Good news, bad news

Just can't catch a lasting wind...

• Good news: John Bolton resigns, as Bush folks concede he'll never be confirmed.
  
  
• Bad news: A dailyKos piece reveals the human price of deregulation, as the Bushies cater to their corporate pals.
  
  
• Good news: Harry Reid may set the Senate schedule to prevent recess appointments in future, although the usual 10-day wait is only tradition, meaning that the President may just ignore it and appoint people over lunch break (or the Senate may revolt over their short holidays).
  
  
• Bad news: Bitch, Ph.D, is feeling a bit ill about our breaking of Jose Padilla, who appears to have lost touch with reality through his years of confinement and interrogation.
  
  
• 20-20 Hindsight: Washington Post notes that the reasons given by Congressfolk who voted against the Iraq war have largely been proven true. Too bad not a word of their thoughts made the paper at the time . . .

Beautiful!

Calvin Trillin waxes poetic about the John Bolton nomination.

The job's too vital, Bush has said,
To leave unfilled, and so instead
He'll simply stiff the Senate now,
And name John Bolton anyhow.

The whole thing's short -- go read it for more giggles.
(If you run into a subscription notice, then read it here instead.)

(via The Washington Note)

In case you need convincing

Just bumped across a June article in Slate that I bookmarked in case anybody needed convincing that John Bolton was a bad choice for U.N. ambassador, and it seems timely again in light of this week's recess appointment (simultaneous nose-thumbing at both international and domestic communities).

Nominating John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations is a little like nominating Jeffrey Dahmer for surgeon general.

heh. Beyond the snark, there's lots of good, if now rather depressing, analysis.

It's not enough to seek allies when suddenly some multilateral project is really important to you; you have to have built alliances by helping allies on projects that are important to them. Building international support, like building social support, is a long-term project, best left in the hands of people who understand this.

There are a lot of basic aspects of national and international functioning that our current leaders appear not to understand. Sigh. The clean-up could take generations...

(originally via kos)

Deferring to the process

Oh no, wait -- bypassing it! A blogger points out that recess appointments were intended for *openings* that occurred during a recess, not just those where the Senate refused to proceed in the dark.

The Democrats and the White House deadlocked over Bolton's acknowledged request for names of U.S officials whose communications were secretly picked up by the National Security Agency. Democrats said the material might show that Bolton conducted a witch hunt for analysts or others who disagreed with him.
(from the Yahoo piece)

kos makes a strong argument that this strategic choice will undermine Bolton's ability to get anything done at the UN, even by the administration's own measures.

So how can he effectively push for reform when the UN bureaucracy can simply run out the clock on him? And how will such delaying tactics blow back on the UN when Bolton couldn't even garner the support of his own countrymen in the U.S. Senate? And how could anyone take Bolton seriously given the number and severity of the allegations against him?

My cowboy countrymen -- wheee.

[and, of course, obligatory photo of the mystfying moustache...]

Bolton vote on hold

For those not following the proceedings, it appears that John Bolton's nomination to be US grenade ambassador to the UN is foundering on an ever-higher pile of allegations and evidence that he has abused his subordinates, spied on his rivals, kept information from his superiors, and generally appeared unfit for most of the jobs he has held thus far.

A delay is what we got today. What was unexpected was the clear and unambiguous comments from Senator George Voinovich and Chuck Hagel that if a vote was held there and then, John Bolton would not get out of Committee. That's right. THEY would help vote him down.

The three weeks added before a vote will be used to dig through the new information coming to light. Would be heartening to see some potential government official held to at least a minimum standard of professionalism (if not respect for the organization he's being sent to work with).

[For specifics on the questions being raised, see this or this or this or this -- Steve Clemons is keeping his finger on the pulse of this one!]

Yelling into the wind

A large number of former diplomats have officially gone on record as opposing Bolton's nomination as Ambassador to the UN. Best of luck with that...

If Nobel laureates can't win an argument for real facts, and a heap of decorated generals are ignored when they say Gonzales is a bad choice for State, why would anybody think that our leaders care about the opinions of diplomats? Don't these folks know that diplomacy is quaint, outdated stuff? Note that the response to this letter is the remark "we look forward to his getting to New York to do the nation's business." Because, you know, the U.N. is all about America's business . . .