According to the wires Saddam gonna hang at
dawn. It's a suitably melodramatic moment. I suppose why waste the day. I won't cut the evil bastard any slack here but the fact that he was tried in an Iraqi kangaroo revenge court and convicted in same under what can best be described as civil war conditions (is chaos too strong a term?) does not bode well for the aftermath of the execution.
The irony of course is that even under the conditions as they are in Iraq, Saddam was guaranteed more even jurisprudence than he would have been had Bush tribunalized him in Gitmo.
All that aside, Bush has never been one for the rule of law so to see him bollocks up this one isn't a surprise. Bush could of had Saddam tried under international law as the international criminal that he (Saddam not the other one) is.
Or he could have actually assisted the Iraqis in a Truth and Reconciliation process instead of his "The Iraq government is sovereign because they can do whatever I tell them to do" trial. But that time has long since past. Both for T&R and for Iraqis giving a jackshit what George Bush thinks.
A cynic might say (oh. not I for sure) that Bush didn't see to it that Saddam went to the Hague because he didn't want to enhance the prestige of a court at which he himself might one day be in the docket. But we shall leave that for cynics and for those that dream what might have been.
What we will have instead is Saddam hung at dawn. Likely it will be privately videotaped and somehow just somehow the execution will be leaked and next week we can look forward to seeing Saddam dangle all over the internets just like we saw Britney's nethers dangle a few weeks ago.
And in the next 24 hours we will get the Bush gloat and smirk as he calls a press conference to discuss the end of tyranny and the triumph of democracy in the middle east. Not withstanding the fact the neither justice nor democracy nor anybody's well-being was served by Bush and his thugs destroying Iraq in order to save it(s oil) and shredding the Constitution in the process if I may gratuitously add.
All the while he is planning to escalate the troop level in the war in Iraq another very useful 10% or 15% for no reason other than because he gotta do something to look all deciderful and stuff.
Well so long, Saddam. You no doubt will find some amenable company in Hell. Now and in the future.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Saturday, December 23, 2006
George Bush - homunculus
George Bush continues being the homunculus of the American Presidency. He has cast himself in no particular order as Truman, Washington, Lincoln, FDR, JFK (remember Mars), Poppy and now both LBJ and Nixon. As if in a political manifestation of Moore's Law, these last he is conflating with breathtaking speed. It was only November 7 that he had his LBJ moment. The American voters no matter how you read it told Old George to go fuck himself and to take his fucking war with him.
Of course W's Nixononian tendencies have been there for all to see with De Facto Re Cheney making the rules and the Fristulan Congress being let's say compliant while George stomps all over the Constitution as he heralds it in support of his imperium.
But now as I said, no sooner has he had his LBJ moment that he is going into his Nixonian "peace with honor" phase which George calls "victory" and "A new way forward" (He's got me so turned around for once I don't know whether to give him props for honesty in that he ain't getting out and unlike Nixon he doesn't care who knows). Nonetheless his slogans would make nifty banners. I bet in years to come those in-house tee-shirts and coffee mugs will fetch an even bigger bundle on E-Bay than the usual run of the mill presidential detritus - I mean memorabilia.
But to my point. Despite the fact that George has dabbled with his inner Nixon with the aid of Cheney and Yoo, he has now gone full Milhouse with his plan to escalate the war in Vi*** - no I mean Iraq. Shit that ghost has presence.
But here we are - after a complete repudiation by the American voters, a continuing repudiation by the polls, a repudiation by the Joint Chiefs of Staff until the White House did the Republican thing and held the voting open until they could knuckle the opposition, even after all that - George is going to send even more American soldiers to endanger themselves for no apparent reason - at least no reason that I and the majority of the American people and even George W Bush can articulate.
And he is doing it right on time. It is Christmas - that magical time of year when illegal wars are escalated through illegal means that will in future times constitute sound arguments for accusing the inhabitant of Office of the Executive of War Crimes.
Of course W's Nixononian tendencies have been there for all to see with De Facto Re Cheney making the rules and the Fristulan Congress being let's say compliant while George stomps all over the Constitution as he heralds it in support of his imperium.
But now as I said, no sooner has he had his LBJ moment that he is going into his Nixonian "peace with honor" phase which George calls "victory" and "A new way forward" (He's got me so turned around for once I don't know whether to give him props for honesty in that he ain't getting out and unlike Nixon he doesn't care who knows). Nonetheless his slogans would make nifty banners. I bet in years to come those in-house tee-shirts and coffee mugs will fetch an even bigger bundle on E-Bay than the usual run of the mill presidential detritus - I mean memorabilia.
But to my point. Despite the fact that George has dabbled with his inner Nixon with the aid of Cheney and Yoo, he has now gone full Milhouse with his plan to escalate the war in Vi*** - no I mean Iraq. Shit that ghost has presence.
But here we are - after a complete repudiation by the American voters, a continuing repudiation by the polls, a repudiation by the Joint Chiefs of Staff until the White House did the Republican thing and held the voting open until they could knuckle the opposition, even after all that - George is going to send even more American soldiers to endanger themselves for no apparent reason - at least no reason that I and the majority of the American people and even George W Bush can articulate.
And he is doing it right on time. It is Christmas - that magical time of year when illegal wars are escalated through illegal means that will in future times constitute sound arguments for accusing the inhabitant of Office of the Executive of War Crimes.
Monday, December 18, 2006
A modest proposal
Y'know how George Bush likes to think of himself as the CEO president? I mean, he has called himself the decider - that essence of CEO-ness. He is the one to make the decidings that affect everyday life. Because that is what CEO's do.
It's become pretty clear that the American people don't think much of George Bush or of his deciderings.
Via Political Wire
comes this
"Monday's poll results suggest the widespread dissatisfaction with the Iraq war may be dragging down public approval of Bush's handling of anti-terrorism efforts as well. Support for his management of that issue plunged to 42 percent, down from 50 percent in a poll taken Oct. 13-15, while the percentage of those who disapproved rose from 47 percent to 55 percent -- the first time more than 50 percent have registered disapproval on that topic."
What to do? Well everyone knows that the witch hunt that was the Starr Inquisition has destroyed the integrity of the impeachment process. Impeachment being a supremely political act is always dicey. Once turned into the rabid and idiotic farce that the Republican Congress made of it under the Clinton Administration, it has become political anathema.
That is only marginally so bad. impeachment of a president - even for just and legal reasons - is too powerful a remedy to be taken for any but the most heinous conditions. This isn't to say that I don't think that George W Bush should have his political ass impeached and hung on its very own Wall of American Shame. I'd mix the concrete myself.
But clearly that will only happen is we can reach near acclamation in our desire to be rid of George Bush. And how likely is acclamation if there are still 30 or so percent of dead-enders who can't bring themselves to admit that George Bush is a royal fuck up (and who has fucked them up pretty good along the way). Not to mention that guy out there who thinks he's doing a good job.
Now as I said - Lonesome George is a CEO president. And when CEO's fuck up - as George Bush has done mightily, there is one thing that CEO's understand. The Buyout.
Happens all the time. CEO gets caught spying on its board of directors say, or CEO takes too much advantage of home decorating opportunities or worst of all runs the company's stock into the sewer what comes next?
The Buyout! Call it the Golden Parachute, The Golden Handshake. Whatever, invariably it involves gold. And equally invariably it gets the bastard's ballast out of the corner office and more importantly off the stock price. America's stock price isn't doing too good in the world just now - if you know what I mean. And given the holy mess that Lonesome George has created in his mad pursuit of what we might laughingly call his Iraq policy if it wasn't so tragic, it ain't gonna improve much over the next eight business cycles.
We have reached that point in the sad, sorry stain on our nation that is the Bush Presidency. Let us all buck up and be true to our Capitalist principles.
I say forget ISG - he already pissed all over that one. Forget hearings, forget impeachment. No, forget all that. Instead, buy out George Bush's Contract. Throw in Cheney's for good measure - pure chump change. It can't possibly cost more that a few days in Iraq - worse case. And it has to be a lot better than enduring these fools for one more market.
It's become pretty clear that the American people don't think much of George Bush or of his deciderings.
Via Political Wire
comes this
"Monday's poll results suggest the widespread dissatisfaction with the Iraq war may be dragging down public approval of Bush's handling of anti-terrorism efforts as well. Support for his management of that issue plunged to 42 percent, down from 50 percent in a poll taken Oct. 13-15, while the percentage of those who disapproved rose from 47 percent to 55 percent -- the first time more than 50 percent have registered disapproval on that topic."
What to do? Well everyone knows that the witch hunt that was the Starr Inquisition has destroyed the integrity of the impeachment process. Impeachment being a supremely political act is always dicey. Once turned into the rabid and idiotic farce that the Republican Congress made of it under the Clinton Administration, it has become political anathema.
That is only marginally so bad. impeachment of a president - even for just and legal reasons - is too powerful a remedy to be taken for any but the most heinous conditions. This isn't to say that I don't think that George W Bush should have his political ass impeached and hung on its very own Wall of American Shame. I'd mix the concrete myself.
But clearly that will only happen is we can reach near acclamation in our desire to be rid of George Bush. And how likely is acclamation if there are still 30 or so percent of dead-enders who can't bring themselves to admit that George Bush is a royal fuck up (and who has fucked them up pretty good along the way). Not to mention that guy out there who thinks he's doing a good job.
Now as I said - Lonesome George is a CEO president. And when CEO's fuck up - as George Bush has done mightily, there is one thing that CEO's understand. The Buyout.
Happens all the time. CEO gets caught spying on its board of directors say, or CEO takes too much advantage of home decorating opportunities or worst of all runs the company's stock into the sewer what comes next?
The Buyout! Call it the Golden Parachute, The Golden Handshake. Whatever, invariably it involves gold. And equally invariably it gets the bastard's ballast out of the corner office and more importantly off the stock price. America's stock price isn't doing too good in the world just now - if you know what I mean. And given the holy mess that Lonesome George has created in his mad pursuit of what we might laughingly call his Iraq policy if it wasn't so tragic, it ain't gonna improve much over the next eight business cycles.
We have reached that point in the sad, sorry stain on our nation that is the Bush Presidency. Let us all buck up and be true to our Capitalist principles.
I say forget ISG - he already pissed all over that one. Forget hearings, forget impeachment. No, forget all that. Instead, buy out George Bush's Contract. Throw in Cheney's for good measure - pure chump change. It can't possibly cost more that a few days in Iraq - worse case. And it has to be a lot better than enduring these fools for one more market.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
jeff greenfield hearts Iran?
Here's what he said:
"But, in the case of Obama, he may be walking around with a sartorial time bomb. Ask yourself, is there any other major public figure who dresses the way he does? Why, yes. It is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, unlike most of his predecessors, seems to have skipped through enough copies of "GQ" to find the jacket-and-no-tie look agreeable."
Is Jeff Greenfield a walking time bomb right there on CNN?
you decide
exhibit a: http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/WORLD/meast/12/12/iran.holocaust.conference.reut/newt1.2130.ahmadinejad.ap.jpg
exhibit b:
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2003/US/Northeast/08/15/otsc.greenfield/story.greenfield.jpg
control:
http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:NPks_Yj_x4NUeM:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/homepage/hp4-25-05d.jpg
"But, in the case of Obama, he may be walking around with a sartorial time bomb. Ask yourself, is there any other major public figure who dresses the way he does? Why, yes. It is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, unlike most of his predecessors, seems to have skipped through enough copies of "GQ" to find the jacket-and-no-tie look agreeable."
Is Jeff Greenfield a walking time bomb right there on CNN?
you decide
exhibit a: http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/WORLD/meast/12/12/iran.holocaust.conference.reut/newt1.2130.ahmadinejad.ap.jpg
exhibit b:
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2003/US/Northeast/08/15/otsc.greenfield/story.greenfield.jpg
control:
http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:NPks_Yj_x4NUeM:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/homepage/hp4-25-05d.jpg
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
No bones about it
Wondering about Neanderthals and DNA as in this story:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2455248,00.html
"DNA extracted from a Neanderthal bone has been analysed in detail for the first time and the genetic code of humanity’s closest cousin will be mapped completely within two years, scientists announced yesterday."
Now the article says that Neanderthals are humanity's "closest cousin." What DNA-wise does that mean. Is a Neanderthal embryo as "valued" as a human embryo in the US? The reason I bring this up is that if we can clone all kinds of non-human animals, is there a moral reason to forbid using Neanderthal DNA to make. well, a Neanderthal.
There is some evidence that Neanderthals and humans might have been able to interbreed - making the different species argument problematic. On the other hand - like wooly mammoths - there aren't any Neanderthals around anymore.
If we could create a mammoth, would we? I think someone somewhere would do it. And other than the initial shock has worn off - it would after all be a little like having a UFO land in the town square - I think no one would have a durable moral argument against it.
So back to the Neanderthal. Would we if could? Should we? Why? Why not?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2455248,00.html
"DNA extracted from a Neanderthal bone has been analysed in detail for the first time and the genetic code of humanity’s closest cousin will be mapped completely within two years, scientists announced yesterday."
Now the article says that Neanderthals are humanity's "closest cousin." What DNA-wise does that mean. Is a Neanderthal embryo as "valued" as a human embryo in the US? The reason I bring this up is that if we can clone all kinds of non-human animals, is there a moral reason to forbid using Neanderthal DNA to make. well, a Neanderthal.
There is some evidence that Neanderthals and humans might have been able to interbreed - making the different species argument problematic. On the other hand - like wooly mammoths - there aren't any Neanderthals around anymore.
If we could create a mammoth, would we? I think someone somewhere would do it. And other than the initial shock has worn off - it would after all be a little like having a UFO land in the town square - I think no one would have a durable moral argument against it.
So back to the Neanderthal. Would we if could? Should we? Why? Why not?
Thursday, October 19, 2006
COWARD
According to Laura Rozen Rumsfeld is bailing after the elections.
This is the mark of a true coward. When faced with the likelihood that he is going to grilled by Congress - something he has 1) had to do rarely and 2) under the most shall we say congenial circumstances - he decides that it is time to spend more time with the family.
Of course a REAL Congress doing REAL oversight and pursuing REAL investigations will have a subpoena. Just the ticket to drag his sorry retired ass under the klieg lights to get his patented bromides.
I... can't...wait. Next summer will be fun.
Of course in the real world it means that he leaves it someone in the waning days of The Bush Disasteration - someone no doubt approved in the most bitter of circumstances - to try to clean up the dogshit he has made of our defense policy.
Good old Rummy... just like a coward.
This is the mark of a true coward. When faced with the likelihood that he is going to grilled by Congress - something he has 1) had to do rarely and 2) under the most shall we say congenial circumstances - he decides that it is time to spend more time with the family.
Of course a REAL Congress doing REAL oversight and pursuing REAL investigations will have a subpoena. Just the ticket to drag his sorry retired ass under the klieg lights to get his patented bromides.
I... can't...wait. Next summer will be fun.
Of course in the real world it means that he leaves it someone in the waning days of The Bush Disasteration - someone no doubt approved in the most bitter of circumstances - to try to clean up the dogshit he has made of our defense policy.
Good old Rummy... just like a coward.
Our very own Nero
Is it too early to start figuring out how we can undo the damage caused by this one?
Monday, October 02, 2006
From Daddy Party to Creepy Uncle Party
I really don't have anymore to add to that headline. I am flabbergasted by the implosion of the Republican Party. In the same week they gut the Constitution they become the next big child sex abuse law suit.
And as if that is not bad enough we get this image from This Modern World (http://thismodernworld.com/3215) :
which seems to capture both men as they feel the massive shitflow pouring in over the top of their waders.
I really really hope that in twenty years (assuming we survive with a nation in tact) that we can look back at this period and really understand what really happened. It is just too weird to be the offices of a normal mortal agency.
Of course as we see in this weeks revelations from Woodward's book Henry Kissinger is a top unofficial advisor on the Iraq mess. Which not only explains the mess in Iraq but also the weirdness beyond human agency.
Unfortunately it virtually guarantees in twenty years time we will be doing it all over again - maybe in the dessert plains of antartica (imagine the untapped resources there). Kissinger not being human, leaves me unconvinced of his mortality.
Someone ask Hitchens. That is, if you can get the rug from between his teeth.
And as if that is not bad enough we get this image from This Modern World (http://thismodernworld.com/3215) :
which seems to capture both men as they feel the massive shitflow pouring in over the top of their waders.
I really really hope that in twenty years (assuming we survive with a nation in tact) that we can look back at this period and really understand what really happened. It is just too weird to be the offices of a normal mortal agency.
Of course as we see in this weeks revelations from Woodward's book Henry Kissinger is a top unofficial advisor on the Iraq mess. Which not only explains the mess in Iraq but also the weirdness beyond human agency.
Unfortunately it virtually guarantees in twenty years time we will be doing it all over again - maybe in the dessert plains of antartica (imagine the untapped resources there). Kissinger not being human, leaves me unconvinced of his mortality.
Someone ask Hitchens. That is, if you can get the rug from between his teeth.
Friday, September 29, 2006
rethinking the approach
warandpiece has this post about Woodwrds latest show and tell
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004954.html
The big news is a July 10,2001 meeting where Tenet and aide in near panic mode tell Condi that OBL is gonna get big soon. She fluffs them off according to the account.
The White House acknowledges the meeting but says it is mischaracterized. Now the problem is that Bush et al have only one mode.
Like a skunk when they sense fear, they skunk everything in sight. As a strategy, that is pretty effective in the short term but the problem is that afterwards only a skunk can stand to be nearby.
