Bill Frist

Frist Opts Out of Embarrassing Presidential Run

Bob Geiger — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 12:54:57 -0500

After a lackluster career in the United States Senate -- including an incorrect, remote "diagnosis" of Terri Schiavo's condition, when he dragged the Senate into that nonsense -- outgoing Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) announced today that he will not seek the presidency in 2008.

As the leader of one of the most do-nothing Senate sessions in U.S. history, Frist evidently decided that he had no political capital in his own party and elected to bow out now and stop any further speculation on his candidacy.

This announcement is a big gain for the Republicans -- one less massive tool in the GOP presidential toolbox -- and a huge loss to late-night comedians and Progressive bloggers.

And thus, Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) remains the Religious Right's favorite for 2008.

You can read more from Bob at BobGeiger.com.

Bill Frist Is Now an Enemy Combatant

Bob Fertik — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 21:32:01 -0400

AP reports:

U.S. Senate majority leader calls for efforts to bring Taliban into Afghan government

QALAT, Afghanistan U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan guerrilla war can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Taliban and their supporters into the Afghan government.

Now let's get this straight: "the Taliban and their supporters" are the very people who attacked us on 9/11 and started Bush's "War on Terror" - Mullah Omar, Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al Zwahiri, and the rest of Al Qaeda.

On 9/18/01, Congress (including Bill Frist) adopted the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which was a declaration of war against those responsible for 9/11 - led by Bin Laden, Al Zwahiri, and Mullah Omar.

This Congressionally-authorized War against Al Qaeda and the Taliban has not ended. The U.S. has 20,000 troops in Afghanistan waging this war every day. According to George Bush, the "War on Terror" will never end.

When we are at war, our goal is to kill our enemies. Yet Bill Frist wants to put our permanent enemies in power!!!

Imagine if the Senate Majority leader had proposed putting Hitler in charge of France during World War II, or putting Hirohito in charge of China. Treason? You bet.

Yet that is precisely what Bill Frist is proposing.

Thanks to last week's Military Commissions Act of 2006, this clearly makes Frist an enemy combatant subject to the new "military commissions."

Any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States, or one of the co-belligerents of the enemy, shall be punished as a military commission under this chapter may direct.

The fact that Bill Frist is a U.S. citizen does not exempt him, because the law covers "any person."

The fact that Bill Frist is a Member of Congress covered by the Speech or Debate clause does not exempt him, because the clause explicitly excludes treason - aiding our enemies in time of war.

Bill Frist's proposal makes him an Enemy Combatant. He should be sent to Guantanamo and held without trial for the rest of his life. Better yet, he should be sent to a secret CIA prison where he is interrogated using "alternative methods" that are only illegal if they cause death or organ failure. Even better, he should be "extraordinarily rendered" to a country that tortures prisoners without any limits at all.

The Republican Congress led by Bill Frist gave George Bush these unlimited tyrannical powers just last week. As soon as Bush signs this evil bill, he should it immediately to Frist - or be impeached.

Update 1: Frist's "modest proposal" has finally pushed rightwingers over the edge. Here's the Ace of Spades:

I don't need the goddamned Republican Party in power to sign "peace" deals with terrorists. I can get that easily enough from the Democratic Party. I've supported these vacuous, cowardly, inept, corrupt idiots for one reason-- to fight terrorists.

if they want to sign peace deals with them, that's their decision. I and others can make another decision. The country may move in this direction, but we hardly have to endorse the decision by voting in favor of Quislings.

At least the Democrats talk tough about sending more troops to Afghanistan and killing Taliban fighters and capturing bin Ladin.

If that really is no longer a GOP prirority, then I am no longer a member of the GOP.

November 7 can't come soon enough for me.

Update 2: Frist now claims the AP story "badly distorts my remarks":

The Taliban is a murderous band of terrorists who’ve oppressed the people of Afghanistan with their hateful ideology long enough. America’s overthrow of the Taliban and support for responsible, democratic governance in Afghanistan is a great accomplishment that should not and will not be reversed.

Having discussed the situation with commanders on the ground, I believe that we cannot stabilize Afghanistan purely through military means. Our counter-insurgency strategy must win hearts and minds and persuade moderate Islamists potentially sympathetic to the Taliban to accept the legitimacy of the Afghan national government and democratic political processes.

National reconciliation is a necessary and an urgent priority … but America will never negotiate with terrorists or support their entry into Afghanistan’s government.

So Frist supports "national reconciliation" by persuading "moderate Islamists" to accept the "Afghan national government."

