No Way Home

Who are Palin's Parrots?

2010-10-20T17:43:00.000-07:00

Palin's 2012 bankroll includes:

Toomey in PA
Raese in WV (also PA sic)
Ayotte in NH
O'Donnell in DE
Angle in NV
The inimitable Alan West in FL
Joe the Jailer Miller in AL

A few dozen more here

What a Kitchen Cabinet that would make.

If she wanted to add gravitas to her list she would endorse the guy from the Rent is Too Damn High Party.

At least someone would have a coherent platform.

I do not understand my country

2010-09-29T20:09:00.000-07:00

Link here: Shortage of Widely Used Anesthetics Is Delaying Executions in Some States

It the article we get not only that headline but also the first 5 paragraphs about how the shortage affects executions in these United States.

Then we get this quote:

'“I’ve been practicing for 25 years and have never seen anything like the frequency and variety of drugs that are in short supply,” said Dr. Alexander A. Hannenberg of Newton, Mass., the president of American Society of Anesthesiologists.'

Then we get 3 more paragraphs about the impact on executions.

Then we get this graph:

'Several anesthesiologists, including Dr. Hannenberg, said they had not yet heard about medical procedures being delayed because of the shortages. But he said it was nearly universal that anesthesiologists were being forced to use less familiar medications that leave patients groggier and with a higher risk of nausea and headaches.

“I have a huge concern,” said Dr. J. P. Abenstein, an associate professor of anesthesiology at the Mayo Clinic School of Medicine in Rochester, Minn., “because we’re having to alter the anesthetics not for the needs of the patient but because of what’s available in the marketplace.”'

Y'know I can almost remember the time when pharmacology's primary focus (raison d'etre?) was on alleviating illness. But we have gotten ourselves to such a place as a nation that it is more newsworthy that the too-many-dozens of executions - and one state sponsored murder is too many - we perform each year are in jeopardy because of delay than the fact the stuff isn't available for the therapeutic purpose for which it was supposedly developed.

A uniquely American Problem

2010-09-29T19:26:00.001-07:00

Shortage of Widely Used Anesthetics Is Delaying Executions in Some States

I'm sure they will find a uniquely American solution.

OK a DEFENSE BILL Gets Bagged

2010-09-22T20:02:00.000-07:00

So the Republicans along with last days on the public tit (directly class) Senator Lincoln and just to be an asshole Senator Pryor voted to filibuster a defense authorization bill. What do you hear? Crickets. That's what. You can tell because crickets don't lie.

Now imagine that a Republican Congress stuffs a defense bill with all kinds o shit. Tax cuts. Special favors for Blackwater. Easier torture rules. You know, the usual stuff.

Now just imagine that a Democratic minority filibusters and the filibuster is sustained. What do you think you would hear? Sat what? Can't hear the crickets now can you?

post 2010

2010-09-04T20:34:00.000-07:00

What happens.

Situation 1 : The Democrats lose the House and the Senate.
Situation 2: Dems lose House Keep Senate
Situation 3: Dems hold house lose senate - not gonna happen.
Situation 4: status quo - also highly unlikely

1) Hellacious 2 years. Maybe Rahm will get to use his alleged madskilz as a street fighter. He sure has shit ain't used them yet. Government shutdown. Fox will cheer on the right of course. But here is the bright side the press will have to chose. Obama possibly will be impeached - I tend to think most of the talk or in a Roe-V-Wade vein. The Republicans talk about it but never get around to it. But still the press finds there really are 2 count them 2 sides and they are distinct and you can no longer say "they both do it".

2 - articles of impeachment. Subpoena 1-2-3 ad adsurdum. At least this time the special prosecutor law lapsing is a good thing.

3 not gonna happen

4 - Don't know how this is possible but if it did happen, it would be a total "refutation" of the right.
Many Blue dogs would not survive - because they ain't no matter what and it would be even a smaller margin in the house and senate. But by any measure it would be a mandate.

Time to pour out the tea.

Pool Time

2008-01-29T21:09:00.000-08:00

Bush gave his last State of the Union. And by the judgment of a case of even advanced Bush Hate Derangement Syndrome it was a yawner. Even Bush looked bored. Hell, the only time he came alive was when he looked downright annoyed he was kept up late for this shit.