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004954.html
The big news is a July 10,2001 meeting where Tenet and aide in near panic mode tell Condi that OBL is gonna get big soon. She fluffs them off according to the account.
The White House acknowledges the meeting but says it is mischaracterized. Now the problem is that Bush et al have only one mode.
Like a skunk when they sense fear, they skunk everything in sight. As a strategy, that is pretty effective in the short term but the problem is that afterwards only a skunk can stand to be nearby.
join 'em
On the campaign trail, Goerge Bush criticized his critics saying, "You do not create terrorism by fighting terrorism." Of course George being George he neglected to include any mention of the quality of that fight. That is too much nuance I guess.
Or maybe I am wrong. Maybe George Bush has been right all along and it really is that simple. So ok let's do it. George has asked nothing of us as Americans to fight terrorism except to shop more. But I am as American as anyone and I want to do more. And I know you do too. So let's fight terrorism. Here's my plan.
See we make a bunch of mud pies. No, now don't get too excited we're going to throw them at Democrats. We're looking for real terrorists here. Like Osama Bin Laden. Well Maybe not the real Osama Bin Laden. We can't seem to find him and that's kind of sad but wait!
We have plenty of photgraphs and even videos. We can project pictures as big as, well, as big as it seems Osama really must be. What's that 100 feet tall? And maybe some of those jihadist fighters. You know the ones. Those guys that the Republican led Congress including my Senator Collins (Senator Snowe voted a courageous "not present" on the bill) decided that they should gut the Constitution and give George Bush the ability to torture any American he wanted. Yeah, Those guys.
So that's the plan. We get pictures of terroists and throw mud pies at them.
I know it doesn't sound like much but consider this: it is cheaper than what we are doing in Iraq and we won't be worsening the problem like the NIE that Bush refuses to release says he is doing in Iraq. And remember, the President Of The United States said it himself - and he is a WAR PRESIDENT and stuff - "You do not create terrorism by fighting terrorism." so it would be at least as effective as George Bush's war policy.
And a whole lot smarter.
Or maybe I am wrong. Maybe George Bush has been right all along and it really is that simple. So ok let's do it. George has asked nothing of us as Americans to fight terrorism except to shop more. But I am as American as anyone and I want to do more. And I know you do too. So let's fight terrorism. Here's my plan.
See we make a bunch of mud pies. No, now don't get too excited we're going to throw them at Democrats. We're looking for real terrorists here. Like Osama Bin Laden. Well Maybe not the real Osama Bin Laden. We can't seem to find him and that's kind of sad but wait!
We have plenty of photgraphs and even videos. We can project pictures as big as, well, as big as it seems Osama really must be. What's that 100 feet tall? And maybe some of those jihadist fighters. You know the ones. Those guys that the Republican led Congress including my Senator Collins (Senator Snowe voted a courageous "not present" on the bill) decided that they should gut the Constitution and give George Bush the ability to torture any American he wanted. Yeah, Those guys.
So that's the plan. We get pictures of terroists and throw mud pies at them.
I know it doesn't sound like much but consider this: it is cheaper than what we are doing in Iraq and we won't be worsening the problem like the NIE that Bush refuses to release says he is doing in Iraq. And remember, the President Of The United States said it himself - and he is a WAR PRESIDENT and stuff - "You do not create terrorism by fighting terrorism." so it would be at least as effective as George Bush's war policy.
And a whole lot smarter.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
latest letter
Emailed indiviudally to my senators and sent to my local daily -
An Open Letter to Senators Snowe and Collins
It may be too late by the time this letter appears in these pages, the pro-torture bill may already have been voted on in the rush of the Republican leadership to rubberstamp an historic bill abrogating Constitutionally protected Habeus Corpus.
To my Senator,
I am very disturbed by the actions of this administration and of your leadership in advancing the pro-torture, anti-habeus corpus bill.
On its merits I find the bill un-American and not just unconstitutional but anti-Constitutional. That you or any of your senatorial colleagues would deign to even consider this disgrace - more than an affront, if I may, it is pissing on the Constitution and all that we hold dear. And the worst part is that we all know it. You know and I know and Bill Frist knows that this is all just to keep President Bush and his willing executioners safe from criminal actions for breaking laws that he should have been held accountable for in your very body.
Are you willing to become at last one more of his willing executioners?
To say I am disgusted is an understatement. To say that I am ashamed of those to whom I have entrusted my representation - who have sworn to uphold and defend our Constitution - is a kindness to those who have betrayed my trust, that of my fellows citizens and this nation that we all hold sacred.
How can I convince you that a vote in favor of this bill is a disaster for our nation?
Consider this:
The day after this bill is signed into law our country will be a different place.
It will be a nation of torture as a national policy.
It will be a nation of secret detention.
It will be a nation where ANYONE accused (and can you say who could NOT be accused under this bill?) DOES NOT HAVE HIS DAY IN COURT. In fact he may never be seen or heard from again.
We will be a nation of The Disappeared.
Are you not disgusted by those who would do that to the country you love?
I am.
Your leadership is needed now like never before in your career as a Senator. You must stop this bill. I am not being too glib in saying that YOU must save this nation from the disaster it is about to inflict upon itself.
Paul Orsillo
Kittery Point Maine
An Open Letter to Senators Snowe and Collins
It may be too late by the time this letter appears in these pages, the pro-torture bill may already have been voted on in the rush of the Republican leadership to rubberstamp an historic bill abrogating Constitutionally protected Habeus Corpus.
To my Senator,
I am very disturbed by the actions of this administration and of your leadership in advancing the pro-torture, anti-habeus corpus bill.
On its merits I find the bill un-American and not just unconstitutional but anti-Constitutional. That you or any of your senatorial colleagues would deign to even consider this disgrace - more than an affront, if I may, it is pissing on the Constitution and all that we hold dear. And the worst part is that we all know it. You know and I know and Bill Frist knows that this is all just to keep President Bush and his willing executioners safe from criminal actions for breaking laws that he should have been held accountable for in your very body.
Are you willing to become at last one more of his willing executioners?
To say I am disgusted is an understatement. To say that I am ashamed of those to whom I have entrusted my representation - who have sworn to uphold and defend our Constitution - is a kindness to those who have betrayed my trust, that of my fellows citizens and this nation that we all hold sacred.
How can I convince you that a vote in favor of this bill is a disaster for our nation?
Consider this:
The day after this bill is signed into law our country will be a different place.
It will be a nation of torture as a national policy.
It will be a nation of secret detention.
It will be a nation where ANYONE accused (and can you say who could NOT be accused under this bill?) DOES NOT HAVE HIS DAY IN COURT. In fact he may never be seen or heard from again.
We will be a nation of The Disappeared.
Are you not disgusted by those who would do that to the country you love?
I am.
Your leadership is needed now like never before in your career as a Senator. You must stop this bill. I am not being too glib in saying that YOU must save this nation from the disaster it is about to inflict upon itself.
Paul Orsillo
Kittery Point Maine
latest letter
Emailed indiviudally to my senators and sent to my local daily -
An Open Letter to Senators Snowe and Collins
It may be too late by the time this letter appears in these pages, the pro-torture bill may already have been voted on in the rush of the Republican leadership to rubberstamp an historic bill abrogating Constitutionally protected Habeus Corpus.
To my Senator,
I am very disturbed by the actions of this administration and of your leadership in advancing the pro-torture, anti-habeus corpus bill.
On its merits I find the bill un-American and not just unconstitutional but anti-Constitutional. That you or any of your senatorial colleagues would deign to even consider this disgrace - more than an affront, if I may, it is pissing on the Constitution and all that we hold dear. And the worst part is that we all know it. You know and I know and Bill Frist knows that this is all just to keep President Bush and his willing executioners safe from criminal actions for breaking laws that he should have been held accountable for in your very body.
Are you willing to become at last one more of his willing executioners?
To say I am disgusted is an understatement. To say that I am ashamed of those to whom I have entrusted my representation - who have sworn to uphold and defend our Constitution - is a kindness to those who have betrayed my trust, that of my fellows citizens and this nation that we all hold sacred.
How can I convince you that a vote in favor of this bill is a disaster for our nation?
Consider this:
The day after this bill is signed into law our country will be a different place.
It will be a nation of torture as a national policy.
It will be a nation of secret detention.
It will be a nation where ANYONE accused (and can you say who could NOT be accused under this bill?) DOES NOT HAVE HIS DAY IN COURT. In fact he may never be seen or heard from again.
We will be a nation of The Disappeared.
Are you not disgusted by those who would do that to the country you love?
I am.
Your leadership is needed now like never before in your career as a Senator. You must stop this bill. I am not being too glib in saying that YOU must save this nation from the disaster it is about to inflict upon itself.
Paul Orsillo
Kittery Point Maine
An Open Letter to Senators Snowe and Collins
It may be too late by the time this letter appears in these pages, the pro-torture bill may already have been voted on in the rush of the Republican leadership to rubberstamp an historic bill abrogating Constitutionally protected Habeus Corpus.
To my Senator,
I am very disturbed by the actions of this administration and of your leadership in advancing the pro-torture, anti-habeus corpus bill.
On its merits I find the bill un-American and not just unconstitutional but anti-Constitutional. That you or any of your senatorial colleagues would deign to even consider this disgrace - more than an affront, if I may, it is pissing on the Constitution and all that we hold dear. And the worst part is that we all know it. You know and I know and Bill Frist knows that this is all just to keep President Bush and his willing executioners safe from criminal actions for breaking laws that he should have been held accountable for in your very body.
Are you willing to become at last one more of his willing executioners?
To say I am disgusted is an understatement. To say that I am ashamed of those to whom I have entrusted my representation - who have sworn to uphold and defend our Constitution - is a kindness to those who have betrayed my trust, that of my fellows citizens and this nation that we all hold sacred.
How can I convince you that a vote in favor of this bill is a disaster for our nation?
Consider this:
The day after this bill is signed into law our country will be a different place.
It will be a nation of torture as a national policy.
It will be a nation of secret detention.
It will be a nation where ANYONE accused (and can you say who could NOT be accused under this bill?) DOES NOT HAVE HIS DAY IN COURT. In fact he may never be seen or heard from again.
We will be a nation of The Disappeared.
Are you not disgusted by those who would do that to the country you love?
I am.
Your leadership is needed now like never before in your career as a Senator. You must stop this bill. I am not being too glib in saying that YOU must save this nation from the disaster it is about to inflict upon itself.
Paul Orsillo
Kittery Point Maine
latest letter
Emailed indiviudally to my senators and sent to my local daily -
An Open Letter to Senators Snowe and Collins
It may be too late by the time this letter appears in these pages, the pro-torture bill may already have been voted on in the rush of the Republican leadership to rubberstamp an historic bill abrogating Constitutionally protected Habeus Corpus.
To my Senator,
I am very disturbed by the actions of this administration and of your leadership in advancing the pro-torture, anti-habeus corpus bill.
On its merits I find the bill un-American and not just unconstitutional but anti-Constitutional. That you or any of your senatorial colleagues would deign to even consider this disgrace - more than an affront, if I may, it is pissing on the Constitution and all that we hold dear. And the worst part is that we all know it. You know and I know and Bill Frist knows that this is all just to keep President Bush and his willing executioners safe from criminal actions for breaking laws that he should have been held accountable for in your very body.
Are you willing to become at last one more of his willing executioners?
To say I am disgusted is an understatement. To say that I am ashamed of those to whom I have entrusted my representation - who have sworn to uphold and defend our Constitution - is a kindness to those who have betrayed my trust, that of my fellows citizens and this nation that we all hold sacred.
How can I convince you that a vote in favor of this bill is a disaster for our nation?
Consider this:
The day after this bill is signed into law our country will be a different place.
It will be a nation of torture as a national policy.
It will be a nation of secret detention.
It will be a nation where ANYONE accused (and can you say who could NOT be accused under this bill?) DOES NOT HAVE HIS DAY IN COURT. In fact he may never be seen or heard from again.
We will be a nation of The Disappeared.
Are you not disgusted by those who would do that to the country you love?
I am.
Your leadership is needed now like never before in your career as a Senator. You must stop this bill. I am not being too glib in saying that YOU must save this nation from the disaster it is about to inflict upon itself.
Paul Orsillo
Kittery Point Maine
An Open Letter to Senators Snowe and Collins
It may be too late by the time this letter appears in these pages, the pro-torture bill may already have been voted on in the rush of the Republican leadership to rubberstamp an historic bill abrogating Constitutionally protected Habeus Corpus.
To my Senator,
I am very disturbed by the actions of this administration and of your leadership in advancing the pro-torture, anti-habeus corpus bill.
On its merits I find the bill un-American and not just unconstitutional but anti-Constitutional. That you or any of your senatorial colleagues would deign to even consider this disgrace - more than an affront, if I may, it is pissing on the Constitution and all that we hold dear. And the worst part is that we all know it. You know and I know and Bill Frist knows that this is all just to keep President Bush and his willing executioners safe from criminal actions for breaking laws that he should have been held accountable for in your very body.
Are you willing to become at last one more of his willing executioners?
To say I am disgusted is an understatement. To say that I am ashamed of those to whom I have entrusted my representation - who have sworn to uphold and defend our Constitution - is a kindness to those who have betrayed my trust, that of my fellows citizens and this nation that we all hold sacred.
How can I convince you that a vote in favor of this bill is a disaster for our nation?
Consider this:
The day after this bill is signed into law our country will be a different place.
It will be a nation of torture as a national policy.
It will be a nation of secret detention.
It will be a nation where ANYONE accused (and can you say who could NOT be accused under this bill?) DOES NOT HAVE HIS DAY IN COURT. In fact he may never be seen or heard from again.
We will be a nation of The Disappeared.
Are you not disgusted by those who would do that to the country you love?
I am.
Your leadership is needed now like never before in your career as a Senator. You must stop this bill. I am not being too glib in saying that YOU must save this nation from the disaster it is about to inflict upon itself.
Paul Orsillo
Kittery Point Maine
Monday, September 25, 2006
Arlen. Ain't he the funny one.
You gotta hand it to this bunch they really have their parts down. You have the sainted John McCain standing firmly against torture as a moral imperative - until he caves in and makes up stories about how - no really this will work.
And Senator JAG who is so concerned about his colleagues in the JAG he is willing to open the road to a future of serious trouble for military interogators charged with international crimes against humanity.
What I want to know is: Why are they so sure that whatever deal they might think they made with the Bush junta will mean anything?
Won't he just attach a signing statement to it saying that everything they thought they meant is the bullshit that it is?
What will St John of McCain do then? Weep bitter tears?
As for Arlen. He is making noises about Habeus Corpus again. That means we can expect him to come out strongly in favor of preserving Habeus Corpus until he caves in and decides it is sacrosanct unless George Bush decides it isn't. Arlen is a man who is slowly dying on the national stage and he still can't put his conscience in front of political expediency.
Please Arlen. Get this charade over with quickly. You are soiling yourself again. And the act has stopped being funny.
And Senator JAG who is so concerned about his colleagues in the JAG he is willing to open the road to a future of serious trouble for military interogators charged with international crimes against humanity.
What I want to know is: Why are they so sure that whatever deal they might think they made with the Bush junta will mean anything?
Won't he just attach a signing statement to it saying that everything they thought they meant is the bullshit that it is?
What will St John of McCain do then? Weep bitter tears?
As for Arlen. He is making noises about Habeus Corpus again. That means we can expect him to come out strongly in favor of preserving Habeus Corpus until he caves in and decides it is sacrosanct unless George Bush decides it isn't. Arlen is a man who is slowly dying on the national stage and he still can't put his conscience in front of political expediency.
Please Arlen. Get this charade over with quickly. You are soiling yourself again. And the act has stopped being funny.
this is enhanced interrogation
And there will be NOTHING stopping El Presidente from deciding you need enhancement.
Waddaya gonna do? Complain to your Congressman? Oh yeah I forgot - maybe your Congressman is Saint John of McCain.
Waddaya gonna do? Complain to your Congressman? Oh yeah I forgot - maybe your Congressman is Saint John of McCain.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
hit my limit
George Bush has finally got to me. He has made completely disgusted by what he has done to my country. I always disliked the man - personally though from the distance of one who only has the impression that he allows to world to see via the press.
I always disliked his policies. His "Compassionate Conservatism" line struck me as bullshit the first time I heard it and he has done nothing but reinforce that impression.
He is an imbecile, a spoiled kid who has grown beyond legal immaturity but never attained maturity.
He is a jerk of the first order and in his position he has been a danger to the world. In his position with his willing executioners in the Republican Congress he has become a danger to the republic.
One day - should the fools in the Republican party stay in office past November - they will find out what life under George Bush is really like but then they will not be able to influence the outcome because they have pissed ther power away.
Having lived through the 60's of Johnson and Nixon, And this time I fell it is far more dangerous and it is dangerously wrong.
We are now or soon to become, given the Republican propensity for rubberstamping, a torturing nation. Not just de facto as we have been off and on but de jure. AND FOREVER.
What kind of scar will that leave on us? we are the willing executioners now. We let our own nation torture. We condone it and through condoning it, we will encourage torture.
Will one day in the future a Truth and Reconiliation commission deal with us with the same leniency that the post-apartheid South African version has dealt with its internal enemies?
At the moment I am feeling that we all should burn in hell because we let ASSHOLES like George Bush and Dick Cheney steal our country out from under us and we let their corrupt and venal cronies in the Republican party give away our Constitution and that we do not have the will, the sense, THE CITIZENSHIP to take it back.
We are detroying the great human experiment in self-government and we do not even care.
May God have mercy on our souls but truth be told we do not deserve it.
