Oops!
GOP Tries Killing Two Birds with One Stone, Hits Something Else Instead
by Tamara Baker
Friday, August 18, 2000 -- SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA (AmpolNS) -- I must agree with Eileen Smith that, contrary to Chris Andersen's recent (and brilliant) Ampol column, the Impeachment War is NOT over.
It seems that, contrary to all common sense and flying directly in the face of the lessons they should have learned back in 1998 and 1999, the Republicans have fired yet another shot in the Impeachment battle.
McCamy Taylor, a frequent poster on Salon's Table Talk, said it better than I can:
In fall 1998 the GOP took aim at one foot before the election. Undeterred, they took aim at the other foot after the election by attempting to remove Clinton from office with insufficient votes in the Senate.
Now they are taking aim again. Unfortunately, there is only one thing left down there.
2000: The Year the GOP Took Aim at Its Own D**K (and I'm not talking Nixon)
I mean, really!
The only way the announcement of Robert Ray's bogus grand jury empanelment (nearly five weeks after the fact) makes any sense is as an attempt to kill two birds with one stone.
The first and most obvious goal was to upstage and embarrass Al Gore during his big moment at the Democratic Convention. The second goal was to cover up the burgeoning scandal over Dick Cheney's platinum-parachute (cum-bribe?) from Halliburton, to wit:
The New York Times
August 17, 2000In Retirement Deal, Cheney Could Keep Options in Office
By FLOYD NORRISDick Cheney, the Republican nominee for vice president, retired from the Halliburton Company with millions of dollars worth of stock options that he cannot cash until long after the new administration takes office, the company announced yesterday. Mr. Cheney has previously said that he would sell his stake in Halliburton before he takes office, assuming the Republicans win the presidency. But under Halliburton's stock option plan, Mr. Cheney would not be allowed to sell the options, which cannot be transferred except on death.
As a result, he would have to either abandon the holding or keep it until after the election, thus giving him a large stake in the future of Halliburton while he is serving as vice president.
How convenient. And how interesting, coming as this news does, hard on the heels of the New York Times's earlier article concerning the $20-million-plus golden parachute, complete with the waived 'handcuffs' clause that ensured Cheney got at least an extra $10 million to which he wasn't legally entitled.
But wait! There's more!
...Chuck Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington said in an interview before the details were disclosed that "there is no legal requirement" that a vice president dispose of such assets.
Mr. Lewis said that he thought there would be a "built-in conflict of interest" for Mr. Cheney to hold such options during the campaign or after he was elected.
Halliburton's stock fluctuates in large part because of changes in oil prices. As a result, if he kept the options, he would stand to profit if oil prices rose, a factor that the administration's energy policies could affect.
Bear in mind that the Saudis have recently announced that they don't intend to increase production after all, thus sending crude oil prices back up to the $35-a-barrel mark. Bear in mind that Cheney has gone on record as advocating high oil prices such as these.
And bear in mind that the Bush family has strong ties to the ruling families of the various oil states in the Middle East.
Of course, Cheney's employers say that poor ol' Dick has no choice but to hang onto his tainted money:
The chief financial officer of Halliburton, Gary Morris, said in a telephone interview that under the Halliburton stock option plan, there was no way for Mr. Cheney to transfer the options, such as by giving them to a charity, before they were exercised.
Uh-huh. Suuuurrrrre he can't.
The New York Times may have decided that Shrub is off-limits, but their editors must have found their collective gonads moldering away in the sock drawer and strapped them on, because they are going after Cheney with guns blazing. And it's not just his paleocon, anti-Head-Start, anti-Mandela voting record they're skewering, either, but his supremely questionable ethics.
This is why the timing of Ray's announcement shouldn't come as a surprise. This Standard Operational Procedure for the Gross Old Party. In 1996, on the very day Clinton gave his acceptance speech to the Dem convention, it was "suddenly" discovered that toe-sucker (and GOP operative) Dick Morris had been hiring hookers and allegedly letting them listen in while he talked to Clinton.
That tactic worked so well -- NOT -- that Bill Clinton was resoundingly reelected to a second term. But the GOP is so addicted to dirty tricks that it just can't resist going to the well over and over again, even when it's killing them.
They can't even claim to have hurt Al Gore by embarrassing him, because, as even NBC News (which used to be run by former RNC chair Roger Ailes until Rupert Murdoch hired him to run FOX News) pointed out Thursday evening, the timing is incredibly suspect; thus, the big surprise is boomeranging back onto the GOP and undoing all the touchy-feely camouflage they donned for their "Barney" convention in Philadelphia.
You remember Philadelphia, right? Where the GOP hired a lot of non-whites to pose for the camera under the pretense of "inclusivity"? Where Henry "Homewrecker" Hyde was the only impeacher allowed near a podium? Where the rabid dogs Delay and Barr operated strictly off-camera?
If anybody was taken in by the Grand Old Con going down in Philly, Robert Ray's latest move just ripped the scales from their eyes big-time.
And now, Al Gore has given the speech of his life, a speech he wrote himself, a speech which took pains to do what Shrub cannot: lay out a specific framework for how he intends to make America even better than it is now.
I can't wait until November.