

The reason we went to Iraq in the first place was to punish the ones responsible for 9/11, take out all the WMD's of Saddam, spread democracy in Iraq. Until we ourselves get democracy by having a president who listens to his people, I don't think we need to try and spread that principle anywhere else.
The American body count stands at 3,018 and there's no end in sight. Happy New Year!

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