I always disliked his policies. His "Compassionate Conservatism" line struck me as bullshit the first time I heard it and he has done nothing but reinforce that impression.
He is an imbecile, a spoiled kid who has grown beyond legal immaturity but never attained maturity.
He is a jerk of the first order and in his position he has been a danger to the world. In his position with his willing executioners in the Republican Congress he has become a danger to the republic.
One day - should the fools in the Republican party stay in office past November - they will find out what life under George Bush is really like but then they will not be able to influence the outcome because they have pissed ther power away.
Having lived through the 60's of Johnson and Nixon, And this time I fell it is far more dangerous and it is dangerously wrong.
We are now or soon to become, given the Republican propensity for rubberstamping, a torturing nation. Not just de facto as we have been off and on but de jure. AND FOREVER.
What kind of scar will that leave on us? we are the willing executioners now. We let our own nation torture. We condone it and through condoning it, we will encourage torture.
Will one day in the future a Truth and Reconiliation commission deal with us with the same leniency that the post-apartheid South African version has dealt with its internal enemies?
At the moment I am feeling that we all should burn in hell because we let ASSHOLES like George Bush and Dick Cheney steal our country out from under us and we let their corrupt and venal cronies in the Republican party give away our Constitution and that we do not have the will, the sense, THE CITIZENSHIP to take it back.
We are detroying the great human experiment in self-government and we do not even care.
May God have mercy on our souls but truth be told we do not deserve it.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
All Hail Billmon
Billmon over at the Whiskey Bar has made a cottage industry of juxtaposing quotes. Often times he omits editorial comment and lets the quotes speak for themselves.
Here he hits it out of the park:
Some of the changes in the Middle East are happening gradually, but they are real . . . Citizens have voted in municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, in parliamentary elections in Jordan and Bahrain, and in multiparty presidential elections in Yemen and Egypt . . . Every nation that travels the road to freedom moves at a different pace, and the democracies they build will reflect their own culture and traditions.
George W. Bush
Speech to the UN General Assembly
September 19, 2006
It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way.
George Orwell
Politics and the English Language
1946
read the whole thing.
http://billmon.org/archives/002746.html
But what floors me is this Cheney quote:
"While civilized societies uphold justice, mercy, and the value of life, the terrorists hold to an ideology that feeds on the pain of others and glorifies murder and suicide. Though they plot and plan and operate by stealth, the terrorists make no secret of the beliefs they hold. They seek to impose a dictatorship of fear, under which every man, woman, and child would live in total obedience to a narrow and hateful ideology."
Here is the Lord of Darkness at his most cynical. When the end of the American Experiment is written, Lord Cheney will feature large. He must have balls to match his plumbing.
Here he hits it out of the park:
Some of the changes in the Middle East are happening gradually, but they are real . . . Citizens have voted in municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, in parliamentary elections in Jordan and Bahrain, and in multiparty presidential elections in Yemen and Egypt . . . Every nation that travels the road to freedom moves at a different pace, and the democracies they build will reflect their own culture and traditions.
George W. Bush
Speech to the UN General Assembly
September 19, 2006
It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way.
George Orwell
Politics and the English Language
1946
read the whole thing.
http://billmon.org/archives/002746.html
But what floors me is this Cheney quote:
"While civilized societies uphold justice, mercy, and the value of life, the terrorists hold to an ideology that feeds on the pain of others and glorifies murder and suicide. Though they plot and plan and operate by stealth, the terrorists make no secret of the beliefs they hold. They seek to impose a dictatorship of fear, under which every man, woman, and child would live in total obedience to a narrow and hateful ideology."
Here is the Lord of Darkness at his most cynical. When the end of the American Experiment is written, Lord Cheney will feature large. He must have balls to match his plumbing.
Monday, September 18, 2006
running scared
I became (what passes for me) politically active after the Abu Graib revelations. I was angry and disgusted that 1) that it even occured and 2) there was no swift and sure investigation/punishment for the bad apples the higher-ups all insisted were responsible. But that wasn't enough by itself. It was finally the reports of blackballing of the whistleblower in his home town that pushed me over the edge.
Here we had gone from an America I thought I knew to a rabid, war-mongering nation that at least winked at torture if not embraced it. And then bashed those who would object.
My activism remains limited to donations and letters to the editor in my local daily. When I started to publish letters critical of the Bush junta were few. Little by little a veritable firestorm occured in the letters section. The local daily decided they needed to institute a regular column "The Conservative Corner". Sure there were Bush defenders in the letter section but you know, you must balance legitimate reader opinion by paying someone to come up with the so-called conservative position. That's media balance for you, I guess.
Anyway that is all preamble. Like then torture is on my mind again. Thanks to George Bush, the Torturer-in-chief. He wants to make his actions retroactively legal. No doubt his whip-smart political team decided that by forcing the issue into the campaigning weeks of the by-elections he could get everyone Democrat and (of course) Republicans to acquiesce because migod who wants to oppose the great leader as he leads us from this savage wilderness into the islamofascist-free (or whatever the toothspitter phrase for the non-christian menace the wingnut chorus has rustled up this week) world'o'tomorrow.
Little did they expect - being the whip-smart politicos that they are - that actual real life Republicans whose future depends on them being NOT Bush would actually stand up and demand - DEMAND DAMMIT - that only a little ripping up of the Constitutiion would be acceptable.
Of course Mr. MyBike-MyBike Bush cannot accept that. After all as Keith Olbermann said when he went after Pinochet Jr, that George thinks thinking is unacceptable. Of course it is evident that it is unacceptable to him. But I guess as Dizzy Dean said (and George being a baseball man probably subscribes) "He who doesn't think too good shouldn't think too much." Unfortunately George - being George - twisted it from a bromide and turned it into a Presidential Rose Garden decree.
Pinochet Jr even said that it is urgent to pass his torturers-go-free bill now or he wouldn't interrogate any more terrorists anymore (God he really said that - sigh) and who knows he might eat worms.
So what is the point of doing it now? He clearly especially wanted no debate - or even what passes for debate in the rubber-stamp congress that gives Goerge whatever he wants and calls it compromise. (Are you listening Arlen?)
Did the Supreme Court's Hamdi ruling really finally get to him? Could it be that deep down Pinochet Jr and his boys know that there is a government bigger than Pinochet Jr. in all his exquisiteness. And that government may at some time in the near or medium future (you know. before the "I don't know. We'll all be dead" period kicks in) be a little upset over his actions as Torturer-in-chief?
Maybe Pinochet Jr. has found a new avenue to embrace the fear of god with the possibility that he could be held responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity and you know all those things that bad people like, like, who am I thinking of.... let me see.... Oh yeah - Saddam Hussein - are ultimately put on public trial for. Presumably before they are legally executed under federal capital punishment laws. And that would be unseemly for an ex-president. You have one who builds houses for poor people and another that convenes BIG IDEAS conferences that your wife is invited to speak at and then there you are up on capital charges for crimes against humanity. What would Barb say? Not to mention Poppee.
I mean Nixon had his Ford to pardon him. Who would be Pinochet Jr's Ford? Not Cheney. He will be lucky to be allowed into a Post Office building to buy stamps after this disaster of an administration is finished.
Would a President McCain maybe get a chance at some payback for his South Carolina reaming and the grovelling he had to do to get Pinochet Jr to look at him back in the good times?
And Lieberman has a bright future doing something but whatever it is being President isn't it. I can't think of a person on the national scene that could do it - except maybe for President Hillary... hmmmm maybe that's why Pinochet Jr and the misses have been warming up to Bill after those reports that Poppee and Barb have taken a kinda parental fondness on the Big Pecker.
Here we had gone from an America I thought I knew to a rabid, war-mongering nation that at least winked at torture if not embraced it. And then bashed those who would object.
My activism remains limited to donations and letters to the editor in my local daily. When I started to publish letters critical of the Bush junta were few. Little by little a veritable firestorm occured in the letters section. The local daily decided they needed to institute a regular column "The Conservative Corner". Sure there were Bush defenders in the letter section but you know, you must balance legitimate reader opinion by paying someone to come up with the so-called conservative position. That's media balance for you, I guess.
Anyway that is all preamble. Like then torture is on my mind again. Thanks to George Bush, the Torturer-in-chief. He wants to make his actions retroactively legal. No doubt his whip-smart political team decided that by forcing the issue into the campaigning weeks of the by-elections he could get everyone Democrat and (of course) Republicans to acquiesce because migod who wants to oppose the great leader as he leads us from this savage wilderness into the islamofascist-free (or whatever the toothspitter phrase for the non-christian menace the wingnut chorus has rustled up this week) world'o'tomorrow.
Little did they expect - being the whip-smart politicos that they are - that actual real life Republicans whose future depends on them being NOT Bush would actually stand up and demand - DEMAND DAMMIT - that only a little ripping up of the Constitutiion would be acceptable.
Of course Mr. MyBike-MyBike Bush cannot accept that. After all as Keith Olbermann said when he went after Pinochet Jr, that George thinks thinking is unacceptable. Of course it is evident that it is unacceptable to him. But I guess as Dizzy Dean said (and George being a baseball man probably subscribes) "He who doesn't think too good shouldn't think too much." Unfortunately George - being George - twisted it from a bromide and turned it into a Presidential Rose Garden decree.
Pinochet Jr even said that it is urgent to pass his torturers-go-free bill now or he wouldn't interrogate any more terrorists anymore (God he really said that - sigh) and who knows he might eat worms.
So what is the point of doing it now? He clearly especially wanted no debate - or even what passes for debate in the rubber-stamp congress that gives Goerge whatever he wants and calls it compromise. (Are you listening Arlen?)
Did the Supreme Court's Hamdi ruling really finally get to him? Could it be that deep down Pinochet Jr and his boys know that there is a government bigger than Pinochet Jr. in all his exquisiteness. And that government may at some time in the near or medium future (you know. before the "I don't know. We'll all be dead" period kicks in) be a little upset over his actions as Torturer-in-chief?
Maybe Pinochet Jr. has found a new avenue to embrace the fear of god with the possibility that he could be held responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity and you know all those things that bad people like, like, who am I thinking of.... let me see.... Oh yeah - Saddam Hussein - are ultimately put on public trial for. Presumably before they are legally executed under federal capital punishment laws. And that would be unseemly for an ex-president. You have one who builds houses for poor people and another that convenes BIG IDEAS conferences that your wife is invited to speak at and then there you are up on capital charges for crimes against humanity. What would Barb say? Not to mention Poppee.
I mean Nixon had his Ford to pardon him. Who would be Pinochet Jr's Ford? Not Cheney. He will be lucky to be allowed into a Post Office building to buy stamps after this disaster of an administration is finished.
Would a President McCain maybe get a chance at some payback for his South Carolina reaming and the grovelling he had to do to get Pinochet Jr to look at him back in the good times?
And Lieberman has a bright future doing something but whatever it is being President isn't it. I can't think of a person on the national scene that could do it - except maybe for President Hillary... hmmmm maybe that's why Pinochet Jr and the misses have been warming up to Bill after those reports that Poppee and Barb have taken a kinda parental fondness on the Big Pecker.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
It's kinda heartening really...
What with the national Republican majority that controls all 3 branches (yes George there are really 3 ) of our government, and their wanton power grab accelerated by the allies on the supreme court and their actively pissing on the Constitution, I was thinking that there wa no moral compass in this the modern RICO-Republicans.
But y'know, today's news has given me hope. What with Duke Cunningham in prison, and Bush pioneer in Ohio Mr. Penny-for-your-thoughts Noe getting sentenced and now Boobie Ney copping a plea, I see it clear as day.
Yes the Republican mob in congress really do have convictions. Just think the Republicans used to be the Party of Lincoln now it is the party of 10 to 20.
But y'know, today's news has given me hope. What with Duke Cunningham in prison, and Bush pioneer in Ohio Mr. Penny-for-your-thoughts Noe getting sentenced and now Boobie Ney copping a plea, I see it clear as day.
Yes the Republican mob in congress really do have convictions. Just think the Republicans used to be the Party of Lincoln now it is the party of 10 to 20.
bye bye bobbie
My god, twice in one day. First the Spectre cave-in and the Bush grab get stuffed in committee in the senate and then we have Bob Ney coppng a plea.
Maybe there is life in this republic after all.
I really don't want to get over excited. God knows these professional crooks that call themselves the national Republican party are completely capable of turning this shit into gold.
Of course they can't do it alone. It requires inept democrats and gullible (read STOOOPID) voters.
The time is coming where we can in fact turn this nation back from the path of Cheneyesque pathology onto to path of the last great hope that I believe in fact our United States to be. I can only hope (and do what I can to convince them) that my fellow voters - because it is ONLY voters that will make a difference - will do the right thing and reject the RICO-grade Republicans in Congress.
And I do believe this nation is that great hope. Its very greatness is shown up in our failure to measure up to its ideals but more so in our insistence on trying. The actual is never perfection but the pursuit of perfection is threaded into the definition of our nation.
That George Bush seeks to use our ideals and beliefs to ruin our national dream says all we need to know about the character, about the morally hollow man that is George Bush.
Whether he is a monomaniac, I don't know but every day thanks to his enablers and co-conspirators whether we are talking about Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Dick Cheney or the other fellow war criminals that hold positions in this the Bush regime we are seeing this shell of a man piss on our ideals all the while grabbing for power.
Bush has cultivated his aw shucks act to total refinement. It is to the point that he could say, "If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier - just so long I'm the dictator." without a even cocked head of suspicion in our national media.
Remember, this is the same man that said of bin Laden:
"Underestimating the words of evil and ambitious men is a terrible mistake."
I know this entire post mght seem to be completely off-topic but really these thieves in the house of democracy are all the same. Bush, Ney, they trade in a different currency but they make their livings the same way.
Maybe there is life in this republic after all.
I really don't want to get over excited. God knows these professional crooks that call themselves the national Republican party are completely capable of turning this shit into gold.
Of course they can't do it alone. It requires inept democrats and gullible (read STOOOPID) voters.
The time is coming where we can in fact turn this nation back from the path of Cheneyesque pathology onto to path of the last great hope that I believe in fact our United States to be. I can only hope (and do what I can to convince them) that my fellow voters - because it is ONLY voters that will make a difference - will do the right thing and reject the RICO-grade Republicans in Congress.
And I do believe this nation is that great hope. Its very greatness is shown up in our failure to measure up to its ideals but more so in our insistence on trying. The actual is never perfection but the pursuit of perfection is threaded into the definition of our nation.
That George Bush seeks to use our ideals and beliefs to ruin our national dream says all we need to know about the character, about the morally hollow man that is George Bush.
Whether he is a monomaniac, I don't know but every day thanks to his enablers and co-conspirators whether we are talking about Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Dick Cheney or the other fellow war criminals that hold positions in this the Bush regime we are seeing this shell of a man piss on our ideals all the while grabbing for power.
Bush has cultivated his aw shucks act to total refinement. It is to the point that he could say, "If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier - just so long I'm the dictator." without a even cocked head of suspicion in our national media.
Remember, this is the same man that said of bin Laden:
"Underestimating the words of evil and ambitious men is a terrible mistake."
I know this entire post mght seem to be completely off-topic but really these thieves in the house of democracy are all the same. Bush, Ney, they trade in a different currency but they make their livings the same way.
Senator Collins rises to greatness
Today in the Senate my senator, Senator Collins stood up. She voted along with McCain, Graham and Warner to turn back the onslaught brought on by the thugs in the Bush Administration. Let me restate that. See by saying "the thugs in the BUsh Administration" I am implying that there are maybe some who are not thugs. But that would be wrong.
Anyway, Senator Collins is one of the moderate Republican. Like her colleague, my other senator Senator Snowe she has earned my ire on many occasions. I am firmly of the blelief that all Republicans at this point are merely enablers of a bunch of creeps - namely the Bush regime. They have done little to nothing - more approaching nothing than little - in moderately the deeply un-American bent of the rackteteers that call themselves the Bush administration.
Today my senator, took a courageous stand. I thank her - I called her office to tell her. THis is big because she not only stood up to what must have been serious busllshit to make her stand but in doing so she moved the alternate bill closer to respectability. No longer is it just 3 Republican presidential hopefuls and primadonnas who have gone wobbly themselves principles-wise more than once under the Bush regime.
No longer is it just Collin Powell trying to salve his conscience so that maybe he can find peace.
No longer is it just some JAGS who are willing to piss away their careers for a principled stand.
See in this America at this time all of that is noise.
Today with Senator Collins standing with Graham Warner and Mcain we see a bit of the ink on the Congressional rubber stamp fade. It is a battle no won yet but decidely closer.
I have always been a political junkie but I was never much of an activist. Still I am not but Abu Graib put me over the edge. I wrote my first letter to the editor and write still. This blog is because of Abu Graib.
George Bush this week is proving that Abu Graib was not an aberation. It was not a few bad apples. Like Guantanamo, like the un-Constitutional and illegal spying, George Bush is showing his true colors as a traitor to this nation and the Constitution he swore to uphold.
Today a senate committee greatly aided by Senator Collins decided to lead the way back from George Bush's criminality.
Anyway, Senator Collins is one of the moderate Republican. Like her colleague, my other senator Senator Snowe she has earned my ire on many occasions. I am firmly of the blelief that all Republicans at this point are merely enablers of a bunch of creeps - namely the Bush regime. They have done little to nothing - more approaching nothing than little - in moderately the deeply un-American bent of the rackteteers that call themselves the Bush administration.
Today my senator, took a courageous stand. I thank her - I called her office to tell her. THis is big because she not only stood up to what must have been serious busllshit to make her stand but in doing so she moved the alternate bill closer to respectability. No longer is it just 3 Republican presidential hopefuls and primadonnas who have gone wobbly themselves principles-wise more than once under the Bush regime.
