The Bush gang won’t know you, when you’re down and out

November 4, 2006

Obviously, in light of this week’s revelations, evangelist Ted Haggard is going to have some trouble keeping his old political allies. I suppose a guy learns who is real friends are after he’s been accused of having a meth-filled fling with a gay prostitute.

Considering the fact that the president considers loyalty one of the most important qualities a person can have, will Bush stand by his friend Haggard in his time of need? Not so much. Consider yesterday’s White House press gaggle:

Q: This Reverend Haggard out in Colorado, is he someone who is close to the White House? There had been reports that he was on the weekly call with evangelicals. Is that true?

MR. FRATTO: I’m actually told that that’s not true, that he has — in terms of a weekly call that he has? He had been on a couple of calls, but was not a weekly participant in those calls. I believe he’s been to the White House one or two times. I don’t want to confine it to a specific number because it would take a while to figure out how many times. But there have been a lot of people who come to the White House….

Yep, now that Haggard is mired in scandal, his old friend the president asks, “Ted who?”

Let’s set the record straight here. Every Monday, Haggard has participated in a West Wing conference call with evangelical leaders. He’s one of only a handful of religious leaders with immediate access to the Bush White House. Here’s a nice pic of Haggard and his friend Bush in the Oval Office. Haggard has personally (and successfully) lobbied the White House on policy issues more than once.

For the Bush gang to now say that Haggard is just some guy who might have been to the White House once or twice is simply wrong. And as it turns out, it’s part of a pattern.

When Enron’s Ken Lay got into trouble, his long-time friend dropped him like a hot potato. The president was so desperate to distance himself from a man with whom he’d been close friends for years, he even misled reporters about the nature of their relationship.

Similarly, Jack Abramoff and the president were hardly strangers. The disgraced GOP lobbyist has described meeting Bush “in almost a dozen settings,” and detailed how he was personally invited to President Bush’s private ranch in Crawford, Texas, for a gathering of Bush fundraisers in 2003. They knew each other so well that the president once joked with Abramoff about his weight lifting past, asking him, “What are you benching, buff guy?” Then, after the scandal hit, Bush didn’t know his friend anymore. At a January 26 press conference, the president said, “You know, I, frankly, don’t even remember having my picture taken with the guy. I don’t know him.”

When Ralph Reed was flying high, he was a close Bush confidant. When Reed’s career fell apart, Bush didn’t want to be anywhere near the guy. When Katherine Harris was helping Bush steal a presidential election, she was a key ally. When she looked like a doomed Senate candidate, Bush didn’t want to even say her name out loud.

And when Ted Haggard was on top of the evangelical world, Bush was a key ally. When Haggard goes down, the White House says, “There have been a lot of people who come to the White House.”

For all the talk about the president and his affinity for loyalty, the fact is the Bush gang considers it a one-way street.

Now, now, hardly a fling. Three years sounds more like a long-term commitment.

  • Bush is a fairy-weather friend. He’s your buddy until you get caught with that live boy. Okay, inappropriate comment.

    It’s funny how fast you can lose a nickname around Bush.

    Bush is famous for fatuous nicknaming and now he’s probably acquired more (mostly negative) nicknames than any president in history.

  • Marion Berry may have been a politician who used crack, but the current leaders in the WH seem to be crackheads using politics. They’d sell their homies out for a dime bag of Congressional races. -Kevo

  • I think the key is how closely Bush feels the individual is identified with The Decider Himself. There are people he’s invested in–like Rummy, Citizen Dick, Bremer and Tenet–whom he’ll either stick with or provide a soft landing for.

    Then there are those who are invested in him–like Cruella de Harris, Jack-off, Kenny Boy, and any of these evangeweasels. Those folks are only useful until they’re not, and he can and does cut bait on them without a shred of guilt.

    The guy is a supreme narcissist, among his many other failings.

  • I’m certain there are a lot of people waiting for the next big election and that–at keast to them–it can’t come too soon!