Clearly Frist wants to bring "moderate Islamists" into the Afghan government - just as the U.S. went to extraordinary lengths to bring Sunni insurgents into the Iraqi government.

In effect Frist is telling the Taliban that if they change their organizational name to "Islamists United" or something like that, they will be welcome in the Afghan government.

Unfortunately Frist's narrow rebuttal still makes him an Enemy Combatant, because he is aiding the "co-belligerants" of the Taliban under the loose definitions of the Torture Act.

Update 3: Rightwingers aren't buying Frist's "clarification". Here's the Rottweiler:

Oh, he speaks a good game about being misquoted out of context and everything, claiming that he didn’t say that vermin that call themselves Taliban should be included in the political process, “only” vermin that “might potentially sympathize” with the Taliban.

And that’s supposed to make us feel all warm and fuzzy again? Try again, you triangulating, two-tongued son of a bitch. So we’re supposed to be fine with having sacrificed the blood of heroes so that mongrels sympathizing with these animals…

…can become part of government?

No creature alive on this planet that can look at images like that one, or these, or these, or these, look at them and NOT immediately be filled with murderous rage and an uncompromising, holy determination to rip the living hearts out of the chest of every single one of the subhuman filth responsible, much LESS be “potentially sympathetic” toward them need to be part of any government, anywhere, ever.

They need to be dead.

Frist Slapped Again -- This Time on Estate Tax

Bob Geiger — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 16:58:24 -0400

Blogging from Yearly Kos

I'm sure when Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) mapped out his ideal scenario for June, he envisioned banning gay marriage, outlawing flag burning, cutting taxes on multi-million dollar estates and making the gun people happy by passing an NRA-friendly carry-permit bill.

So far, the beleaguered Frist is zero for two.

The latest defeat came today in the Senate, when a vote to invoke cloture (end debate) on the House Death Tax Repeal Permanency Act of 2005, which would have repealed federal estate taxes on inherited wealth, went down in flames. The cloture motion, which requires 60 Senators voting to end debate and invoke a full Senate vote on the issue, failed 57-41, when the GOP could only strong-arm four Democrats into voting to proceed while two Republicans -- George Voinovich of Ohio and Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee -- voted with the Democrats to kill the measure.

Frist, who is somehow still full of himself despite a number of major defeats as Majority Leader, pushed forward with the vote, thinking he could overcome objections from conservative Democrats and gain enough support to end debate and bring the bill to a vote -- he was wrong.

"The audacity of the Bush Administration and their Congressional allies truly knows no limit," said Ted Kennedy (D-MA) in a statement after the vote. "In spite of all of the urgent problems facing our nation – from the ongoing war in Iraq, to the devastating hurricane damage along the Gulf Coast that has not yet been repaired, to the outrageously high gasoline prices that are squeezing American families – the top Republican priority is eliminating the estate tax for the richest families in the country."

The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the repeal of the estate tax would cost more than $700 billion in the decade after it would have become effective in 2011 and Frist was unable to convince enough Senators that it was politically advisable to support yet another tax cut for the wealthiest Americans while contributing still more to the biggest budget deficit in U.S. history.

Republicans tried mightily to paint Democrats as the bad guys on this, despite the fact that the estate tax now hits less than one percent of American families.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that this issue was yet another distraction in Frist's bag of tricks leading to the midterm elections and called it a fitting follow-up to the GOP's silly attempt to ban gay marriage.

"We are wasting precious days on these divisive issues when there are so many other matters that deserve and demand our attention," said Reid.

The measure had passed the House of Representatives 272-162 in April 2005, but is dead without Senate approval.

"This is about allowing the wealthiest Americans, much of whose wealth accumulation has never borne a tax, to escape taxation at a time when we're up to our neck in debt and at war,'' said Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) yesterday.

And so we move on to the next wedge issue -- flag burning -- in a month that Bill Frist and the GOP leadership hoped would provide enough hot air to blow them to victory in November.

That isn't going to happen, warned Kennedy.

"The dollars that Republicans now want to spend on the ultimate tax break for the rich - allowing the heirs of multimillionaires to inherit their enormous wealth tax free - are dollars that should be used to help all Americans," said the Massachusetts Senator. "The American people deserve better; and in November they will insist on a new Congress that truly shares their values and cares about their needs."

You can reach Bob Geiger at geiger.bob@gmail.com

Bill Frist Spits on Veterans' Graves

Bob Fertik — Mon, 29 May 2006 10:43:32 -0400

So how is Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist honoring our Veterans this weekend? By scheduling bitterly divisive votes on flag burning and gay marriage to "energize" the demoralized GOP base for the November elections - and for his 2008 Presidential campaign.