No longer is it just Collin Powell trying to salve his conscience so that maybe he can find peace.
No longer is it just some JAGS who are willing to piss away their careers for a principled stand.
See in this America at this time all of that is noise.
Today with Senator Collins standing with Graham Warner and Mcain we see a bit of the ink on the Congressional rubber stamp fade. It is a battle no won yet but decidely closer.
I have always been a political junkie but I was never much of an activist. Still I am not but Abu Graib put me over the edge. I wrote my first letter to the editor and write still. This blog is because of Abu Graib.
George Bush this week is proving that Abu Graib was not an aberation. It was not a few bad apples. Like Guantanamo, like the un-Constitutional and illegal spying, George Bush is showing his true colors as a traitor to this nation and the Constitution he swore to uphold.
Today a senate committee greatly aided by Senator Collins decided to lead the way back from George Bush's criminality.
Monday, August 28, 2006
Karr flooey
The US gov't made the Americans evacuated from Lebanon sign waivers individually agreeing to assume the bill for air fare should the US gov't decide to charge them. (Golfing at St Andrews not included)
John Mark Karr gets a plane ticket out of an arrest as a child molester and a date with an Indonesian prison by claiming an involvement in the Benet murder in the US. Is this a get out of jail free card? Will we ship him back to Indonesia to face charges? Will we at least charge him air fare?
US media role in this stupidity? hook line and sinker. Did anyone in the US press ever even raise a question that maybe just maybe his let's say opportune claim was maybe suspect? Just because he was a known child porn fan, with an ex who had an alibi for him and a known obsession with the Benet murder case.
What suspicions about his veracity (and worthiness for even a newsnote) could there possibly be?
And I wonder why these Bozos in the news media give Bush and his RICO pals a pass wile they walk away with the Constitution and most of the wealth in this country. But then again why should I be mean to Bozos.
This - yet another instance of media vacuity - is too ridiculous to be sad and too important to be ridiculous and so ridiculous that it is funny so how can it be sad?
It's a wonder in this madness that more heads don't explode like so many summertime New York manholes.
Excuse me I must tighten my brain truss.
John Mark Karr gets a plane ticket out of an arrest as a child molester and a date with an Indonesian prison by claiming an involvement in the Benet murder in the US. Is this a get out of jail free card? Will we ship him back to Indonesia to face charges? Will we at least charge him air fare?
US media role in this stupidity? hook line and sinker. Did anyone in the US press ever even raise a question that maybe just maybe his let's say opportune claim was maybe suspect? Just because he was a known child porn fan, with an ex who had an alibi for him and a known obsession with the Benet murder case.
What suspicions about his veracity (and worthiness for even a newsnote) could there possibly be?
And I wonder why these Bozos in the news media give Bush and his RICO pals a pass wile they walk away with the Constitution and most of the wealth in this country. But then again why should I be mean to Bozos.
This - yet another instance of media vacuity - is too ridiculous to be sad and too important to be ridiculous and so ridiculous that it is funny so how can it be sad?
It's a wonder in this madness that more heads don't explode like so many summertime New York manholes.
Excuse me I must tighten my brain truss.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Rules of engagement?
Is it just me or has George Bush's people gone out of their way to describe the President as being "engaged"? It seems to me if you are engaged you don't need to remind folks that you are but I could be wrong. But anyway:
White House officials said Wednesday night that the transcripts and video obtained by AP show only a few moments in time and don't reflect that Bush was engaged before, during and after the hurricane hit.
"He issued emergency disaster declarations ahead of the storm. He told people in the region to listen to the warnings of state and local officials," said Blair Jones, a White House spokesman. "He received multiple briefings from multiple officials. ... He was engaged."
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13994512.htm
Brown described the president throughout the crisis this way: "I think he was engaged, but I think there was an overconfidence that FEMA had handled Sept. 11, we had handled the California wildfires, we had handled the 2004 hurricanes right in the middle of the presidential elections. Hey, we could do this, too."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,186546,00.html
Here are two...
In August 29th Videoconference, Former FEMA Director Michael Brown Said The President Was "Asking A Lot Of Really Good Questions I Would Expect Him To Ask." BROWN: "The President remains very, very interested in this situation. ... He's obviously watching the television a lot, and he had some questions about the Dome, he's asking questions about reports of breaches. He's asking about hospitals. He's very engaged, and he's asking a lot of really good questions I would expect him to ask." (Bill Walsh, "The Day Storm Hit, Bush Was Worried About Levees," The New Orleans Times-Picayune, 3/1/06)
The President Was Engaged In The Katrina Response And Mobilized Federal Resources.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060302-17.html
(AP) WASHINGTON President Bush remained engaged during Hurricane Katrina but was overconfident that the Federal Emergency Management Agency could handle the destructive aftermath based on its record in previous disasters, former federal disaster chief Michael Brown said Wednesday.
http://cbs4boston.com/hurricanes/hurricanekatrina_story_060210802.html
White House officials said the footage reinforces what they have said to critics: that the president, at his Texas vacation home, was fully engaged from the opening hours of the emergency, while leaving operational decisions to the agencies in charge.
http://www.citizensforethics.org/press/pressclip.php?view=1934
Oh yeah, and there's the fact that those unnamed White House sources tell Bumiller that Bush was "engaged in the fighting in Falluja," which is sort of like saying Bush was engaged in the fighting in Vietnam (on the other hand, it does help explain why things went to hell there.)
http://gadflyer.com/articles/print.php?ArticleID=117
As Cardinal Pio Laghi, perhaps the last opponent of war President Bush will meet face-to-face prior to a U.S.-led attack against Iraq, made the case for peace, the president was engaged and attentive.
http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives/031403/031403d.htm
"If you saw the President's press conference today there was no doubt that Mr. Bush fervently believes he is doing the right thing in Iraq and effectively fighting terrorism. The President was engaged and challenging, especially to critics who have questioned his motives, like White House reporter Helen Thomas.
http://www.billoreilly.com/show?action=viewTVShow&showID=725
That is a quick perusal of the result of the first 5 pages of this Google search: "President Bush" "was engaged"
I picked the obvious stuff and Katrina seems to be the source of a lot of the need to show that Bush "is engaged" but after a bit the weight builds. It is as though everyone knows that there is a lack of gravitas that his own handlers know must be addressed.
But really... Have there been other Leaders of the Free World for whom the need to be described as "ENGAGED" has been so great?
White House officials said Wednesday night that the transcripts and video obtained by AP show only a few moments in time and don't reflect that Bush was engaged before, during and after the hurricane hit.
"He issued emergency disaster declarations ahead of the storm. He told people in the region to listen to the warnings of state and local officials," said Blair Jones, a White House spokesman. "He received multiple briefings from multiple officials. ... He was engaged."
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13994512.htm
Brown described the president throughout the crisis this way: "I think he was engaged, but I think there was an overconfidence that FEMA had handled Sept. 11, we had handled the California wildfires, we had handled the 2004 hurricanes right in the middle of the presidential elections. Hey, we could do this, too."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,186546,00.html
Here are two...
In August 29th Videoconference, Former FEMA Director Michael Brown Said The President Was "Asking A Lot Of Really Good Questions I Would Expect Him To Ask." BROWN: "The President remains very, very interested in this situation. ... He's obviously watching the television a lot, and he had some questions about the Dome, he's asking questions about reports of breaches. He's asking about hospitals. He's very engaged, and he's asking a lot of really good questions I would expect him to ask." (Bill Walsh, "The Day Storm Hit, Bush Was Worried About Levees," The New Orleans Times-Picayune, 3/1/06)
The President Was Engaged In The Katrina Response And Mobilized Federal Resources.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060302-17.html
(AP) WASHINGTON President Bush remained engaged during Hurricane Katrina but was overconfident that the Federal Emergency Management Agency could handle the destructive aftermath based on its record in previous disasters, former federal disaster chief Michael Brown said Wednesday.
http://cbs4boston.com/hurricanes/hurricanekatrina_story_060210802.html
White House officials said the footage reinforces what they have said to critics: that the president, at his Texas vacation home, was fully engaged from the opening hours of the emergency, while leaving operational decisions to the agencies in charge.
http://www.citizensforethics.org/press/pressclip.php?view=1934
Oh yeah, and there's the fact that those unnamed White House sources tell Bumiller that Bush was "engaged in the fighting in Falluja," which is sort of like saying Bush was engaged in the fighting in Vietnam (on the other hand, it does help explain why things went to hell there.)
http://gadflyer.com/articles/print.php?ArticleID=117
As Cardinal Pio Laghi, perhaps the last opponent of war President Bush will meet face-to-face prior to a U.S.-led attack against Iraq, made the case for peace, the president was engaged and attentive.
http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives/031403/031403d.htm
"If you saw the President's press conference today there was no doubt that Mr. Bush fervently believes he is doing the right thing in Iraq and effectively fighting terrorism. The President was engaged and challenging, especially to critics who have questioned his motives, like White House reporter Helen Thomas.
http://www.billoreilly.com/show?action=viewTVShow&showID=725
That is a quick perusal of the result of the first 5 pages of this Google search: "President Bush" "was engaged"
I picked the obvious stuff and Katrina seems to be the source of a lot of the need to show that Bush "is engaged" but after a bit the weight builds. It is as though everyone knows that there is a lack of gravitas that his own handlers know must be addressed.
But really... Have there been other Leaders of the Free World for whom the need to be described as "ENGAGED" has been so great?
Rules of engagement?
Is it just me or has George Bush's people gone out of their way to describe the President as being "engaged"? It seems to me if you are engaged you don't need to remind folks that you are but I could be wrong. But anyway:
White House officials said Wednesday night that the transcripts and video obtained by AP show only a few moments in time and don't reflect that Bush was engaged before, during and after the hurricane hit.
"He issued emergency disaster declarations ahead of the storm. He told people in the region to listen to the warnings of state and local officials," said Blair Jones, a White House spokesman. "He received multiple briefings from multiple officials. ... He was engaged."
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13994512.htm
Brown described the president throughout the crisis this way: "I think he was engaged, but I think there was an overconfidence that FEMA had handled Sept. 11, we had handled the California wildfires, we had handled the 2004 hurricanes right in the middle of the presidential elections. Hey, we could do this, too."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,186546,00.html
Here are two...
In August 29th Videoconference, Former FEMA Director Michael Brown Said The President Was "Asking A Lot Of Really Good Questions I Would Expect Him To Ask." BROWN: "The President remains very, very interested in this situation. ... He's obviously watching the television a lot, and he had some questions about the Dome, he's asking questions about reports of breaches. He's asking about hospitals. He's very engaged, and he's asking a lot of really good questions I would expect him to ask." (Bill Walsh, "The Day Storm Hit, Bush Was Worried About Levees," The New Orleans Times-Picayune, 3/1/06)
The President Was Engaged In The Katrina Response And Mobilized Federal Resources.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060302-17.html
(AP) WASHINGTON President Bush remained engaged during Hurricane Katrina but was overconfident that the Federal Emergency Management Agency could handle the destructive aftermath based on its record in previous disasters, former federal disaster chief Michael Brown said Wednesday.
http://cbs4boston.com/hurricanes/hurricanekatrina_story_060210802.html
Oh yeah, and there's the fact that those unnamed White House sources tell Bumiller that Bush was "engaged in the fighting in Falluja," which is sort of like saying Bush was engaged in the fighting in Vietnam (on the other hand, it does help explain why things went to hell there.)
http://gadflyer.com/articles/?ArticleID=117
White House officials said the footage reinforces what they have said to critics: that the president, at his Texas vacation home, was fully engaged from the opening hours of the emergency, while leaving operational decisions to the agencies in charge.
http://www.citizensforethics.org/press/pressclip.php?view=1934
Oh yeah, and there's the fact that those unnamed White House sources tell Bumiller that Bush was "engaged in the fighting in Falluja," which is sort of like saying Bush was engaged in the fighting in Vietnam (on the other hand, it does help explain why things went to hell there.)
http://gadflyer.com/articles/print.php?ArticleID=117
As Cardinal Pio Laghi, perhaps the last opponent of war President Bush will meet face-to-face prior to a U.S.-led attack against Iraq, made the case for peace, the president was engaged and attentive.
http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives/031403/031403d.htm
"If you saw the President's press conference today there was no doubt that Mr. Bush fervently believes he is doing the right thing in Iraq and effectively fighting terrorism. The President was engaged and challenging, especially to critics who have questioned his motives, like White House reporter Helen Thomas.
http://www.billoreilly.com/show?action=viewTVShow&showID=725
All that is a quick perusal of the result of the first 5 pages of this Google search: "President Bush" "was engaged"
I picked the obvious stuff and Katrina seems to be the source of a lot of the need to show that Bust "is engaged" but after a bit the weight builds. It is as though everyone knows that there is a lack of gravitas that his own handlers know must be addressed.
But really... Have there been other Leaders of the Free World for whom the need to be described as "ENGAGED" has been sp great?
White House officials said Wednesday night that the transcripts and video obtained by AP show only a few moments in time and don't reflect that Bush was engaged before, during and after the hurricane hit.
"He issued emergency disaster declarations ahead of the storm. He told people in the region to listen to the warnings of state and local officials," said Blair Jones, a White House spokesman. "He received multiple briefings from multiple officials. ... He was engaged."
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13994512.htm
Brown described the president throughout the crisis this way: "I think he was engaged, but I think there was an overconfidence that FEMA had handled Sept. 11, we had handled the California wildfires, we had handled the 2004 hurricanes right in the middle of the presidential elections. Hey, we could do this, too."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,186546,00.html
Here are two...
In August 29th Videoconference, Former FEMA Director Michael Brown Said The President Was "Asking A Lot Of Really Good Questions I Would Expect Him To Ask." BROWN: "The President remains very, very interested in this situation. ... He's obviously watching the television a lot, and he had some questions about the Dome, he's asking questions about reports of breaches. He's asking about hospitals. He's very engaged, and he's asking a lot of really good questions I would expect him to ask." (Bill Walsh, "The Day Storm Hit, Bush Was Worried About Levees," The New Orleans Times-Picayune, 3/1/06)
The President Was Engaged In The Katrina Response And Mobilized Federal Resources.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060302-17.html
(AP) WASHINGTON President Bush remained engaged during Hurricane Katrina but was overconfident that the Federal Emergency Management Agency could handle the destructive aftermath based on its record in previous disasters, former federal disaster chief Michael Brown said Wednesday.
http://cbs4boston.com/hurricanes/hurricanekatrina_story_060210802.html
Oh yeah, and there's the fact that those unnamed White House sources tell Bumiller that Bush was "engaged in the fighting in Falluja," which is sort of like saying Bush was engaged in the fighting in Vietnam (on the other hand, it does help explain why things went to hell there.)
http://gadflyer.com/articles/?ArticleID=117
White House officials said the footage reinforces what they have said to critics: that the president, at his Texas vacation home, was fully engaged from the opening hours of the emergency, while leaving operational decisions to the agencies in charge.
http://www.citizensforethics.org/press/pressclip.php?view=1934
Oh yeah, and there's the fact that those unnamed White House sources tell Bumiller that Bush was "engaged in the fighting in Falluja," which is sort of like saying Bush was engaged in the fighting in Vietnam (on the other hand, it does help explain why things went to hell there.)
http://gadflyer.com/articles/print.php?ArticleID=117
As Cardinal Pio Laghi, perhaps the last opponent of war President Bush will meet face-to-face prior to a U.S.-led attack against Iraq, made the case for peace, the president was engaged and attentive.
http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives/031403/031403d.htm
"If you saw the President's press conference today there was no doubt that Mr. Bush fervently believes he is doing the right thing in Iraq and effectively fighting terrorism. The President was engaged and challenging, especially to critics who have questioned his motives, like White House reporter Helen Thomas.
http://www.billoreilly.com/show?action=viewTVShow&showID=725
All that is a quick perusal of the result of the first 5 pages of this Google search: "President Bush" "was engaged"
I picked the obvious stuff and Katrina seems to be the source of a lot of the need to show that Bust "is engaged" but after a bit the weight builds. It is as though everyone knows that there is a lack of gravitas that his own handlers know must be addressed.
But really... Have there been other Leaders of the Free World for whom the need to be described as "ENGAGED" has been sp great?
Saturday, August 05, 2006
a future maybe?
I dunno. The Cook report says that the RICO in action squad that runs this national government is through come November.
"Time is running out for Republicans. Unless something dramatic happens before Election Day, Democrats will take control of the House. And the chances that they’ll seize the Senate are rising toward 50-50."
We can dream. But I have a rule: never underestimate the ability of the Democratic Party to fuck it up.
We saw it in Gore's statesman-like cave-in in 2000. It was to save the Republic a crisis or some such bullshit. Like this country has never survived a crisis. And we have seen the bullshit that decision and the elevation of the boy-king has given us.
Then we saw the Kerry campaign. Always a lackluster overambitious politician, Kerry lost an election he should have won. Ohio? Yeah probably stolen. But still. The fact that it was that close shows how bad his campaign was run.
We see it even now in CT. Thank the ever loving God that maybe just maybe Joe will get creamed. I truly hope he finds solace and comfort in his future lobbying career. But my point is that even now the Democratic establishment is trying to wrest defeat from the jaws of victory by supporting the guy who can be counted on to stick his thumb in his colleagues eyes when they need it least. The guys he caucuses with no less.
Now I am at this point I suppose a fair weather Democrat. More exactly I have become a Democrat out of desperation.