  • Dale, Ds>Rs: Bush is famous for fatuous nicknaming and now he’s probably acquired more (mostly negative) nicknames than any president in history.

    my fave is still smirkey mcBruisey. 🙂

  • I cant wait for a two corrupt party system of government after Tuesday, quickly followed by handing Don Rumshole his walking papers..

  • Don’t forget Ahmed Chalabi. Bush denied him shortly after placing him within close camera range of (nearly directly behind) the first lady at a SOTU speech. “Chalabi? Chalabi? Think I may have met him on a rope line.” Bush is a denier and a divider. He is the “Peter” while Cheney’s the “Dick.” I think “loyalty” is linked not to the Chimp’s “investment” in a person, but rather what kind of “goods” someone is likely to have on him. Throw life preservers only to those who have a death grip on your ankle, or around your waist , or around your neck. The others get an anvil and wishes to disappear quickly.

  • Let’s not forget the Crawford Cretin on Jack Abramhoff, “I DON’T know the man” although Secret Service visitor logs show hundreds of Abramhoff visits to the White House and pictures showing him with Bushie at the same parties.

  • Peter denied he knew Christ 3 times in the same night, but he was ashamed. These guys have none.

  • History is like a boomerang; what goes around, is destined to come around—and hit you square in the back of the head. The Bush family legacy is a tattered ruin—and thanks to Herr Bush, it will eventually be wiped from the historical record as “a squashed fly on the paper, impersonating a comma.”

    In America’s case, the Vengeance of Democracy is truly a dish best served cold—and I’ve got the setting on our freezer turned all the way down….

  • I remember viewing Richard Dawkins’ BBC doc where Ted Haggard was featured (called “The Root of All Evil”) and was thinking to myself, there’s something kinda gay about Ted (my gaydar only occasionally works). Now, with reading more and more of Bush’s off-handed comments and nicknames he assigns to friends and people in the press (is it mostly men?), I’m starting to wonder about the closeted nature of Bush himself. He called Jack Abramoff “Buff Guy?” He compliments men in their suits, their sunglasses, what else? Their tan, their hair? He calls David Gregory (who is 6’4″ or more) “Stretch”.

    Ahem…is this a pattern that has been so blatantly before us that we didn’t see the connection to the man chomping at the bit for a federal amendement to the constitution to ban the union of a same-sex couple and one whose routine compliments of men border on flirtation? I mean, aside from the reach around he did with the German chancelor, does Bush ever flatter or flirt with women?

    Hmmm, it does seem to make rather creepy sense. What can be more over-compensating for a self-doubting sense of manhood than to start up a war with a dictator (er…the country of) that had that much machismo and bullishness?

    Of course, you kinda have to be president to scratch that itch I guess. The rest of that ilk just get drunk at a bar and pick a fight to shake off such feelings (ref: Brokeback Mountain).

    Keep it light and bright.

  • One can always count on Bush to screw a thing up, i.e., “Fool me once…”. He probably thinks that JFK said, “Ask not what you can do for your country; ask what you can do for me.” From his perspective, it makes perfect sense as a guiding principle in his own life.

  • It does not surprise me that the elephant of fortuitous opportunity tends to shy away from places of where it has embarassingly left its own excrement. Republicans, loaded with their hubris, want no reminders of their pridefully misguided crap to ever be connected directly to them, particularly that through which they’ve ineptly dragged their minions and sheep. I think what sheep are discovering is that crap in one’s own wool is more than a tiny bit unpleasant. And, minions are just downright annoyed by the treatment. At first, back when there was a shorter list of casualties, this was dismissed as cute. You know, Junior’s first whiz on the political seas at the helm of the Ship of State. All that notwithstanding, with the stinch of so many victims wreaking from his outrageously horrendous, and disgusting abuses of power and authority from their trusted and moralizing president, who is seen more and more now as a first degree hyprocrite and liar, many are starting to scream for a hose and a strong disinfectant. Those greatest harmed are demanding that we stop looking at whose wearing the excrement through which many have been unwittingly and certainly unwantedly dragged to point out those who less than graciously left all this manure. The nation is getting sick of him wiping his behind with them, and flushing them away with his poop. Shrub is about to need a serious plunger in a minute here.