So among all the talk of his legacy we will hear over the next (LAST) 12 months of his bushiness here is the real question that will test the nation for the remainder of the Bush Presidency.

That is of course exactly how soon after January 20, 2009 12:00 noon will President Brush Cutter unload his Crawford fantasy ranch (at a significant profit).

Extra points if you guess which department of the Wingnut Welfare Administration buys it.

My pick is the Presidential Library Committee by May 2009. Bush will move to Southern CA. San Diego off chance Palm Springs.

George Bush's Successful Administration

2007-11-02T19:32:00.000-07:00

It is time to concede this simple fact. The Bush Administration has been a successful presidency. I think at this point seven years into his incumbency there can be little doubt.

Granted for the first six years he had a rubber stamp Congress only too eager to hitch their own stunning corruption to his wild brand of success.

The gains he made in destroying the public commonweal from the surplus to public education to Medicare prescription benefits to almost but not quite Social Security were astonishing.

But even since 2006 in the true test of adversity George Bush has been almost singularly successful.

He turned the Department of Justice from an institution internationally admired for its impartial adherence to the rule of law to – excuse me, words fail me here – the closest I can come to it is stalinesque,

Evisceration of Constitutional guarantees of Habeas Corpus? Ditto.

A feeble FEMA? enough said.

A mercenary military? Blackwater - aka Hessians R us.

Not to mention the implicit but oft constitutionally upheld right to privacy. He has been singularly successful there. George Bush turned your telephone into his earphone and your Congress can barely stifle a yawn.

Now that is success.

But it is was ability to make torture the official policy of the United States that has been simply elegant.

I admire the man. Really, I do.

Poll after poll says that George Bush is a President as despised as Richard Nixon was at the nadir of the Watergate scandal. A majority of our fellow citizens say this country is on the wrong track. Measure after measure. Issue after issue.

But does Congress act to compel this man to actually honor his oath to “protect and defend the Constitution”?

Nahhh! To actually believe that stuff is for the simple people like you and me. Not those we elect to office. They know better. I sometimes forget my place in this democratic ecosystem and wonder why.

But surely it is not meant for people like our senators. Mine are Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. They like to be called moderates. They must be. They certainly use their Constitutional office to hold a lawless and outright criminal administration to account pretty moderately. I don't expect your's do any better, But I do wish mine would decide to spend more time with their families.

No, our Congress has become bi-partisan. That means giving your telephone company immunity for illegally giving George Bush illegal information he was not legally entitled too is reasonable. Even though they all had a way to do it legally if it was necessary. That was a law called FISA. But you can forget I said it because that will be an obsolete acronym soon enough.

Why is it that “reasonable” with these people always ends up meaning selling out the Constitution?

Ahh but then there is torture.

That is George Bush's crowning glory - so to speak. Since the very founding of our nation torture has been the one area that we have steadily held to be the very the definition of Scum of Humanity. If you do it you are Scum. It really was that simple. For hundreds of years our civilization the one that bore this nation held torture beyond contempt becoming more and more certain in its determination that that was so. Even when that belief was breached it was eventually corrected. Often by hanging.

We hung Nazis to prove we meant it.

In those times the United States – our country- drove the efforts to outlaw torture forever everywhere no matter what. These efforts became the third and fourth Geneva conventions. We created the international institutions that recognized torture as the abomination that it is.

We even explicitly made those conventions our laws.

These days our government still can criticize those governments we don't like that do torture but how George Bush keeps a straight face, I don't know. The man is a genius. And certainly the world only laughs at us.

Somehow George turned it all around. We torture.

You and me and the guy next to you – we all do it. We do it in Guantanamo. We do it in the CIA's black sites. We have Syrians and Egyptians do it for us and wherever else we can KlubMed those we want beaten to within a heartbeat of their lives without the rule of law getting in the way.

Because George Bush made it OK. Need more proof?

The likely next Attorney General will be just like the last Attorney General – Fredo - in being completely happy to let you and your country torture people.

Senate Question: Waterboarding?

Nominee Answer: That's personally abhorrent.

