Here’s a Shocker: more Republican corruption with ties to the Bush family.

• A company called Moving Water Industries (MWI) won a $32 million contract to sell drainage pumps for use in New Orleans.
• The pumps have since proven to be defective.
• When bids for the project were taken, specifications were given. It turns out that those specs were copied from the MWI catalog, “typos and all,” as a way of ensuring that MWI got the contract.
• MWI used to employ now-Florida-governor Jeb Bush, and has strong ties to the Republican Party.

Surprise!

Yet another piece of evidence that the White House, and especially Condi Rice, had a great many significant warnings about 9/11 beforehand and ignored it. George Tenet, formerly willing to take the blame, now asserts that he had a briefing with Condi Rice in July 2001 where he told her that “There are going to be multiple, spectacular attacks against the United States. We believe these attacks are imminent,” and that “We need to consider immediate action inside Afghanistan now.”

Rice’s response: “I don’t know what we were supposed to pre-emptively strike in Afghanistan.”

Umm.. maybe, I dunno, Osama bin Laden? Remember how Bill Clinton tried to pre-emptively strike bin Laden in Afghanistan and was castigated by Republicans for it, who blamed him for trying to wag the dog and take attention away from more pressing matters like Monica Lewinsky?

Democrats may very well end up picking up even more House seats than expected next election, and probably Senate seats as well. Why? Well, partly because Democrats in Congress are doing notably well in the polls. But even more so because Republican have such a bad image that their party is more and more considered to be a “toxic climate.” Fewer people are willing to identify themselves as “Republicans,” and it doesn’t help that even after the 2006 drubbing, congressional Republicans are still supporting Bush with their voting records, and are still voting down highly popular measures such as the minimum wage hike, Medicare negotiation for drug prices, and an exit from the Iraq War.

This is probably best evidenced by the fact that the Republican Party is failing to get their top candidate picks for 2008 congressional races to sign on, and that Democrats are doing a better job fundraising than the GOP–a reversal of past trends.

Learned a new word: IOKIYAR. Acronym for: It’s OK If You’re A Republican. Referring, of course, to the common Republican double standard of condemning Democrats for certain things, but at the same time forgiving Republicans who do the exact same thing.

I agree–this is just creepy. Does Condi really feel this way about her husb–er, I mean, her president?