Ka-Ching! Ka-Ching!

Bush raises BIG bucks for one of his wingmen, Horrid Hatch. The biggest fundraiser in Orrin's career raised over $750,000 and we paid for Bush's travel.
He addressed a crowd of about 1,200 supporters. While he broke no new ground, Bush sprinkled compliments of Hatch throughout. "People like to hear him, they trust him, they trust his judgment. And so do I," he said. Bush thanked Hatch for help passing the Patriot Act, for confirming his picks to the Supreme Court and for backing his tax cuts.



Bordering on the obscene...lust for money

U.S. President George W. Bush (L) attends a fundraiser for candidate for U.S. Senate Bob Corker in Nashville, Tennessee, August 30, 2006. REUTERS/Jim Young


Bringing in the dough
Bob Corker's campaign raised over one-point-five million dollars last night thanks to a 21-hundred dollar a plate dinner featuring the President. Mr. Bush came to Tennessee to endorse Corker's bid for the U-S Senate seat being vacated by Bill Frist.
Taxpayers foot $100,000 bill for Chimp to fly to fundraiser.
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Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Bob Tuke said Senate candidate Bob Corker should pay for the cost of flying President George Bush to Nashville to campaign for him.

Mr. Tuke said he was "joining former U.S. Senate candidates Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary in calling for an end to 'free rides' on Air Force One to political fundraisers." He said the cost of the Bush trip will exceed $100,000.

Mr. Tuke stated, "Everyone knows that Bush Republicans are free spenders, but expecting taxpayers to shell out over $100,000 to raise money for Bob Corker is over the line. Van Hilleary and Ed Bryant believe that Bob Corker should reimburse the taxpayers for the usage of Air Force One. Tennessee taxpayers believe he should, too. If Bob Corker doesn't agree, it just shows how out of touch he is with our values."

He said as members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Bryant and Hilleary voted in favor of legislation to require political campaigns to fully reimburse the federal government for the cost of using Air Force One to fly the president to purely political functions. The votes took place on July 20, 1998 (Roll Call Vote #307) and September 14, 1999 (Roll Call Vote #416). Neither piece of legislation became law.

He said a study by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress charged with examining the receipt and payment of public funds, estimated that Air Force One costs between $35,000 and $56,000 per hour to operate.

Mr. Tuke said, "Since a round trip flight from Washington, D.C. to Nashville takes approximately three hours, the cost to taxpayers of using Air Force One to bring Bush to Nashville for Corker's fundraiser will be between $105,000 and $168,000.

"Corker has been known to use public office for personal gain. Enough is enough. It's wrong for him to ask the taxpayers to pay for his political events any time, but it's especially wrong when the average Tennessean is cash-strapped because of the outrageous cost of a gallon of gasoline."
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I take issue with the first sentence of this WaPo article.
Sandwiching politics between anniversary commemorations for the two pivotal events of his tenure, President Bush campaigned Wednesday on behalf of two Republican candidates facing unexpectedly strong Democratic opposition in Southern border states dominated in recent years by the GOP.

Everything that Bush does is political. From pretending to care about Katrina survivors to his mock outrage over 9/11, there's a political purpose to every word he's given to read.

A day after visiting New Orleans to mark the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Bush flew to Little Rock to appear at a closed-door fundraiser for former congressman Asa Hutchinson, who is trailing state Attorney General Mike Beebee in his bid to become Arkansas governor. After little more than three hours on the ground, Bush moved on to Nashville to help Bob Corker collect funds for his contest against Democrat Harold Ford Jr. for Tennessee's open Senate seat.
Lieboy continues to defend the Iraq war he's bungled so badly:
Bush offered an impassioned defense of his Iraq policy, linking the war to the battle against terrorists and once again rejecting the growing clamor from Democrats -- and some Republicans -- to begin setting a timetable for withdrawing the more than 130,000 U.S. troops. While acknowledging that many Americans are troubled by the violence in Iraq, he said "amazing progress" is being made and said defeating the insurgency in Iraq is essential to preventing terrorists from coming to America.

If America left Iraq "before the job is done," he said, it would be a "major defeat" for the United States and would create a "terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East."
He can't have it both ways...he said that Iraq was already a hotbed of terrorism, WMDs, mushroom clouds before we attacked. Perhaps if we stopped killing Iraqis they wouldn't hate us so much.