Senate Question: “Is it torture? “

Nominee Answer: Wink Wink...

Senators Diane Feinstein and George Schumer: “Well, that's enough for me.”

And your Congress will happily go along.

Oh sure they will make long faces and talk about the rule of law before they vote to approve his nomination but that is talk for the simple people like you and me.

Chalk another win up for President Bush.

Sometimes a useless fuck is a ...

2007-10-24T19:50:00.000-07:00

The "Hitler comparison" should be shouted from the rooftops, as should the Goebbels comparison, the Himmler comparison, the Mengele, Stalin, Torquemada, Beelzebub comparisons and all the rest. If it struts like a Nazi, talks like Nazi, tortures like a Nazi and wages aggressive and illegal war like a Nazi... it's not a duck.

Press kit: Watch til you get it. Criminy what does it take?

Who is this national self?

2007-10-24T18:12:00.001-07:00

Josh Marshal say this: "Tancredo doesn't cut much of a figure in the progressive blogosphere. But in the mainstream media circles he's treated as a respectable if rather outlandish figure. But it's worth pausing play for a moment and recognizing the guy as we would if read about him in the history books: a hate-peddler and huckster, the dark side of our national selves.

But I am developing a problem with this kind of observation.

Yeah Tancredo is a cretin.

Yeah his supporters are cretins.

But how exactly does he represent some (implicitly ) dark side of our national selves?

Our national selves have acquiesced in building a virtual fence along the border to keep out "those people".

Our nation selves have allowed a war criminal president and his war criminal minions to torture whomever he likes. And Our national selves do not stop him.

Our national selves have stripped a millennium old rule of Habeus Corpus from our national protections. And our national selves do not stop it from happening or correct it.

Our national selves are about to allow the telecoms to walk away from abetting a lawless, unconstitutional and criminal regime from commandeering information that they were constitutionally and legally required to protect. And our national selves do not demand that they stand up to their obligations.

Our national selves have allowed the rule of law to become the rule of fiat by the ruling party. And our national selves yawn.

Sure we have had able assistance from a Republican party whose members seemingly in every office and every position of responsibility have chosen a Stalinist one-party system over the Constitution. But our national selves tune into their prurient lies.

And sure we have had the miserable assistance of the Democratic majority in the House and Senate who have chosen - frankly I don't know what they have chosen but whatever it is, it superseded their oath to support and defend the Constitution.

SO no, I don't understand what "dark side" Josh Marshal is referring to. As near as I can figure. Tancredo and the rest are representing us pretty faithfully.

irony 101

2007-10-13T17:19:00.001-07:00

From the AP
"I think there is too much concentration of power in the Kremlin. I have told the Russians that. Everybody has doubts about the full independence of the judiciary. There are clearly questions about the independence of the electronic media and there are, I think, questions about the strength of the Duma," said Rice, referring to the Russian parliament.

I just don't know what to freakin say. Has she even seen the Daily Show - let alone Saturday Night Live over the last million years - and she can't even see the irony in her stupidity? The AP didn't say anything about Rice struggling to keep a straight face. But I guess that's why she's the Secretary of State. Ask Colin.

And yes I know that Gawfabid there is a hint here that I am comparing our Perfect Republic(tm) to the horrible bunch-o-ruskie bastards but still.

Has she never talked to Alberto in the last 6 years?

This is exactly the kind of thing that the criminal Bushism opens us to. Who the fuck is going to take any criticism we say seriously (I can't even do it for crissakes and I think Putin is a major creep) when since 9-11-changed-everything we can't even say that we AREN'T ourselves doing exactly what Rice says Russia is.

Seriously in the quote above change "Kremlin" to White House" and "the Russians" to "President Bush". Is there a note of cognitive dissonance?

No.

Secretary Rice, all I can say to you is get bent.

Poor Franz

2007-10-11T20:50:00.001-07:00

If Kafka was alive today he would have to change his name to Bush to stay ahead of the curve.

What a dope

2007-09-24T20:01:00.001-07:00

What deserves congressional attention?

Well, none other than the Move On scandal of course. Like Terry Schiavo I guess.