Asked on "Fox News Sunday" if flag burning and gay marriage were the most important issues the Senate can address in June, Frist said the agenda will focus on securing the country and its values.

"I'm going to Arlington Cemetery tomorrow, and I'm going to see that American flag waving on every single grave over there," Frist said the day before Memorial Day ceremonies at the military cemetery.

"And when you look at that flag and then you tell me that right now people in this country are saying it's OK to desecrate that flag and to burn it and to not pay respect to it is that important to our values as a people when we've got 130,000 people fighting for our freedom and liberty today? That is important."

Well none of those soldiers would be fighting in Iraq if Bush, Frist, and the rest of the GOP hadn't lied about Saddam's non-existent WMD's. So when will the Republican Congress outlaw deadly lies? And when will the Republican Congress impeach Bush for those lies?

Frist defended a constitutional ban on gay marriage because "that union between a man and a woman is the cornerstone of our society. It is under attack today." At work against such amendments to state constitutions are "activist judges, unelected activist judges," he said.

I dare Bill Frist to find me one married couple who feels their marriage is "under attack" because a few thousand loving gay couples are getting married.

Update 1: Here's Steve Benen:

On the flag, I'm glad Frist is going to Arlington Cemetery today; maybe while he's there he can take a moment to reflect on the freedoms for which those men and women sacrificed their lives. It wasn't for a symbolic piece of cloth, it was for what that cloth represented. As far as Frist is concerned, the United States should join Cuba, China, and Iran as the only countries on earth to ban flag desecration. For him to connect this vote to American "values" during a time of war is painfully stupid.

Bush's "Party of Ideas"

Bob Geiger — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 06:59:15 -0400

In addition to the most recent revelations of George W. Bush authorizing leaks of critical intelligence information to silence Iraq war critics, Bush had this to say when responding to the decision by disgraced Republican Congressman Tom DeLay to retire from Congress: “I wish him all the very best and I know he is looking to the future. My own judgment is, our party will continue to succeed because we're the party of ideas.'' The party of ideas? Off the top of my head, here’s the only Republican ideas I’ve seen in the last five years:

Doctoring evidence used to start a war with a country that did not attack us and posed no threat to America.

Having responsibility for the deaths of 2,344 American military people and tens of thousands of Iraqis, at least $250 billion in wasted war money and a trashed reputation throughout the world.

Being fully supportive of holding prisoners without charges, without counsel and in violation of every tenet of American ideals. Oh, yeah, the GOP leadership thinks it’s acceptable to torture people too.

Consistently lying to the American people about everything from the rationale for war, through Hurricane Katrina response to domestic spying.

And speaking of Katrina, how many people might have lived had the Republicans not gutted the Federal Emergency Management Agency and exiled it under the Department of Homeland Security? Incompetence kills. Heck of a job, Brownie. And speaking of domestic spying, the Republican party stands for eavesdropping on all of us, without required court orders and in express violation of the law.

Politicizing to the extreme the heart-wrenching Terri Schiavo situation – including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist making a magical “diagnosis” of her condition from the Senate floor that, as it turns out, was wrong anyway.

Being the party of Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham – enough said.

Disclosing the identity of covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame as retaliation for her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, pointing out that Team Bush was lying in their reasons for attacking Iraq. The GOP: Where treason becomes fashionable.

Seeding the media with right-wing propaganda disguised as legitimate news, including having former prostitute Jeff Gannon sitting front and center in the White House briefing room to throw softball questions at Scott “The Lyin’ King” McClellan.

Embarrassing the American people by making a macho vow to get Osama bin Laden – you remember, the guy who actually did attack us on September 11 – letting him roam completely free for almost five years, while allowing al Qaeda to continue operating in at least 60 countries.

Cutting taxes for other rich Republicans time after time, while running up the biggest budget deficit in U.S. history.

Making our Statue of Liberty at least temporarily irrelevant by trying to kick 12 million immigrants out of the country, while branding them felons. (I’ve been in Mexico a lot lately and the people I talk to there have the same reaction as most people throughout the world – love most Americans, hate our government.)

Decimating social programs including Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare while forcing a disastrous drug program on the nation’s elderly.

Refusing to raise the minimum wage and only funding the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program for a fraction of the approved budget and at the end of the winter.

Giving the American version of the Taliban – our very own religious extremists – a front-row seat in governing our country.

Fighting at every turn, attempts by Congressional Democrats to support homeland security – such as providing funds for port protection and first-responders – while rejecting almost every Democratic effort to fund Veterans programs.