I left my hereditary democratness in 72. McGovern lost Nixon won and the Democratic establishment stopped thinking.
They decided the very next day that their very ideals we wrong.
Rather than draw the conclusion that the power of incumbency beat them. And even later that the vicious shit that was Richard Nixon got his ass handed to him because there were still people that realized that ideals were worth fighting over, they internalized the meme that they were on the wrong side of the majority of the American people.
In a single thrust, they gave everything that the RICO wing of the Republican party needed to craft a generation of power. Kevin Phillips the reformed architect of the Southern Strategy has decided that his progeny are a bunch of assholes. I agree - may God burn him in hell. But the establishment Democrats have as much blame to shoulder.
So here I am. I really want a multi-party system in the this country. But now I would settle for merely two parties.
The first thing that must happen is that the Democratic party must be forced to become something other than Republican-lite.
And possibly - just even maybe - we will have CT next week to thank for making that happen.
"Time is running out for Republicans. Unless something dramatic happens before Election Day, Democrats will take control of the House. And the chances that they’ll seize the Senate are rising toward 50-50."
We can dream. But I have a rule: never underestimate the ability of the Democratic Party to fuck it up.
We saw it in Gore's statesman-like cave-in in 2000. It was to save the Republic a crisis or some such bullshit. Like this country has never survived a crisis. And we have seen the bullshit that decision and the elevation of the boy-king has given us.
Then we saw the Kerry campaign. Always a lackluster overambitious politician, Kerry lost an election he should have won. Ohio? Yeah probably stolen. But still. The fact that it was that close shows how bad his campaign was run.
We see it even now in CT. Thank the ever loving God that maybe just maybe Joe will get creamed. I truly hope he finds solace and comfort in his future lobbying career. But my point is that even now the Democratic establishment is trying to wrest defeat from the jaws of victory by supporting the guy who can be counted on to stick his thumb in his colleagues eyes when they need it least. The guys he caucuses with no less.
Now I am at this point I suppose a fair weather Democrat. More exactly I have become a Democrat out of desperation.
I left my hereditary democratness in 72. McGovern lost Nixon won and the Democratic establishment stopped thinking.
They decided the very next day that their very ideals we wrong.
Rather than draw the conclusion that the power of incumbency beat them. And even later that the vicious shit that was Richard Nixon got his ass handed to him because there were still people that realized that ideals were worth fighting over, they internalized the meme that they were on the wrong side of the majority of the American people.
In a single thrust, they gave everything that the RICO wing of the Republican party needed to craft a generation of power. Kevin Phillips the reformed architect of the Southern Strategy has decided that his progeny are a bunch of assholes. I agree - may God burn him in hell. But the establishment Democrats have as much blame to shoulder.
So here I am. I really want a multi-party system in the this country. But now I would settle for merely two parties.
The first thing that must happen is that the Democratic party must be forced to become something other than Republican-lite.
And possibly - just even maybe - we will have CT next week to thank for making that happen.
Sunday, July 02, 2006
The ghost in the machine
Over at TalkingPointsMemo guest blogger dk (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/008911.php) discusses the reality of what we are seeing in our current politics: Machine politics. I think dk has hit on the central fact of our current crisis.
The skin of this era is ideology. We see it in the knee-jerk genuflection (is that possible?) of the Republican majority to its sacred base. We also see it in its more germaine Corporatist philiosophy which wants to give catre blanche to the masters of the universe in corporate America.
But in reality it is machine politics. Both the evangelical right and the Corporatist master race were deliberately chose by the Rpublican comrades to further the purposes of the machine. I cannot overstate the cynicism in this calculus. It is as cyinical as it appears. There is no true ideology here. The erstwhile conservative Republican credo of low taxes and limited taxes has been shot straight to hell. There is no attempt at ideological consistency exactly because there is no ideology.
Enter into this morass, George Bush - a hapless opportunist (naive but always with enough grease to make things work out) and more importantly the Cheney junta.
One could weave a conspiracy theory that makes all this coherent as a deliberate attempt at a corporatist takeover of the United States.
But it is both comedic and maybe more dangerous that the current Constitutional and governmental disaster we find ourselves in is the result of a perfect storm of a confluence of naive opportunism, willful executive expansionism (ironically the only honest if wrongheaded political philiosphy in the i whole mess) and plain old machine politics.
Does this matter? Probably not lightning will kill you when it hits you regardless of whether or not it meant to hit you.
I have been reading recently The Unknown American Revolution by Gary Nash. And though I am only about 1/3 through it is clear in his discussion of the situation in the runup to the American Revolution that much of what was possible to even bring about revolution was a confluence of disparate events that we would term class issues.
Most of the mechanism - the communication network and even the climate of potical action - though steeped in Locke and Rights of man rhetoric was put in place as a more or less populist response to the immportation of aristocratic instutions into the colonies.
There is no direct analogy here and I am not intending one. Except that it is the law of unintended consequences in action in both cases.
One established the foundation of the Great American Experiment. The other, if brought to its logical conclusion will bring about the experiments demise.
HAPPY INDEPENDECE DAY.
Remember only you can prevent tyranny.
The skin of this era is ideology. We see it in the knee-jerk genuflection (is that possible?) of the Republican majority to its sacred base. We also see it in its more germaine Corporatist philiosophy which wants to give catre blanche to the masters of the universe in corporate America.
But in reality it is machine politics. Both the evangelical right and the Corporatist master race were deliberately chose by the Rpublican comrades to further the purposes of the machine. I cannot overstate the cynicism in this calculus. It is as cyinical as it appears. There is no true ideology here. The erstwhile conservative Republican credo of low taxes and limited taxes has been shot straight to hell. There is no attempt at ideological consistency exactly because there is no ideology.
Enter into this morass, George Bush - a hapless opportunist (naive but always with enough grease to make things work out) and more importantly the Cheney junta.
One could weave a conspiracy theory that makes all this coherent as a deliberate attempt at a corporatist takeover of the United States.
But it is both comedic and maybe more dangerous that the current Constitutional and governmental disaster we find ourselves in is the result of a perfect storm of a confluence of naive opportunism, willful executive expansionism (ironically the only honest if wrongheaded political philiosphy in the i whole mess) and plain old machine politics.
Does this matter? Probably not lightning will kill you when it hits you regardless of whether or not it meant to hit you.
I have been reading recently The Unknown American Revolution by Gary Nash. And though I am only about 1/3 through it is clear in his discussion of the situation in the runup to the American Revolution that much of what was possible to even bring about revolution was a confluence of disparate events that we would term class issues.
Most of the mechanism - the communication network and even the climate of potical action - though steeped in Locke and Rights of man rhetoric was put in place as a more or less populist response to the immportation of aristocratic instutions into the colonies.
There is no direct analogy here and I am not intending one. Except that it is the law of unintended consequences in action in both cases.
One established the foundation of the Great American Experiment. The other, if brought to its logical conclusion will bring about the experiments demise.
HAPPY INDEPENDECE DAY.
Remember only you can prevent tyranny.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Calling Bullshit on Obama
From the AP:
Sen. Barack Obama chastised fellow Democrats on Wednesday for failing to "acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people," and said the party must compete for the support of evangelicals and other churchgoing Americans.
"Not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation. Context matters," the Illinois Democrat said in remarks to a conference of Call to Renewal, a faith-based movement to overcome poverty.
"It is doubtful that children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance feel oppressed or brainwashed as a consequence of muttering the phrase 'under God,'" he said. "Having voluntary student prayer groups using school property to meet should not be a threat, any more than its use by the High School Republicans should threaten Democrats."
Ummm - unless this is the AP getting a little loose with their reporting, I wonder?
Who is Obama refering to here? Can he name the Democrats he is chastising? I don't know who they are. Last I checked it was the federal court that said that "under God" was un-Constitutional. Last I knew school prayer was an issue decided by the Supreme Court.
Barack this is BULLSHIT. Why are you Liebermaning your party?
Sen. Barack Obama chastised fellow Democrats on Wednesday for failing to "acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people," and said the party must compete for the support of evangelicals and other churchgoing Americans.
"Not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation. Context matters," the Illinois Democrat said in remarks to a conference of Call to Renewal, a faith-based movement to overcome poverty.
"It is doubtful that children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance feel oppressed or brainwashed as a consequence of muttering the phrase 'under God,'" he said. "Having voluntary student prayer groups using school property to meet should not be a threat, any more than its use by the High School Republicans should threaten Democrats."
Ummm - unless this is the AP getting a little loose with their reporting, I wonder?
Who is Obama refering to here? Can he name the Democrats he is chastising? I don't know who they are. Last I checked it was the federal court that said that "under God" was un-Constitutional. Last I knew school prayer was an issue decided by the Supreme Court.
Barack this is BULLSHIT. Why are you Liebermaning your party?
your Congress at work
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to overturn a recently enacted law requiring safety trigger locks on all hand guns sold in the United States.
The Republican-controlled House handed a victory to opponents of gun control by a vote of 230-191.
Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, a Colorado Republican, argued that the added cost of the trigger locks is passed on to gun owners and that they "do not stop accidental shootings."
Last fall, President George W. Bush signed legislation giving gun makers broad protections from civil lawsuits, but that law contained the mandatory trigger lock provision.
The amendment overturning the requirement for trigger locks was attached to a larger law enforcement spending bill for next year that has not yet been considered by the Senate.
-- Gun locks too expensive for gun owners.
Prescription drug "donut" expenses - not a problem.
Your Congress at work
The Republican-controlled House handed a victory to opponents of gun control by a vote of 230-191.
Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, a Colorado Republican, argued that the added cost of the trigger locks is passed on to gun owners and that they "do not stop accidental shootings."
Last fall, President George W. Bush signed legislation giving gun makers broad protections from civil lawsuits, but that law contained the mandatory trigger lock provision.
The amendment overturning the requirement for trigger locks was attached to a larger law enforcement spending bill for next year that has not yet been considered by the Senate.
-- Gun locks too expensive for gun owners.
Prescription drug "donut" expenses - not a problem.
Your Congress at work
GOP Congress says: Not OK to burn flag but OK to piss on Constitution
Via crooks and liars the Cafferty file: http://movies.crooksandliars.com/CaffertyFile-Sig.mov
Cafferty says here that Bush has issued 750 signing statements to express reservations on 150 laws. Don't know how the math works but the intent is clear. Of course this isn't news. The fact that it isn't news isn't news either. And that should be news.
The sad excuse for a Congress that we now enjoy just defeated a flag burning amendnment though by one vote. Bill First the Panderer in Chief of the Senate is intent on bringing up every red-meat issue he can find to get that approximately one-third of the voters that will still admit to supporting the bozos that we know as the national GOP. So of course flag burning is on the top of the pile (so to speak). The fact that flag burning is not a problem and the fact that any serious anti-desecration law would mean exposing every corporation from Walmart to your local car dealer to a lawsuit any time they smeared the flag on an ad doesn't seem to have occured to these clowns.
But while the flag isn't in danger of getting burned anytime soon, Rome is burning. Thanks to George Bush Dick Cheney and the collective his signing statements. Now signing statements have no weight in law. They do not convey to the Executive any right whatsoever to circumvene the law. And yet Bush is doing it over and over again. How is this possible?
Thanks to your elected representatives (I use that term becasue that is what they are called even though what they are doing represents from a minority to close ot zero of the electorate).
So there you go. The Constitution isn't being defeated. The Constituion isn't being stolen. The Constituion - that is, your rights as an American - is being given away.
It is being given away by Bill Frist who would rather talk about flag burning than about the Bill of Rights. It is being given away by Senator R0berts in the intelligence commitee who would rather do nothing that do anything like meaningful oversight over the egregious practices of our Stalinist Executive. It is being given away By Senator Specter who would rather make great noises about what he is going to do before he throws in the towel without doing any of it.
My friends, I give you, your Congress at work.
Should you be going to Washington DC in the near future be sure to get photos of the Constitution while you are there. You will certainly want something to remember it by.
Cafferty says here that Bush has issued 750 signing statements to express reservations on 150 laws. Don't know how the math works but the intent is clear. Of course this isn't news. The fact that it isn't news isn't news either. And that should be news.
The sad excuse for a Congress that we now enjoy just defeated a flag burning amendnment though by one vote. Bill First the Panderer in Chief of the Senate is intent on bringing up every red-meat issue he can find to get that approximately one-third of the voters that will still admit to supporting the bozos that we know as the national GOP. So of course flag burning is on the top of the pile (so to speak). The fact that flag burning is not a problem and the fact that any serious anti-desecration law would mean exposing every corporation from Walmart to your local car dealer to a lawsuit any time they smeared the flag on an ad doesn't seem to have occured to these clowns.
But while the flag isn't in danger of getting burned anytime soon, Rome is burning. Thanks to George Bush Dick Cheney and the collective his signing statements. Now signing statements have no weight in law. They do not convey to the Executive any right whatsoever to circumvene the law. And yet Bush is doing it over and over again. How is this possible?
Thanks to your elected representatives (I use that term becasue that is what they are called even though what they are doing represents from a minority to close ot zero of the electorate).
So there you go. The Constitution isn't being defeated. The Constituion isn't being stolen. The Constituion - that is, your rights as an American - is being given away.
It is being given away by Bill Frist who would rather talk about flag burning than about the Bill of Rights. It is being given away by Senator R0berts in the intelligence commitee who would rather do nothing that do anything like meaningful oversight over the egregious practices of our Stalinist Executive. It is being given away By Senator Specter who would rather make great noises about what he is going to do before he throws in the towel without doing any of it.
My friends, I give you, your Congress at work.
Should you be going to Washington DC in the near future be sure to get photos of the Constitution while you are there. You will certainly want something to remember it by.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Don't know the gentleman
Pulled thos off James Wolcott's site http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2006/06/batchelor_fodde.php. He is quoting a gentleman myu blessed life has seen to miss. BUt here is the subjets's quote.
"The noise of the anti-Americans in Europe, the doubts of our outmanned generals, the cunning of men who hate liberty, all this needs to be heard and ignored. We go forward into empire because, as for my father on Omaha Beach, there is no retreat."
Read it all for a full - umm - appreciation.
My question: Bullshit ot pure shit?
"The noise of the anti-Americans in Europe, the doubts of our outmanned generals, the cunning of men who hate liberty, all this needs to be heard and ignored. We go forward into empire because, as for my father on Omaha Beach, there is no retreat."
Read it all for a full - umm - appreciation.
My question: Bullshit ot pure shit?
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
neocons decide they got conned
Raw Story posts this article: Neo-cons question Bush’s democratisation strategy . Well ok. Bush ain' t really one of them. The fiscal conservatives are saying the same thing. And even the libertarians among that crowd are disavowing their former action hero and their belief that Bush was one of them.
My advice? Get over it. To all of you. He's your's. You bought him, you nourished him and like the old fable goes - you knew he was a snake when you took him in.
Cheney is perhaps the biggest fool - could he be even stupider than the Stupidest Man On the Planet (tm) Doug Feith? The veep has a strong claim. He thought he could step into the office and direct his Bushiness into being the stellar Urinary Executive that Cheney dreamed of. Unfortunately he (Cheney) hitched his wagon to Bush - a proven failure.
Bush is after all a man who is nothing but the sum of his family's connections - the evolutionary dead-end that all dynasties throughout history have eventually spawned. Whether it be a cruel and megalomaniacal Nero or an idiot Bush eventually the DNA comes up DOA.
Cheney knew it but he thought he could control it. Maybe it was too many years successfully covering up the tracks of Halliburton's questionable business deals made the veep a little cocky. Once in the cocky-drome that is the Bush white house it is no wonder that Cheney maybe over-reached.
But anyway. To all you guys neo's, paleo, randian - conservative, like I said, you bought the Bush man, you own him. Just be thankful that we aren't enforcing the Pottery Barn policy on you. No need to offer - we will clean up after you.
My advice? Get over it. To all of you. He's your's. You bought him, you nourished him and like the old fable goes - you knew he was a snake when you took him in.
Cheney is perhaps the biggest fool - could he be even stupider than the Stupidest Man On the Planet (tm) Doug Feith? The veep has a strong claim. He thought he could step into the office and direct his Bushiness into being the stellar Urinary Executive that Cheney dreamed of. Unfortunately he (Cheney) hitched his wagon to Bush - a proven failure.
Bush is after all a man who is nothing but the sum of his family's connections - the evolutionary dead-end that all dynasties throughout history have eventually spawned. Whether it be a cruel and megalomaniacal Nero or an idiot Bush eventually the DNA comes up DOA.
Cheney knew it but he thought he could control it. Maybe it was too many years successfully covering up the tracks of Halliburton's questionable business deals made the veep a little cocky. Once in the cocky-drome that is the Bush white house it is no wonder that Cheney maybe over-reached.
But anyway. To all you guys neo's, paleo, randian - conservative, like I said, you bought the Bush man, you own him. Just be thankful that we aren't enforcing the Pottery Barn policy on you. No need to offer - we will clean up after you.
neocons decide they got conned
Raw Story posts this article: Neo-cons question Bush’s democratisation strategy . Well ok. Bush ain' t really one of them. The fiscal conservatives are saying the same thing. And even the libertarian among that crowd are diasvowing their former belief that Bish was one of them.
My advice? Get over it. To all of you. He's your's. You bought him, you nourished him and like the old fable goes - you knew he was a snake when you took him in.