Here is GOP Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia. He sent a letter to Oversight Committee chair Henry Waxman demanding a probe into the "scandal."

It is time for The New York Times to answer publicly, on the record, and under oath for its conduct," Davis writes. "You have repeatedly challenged the public statements of administration and private industry officials and sought testimony under oath. It is time for you to give equal treatment to The New York Times.

He of course neglected to mention the times that Attorney General, and various other military and executive employees weren't sworn in. I guess because they are of the better sort. You can tell him

he's a dope - in a nice way of course - here
Tom Davis, you are a dope

Dear Harry Reid

2007-09-22T17:27:00.000-07:00

Below is text of email to the Senator:

I've been thinking about the stupid censure of Move ON that you and your leadership team allowed the Republicans to pull. And I think turn about is fair play.

Here is a link from a blog - http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/rulz-by-digby-village-rule-number-one.html

It's ok it won't hurt you. You can click on it and read it and everything.

It's from Digby's blog Hullabaloo. In this post she lists a number of times when the right played the Obama/Osama name game.

Now this is just a small selection of things that if it had been aimed at a Republican would have made you allow a censure motion to show the dastardly culprit.

But instead you can use these as a starting point. Here's the idea: each day offer a censure motion to be you know just to be fair and balanced.

With a little thought you could add to the list I am sure. Pull some Swift Boat quotes and slurs aimed at Max Cleland - shucks just read Ann Coulter for a week and you would have a mother load (no pun intended).

That way you can cave to the Republicans and avoid making them actually have to filibuster whenever they threaten to and you with each (update: edited because the actual note had gibberish here) vote you lose you will still carry a message more potent than whatever pointless Iraq resolution you come up with to please Republican Moderates (ha-ha-ha) to plead with President Bush to please like uphold his oath to the Constitution.

Just trying to be helpful here,

Would you go to war because this guy thinks it's a good idea?

2007-09-17T17:52:00.001-07:00

No, I didn't think so.

(ht := Glenn Greenwald)

Verizon part II

2007-09-11T20:48:00.000-07:00

Oh just by the way - - -

I can't get passed the Verizon contact page to register my issue directly. They seem to have required STATE but then have disabled the STATE field.

It fails on both Firefox and IE.

I can see that I am up against real customer service professionals here.

So if you or anyone you know has a contact within Verizon who can, you know, pass a note please let me know.

It's a wonder that the Department of Homeland Security can anything out of these guys.

You ask what do I think of Verizon?

2007-09-11T19:00:00.001-07:00

I was talking to a friend on my Verizon landline. In the middle of the conversation the connection was lost. It was on my end. There was no dial tone - - nada. I picked up my Verizon Wireless phone (always a dicey operation at my house) and called my friend, but that was ok. For a while.

Then the wireless died. But in the meantime my landline signal came back. So once again I called my friend back on landline. Landline died again - no dial tone. So back to wireless. We are going on an hour of this game now. Technical problems - I understand.

We talk on my wireless. I check periodically on the landline - no dial tone. Finally we hang up on the wireless - I must say hadn't failed that whole time.

So. I check the landline. It lives. I want to know the status of phone service in my area. Is this storm related? We've had heavy rains. Is this caused by a car that decided to take out a pole? I dunno. So I check.

I discover the contact number on the verizon website. I use the word "discover" deliberately, it is not obvious. I should have at least been given a cookie for my efforts but then again I probably got a cookie. That part of the interaction is always well thought out.

I play tone tag with the automated "assistant". Finally "she" tells me the office is closed.

So... I look up the help number in the F***ing phone book. That's the one that is supposed to have all the phone numbers in it.

I call the number.

I play some more tone tag with the automated assistant.

I am placed on hold.

They seem to have an endless supply of Steely Dan.

Then I wait on hold.

Then I do a refresher. I relearn playing Mary has a little lamb on the keypad.

Then I wait.

I learned how to play "For the Good Times" on a keypad: 1 5 8 5 ## 8 58#.
It's not perfect but keypad fidelity sucks too.

All tolled I listened for 45 minutes.

I cave.

They beat me.

I didn't get a person to ask what was going on with my phone service.