Trying to turn over security of our major ports to a country with known ties to the terrorist attacks of 2001.

Leading the effort to turn back the clock in our society and outlaw a woman’s right to reproductive choice.

Whew! That took me a whole 10 minutes. Bush may be right and the Republicans may indeed be the “party of ideas.” Too bad those ideas are ruining our country, destroying our world standing and imperiling the next generation. You can reach Bob Geiger at geiger.bob@gmail.com

Senator Bill Frist: Flag Defender or Cynical Tool?

Bob Geiger — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 09:21:06 -0500

“Every morning we open the Senate by reciting, as we just did a few moments ago, the Pledge of Allegiance. Hand over heart, we pay solemn tribute to the American flag, that sacred symbol of America's history, values, and principles.”

With those stirring words, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist opened another day of Congressional business earlier this week and used it as a springboard to announce a bold plan to meet one of the major problems confronting our nation.

Did he plan to address a needless war that’s cost us $250 billion, left 2,300 military dead, thousands others maimed and our standing in the world trashed? How about the fact that our vaunted “war on terror” still has not turned up Osama bin Laden or kept al Qaeda from continuing to operate in 60 countries? Or was he going to tackle the reality that over 45 million Americans have no health care whatsoever?

Naw.

What Bill Frist rose to speak of was that thing that concerned Americans sit around their dinner tables wringing their hands over every night: Desecration of the American flag.

“We are reminded that we are but servants, momentary players in the great unfolding of the American story,” said Frist, as I’m sure even people on his side of the aisle started dosing off. “The flag -- transcendent, noble, still -- commands our humility and binds us in the common project of serving the body politic.”

And here comes the money line: “It is with this understanding that, before Congress adjourns for the Fourth of July recess, I intend to bring the flag protection amendment to the floor.”

Wow, I’m sure glad he’s jumping all over that. I was afraid he was going to spend his time on something trivial, like George W. Bush wanting to turn over the security of our major ports to a country with well-defined links to September 11.

Of course, cynic that I am, I can’t help but notice that he’s going to drag this onto the national stage just in time for the mid-term elections, in which Republican candidates are in more trouble than Paris Hilton prepping for a MENSA test. And, hey, wait just a minute… Didn’t Frist announce about a month ago that he’s also going to drag that tired, old Marriage Protection Amendment out of mothballs this summer?

But, maybe Frist truly does have his eye on the issues of greatest importance in our country. Why, just today, as I walked through Midtown Manhattan after work, I must have seen 20 or 30 instances of people burning American flags on street corners. I bet you saw the same thing in your town. And I'd wager a month's pay that, at tonight's dinner hour, the average family won’t be talking about their day, the squeezed household budget, the lack of affordable health care or the budget deficit we’re passing on to our kids – they’ll be worried sick about Bill and Jim getting married in Massachusetts.

Or it could just be that Frist is trying to augment the heightened terror alerts we’re sure to see as November gets closer with some mindless wedge issues to distract the dumbest elements of our society – even though he knows damn good and well he doesn’t have the 67 votes to pass a constitutional amendment on either dim-witted issue.

Back on the Senate floor, Frist talked about what somebody burning the flag really means.

“In my view, desecrating the flag is not speech but an act of physical assault,” he intoned grimly. “We know this when we see rioting mobs in foreign countries setting our flag on fire. We can see clearly that they are engaged in a specific act of physical aggression against our country and everything for which we stand.”

Of course, the last person to take a kick at this can was a guy in the House of Representatives named Randy “Duke” Cunningham and he’s about to start doing eight years of hard time in the state penitentiary for the crime of being an average Republican.

We can only hope the same karma holds true for Frist as well.

More of Bob Geiger's work can be found at BobGeiger.com

Bill Frist threatens to re-structure the Intelligence Committee in order to block NSA hearings

Ted Kahl — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 06:55:31 -0500

From AfterDowningStreet.org:

Glenn Greenwald writes:

With the March 7 vote looming on Sen. Rockefeller's motion for the Committee to finally hold hearings to investigate the scope and nature of the Administration's NSA warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens -- and with several Committee Republicans indicating their intent to vote for hearings -- Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened the Committee yesterday and warned it not to hold any hearings.

Call it the year of lame excuses!

Frank Ranelli — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 11:53:24 -0500

A great summary of how Bush and others, such as the media, vastly failed all Americans in 2005:

Call it the year of lame excuses,

Officials sought any shelter in the year’s storms, both natural and political

By Alex Johnson
Reporter
MSNBC
Updated: 9:04 a.m. ET Dec. 29, 2005

“I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees,” President Bush said on Sept. 1, three days after Hurricane Katrina punctured the system of dams protecting New Orleans and created the greatest natural disaster in American history.

