Hullabaloo

Monday, April 09, 2007

 
Dispatches From The Freashow Circuit

by digby


Back in the day I wrote:

This article in The Times seems to validate my theory that Bush saw Kerik as some sort of alter ego. It doesn't elaborate on his insistence on relying on his gut and therefore overruling the necessary vetting, but I'll bet you he did. These guys aren't usually sloppy about these things and this was outrageously sloppy. It has the mark of Codpiece all over it.

digby 12/19/2004

Waddaya know:

Bush met Kerik in the debris of the World Trade Center and was so impressed that he later sent him to Iraq to train police. The bald, mustachioed street cop appealed to Bush, who admired his can-do persona. By 2004, Kerik was sent to the Democratic National Convention as part of an opposition war room, given a prime speaking slot at the Republican National Convention and tapped to appear with the president on the campaign trail.

[...]

So when Giuliani telephoned Bush to recommend that he make Kerik his second-term homeland security secretary, the president jumped at the idea. The sheen of a 9/11 hero seemed to be just what was needed to take on a troubled new department struggling to integrate 22 agencies and 180,000 employees to protect the nation's ports, borders and airports; enforce immigration and customs laws; and respond to major disasters. Only a few aides, including then-Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and senior adviser Karl Rove, were clued in to the president's decision.

[..]

...White House officials knew that Kerik had been head of the nation's largest police department and had a security clearance for his work in Iraq. He was a hero of Sept. 11. He was well liked by the president. No one checked with key officials at the Homeland Security, Defense or State departments or elsewhere in the government. Even within the White House, the choice was kept secret so Bush could make a splash.

"The loop on it was extremely small," said a former official. "That's a president-of-the-United-States, 'I don't want anyone to know, I want to announce it on Friday' [deal]. It drives people to not follow all the normal procedures."

Yeah.

Of course, it's never really their fault. Nothing is:

In the White House, there is still resentment toward Giuliani for foisting the problem on the president. "There are two people who are to blame for what happened -- Rudy Giuliani and Bernie Kerik," said one former White House official. Still, a senior administration official acknowledged some responsibility as well. Bush wanted "a hard-charging personality" to get the department in line, he said. "Instead, we ended up shooting ourselves in the foot."

It had the mark of the Codpiece, allright. As does everything else this misbegotten empty suit has done to this country over the past six years.

Update: Oh, and in case anyone's wondering about last week's featured Republican weirdo, Dr Oxytocin, check this out:

The daughter, whose name was withheld, also said Keroack gave her parents money and presents, and allegedly issued a fraudulent prescription for the anti depressant Zoloft to her sister -- who had insurance -- when their uninsured mother became unable to pay for the prescription herself.

In his response to the board, Keroack acknowledged that he had switched the prescription, saying that he had recently given the complainant's sister several free samples of Zoloft. With the prescription in hand, he said, the sister would then be able to pass the samples on to his patient. He said it was like "killing two birds with stone."

He also acknowledged giving the patient money and presents, but denied overstepping the patient-doctor boundary, as alleged in the complaint.

"I am guilty of being generous to a fault in the care of this couple and their family," said Keroack, who has a degree from the Tufts University School of Medicine.

"It seems that being aware of the dynamics in a family that I have taken care of for over 12 years has somehow been interpreted to be atypical, abnormal, and a violation of boundaries," he wrote the board. "This is a sad reflection on the state of what is considered normal within today's medical care system. In my opinion, it does not serve a patient's best interest to whisk them in and out of an office visit in 15-20 minutes, learning nothing about their actual every day life."

[...]

In the 2005 complaint, the patient's daughter, who had once been Keroack's patient, alleged that the doctor gave her mother money for groceries, evenings out with her husband, and a Cape Cod getaway for the couple. "What MD does this???" the daughter wrote the board of medicine in writing.

But she seemed most upset by a letter he had recently sent urging her to make peace with her parents, who had both been diagnosed with cancer.

Using exclamation points, all-capitalized sentences, and quotes from country singer Randy Travis, Keroack urged his patient's daughter to make up with her mother "before it's too late to fix it." "If either of your parents were to die tomorrow . . . . YOU and ONLY you will be responsible for the losses that will surely follow."

The man is a gynecologist. And obviously a total nutcase, not that we didn't already know that. He's just another in a long line of Bush appointees from the bowels of the far right freakshow who have been given important jobs in the federal government.

I can only imagine what we are going to find in the civil service after seven years of career workers being forced out for Pat Robertson U grads. Aye yay yay.


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digby 4/09/2007 07:20:00 PM |