I didn't get a recorded message saying - "service in your area has been experiencing technical difficulties."

Whatever it was was evidently fixed because they kept me on hold for nearly an hour and I never lost the line.

One hour plus of Steely Dan.

So who wins?

Well. I have my phone back.

But now I am infinitely pissed at Verizon. And not even because of the phone outage. I can understand that.

What I can't understand is :
1 - THERE IS NO SIMPLE EASILY DISCOVERABLE STATUS help line online or in the phone book.
2 - Verizon's website SUCKS.
3 - Verizon's website SUCKS.
4 - VERIZON'S CUSTOMER SERVICE SUCKS. No I am being unfair. Verizon Customer Service may be the best in the world. I'll never know. I NEVER GOT THAT FAR. I do know their queuing algorithm or their HUMAN RESOURCING SUCKS.

Why should I have to wait an hour plus and then hang up in frustration because I NEVER GOT ANY INFORMATION ABOUT THE SERVICE STATUS IN MY AREA?

Here Verizon, this will save you easily a million bucks in consulting fees easy - I SHOULDN'T. Discount my bill.

What I really want to know is:

Why did you Verizon find it acceptable to piss me off on such a trivial matter? My landline - the phone that everyone relies on when even the electricity is out - dies and all I want to know is why. And you made me hate you for trying to ask.

After this experience I decided that it is time I found another phone service.

All I can say to Verizon is:
1 5 8 5 ## 8 58#.

Verizon, call me back ok, if you want to discuss? My number's in the book.

I just bought Kris Kristofferson's greatest hits special. It's playing on my answering machine.

Can you thread the needle?

2007-09-10T18:51:00.000-07:00

Atrios says If I were a Democrat running for president I wouldn't be looking forward to inheriting this mess and would be working to end it sooner, not later.

I suppose a good point in the abstract but even Nixon running against Johnson couldn't do a frontal assault against the Viet Nam War. And he went to China for chissake!

Nixon ran with a secret plan to end the war. Of course that plan was a fiction but ending the war was everyone's goal. He stipulated "Peace with honor" never defining peace or honor as I recall.

Gene McCarthy (in the primary) and then later McGovern said they would just get out more-or-less and they got creamed - Gene taken out by soon-to-be-dead-Bobby and Humphrey. McGovern taken out by a straight up election of the enlightened electorate.

How does anyone expect a politician to not learn a serious lesson from that. No matter how stupid the war is. No matter how dishonest and corrupt the motivations or machinations that created the war - once in you can't just say we need to get out. That makes you a peacenik - and then you are fucked.

tells you all you need to know

2007-09-10T18:46:00.000-07:00

Romney Headquarters Burglarized They took his TV and some computers. Is that redundant?

Words to live by

2007-08-21T06:00:00.001-07:00

Atrios says all that needs to be said about actually most of the past 7 years of horseshit here when he says:

The fact that some people failed to have "foresight" does not mean that those who did were only correct in "hindsight."

Draft 2.0

2007-08-10T19:49:00.002-07:00

Talk about conflicted that is me.

According to this story in the Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0%5C,%5C,%5C-6841959,00.html the draft is on the table.

As one who survived the embrace of the draft during Viet Nam (4F - for reasons that baffle me still), I cannot decide what I think of the draft.

On the one hand it gives this vicious government - the same government that can intern, murder, torture, and disappear unhindered and now thanks to our Democratic Congress ,spy in all manners of ways on Fredo's say so- the bodies to go kill also on its unimpeded whim. But then it seems to have those anyway.

On the other hand there is nothing like getting drafted to get your attention, and all those who care about you, about going to fight a war.

If you are gonna be drafted during a war, you want a damn good reason for that war. It is not like a volunteer force where you decide to accept the risk and it is still less like our current mercenary auxiliary - almost as numerous as the actual soldiers on the ground approximately 120,ooo strong with fully 20% of those in combat roles (and over 1000 dead) - who do it for whatever reasons they have.

Viet Nam proved that a draft cannot prevent a war but more than anything it proved that you can stop a wrongheaded war once it was going. Granted 50,000 soldiers had to die. And yes they died in vain. Let me say that again - in Viet Nam they died in vain.