  • Jeff “Drop & Give Me 20” Gannon? I don’t know any Jeff.

    I think these guys are working up to copping an insanity plea before the Hauge: “I’m not George Bush, I’m Hoppy the Kangaroo!” And really, it wouldn’t be that hard to convince reasonable people that they are stark staring bat shit crazy.

  • It is as if they are physically incapable of telling the truth. The immediate response is never even fudged truth– they go straight to a lie. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

    Haggard was on the call, and they know people can prove it. They just don’t care. I hope it’s not because they know the election is rigged anyway. That’s been my nightmare this week: that the reason Bush et al seem so unconcerned is that they know they have it sewn up no matter what.

    (It could also be complete and utter stupidity and deep denial. I hope that’s the case.)

  • CRK…now there’s a meme we should be spreading, and as fast as possible! Peter denied Christ three times, too…

    I love it, and I think evangelicals will get it, too.

  • Something about Reverand Ted Haggard reminds me of Steve Stiffler in “American Pie: American Wedding” during the gay bar dance scene.

    There is no question but Seann William Scott should play the gay pastor in the movie version.

    Boy George II has a nickname for everybody. And now everybody has a nickname for BG2 😉

    And yes, I find his habit of dropping friends to be quite venel considering his demand for total loyalty. This latest one is just stupid. People will again be pounding the Secret Service and White House Communications Office for records on visits and calls all they will prove, again, that BG2 is a stupid (why do it?) liar.

  • One more accidental find….Bush and Abramoff **N A K E D** together, shaking hands? Nope…no gay connection there. I wonder if Jeff Gannon’s the new “pool boy” at the reflecting pool on the Mall.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11007761/site/newsweek/

    Here’s a teaser, if you’re like me and missed the first run of the story:

    The photos, published yesterday in Payboy, a magazine devoted to nude pictures of disgraced lobbyists, appeared to fly in the face of the president’s claims that he had never met Abramoff. The five photos, which appear to have been taken on five different occasions, show the two naked men smiling and shaking hands.

  • From Shaggard’s “apology”:

    “There’s a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life.”

    Ho hum, I have sinned, boo fucking hoo, yawn. But since you’re feeling so contrite, would you care to tell us what that “dark and repulsive” thing is Teddy Bear?” Nope. Hmmm. Will confirm he’s been a baaaad boy (in some unspecified way). Won’t confirm paying for sex. Will admit to buying Meth. Could it be that prostitutes are the least of our boy’s pecadillos? Better to hide under a rock while people are thinking about hookers. Than to face a stoning when the real heavy shit becomes airborne

    Quick, someone check his tighty-whiteys for animal dander.

  • Just one thing:

    I am a 34 yr old Dutch heterosexual male, born as a Catholic, just for the record.

    If you people, and I do not mean all of you, but only those people that (in the name of the Lord or not) are so aggressively opposing on other people’s way of life, would just stop judging other people’s hopes and wishes, their (sexual or whatever) preferences and/or desires, this world would be a much better place to live in.

    Gay people, like everybody else, just want to be happy and share their love with the people of their own free choice. We are, well at least I am, living in a free country, where people (should) have the right to live their life the way they desire (within the boundaries of the law). As long as there are hypocrite people like G.W. Bush or T. Haggard judging on other peoples lives (while doing exactly what they are condemning),by using the Bible in their judgement, this world will stay the mess it is right now. The same holds for those Muslim fanatic leaders, that are on TV almost every day (see Memritv.org,), saying with the Quran in their hands that all Western women are mating with pigs and donkeys.

    I am getting so tired of all those religious fanatics, that I would like to plea for one, just ONE day to start with, “International Religious Violence-free Day a year.”. George Bush could stay in his bed all day and ask Pastor Teddie for a massage…..

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