Unfortunately for the president, that wasn’t true, as news reports about studies that did just that would make clear. But it sounded good at the time.

“I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, ‘New Orleans Dodged the Bullet,’” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said three days later, explaining why his department was slow to respond to the devastation. “Because, if you recall, the storm moved to the east and then continued on and appeared to pass with considerable damage but nothing worse.”

Of course, it didn’t. And even if it had, that would only have meant that the bullet took out Mississippi and Alabama, rather than Louisiana. But it sounded good at the time.

That was 2005. It was the year of the excuse.

‘Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job’
Hurricane Katrina was the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. It killed 1,300 people, ravaged five states along the Gulf Coast and all but destroyed New Orleans. It also caused a political and bureaucratic storm of unprecedented proportions.

At the center of it was Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who became a laughingstock after he betrayed his agency’s lack of planning before Katrina and its lack of awareness afterward. Brown told CNN that he didn’t even learn that hundreds of New Orleanians were trapped in the fetid Convention Center until two days after the television networks had been broadcasting the scene to the world.

Instead, e-mail records showed, Brown and his staff were hard at work making sure he had enough time for a leisurely dinner in Baton Rouge and looked snappy on TV. “I got (my shirt) at Nordsstroms (sic),” Brown wrote. “Are you proud of me? Can I quit now? Can I go home?”

Others followed closely in Brown’s rhetorical missteps.

“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job,” the president said at a post-disaster photo-op, hard on the heels of pictures of the chief executive reviewing hurricane-ravaged areas from the comfort of Air Force One while returning from vacation.

The president’s mother placed foot firmly in mouth when she said this of the thousands of Louisianans who took refuge in Houston’s Astrodome: “So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.”

And Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., was overheard telling lobbyists: “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”

It sounded good at the time
2005 gave us opportunities galore to step into big, steaming piles of rhetoric:

Iraq: There was good news for the administration by year’s end as Iraqis carried out a largely peaceful and broadly inclusive election on the way to establishing a new constitution. But it was a long and deadly road to get there. The U.S. military death toll topped 2,000 — a symbolic milestone that the White House dismissed as substantively meaningless — and Bush himself put the total number of Iraqis killed at 30,000.

Quotation: “It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong,” Bush said in December, after his administration largely denied exactly that for almost three years.

Terri Schiavo: Fifteen years after she collapsed in a coma and seven years after various members of her family began fighting in court over what to do with her, Terri Schiavo died in a hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., in March. The battle over which relatives should have the final say in whether to remove her feeding tube turned into a proxy for the abortion wars as figures from Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to the Rev. Jesse Jackson weighed in on the meaning of life.

Quotation: “This is not somebody in a persistent vegetative state,” Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a physician, diagnosed in Washington after watching Schiavo on videotape. Turns out she was, as her autopsy revealed.

[snip]

FULL STORY HERE:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10576609/

GOP Would Rather Protect the Drug Companies Than Support the Troops

Ted Kahl — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 23:26:38 -0500

(NY Times) Companies making vaccines to protect against biological agents or pandemic viruses would be shielded from lawsuits, even if they are negligent or reckless, under a provision inserted into a military spending bill by Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader.

[...]

But critics, like Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said the language was more far-reaching than Mr. Frist had described.

"The Republican leadership in Congress cut a back room deal to give a massive Christmas bonus to the drug companies," Mr. Kennedy said in a statement.

In an interview, Mr. Kennedy said he would try to strip the language from the bill, arguing that it was not relevant to the military measure.

The immunity provision has already been approved by the House, which voted early Monday to pass the military spending measure.

Frist Donated to Campaign After HCA Sale

Ted Kahl — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 04:45:34 -0400

(AP) Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist paid $72,012 from his own pocket to his 2000 re-election campaign fund in August, two months after he was notified that trustees had sold millions of dollars of his stock in HCA Inc., the hospital chain founded by his father and brother.

That Aug. 30 payment was disclosed in Federal Election Commission filings last Friday. The documents also show the campaign fund on the same day paid off a $349,107 outstanding loan from U.S. Bank Corp.

Both transactions enabled the Tennessee Republican to close the Senate campaign fund in anticipation of his retirement from the Senate next year and a possible run for the White House in 2008.

Frist has come under scrutiny from federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission following the sale of his HCA stock. The sales were completed by July 1, near the stock's 52-week peak and two weeks before share prices fell 9 percent.