Just like every military death in Iraq has been in vain because stupid people made stupid decisions and We The People were too stupid to stop them when we could.

So let General Lute, our War Czar - remember when we used to call that the President? - say a draft is "on the table" (another mushy run-it-up-the-flagpole locution that seems to have become a well-honed exercise for this criminal regime).

All I can say is go ahead - re-invigorate the draft.

Until now the new progressives have dissed open protest - taking to the street as being a gauche hippie thing or something.

The right has people whose entire careers are dedicated to making the left a laughing stock for any protest no matter how meager.

We now have "Free Speech Zones" where those who might disagree on the street can disagree in corrals set up by local police and political operatives impersonating law enforcement officials harass lawful participants in public meetings and everyone does surveillance.

So, yeah, see what happens when you force every kid to try to Cheney his way through deferment after deferment or to Bush his way through through an AWOL by another name.

Yeah just see...

Maybe this War Czar - unlike the previous one - can do some good.

So this is the best the Democratic Majority can do?

2007-08-05T19:01:00.000-07:00

WTF is going on with this Democratic leadership?

We saw in the span of less than one week both the Senate and the House get completely rolled over the FISA Deconstruction Act of 2007. In God's name who in any position of oversight authority can think that it is a good idea to take the review of Constitutionally sensitive intelligence operations away from an independent judicial review and place it in the hands of not only an executive that has dope-slapped you ohhh a million times but put the decision directly in the hands of his attorney general who has all but pissed on your chairs before you sat down on them.

I thought that once the Democratic majority was in place we would at least see a halt to further erosion to civil liberties caused by the Bush junta. I wasn't looking for miracles. No Bush impeachment, no Cheney impeachment, no Rove frog-march. That was all too much to ask but simple adherence to the Bill of Rights - now that I thought was doable. Silly me.

God how I long for a Tip O'Neil at this moment. If he was around we would not have seen a cave like we experienced over the FISA bill.

No long before now we would have seen Gonzale's balls hanging from the fools cap that Tip would have made Bush wear on national TV.

Christ I hate these people.

Reagannomics

2007-08-03T20:10:00.000-07:00

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose

2007-07-26T18:16:00.000-07:00

Her impeachment speech ( link ) was delivered July 25 1974 - yet here is a paragraph pulled out.

"Common sense would be revolted if we engaged upon this process for petty reasons. Congress has a lot to do: Appropriations, Tax Reform, Health Insurance, Campaign Finance Reform, Housing, Environmental Protection, Energy Sufficiency, Mass Transportation. Pettiness cannot be allowed to stand in the face of such overwhelming problems. So today we are not being petty. We are trying to be big, because the task we have before us is a big one."

Read it and weep

2007-07-26T18:05:00.000-07:00

Barbara Jordan on impeachment. Also audio with that glorious voice.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barbarajordanjudiciarystatement.htm

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I join my colleague Mr. Rangel in thanking you for giving the junior members of this committee the glorious opportunity of sharing the pain of this inquiry. Mr. Chairman, you are a strong man, and it has not been easy but we have tried as best we can to give you as much assistance as possible.

Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States: "We, the people." It's a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787, I was not included in that "We, the people." I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in "We, the people."

Today I am an inquisitor. An hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.

"Who can so properly be the inquisitors for the nation as the representatives of the nation themselves?" "The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men."¹ And that's what we're talking about. In other words, [the jurisdiction comes] from the abuse or violation of some public trust.

It is wrong, I suggest, it is a misreading of the Constitution for any member here to assert that for a member to vote for an article of impeachment means that that member must be convinced that the President should be removed from office. The Constitution doesn't say that. The powers relating to impeachment are an essential check in the hands of the body of the legislature against and upon the encroachments of the executive. The division between the two branches of the legislature, the House and the Senate, assigning to the one the right to accuse and to the other the right to judge, the framers of this Constitution were very astute. They did not make the accusers and the judgers -- and the judges the same person.