Cheney perhaps the biggest fool - could he be even stupider than the Stupidest Man On the Planed (tm) Doug Feith? The veep has a strong claim. He thought he could step into the office and direct his Bushiness into being the stellar Urinary Executive that Cheney dreamed of. Unfortunately he (Cheney) hitched his wagon to Bush - a proven failure. Bush is after all a man who is the nothing but the sum of his family's connections - the evolutionary dead-end that all dynasties throughout history have eventually spawned. Whether it be a cruel and megalomaniacal Nero or an idiot Bush eventually comes up DOA.
Cheney knew it but he thought he could control it. Maybe it was too many years a successfully covering up the tracks of Halliburton's questionable business deals made the veep a little cocky. Once in the cocky-drome that is the Bush white house it is no wonder that Cheney maybe over-reached.
But anyway. To all you guys neo's, paleo, randian - conservative, like I said, you bought the Bush man, you own him. Just be thankful that we aren't enforcing the Pottery Barn policy on you. No need to offer - we will clean up after you.
My advice? Get over it. To all of you. He's your's. You bought him, you nourished him and like the old fable goes - you knew he was a snake when you took him in.
Cheney perhaps the biggest fool - could he be even stupider than the Stupidest Man On the Planed (tm) Doug Feith? The veep has a strong claim. He thought he could step into the office and direct his Bushiness into being the stellar Urinary Executive that Cheney dreamed of. Unfortunately he (Cheney) hitched his wagon to Bush - a proven failure. Bush is after all a man who is the nothing but the sum of his family's connections - the evolutionary dead-end that all dynasties throughout history have eventually spawned. Whether it be a cruel and megalomaniacal Nero or an idiot Bush eventually comes up DOA.
Cheney knew it but he thought he could control it. Maybe it was too many years a successfully covering up the tracks of Halliburton's questionable business deals made the veep a little cocky. Once in the cocky-drome that is the Bush white house it is no wonder that Cheney maybe over-reached.
But anyway. To all you guys neo's, paleo, randian - conservative, like I said, you bought the Bush man, you own him. Just be thankful that we aren't enforcing the Pottery Barn policy on you. No need to offer - we will clean up after you.
Friday, May 26, 2006
Bush the contrite = or he plays one pn tv.
Wolcott says here (http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2006/05/tangled_up_in_b.php)
"My guess is that the administration believed it didn't need this or any other prop, that the Firm Fist of American Resolve would suffice, and that Dick Cheney still believes that might equals right and legal niceties are for sissy-men. Bush seems to have drifted away from Cheney's clenched certitudes...tapering off in his own aimless direction. For the good of the country, let's hope he doesn't become orphaned and imprisoned within his own presidency, giving us a replay of the embittered, Watergate-haunted Nixon at the end of his rope, when the drapes in the Oval Office began to resemble druid's robes and portraits on the walls became his only companions. We don't need to relive that horror movie again. Not with the glaciers melting, and other, bigger horror movies threatening to unfold."
Not so sure, I think I would rather Bush talking to the oil paint. I could definitely live with that. Better than having this fool in fool's clothing running around with actual power to do even more damage than he has done.
I would gladly pour W oneof Nixon's scotches if he wouldjust start talking to Truman's poertrait instead of hallucinating that he and Harry will come within orders of magnitude to each other in historical esteem.
"My guess is that the administration believed it didn't need this or any other prop, that the Firm Fist of American Resolve would suffice, and that Dick Cheney still believes that might equals right and legal niceties are for sissy-men. Bush seems to have drifted away from Cheney's clenched certitudes...tapering off in his own aimless direction. For the good of the country, let's hope he doesn't become orphaned and imprisoned within his own presidency, giving us a replay of the embittered, Watergate-haunted Nixon at the end of his rope, when the drapes in the Oval Office began to resemble druid's robes and portraits on the walls became his only companions. We don't need to relive that horror movie again. Not with the glaciers melting, and other, bigger horror movies threatening to unfold."
Not so sure, I think I would rather Bush talking to the oil paint. I could definitely live with that. Better than having this fool in fool's clothing running around with actual power to do even more damage than he has done.
I would gladly pour W oneof Nixon's scotches if he wouldjust start talking to Truman's poertrait instead of hallucinating that he and Harry will come within orders of magnitude to each other in historical esteem.
Gee George shows vulnerability
Big deal. I wish I could believe him when he says that he learned that he should talk "more sophisticated" and that caused a problem in some parts of the world.
Forgive me but this is a guy that has been in public life for what 20 years? He just learned the lesson that saying stupid shit isn't a good idea?
Please. His sincerity is as thin as the veneer of competence he has shown in his dogged pursuit of becoming the Worst President Ever.
I wish the man would just go away, His disability (I don't mean that in a bad way of course) with the English language that he so desires aliens that unlike his himship are uneducated at the best American schools to speak fluently has never been cute or machismo or endearing in its humitlity to me.
This man holds Yale and Harvard degrees for Christ's sakes. Didn't one of his Harvard MBA case studies teach him that "you shouldn't say stupid shit"?
No. All this is calculated BULLSHIT. That is a word that even simple George could understand.
He speaks it and he is it.
God I will be glad when this guy can go full time to build his LIE-brary.
Forgive me but this is a guy that has been in public life for what 20 years? He just learned the lesson that saying stupid shit isn't a good idea?
Please. His sincerity is as thin as the veneer of competence he has shown in his dogged pursuit of becoming the Worst President Ever.
I wish the man would just go away, His disability (I don't mean that in a bad way of course) with the English language that he so desires aliens that unlike his himship are uneducated at the best American schools to speak fluently has never been cute or machismo or endearing in its humitlity to me.
This man holds Yale and Harvard degrees for Christ's sakes. Didn't one of his Harvard MBA case studies teach him that "you shouldn't say stupid shit"?
No. All this is calculated BULLSHIT. That is a word that even simple George could understand.
He speaks it and he is it.
God I will be glad when this guy can go full time to build his LIE-brary.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
The Great Debate
So I was reading this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html. Dan Fromkin notes that Bush welcomes a debate on pulling out. Dan says, :So how about it?"
In my mind it tickled a different how about it moment. Seeing that we are nominally - this administration notwithstanding - a triumvirate form of government, why is there not a group forum . I envision one where the executive , judiciarcy and the legislative branches are all represented by their titular heads and answer question in an open forum. Freeform/five days.
It can be framed as a bi-cameral Q&A with house and senate asking questions. Or better a citizen panel drawn by lot. The thing could go on for 5 days an aspect of governance a day for a week. A different group impanelled each fday - even a different topic.
Why not? How better to get real national debate than from comment from every salient (and for once informed) aspect of governance - from making the law to enforcing it to deciding its adherence to constitutional principal.
How much closer can one get to real democracy than that?
Instead what we have are 3 branches of government that are playing party games in the press and never forced to take a stand by The "We the People" in all of this except at election time . They are never forced on their own terms to defend their own peculiar constitutional prerogative on a national public stage. Would it not be worth even a shut down of the normal "business" of governance to attend such a panel?
Just thinking.
In my mind it tickled a different how about it moment. Seeing that we are nominally - this administration notwithstanding - a triumvirate form of government, why is there not a group forum . I envision one where the executive , judiciarcy and the legislative branches are all represented by their titular heads and answer question in an open forum. Freeform/five days.
It can be framed as a bi-cameral Q&A with house and senate asking questions. Or better a citizen panel drawn by lot. The thing could go on for 5 days an aspect of governance a day for a week. A different group impanelled each fday - even a different topic.
Why not? How better to get real national debate than from comment from every salient (and for once informed) aspect of governance - from making the law to enforcing it to deciding its adherence to constitutional principal.
How much closer can one get to real democracy than that?
Instead what we have are 3 branches of government that are playing party games in the press and never forced to take a stand by The "We the People" in all of this except at election time . They are never forced on their own terms to defend their own peculiar constitutional prerogative on a national public stage. Would it not be worth even a shut down of the normal "business" of governance to attend such a panel?
Just thinking.
Friday, May 19, 2006
Phony John McCain
The senator - one day to be failed presidential candidate - gets his first soljah moment when confronted by students at the New School commencement.
His respone: "When I was a young man, I was quite infatuated with self-expression, and rightly so because, if memory conveniently serves, I was so much more eloquent, well-informed and wiser than anyone else I knew," McCain said.
Well there you go. John the phony maverick McCain. Gawblesshim and his condescion. It wasn't in evidence when he was at LibertyVille I mean university, sucking up to the christofascist wing of his party.
So the NYT will give him a lede about the the raucous greeting he got in front of them liberal kids and he will burnish his right wing cred., Beautiful.
Bush is taking the country into a controlled descent into terrain and phony john still plays the game like the craft is trim.
Better be checking that chute johnny.
His respone: "When I was a young man, I was quite infatuated with self-expression, and rightly so because, if memory conveniently serves, I was so much more eloquent, well-informed and wiser than anyone else I knew," McCain said.
Well there you go. John the phony maverick McCain. Gawblesshim and his condescion. It wasn't in evidence when he was at LibertyVille I mean university, sucking up to the christofascist wing of his party.
So the NYT will give him a lede about the the raucous greeting he got in front of them liberal kids and he will burnish his right wing cred., Beautiful.
Bush is taking the country into a controlled descent into terrain and phony john still plays the game like the craft is trim.
Better be checking that chute johnny.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
giving due where it is due.
You have to give the Bush Administration points for racing from concept to implementation in record time. I mean it was what 90 days after the 9/11 attacks that we had the Patriot Act. And now 5 years later we find that the government is using "oversight-free' National Security Letters to spy on journalists who I guess, despite all available evidence, are considered enemies of the Bush crew.
I mean just think. The RICO act that other disaster of Congressional deliberation was around for many years - I'm too lazy to look it up but it's gotta be more than 5 - before some bright light had the idea to use it against the anti-choice protesters. There were probably other expansions of the the act's provisions (I seem to recall F. Lee Bailey being at least threatened with impounding his helicopter under RICO provisions but I like I said I'm lazy and I may be hallucinating. But you get my point).
Bush who cannot do anything useful has moved with astonishing speed to tatter the fabric that holds this nation together.
THe worst part for me is that it isn't really for ideaological reasons. I mean I really believe he doesn't want to be dictator for life. What he is is lazy (yes like me but I'm not president) and even more than me a world class short cut artist. He has of course had great opportunity to hone his craft(iness).
I mean here he is the Paris Hilton of the clique of political robber barons: the Bushes, the Kennedy's, the Gores, and whoever else. He got to the "best educaiton" meaning attending best-connected schools even managing to get a graduate degree a Harvard MBA no less - forever devaluing the worth of that particular bit of sheepskin. Good thing Harvard has a few billion in the bank, it will take a generation for them to regain their street cred.
Anyway like I said, he's Paris Hilton - getting laid and doing whatever else high livers do to their livers. Then because breeding shows he buys his way into office. And so finally here is my point. All he sees himself doing is fucking with people. Tossing his weight around just because he can.
He doesn't give a royal shit that the damage he has done and is doing to this nation will be precedent for the next megalomaniac. (Yes I believe W is a megalomaniac but of so little ambition that he is not dynasty material.)
So when the next power pusher decides that there are enemies of the state (as arbitrarily defined as W defines them) the next step up is already half-laid. So we get from enactment to abuse of the Patriot Act in near internet time.
Say what you want about W and what his disaster of a presidency has done already to this republic but he managed to get the tools for its final destruction in fine order in near record time.
I mean just think. The RICO act that other disaster of Congressional deliberation was around for many years - I'm too lazy to look it up but it's gotta be more than 5 - before some bright light had the idea to use it against the anti-choice protesters. There were probably other expansions of the the act's provisions (I seem to recall F. Lee Bailey being at least threatened with impounding his helicopter under RICO provisions but I like I said I'm lazy and I may be hallucinating. But you get my point).
Bush who cannot do anything useful has moved with astonishing speed to tatter the fabric that holds this nation together.
THe worst part for me is that it isn't really for ideaological reasons. I mean I really believe he doesn't want to be dictator for life. What he is is lazy (yes like me but I'm not president) and even more than me a world class short cut artist. He has of course had great opportunity to hone his craft(iness).
I mean here he is the Paris Hilton of the clique of political robber barons: the Bushes, the Kennedy's, the Gores, and whoever else. He got to the "best educaiton" meaning attending best-connected schools even managing to get a graduate degree a Harvard MBA no less - forever devaluing the worth of that particular bit of sheepskin. Good thing Harvard has a few billion in the bank, it will take a generation for them to regain their street cred.
Anyway like I said, he's Paris Hilton - getting laid and doing whatever else high livers do to their livers. Then because breeding shows he buys his way into office. And so finally here is my point. All he sees himself doing is fucking with people. Tossing his weight around just because he can.
He doesn't give a royal shit that the damage he has done and is doing to this nation will be precedent for the next megalomaniac. (Yes I believe W is a megalomaniac but of so little ambition that he is not dynasty material.)
So when the next power pusher decides that there are enemies of the state (as arbitrarily defined as W defines them) the next step up is already half-laid. So we get from enactment to abuse of the Patriot Act in near internet time.
Say what you want about W and what his disaster of a presidency has done already to this republic but he managed to get the tools for its final destruction in fine order in near record time.
Monday, May 15, 2006
fragile democracy
It is quite amazing to think how fragile democracy is. To think in 5 years what the Bush junta (can it be called anything else at this point?) has done to this nation is breathtaking. The revelations of spying on journalists is nothing short of a Nixon-on-steroids moment and still our Republican led Congress does what they do best - nothing. Actually more specifically they try to change the subject to immigration - a sure winner no doubt in their desperate attempt to keep their phoney-baloney jobs come November.
But still when the leader of your party is in fact stealing the show out from under you and you are the only one with a serious chance at bringing him to heel and you don't - what are you? We now know they are incompetent. We now know they are even more corrupt than we could imagine. We know that they are blinded by ideology. Now we know that they must also be cowards. Either that or they are SO blind that they will let George Bush to continue pissing on the Constitution and the American People he so often claims to be protecting.
That is beyond pathetic. That is despicable. It is immoral in our democracy. It is criminal.
But it does point up my thesis: democracy is fragile. One can argue with certainty that this is a perfect storm where the lockstep Republican party is taken in by a megalomaniac and his willing executioners who will glady run roughshod over them - when their turn comes. It is a perfect storm but throughout history we have seen it all before. How it usually ends is in the total dissolution of the republic in fact though the trappings stay aorund for a while. We have seen it from Rome to Paris to Berlin to Moscow.
How will this perfect storm end now? We have an abject press that even in its willingly suppliant state is still having the boot of state security applied to its throat. Congress - notably Frist Hastert Roberts and the late unlamented Delay who have turned the Congress in similar fashion into a "People's Chamber of Deputies" - are simply being ignored by a president who has chosen to ignore over 700 laws and has apparently been making up a bunch more on the fly.
Saddam weeded out the chaff from his people's chamber by denouncing them in a famous speech and having those he denounced walked out from the hall and into oblivion by his goons. How will George do it do you suppose?
Maybe the burgeoning corruption scandals that are overtaking the House in particular is really his clever way of appying the screws to the Congress whogave him everything he wanted. It would be surgically clean no? That would require a mind that certainly the boy king doesn't have and a finesse the even the overrated Karlness himself could only dream of.
No the corruption is certainly theirs and the DOJ is legitimately catching up with them. So maybe their is hope. The junta doesn't have the stuff to actually stand up for their own. So the scandals will gnaw away at the Republican hegemony and as the targets cut their deals the foundation will collapse.
And if that happens, maybe just maybe, like when Nixon tried the creeping coup gambit those that stood up for the Constitution fortified by some serious courage coming from the career folks in the DOJ found enough strength to cause Nixon to hit a wall of resistance. It is that wall that gives fragile democracy whatever resilience it has. But it takes instutions and most importantly the courage and conviction of those that take that this nation and its Constitution seriously - who believe that it is worth fighting for even when the enemies of state are the ones who hold the levers of power.
But still when the leader of your party is in fact stealing the show out from under you and you are the only one with a serious chance at bringing him to heel and you don't - what are you? We now know they are incompetent. We now know they are even more corrupt than we could imagine. We know that they are blinded by ideology. Now we know that they must also be cowards. Either that or they are SO blind that they will let George Bush to continue pissing on the Constitution and the American People he so often claims to be protecting.
That is beyond pathetic. That is despicable. It is immoral in our democracy. It is criminal.
But it does point up my thesis: democracy is fragile. One can argue with certainty that this is a perfect storm where the lockstep Republican party is taken in by a megalomaniac and his willing executioners who will glady run roughshod over them - when their turn comes. It is a perfect storm but throughout history we have seen it all before. How it usually ends is in the total dissolution of the republic in fact though the trappings stay aorund for a while. We have seen it from Rome to Paris to Berlin to Moscow.
How will this perfect storm end now? We have an abject press that even in its willingly suppliant state is still having the boot of state security applied to its throat. Congress - notably Frist Hastert Roberts and the late unlamented Delay who have turned the Congress in similar fashion into a "People's Chamber of Deputies" - are simply being ignored by a president who has chosen to ignore over 700 laws and has apparently been making up a bunch more on the fly.
Saddam weeded out the chaff from his people's chamber by denouncing them in a famous speech and having those he denounced walked out from the hall and into oblivion by his goons. How will George do it do you suppose?
Maybe the burgeoning corruption scandals that are overtaking the House in particular is really his clever way of appying the screws to the Congress whogave him everything he wanted. It would be surgically clean no? That would require a mind that certainly the boy king doesn't have and a finesse the even the overrated Karlness himself could only dream of.
No the corruption is certainly theirs and the DOJ is legitimately catching up with them. So maybe their is hope. The junta doesn't have the stuff to actually stand up for their own. So the scandals will gnaw away at the Republican hegemony and as the targets cut their deals the foundation will collapse.
