What Is It With These People?

From ABC News:

Bush administration officials throughout the government have engaged in White House-directed efforts to stifle, delay or dampen the release of climate change research that casts the White House or its policies in a bad light, says a new report that purports to be the most comprehensive assessment to date of the subject.

The reason why most members of the Bush Regime always seems to have their heads up their asses is because, with these people, it's all politics all the time. The recent PurgeGate Scandal arose from this obsession with politics. There's simply no substance. None. That's one hell of a way to run a country.

John DiIulio, the former Bush director of the White House Office Of Faith-based and Community Initiatives, summed it up this way (via Kevin Drum):

In eight months, I heard many, many staff discussions, but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions. There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues. There were, truth be told, only a couple of people in the West Wing who worried at all about policy substance and analysis....On social policy and related issues, the lack of even basic policy knowledge, and the only casual interest in knowing more, was somewhat breathtaking -- discussions by fairly senior people who meant Medicaid but were talking Medicare; near-instant shifts from discussing any actual policy pros and cons to discussing political communications, media strategy, et cetera. Even quite junior staff would sometimes hear quite senior staff pooh-pooh any need to dig deeper for pertinent information on a given issue.

The last straw for me on all of this was when Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, was put in charge of the post-Katrina reconstruction effort. Heckuva job, Rovie.