And if that happens, maybe just maybe, like when Nixon tried the creeping coup gambit those that stood up for the Constitution fortified by some serious courage coming from the career folks in the DOJ found enough strength to cause Nixon to hit a wall of resistance. It is that wall that gives fragile democracy whatever resilience it has. But it takes instutions and most importantly the courage and conviction of those that take that this nation and its Constitution seriously - who believe that it is worth fighting for even when the enemies of state are the ones who hold the levers of power.
Saturday, April 29, 2006
high times and misdemeanors
I do wonder where this mess of an administration will end up. So far it is a toss-up between whether Bush's will go down as more corrupt than Grant's or Harding's. Either way he is in rarified company corruption-wise.
It is really amazing to watch a misadministration implode. I watched Johnson's die its slow death. I watched as Nixon got tangled in the noose that he tried to lynch the Constitution with - and thanks to a Congress that really took its oath of office seriously - he got strangled himself.
It is a cliche I know but it is like watching a slow-mo train wreck. And every day brings a new more bizarre twist to this plot.
The latest is centered at the Watergate (I guess we have to draw up a topology. This would just be one more local minimum) and at last this cess-pool of an administration (for a second time after having required a -gate after every scandalous whiff we have a -gate that really is a watergate -gate.) now finally includes SEX. At long last the extended Bush administration has a SEX SCANDAL. Of course it is too little too late for Boy George. I expect with his polls in 30's (soon to be 20's?), about now he is wishing someone liked him enough to give him a blowjob.
It is like this GOP in its "Republican-error" of one party government is determined to taste every mode of corruption available to the human psyche. I wouldn't be suprised if a Republican congressman was found eating roasted human flesh at a rest stop in suburban MD. OK I would be suprised but not in the "Oh my God how could anyone..." sense.
But in a way, it is kinda heartening this watergate/callgirl/cuban contraband cigar/whatever scandal.
And we owe it to the Dukestir. While the President and his mob actively piss on the Constitution and Hastert, Delay, Frist, and Roberts all do pee-pee on the Constitution at his behest we get Cunningham and the CIA overseers all getting laid and bribed apparently out of simple greed. It is almost quaint and quite like a breath of fresh (incredibly stinkie but fresh) air.
So thank you Duke and all the others soon to be implicated (present and former Congressmen included) in this latest aspect of the Bush rot for restoring my faith in the ability of Washington to do just good old fashioned corruption.
To you all a toast.
It is really amazing to watch a misadministration implode. I watched Johnson's die its slow death. I watched as Nixon got tangled in the noose that he tried to lynch the Constitution with - and thanks to a Congress that really took its oath of office seriously - he got strangled himself.
It is a cliche I know but it is like watching a slow-mo train wreck. And every day brings a new more bizarre twist to this plot.
The latest is centered at the Watergate (I guess we have to draw up a topology. This would just be one more local minimum) and at last this cess-pool of an administration (for a second time after having required a -gate after every scandalous whiff we have a -gate that really is a watergate -gate.) now finally includes SEX. At long last the extended Bush administration has a SEX SCANDAL. Of course it is too little too late for Boy George. I expect with his polls in 30's (soon to be 20's?), about now he is wishing someone liked him enough to give him a blowjob.
It is like this GOP in its "Republican-error" of one party government is determined to taste every mode of corruption available to the human psyche. I wouldn't be suprised if a Republican congressman was found eating roasted human flesh at a rest stop in suburban MD. OK I would be suprised but not in the "Oh my God how could anyone..." sense.
But in a way, it is kinda heartening this watergate/callgirl/cuban contraband cigar/whatever scandal.
And we owe it to the Dukestir. While the President and his mob actively piss on the Constitution and Hastert, Delay, Frist, and Roberts all do pee-pee on the Constitution at his behest we get Cunningham and the CIA overseers all getting laid and bribed apparently out of simple greed. It is almost quaint and quite like a breath of fresh (incredibly stinkie but fresh) air.
So thank you Duke and all the others soon to be implicated (present and former Congressmen included) in this latest aspect of the Bush rot for restoring my faith in the ability of Washington to do just good old fashioned corruption.
To you all a toast.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
It's spring. Time to clear the brush?
Yeah well, Bush is cleaning house... Andy Card is gone and George has a new appointment czar in Bolten who is as has been noted an insider.
Now Mouthpiece McClellan is gone - Bush is obviously soul searching. Rove has been "demoted". When Rasputin was demoted it took cyanide, several bullets and a club (here).
But Karl isn't being left to the tender mercies of his own numerous enemies. Instead this so-called demotion is 1) a chance for him to work on defending himself against the ample evidence that he is a traitor, like Veep's aide Libby, to his country and 2) a chance to work whatever mojo he has left in salvaging the rapidly collapsing Generation of the Republican Majority(tm).
But all that begs the question: how would we know when the Bush housecleaning is a real Spring cleaning and not just re-arranging the deck chairs to get a better look at the icebergs?
Well in short, if someone has to be confirmed - my bet - it ain't gonna happen.
I mean what candidate could go before Congress - even this rubber stamp bunch of racketeers (when does RICO kick in?) that might otherwise be laughingly called the Republican Leadership - and not get hosed by the sins of his/her predecessor?
SecDef? Obviously not. It would be wall-to-wall Iraq fuckup for weeks.
Interior - Say, Norton leaves. The question? How do you intend to reclaim the department from being the wholly owned subsidiary of Jack inc?
Treasury? Um can you spell "trillions in debt"?
Homeland Security - a department that should have never seen the light of day. Will you promise not to sell the ports to terrorist financiers? What happens if it rains in the south again? Wiretaps anyone?
You get my point. Any office that requires Bush to have his nominee confirmed by the Senate would be an invitation to (further) disaster to the fool-in-chief.
I mean even at this point should the entire Supreme Court succumb to the plague (even one not instigated by Ann Coulter), Bush would be very hard pressed to get a quorum seated.
So what is poor Boy George to do?
The beauty of nationhood is that we are all in this together.
At this writing there are 1006 days left in the misadministration.
The downside of nationhood is that for the next 1006 days we are all in this together.
The entire Kennedy era lasted that long.
So don't count on any real change. Any change for George at this point is bad change. At worse it would open the seepage to impeachment (note: not floodgate - it is the Republican rubber stamp after all) that even Karl with all his new found free time - let alone George - couldn't control.
Even if the Democrats win big in November expect a very slow death of a thousand cuts for this disastrous epoch in out national life. It will take a new dem majority a long time to overcome its battered spouse syndrome. At best they will tie Bush in knots. At worse that will cause Bush to go off the deep end and do something - I was going to say "stupid" but he has already raised the bar too high for my feeble imagination - so fill in the blank.
Now Mouthpiece McClellan is gone - Bush is obviously soul searching. Rove has been "demoted". When Rasputin was demoted it took cyanide, several bullets and a club (here).
But Karl isn't being left to the tender mercies of his own numerous enemies. Instead this so-called demotion is 1) a chance for him to work on defending himself against the ample evidence that he is a traitor, like Veep's aide Libby, to his country and 2) a chance to work whatever mojo he has left in salvaging the rapidly collapsing Generation of the Republican Majority(tm).
But all that begs the question: how would we know when the Bush housecleaning is a real Spring cleaning and not just re-arranging the deck chairs to get a better look at the icebergs?
Well in short, if someone has to be confirmed - my bet - it ain't gonna happen.
I mean what candidate could go before Congress - even this rubber stamp bunch of racketeers (when does RICO kick in?) that might otherwise be laughingly called the Republican Leadership - and not get hosed by the sins of his/her predecessor?
SecDef? Obviously not. It would be wall-to-wall Iraq fuckup for weeks.
Interior - Say, Norton leaves. The question? How do you intend to reclaim the department from being the wholly owned subsidiary of Jack inc?
Treasury? Um can you spell "trillions in debt"?
Homeland Security - a department that should have never seen the light of day. Will you promise not to sell the ports to terrorist financiers? What happens if it rains in the south again? Wiretaps anyone?
You get my point. Any office that requires Bush to have his nominee confirmed by the Senate would be an invitation to (further) disaster to the fool-in-chief.
I mean even at this point should the entire Supreme Court succumb to the plague (even one not instigated by Ann Coulter), Bush would be very hard pressed to get a quorum seated.
So what is poor Boy George to do?
The beauty of nationhood is that we are all in this together.
At this writing there are 1006 days left in the misadministration.
The downside of nationhood is that for the next 1006 days we are all in this together.
The entire Kennedy era lasted that long.
So don't count on any real change. Any change for George at this point is bad change. At worse it would open the seepage to impeachment (note: not floodgate - it is the Republican rubber stamp after all) that even Karl with all his new found free time - let alone George - couldn't control.
Even if the Democrats win big in November expect a very slow death of a thousand cuts for this disastrous epoch in out national life. It will take a new dem majority a long time to overcome its battered spouse syndrome. At best they will tie Bush in knots. At worse that will cause Bush to go off the deep end and do something - I was going to say "stupid" but he has already raised the bar too high for my feeble imagination - so fill in the blank.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
what happens the day after Bush attacks Iran?
George Bush is going to take us to war again. This time in Iran. Do I know for certain? No. But I am certain enough to enter an office pool on naming the date and time for it too start.
The real question is not "if" George Bush will once again make himself an international war criminal and make the American people complicit in his crimes. No, the question is what will we the American People do about it. I don't mean what will we do to stop him. We can't. As in Iraq, George Bush wants a war and George Bush will have his war. Call it GW II.
I mean what will the American people do the after it starts. With wall-to-wall coverage of an air war full of flash and fire (fka shock and awe) on CNN and FOX. With the usual band of coconspirators talking about how important it is to attack Iran. With the whole GW War Noise Machine in full throat, what will we do? Will we be awed ourselves like we were at the start of the Iraq debacle? Will we be cowed by the calls to stand behind our President in a "Time of War"(tm).
Will we take to the streets in free speech zones?
I don't know the answer. As sure I am that George Bush is going to attack Iran and I do think it is more than possible (bordering likely) that he will use tactical nukes to do it, I have no idea what the reaction of the American People will be.
As George Bush himself once said, "Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice - won't get fooled again." We must wait for after the bombs start falling on Iran before we know if he was/is speaking for the American People.
The real question is not "if" George Bush will once again make himself an international war criminal and make the American people complicit in his crimes. No, the question is what will we the American People do about it. I don't mean what will we do to stop him. We can't. As in Iraq, George Bush wants a war and George Bush will have his war. Call it GW II.
I mean what will the American people do the after it starts. With wall-to-wall coverage of an air war full of flash and fire (fka shock and awe) on CNN and FOX. With the usual band of coconspirators talking about how important it is to attack Iran. With the whole GW War Noise Machine in full throat, what will we do? Will we be awed ourselves like we were at the start of the Iraq debacle? Will we be cowed by the calls to stand behind our President in a "Time of War"(tm).
Will we take to the streets in free speech zones?
I don't know the answer. As sure I am that George Bush is going to attack Iran and I do think it is more than possible (bordering likely) that he will use tactical nukes to do it, I have no idea what the reaction of the American People will be.
As George Bush himself once said, "Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice - won't get fooled again." We must wait for after the bombs start falling on Iran before we know if he was/is speaking for the American People.
Monday, April 03, 2006
tom delay goes on the lam
He's out. He wants to spend more time away from Ronnie Earle, I guess. Naturally he is cloaking his slime in his normal smarmy sleeze (do you get the idea that my respect for the man knows limits?). He is leaving Texas to move to his residence in Va so he can vacate his candidacy and give the next Texas Republican felon-to-be a chance.
You can tell how much shit he thinks he's in. He's moving from his place on a gold course. And you know he loves him some golf by-jeebus. I guess it ain't the same without jack coming anymore by to pick up the drink tab. Ah those were the days, eh Tommie boy. But wipe your eye. You still got Jesus and besides, they're closing in, it's time to flee.
So long Tom, you gave us hours of fun and excitement, But I gotta tell you, America will be better off without you, Texas will be better off without you and soon enough Allentown will be better with you,
Ciao, Babe. Don't let the bed bugs bite,
You can tell how much shit he thinks he's in. He's moving from his place on a gold course. And you know he loves him some golf by-jeebus. I guess it ain't the same without jack coming anymore by to pick up the drink tab. Ah those were the days, eh Tommie boy. But wipe your eye. You still got Jesus and besides, they're closing in, it's time to flee.
So long Tom, you gave us hours of fun and excitement, But I gotta tell you, America will be better off without you, Texas will be better off without you and soon enough Allentown will be better with you,
Ciao, Babe. Don't let the bed bugs bite,
Saturday, April 01, 2006
back from the brink
I've been wondering what it might take to take this nation back from its current bout of acute psychosis.
People can become bipolar - they become manic; they become depressed. They swing like a pendulum from one state to the other. States too can become bipolar. For states though the manifestations are named differently. States swing between self-aggrandizing on one end to paranoid on the other.
I think that the manic/self-aggrandizement and depression/paranoia equate generally well enough to make "people bipolar" and "state bipolar" close analogs if not isomorphic.
Given that, it is clear to me that despite the chest thumping that the Bush administration and its willing executioners like to display exhibits depression. Now chest thumping and depression are not usually equated. Neither is chest thumping and paranoia I suppose. But consider that when one is in greatest fear, one can choose to run or one can chose to fight. If you feel you are dealing from weakness and you decide to fight the only tool you have is the bluff. Said another way, all you can do is thump your chest and hope your opponent is impressed enough to back down.
If one is deeply paranoid (and won't run) all one can do is chest-thumping. I obviously have a big definition of chest thumping here. Sending American troops into Iraq s a valid manifestation of chest-thumping. You see, chest thumping doesn't actually do anything significant. What it does is it attempts to make your adversary believe that you COULD do something significant. And that describes the Iraq invasion. It did not solve any particular problem. It only tried to demonstrate that we could do such a thing to our adversary if we wanted to.
I don't believe for a second that the neo-cons see it this way. I think that they thought they were solving a problem. Saddam had become a serious boogey-man for them, He kept them from sleep and stuff. But the real actor here is George Bush. What did he see? I am convinced that he saw it as chest thumping. We could show North Korea and Iran. And we could show Al Qaeda too. They would see how powerful we are (were) and decide that they better get with program.
He followed all that up with the incipient Constitutional crisis of illegal wiretaps, Constitutional crime, and neo-McCarthyism that is so bad we have no "-gate" name for it. We just call it "politics."
George Bush put this nation into a serious paranoia. Does he feel it as a personal paranoia? I don't know. That is not a necessary pre-condition I think for the nation to be in such a state. I don't think it is even necessary for his machine to believe it. Their job is by definition a machiavellian one. They must manipulate events to support the narrative they want to embed in the national consciousness.
So the question again, how to get the nation back from not only this state of paranoia but from its general psychosis? One can say that this nation has always been thusly psychotic. Our Manifest Destiny is manifest enough. Our adherence since the Civil War of a nearly-wahhabist strain of capitalism has always been at odds with the principals of our founding documents.
But before this Bush Administration we were able to find a rough equilibrium. It lasted from between the mid-fifties until September 11, 2001. And yes, I am including Nixon and Reagan in their. Through all that time the pendulum swung but it didn't move really all that far from its center. And really I don't believe that even McCarthy was that much of a Constitutional problem. For the proper bookend we would have to go back to FDR and his ramming through of his Depression-era programs and his subsequent Japanese internment order.
Somehow we survived that. Now the question is, how do we survive this?
People can become bipolar - they become manic; they become depressed. They swing like a pendulum from one state to the other. States too can become bipolar. For states though the manifestations are named differently. States swing between self-aggrandizing on one end to paranoid on the other.
I think that the manic/self-aggrandizement and depression/paranoia equate generally well enough to make "people bipolar" and "state bipolar" close analogs if not isomorphic.
Given that, it is clear to me that despite the chest thumping that the Bush administration and its willing executioners like to display exhibits depression. Now chest thumping and depression are not usually equated. Neither is chest thumping and paranoia I suppose. But consider that when one is in greatest fear, one can choose to run or one can chose to fight. If you feel you are dealing from weakness and you decide to fight the only tool you have is the bluff. Said another way, all you can do is thump your chest and hope your opponent is impressed enough to back down.
If one is deeply paranoid (and won't run) all one can do is chest-thumping. I obviously have a big definition of chest thumping here. Sending American troops into Iraq s a valid manifestation of chest-thumping. You see, chest thumping doesn't actually do anything significant. What it does is it attempts to make your adversary believe that you COULD do something significant. And that describes the Iraq invasion. It did not solve any particular problem. It only tried to demonstrate that we could do such a thing to our adversary if we wanted to.
I don't believe for a second that the neo-cons see it this way. I think that they thought they were solving a problem. Saddam had become a serious boogey-man for them, He kept them from sleep and stuff. But the real actor here is George Bush. What did he see? I am convinced that he saw it as chest thumping. We could show North Korea and Iran. And we could show Al Qaeda too. They would see how powerful we are (were) and decide that they better get with program.
He followed all that up with the incipient Constitutional crisis of illegal wiretaps, Constitutional crime, and neo-McCarthyism that is so bad we have no "-gate" name for it. We just call it "politics."
George Bush put this nation into a serious paranoia. Does he feel it as a personal paranoia? I don't know. That is not a necessary pre-condition I think for the nation to be in such a state. I don't think it is even necessary for his machine to believe it. Their job is by definition a machiavellian one. They must manipulate events to support the narrative they want to embed in the national consciousness.
So the question again, how to get the nation back from not only this state of paranoia but from its general psychosis? One can say that this nation has always been thusly psychotic. Our Manifest Destiny is manifest enough. Our adherence since the Civil War of a nearly-wahhabist strain of capitalism has always been at odds with the principals of our founding documents.
But before this Bush Administration we were able to find a rough equilibrium. It lasted from between the mid-fifties until September 11, 2001. And yes, I am including Nixon and Reagan in their. Through all that time the pendulum swung but it didn't move really all that far from its center. And really I don't believe that even McCarthy was that much of a Constitutional problem. For the proper bookend we would have to go back to FDR and his ramming through of his Depression-era programs and his subsequent Japanese internment order.
Somehow we survived that. Now the question is, how do we survive this?
Saturday, March 25, 2006
about letters
I am a recent blogger. I started in the last six months. I have been reading blogs since they first started showing up. Before I started a blog, I responded to some (still do of course). But before I started blogging, I started writing to the editorial page on my local daily.
I am a private person. Completely introvert. On the Myers-Briggs scale I peg the INFP rating in the INP categories. The F cat being a sex influenced one I out F many if not most females (hint: I am male). So anyway – understand: me <> spotlight. You can look it up INFP
I started writing to the editor on a certain date. Don’t recall it offhand but I can tell you what got to me. It was Abu Graib. It wasn’t what specifically happened AT Abu Graib that did it. I was disgusted by it. At the time it was a hint that it was official policy to allow torture and that pushed me into the ozone. But I didn’t write.
No, what got me was the fact that a grunt came forward to report it. He had to fight his chain of command. To my consternation I can’t find the soldier’s name. HE DESERVES A FREAKIN’ MEDAL. As I recall the guy was being vilified by the Right Wing Noise Machine for being a rat. The Abu Graib shit wasn’t as bad as all that they said. Rush equated it to frat house hijinx. That got to me.
My first letter to the editor said that the guy was a hero. I never dreamed at the time that MY AMERICA would fall so low. It has become a country that condones torture despite its own laws (but then I guess that is true of most of our brethren torturing countries).
I got a call at home after that letter was printed commending me on writing it.
I rarely read the letters to the editor in a newspaper. That is still true. I was surprised that someone did and felt strongly enough to let me know.
Since that time I have written many letters. The Bush Administration provides a wealth of material that will grate on a citizen’s conscience enough to get him to write. I did and do.
You should too.
I sometimes get stopped and told by people how much they appreciate my letters. I have even been commended on my “courage” for writing them. And I guess that is my point.
We have come to a point in our history when it is thought that merely stating one’s opinion on an editorial page is an act of courage. That is sad. I can attest that it isn’t true but I can understand how the poison in our political climate can make it appear so. I don’t know what I would do if real police came for people who wrote letters to the editor (I mean real police not those sent by Bill O’Reilly ).
So, my point – blog if you want but write letters. That is where you live. You will get people who disagree with you but you will get if not more then at least some people that agree. You become the voice for the voiceless and maybe more importantly you add to the critical mass of opinion where it counts – locally. It is only where we live that we can really change anything and we have to win our own backyard before we can wing the nation back.
So write dammit. Ok?
I am a private person. Completely introvert. On the Myers-Briggs scale I peg the INFP rating in the INP categories. The F cat being a sex influenced one I out F many if not most females (hint: I am male). So anyway – understand: me <> spotlight. You can look it up INFP
I started writing to the editor on a certain date. Don’t recall it offhand but I can tell you what got to me. It was Abu Graib. It wasn’t what specifically happened AT Abu Graib that did it. I was disgusted by it. At the time it was a hint that it was official policy to allow torture and that pushed me into the ozone. But I didn’t write.
No, what got me was the fact that a grunt came forward to report it. He had to fight his chain of command. To my consternation I can’t find the soldier’s name. HE DESERVES A FREAKIN’ MEDAL. As I recall the guy was being vilified by the Right Wing Noise Machine for being a rat. The Abu Graib shit wasn’t as bad as all that they said. Rush equated it to frat house hijinx. That got to me.
My first letter to the editor said that the guy was a hero. I never dreamed at the time that MY AMERICA would fall so low. It has become a country that condones torture despite its own laws (but then I guess that is true of most of our brethren torturing countries).
I got a call at home after that letter was printed commending me on writing it.
I rarely read the letters to the editor in a newspaper. That is still true. I was surprised that someone did and felt strongly enough to let me know.
Since that time I have written many letters. The Bush Administration provides a wealth of material that will grate on a citizen’s conscience enough to get him to write. I did and do.
You should too.
I sometimes get stopped and told by people how much they appreciate my letters. I have even been commended on my “courage” for writing them. And I guess that is my point.
We have come to a point in our history when it is thought that merely stating one’s opinion on an editorial page is an act of courage. That is sad. I can attest that it isn’t true but I can understand how the poison in our political climate can make it appear so. I don’t know what I would do if real police came for people who wrote letters to the editor (I mean real police not those sent by Bill O’Reilly ).
So, my point – blog if you want but write letters. That is where you live. You will get people who disagree with you but you will get if not more then at least some people that agree. You become the voice for the voiceless and maybe more importantly you add to the critical mass of opinion where it counts – locally. It is only where we live that we can really change anything and we have to win our own backyard before we can wing the nation back.
So write dammit. Ok?
We write letters
Below is the text of my most recent letter to the editor of my local daily. Not to be sanctimonious but are you writing to your local paper too?
We can read and blog all we want but really the bogosphere is largely a closed universe. Sure it leaks into the real world - like in the Dan Rather dustup. But not always. Will anyone in the real world hear about the Washington Post blog fiasco in hiring a serial plagerist as a conservative balance to Dan Froomkin? I'll kill the suspense -no.
So anyway, what I'm saying is. if you want to change something, change Main Street. And still the only way to do that is to do it locally. OK end of sermon. I'll have more to say about it. Here's the letter:
Mr. President, Iraq is George Bush’s War. Make no mistake. Despite the various rationales for starting this war: The central front on the war on terror; The march of democracy in the world; WMD; Oil; 9/11 – all of which (except maybe for oil) have been shown to be pipedreams, lies, or hallucinations- this is your war of choice, George Bush’s war.
At your most recent news conference you said that getting troops out of Iraq was for “future presidents” to decide (I noted the plural - presidents).
No, Mr. President. No, Mr. Commander-In-Chief-Because-I-Said-So. No.
Iraq is your war. It is the war of choice that you decided to wage. It is the war for which you decided that no lie was too egregious, that no callousness in calling dissenters of your plans traitors was too extreme, that no manipulation of the bogus color coded “terrorist alert” index was too spurious, that no national security leak to get back at your critics was too damaging to actual national security.
You recall that you told us how important it is for you to make the hard decisions. Amidst all your lies about Iraq, your lie about preserving and protecting the Constitution, you may recall how you said you struggled to make the decisions that you make. “It’s hard work.” Yes, you told us.
Well Mr. President, you must struggle a bit more.
Iraq is your war.
Over two thousand American soldiers in Iraq have been killed in your name. Many more Americans have been maimed in your name. You have crushed the lives of thousands of American families beyond that in your perverse need to pursue a war of lies by using America’s part time soldiers for full time combat three times over.
And you are exactly one international crisis from destroying our armed services outright.
Mr. President, Iraq is your failure, a failure that is your legacy to the American people and to history as surely as the crushing deficit that you will leave to generations is.
It is not up to “future presidents” to get American soldiers out of Iraq. What makes you think future American presidents will want to be known as the President That Lost Iraq? No, it is up to one President George W. Bush to get the American soldiers out of Iraq.
I know that you don’t want to do it – to admit that you have visited a disaster upon our nation and the world. I know too that the Congress will not make you do it. The rubber-stamp House and Senate leadership is too corrupt and too busy helping you dismantle what remains of our Constitutional government after all. And the members in Congress in both parties who refuse to hold you to account are equally culpable in allowing you to continue your assault on our nation’s well being.
But, Mr. President, this cup cannot be taken from your hand. The Iraq War is your war. Only you can honorably bring our American soldiers home.
We can read and blog all we want but really the bogosphere is largely a closed universe. Sure it leaks into the real world - like in the Dan Rather dustup. But not always. Will anyone in the real world hear about the Washington Post blog fiasco in hiring a serial plagerist as a conservative balance to Dan Froomkin? I'll kill the suspense -no.
So anyway, what I'm saying is. if you want to change something, change Main Street. And still the only way to do that is to do it locally. OK end of sermon. I'll have more to say about it. Here's the letter:
Mr. President, Iraq is George Bush’s War. Make no mistake. Despite the various rationales for starting this war: The central front on the war on terror; The march of democracy in the world; WMD; Oil; 9/11 – all of which (except maybe for oil) have been shown to be pipedreams, lies, or hallucinations- this is your war of choice, George Bush’s war.
At your most recent news conference you said that getting troops out of Iraq was for “future presidents” to decide (I noted the plural - presidents).
No, Mr. President. No, Mr. Commander-In-Chief-Because-I-Said-So. No.
Iraq is your war. It is the war of choice that you decided to wage. It is the war for which you decided that no lie was too egregious, that no callousness in calling dissenters of your plans traitors was too extreme, that no manipulation of the bogus color coded “terrorist alert” index was too spurious, that no national security leak to get back at your critics was too damaging to actual national security.
You recall that you told us how important it is for you to make the hard decisions. Amidst all your lies about Iraq, your lie about preserving and protecting the Constitution, you may recall how you said you struggled to make the decisions that you make. “It’s hard work.” Yes, you told us.
Well Mr. President, you must struggle a bit more.
Iraq is your war.
Over two thousand American soldiers in Iraq have been killed in your name. Many more Americans have been maimed in your name. You have crushed the lives of thousands of American families beyond that in your perverse need to pursue a war of lies by using America’s part time soldiers for full time combat three times over.
And you are exactly one international crisis from destroying our armed services outright.
Mr. President, Iraq is your failure, a failure that is your legacy to the American people and to history as surely as the crushing deficit that you will leave to generations is.
It is not up to “future presidents” to get American soldiers out of Iraq. What makes you think future American presidents will want to be known as the President That Lost Iraq? No, it is up to one President George W. Bush to get the American soldiers out of Iraq.
I know that you don’t want to do it – to admit that you have visited a disaster upon our nation and the world. I know too that the Congress will not make you do it. The rubber-stamp House and Senate leadership is too corrupt and too busy helping you dismantle what remains of our Constitutional government after all. And the members in Congress in both parties who refuse to hold you to account are equally culpable in allowing you to continue your assault on our nation’s well being.
But, Mr. President, this cup cannot be taken from your hand. The Iraq War is your war. Only you can honorably bring our American soldiers home.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
A change in the wind?
So the Washington Post hired themselves a blogger. A right winger - for balance doncha know. I guess it must be because newspapers are oh so leftie. Even my own local. The Portsmouth Herald several months ago hired a regular columnist – not a blogger but someone to write for the Sunday print edition. They call it The Conservative Corner.
Now, I for one do not think of the Portsmouth Herald is particularly liberal. It tends to be Chamber of Commerce safe in its editorials. But what I have found is that its letters page has become decidedly more left wing (full disclosure – I do my part).
It’s a phenomenon maybe. I do not equate my local daily with the Washington Post and I believe my local daily would not equate themselves thus. But there seems to be a certain resonance in their actions. I think they are in fact reactions.
What immediately comes to mind is that they are kowtowing to the right wing whinery. You know the constant railing against the liberal media. And to some degree that is probably the case. Not that the media is liberal, it is because the letters page has become decidedly more leftie.
That is the interesting part. I don’t know if this holds for the Washington Post but my un-empirical conclusion is that it is absolutely the case with my local daily. The letters that deal with national issues are very nearly all to the left. There are the few right ones but really even the Republican operatives have stopped writing in to defend the current state of this nation.
Some time ago there was a Midwest paper that actually put out the call for more pro-Bush right-wingers to write in because the letters page was getting too left heavy. And that was when Bush was popular.
The acknowledgement- putting a right winger on the payroll - is itself a victory for the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. And that is exactly what happened with my local daily and what has happened with the Washington Post. They are “balancing” meaining that they are pre-emptively caving to the right wing. They marching themselves to the re-education camp.
But there is a deeper truth here. If my anecdotal conclusion is correct that for my local daily the letters page is becoming tilted left and for the Post that the blogosphere that is attached to it is becoming tilted left, it suggests that there is a left tilt happening in reality.
If the news media pulp-edition and the news-media internets edition both need to self-censor – I mean "balance" because the public is tilting the other way then maybe there really is something happening here.
Now, I for one do not think of the Portsmouth Herald is particularly liberal. It tends to be Chamber of Commerce safe in its editorials. But what I have found is that its letters page has become decidedly more left wing (full disclosure – I do my part).
It’s a phenomenon maybe. I do not equate my local daily with the Washington Post and I believe my local daily would not equate themselves thus. But there seems to be a certain resonance in their actions. I think they are in fact reactions.
What immediately comes to mind is that they are kowtowing to the right wing whinery. You know the constant railing against the liberal media. And to some degree that is probably the case. Not that the media is liberal, it is because the letters page has become decidedly more leftie.
That is the interesting part. I don’t know if this holds for the Washington Post but my un-empirical conclusion is that it is absolutely the case with my local daily. The letters that deal with national issues are very nearly all to the left. There are the few right ones but really even the Republican operatives have stopped writing in to defend the current state of this nation.
Some time ago there was a Midwest paper that actually put out the call for more pro-Bush right-wingers to write in because the letters page was getting too left heavy. And that was when Bush was popular.
The acknowledgement- putting a right winger on the payroll - is itself a victory for the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. And that is exactly what happened with my local daily and what has happened with the Washington Post. They are “balancing” meaining that they are pre-emptively caving to the right wing. They marching themselves to the re-education camp.
But there is a deeper truth here. If my anecdotal conclusion is correct that for my local daily the letters page is becoming tilted left and for the Post that the blogosphere that is attached to it is becoming tilted left, it suggests that there is a left tilt happening in reality.
If the news media pulp-edition and the news-media internets edition both need to self-censor – I mean "balance" because the public is tilting the other way then maybe there really is something happening here.
A change in the wind?
So the Washington Post hired themselves a blogger. A right winger - for balance doncha know. I guess it must be because newspapers are oh so leftie. Even my own local. The Portsmouth Herald several months ago hired a regular columnist – not a blogger but someone to write for the Sunday print edition. They call it The Conservative Corner.
Now, I for one do not think of the Portsmouth Herald is particularly liberal. It tends to be Chamber of Commerce safe in its editorials. But what I have found is that its letters page has become decidedly more left wing (full disclosure – I do my part).
It’s a phenomenon maybe. I do not equate my local daily with the Washington Post and I believe my local daily would not equate themselves thus. But there seems to be a certain resonance in their actions. I think they are in fact reactions.
What immediately comes to mind is that they are kowtowing to the right wing whinery. You know the constant railing against the liberal media. And to some degree that is probably the case. Not that the media is liberal, it is because the letters page has become decidedly more leftie.
That is the interesting part. I don’t know if this holds for the Washington Post but my un-empirical conclusion is that it is absolutely the case with my local daily. The letters that deal with national issues are very nearly all to the left. There are the few right ones but really even the Republican operatives have stopped writing in to defend the current state of this nation.
Some time ago there was a Midwest paper that actually put out the call for more pro-Bush right-wingers to write in because the letters page was getting too left heavy. And that was when Bush was popular.
The acknowledgement- putting a right winger on the payroll - is itself a victory for the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. And that is exactly what happened with my local daily and what has happened with the Washington Post. They are “balancing” meaining that they are pre-emptively caving to the right wing. They marching themselves to the re-education camp.
But there is a deeper truth here. If my anecdotal conclusion is correct that for my local daily the letters page is becoming tilted left and for the Post that the blogosphere that is attached to it is becoming tilted left, it suggests that there is a left tilt happening in reality.
If the news media pulp-edition and the news-media internets edition both need to self-censor – I mean "balance" because the public is tilting the other way then maybe there really is something happening here.
Now, I for one do not think of the Portsmouth Herald is particularly liberal. It tends to be Chamber of Commerce safe in its editorials. But what I have found is that its letters page has become decidedly more left wing (full disclosure – I do my part).
It’s a phenomenon maybe. I do not equate my local daily with the Washington Post and I believe my local daily would not equate themselves thus. But there seems to be a certain resonance in their actions. I think they are in fact reactions.
What immediately comes to mind is that they are kowtowing to the right wing whinery. You know the constant railing against the liberal media. And to some degree that is probably the case. Not that the media is liberal, it is because the letters page has become decidedly more leftie.
That is the interesting part. I don’t know if this holds for the Washington Post but my un-empirical conclusion is that it is absolutely the case with my local daily. The letters that deal with national issues are very nearly all to the left. There are the few right ones but really even the Republican operatives have stopped writing in to defend the current state of this nation.
Some time ago there was a Midwest paper that actually put out the call for more pro-Bush right-wingers to write in because the letters page was getting too left heavy. And that was when Bush was popular.
The acknowledgement- putting a right winger on the payroll - is itself a victory for the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. And that is exactly what happened with my local daily and what has happened with the Washington Post. They are “balancing” meaining that they are pre-emptively caving to the right wing. They marching themselves to the re-education camp.
But there is a deeper truth here. If my anecdotal conclusion is correct that for my local daily the letters page is becoming tilted left and for the Post that the blogosphere that is attached to it is becoming tilted left, it suggests that there is a left tilt happening in reality.
If the news media pulp-edition and the news-media internets edition both need to self-censor – I mean "balance" because the public is tilting the other way then maybe there really is something happening here.
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