We know the nature of impeachment. We've been talking about it awhile now. It is chiefly designed for the President and his high ministers to somehow be called into account. It is designed to "bridle" the executive if he engages in excesses. "It is designed as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men."² The framers confided in the Congress the power if need be, to remove the President in order to strike a delicate balance between a President swollen with power and grown tyrannical, and preservation of the independence of the executive.

The nature of impeachment: a narrowly channeled exception to the separation-of-powers maxim. The Federal Convention of 1787 said that. It limited impeachment to high crimes and misdemeanors and discounted and opposed the term "maladministration." "It is to be used only for great misdemeanors," so it was said in the North Carolina ratification convention. And in the Virginia ratification convention: "We do not trust our liberty to a particular branch. We need one branch to check the other."

"No one need be afraid" -- the North Carolina ratification convention -- "No one need be afraid that officers who commit oppression will pass with immunity." "Prosecutions of impeachments will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community," said Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, number 65. "We divide into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused."³ I do not mean political parties in that sense.

The drawing of political lines goes to the motivation behind impeachment; but impeachment must proceed within the confines of the constitutional term "high crime[s] and misdemeanors." Of the impeachment process, it was Woodrow Wilson who said that "Nothing short of the grossest offenses against the plain law of the land will suffice to give them speed and effectiveness. Indignation so great as to overgrow party interest may secure a conviction; but nothing else can."

Common sense would be revolted if we engaged upon this process for petty reasons. Congress has a lot to do: Appropriations, Tax Reform, Health Insurance, Campaign Finance Reform, Housing, Environmental Protection, Energy Sufficiency, Mass Transportation. Pettiness cannot be allowed to stand in the face of such overwhelming problems. So today we are not being petty. We are trying to be big, because the task we have before us is a big one.

This morning, in a discussion of the evidence, we were told that the evidence which purports to support the allegations of misuse of the CIA by the President is thin. We're told that that evidence is insufficient. What that recital of the evidence this morning did not include is what the President did know on June the 23rd, 1972.

The President did know that it was Republican money, that it was money from the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, which was found in the possession of one of the burglars arrested on June the 17th. What the President did know on the 23rd of June was the prior activities of E. Howard Hunt, which included his participation in the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, which included Howard Hunt's participation in the Dita Beard ITT affair, which included Howard Hunt's fabrication of cables designed to discredit the Kennedy Administration.

We were further cautioned today that perhaps these proceedings ought to be delayed because certainly there would be new evidence forthcoming from the President of the United States. There has not even been an obfuscated indication that this committee would receive any additional materials from the President. The committee subpoena is outstanding, and if the President wants to supply that material, the committee sits here. The fact is that on yesterday, the American people waited with great anxiety for eight hours, not knowing whether their President would obey an order of the Supreme Court of the United States.

At this point, I would like to juxtapose a few of the impeachment criteria with some of the actions the President has engaged in. Impeachment criteria: James Madison, from the Virginia ratification convention. "If the President be connected in any suspicious manner with any person and there be grounds to believe that he will shelter him, he may be impeached."

We have heard time and time again that the evidence reflects the payment to defendants money. The President had knowledge that these funds were being paid and these were funds collected for the 1972 presidential campaign. We know that the President met with Mr. Henry Petersen 27 times to discuss matters related to Watergate, and immediately thereafter met with the very persons who were implicated in the information Mr. Petersen was receiving. The words are: "If the President is connected in any suspicious manner with any person and there be grounds to believe that he will shelter that person, he may be impeached."

Justice Story: "Impeachment" is attended -- "is intended for occasional and extraordinary cases where a superior power acting for the whole people is put into operation to protect their rights and rescue their liberties from violations." We know about the Huston plan. We know about the break-in of the psychiatrist's office. We know that there was absolute complete direction on September 3rd when the President indicated that a surreptitious entry had been made in Dr. Fielding's office, after having met with Mr. Ehrlichman and Mr. Young. "Protect their rights." "Rescue their liberties from violation."

The Carolina ratification convention impeachment criteria: those are impeachable "who behave amiss or betray their public trust."4 Beginning shortly after the Watergate break-in and continuing to the present time, the President has engaged in a series of public statements and actions designed to thwart the lawful investigation by government prosecutors. Moreover, the President has made public announcements and assertions bearing on the Watergate case, which the evidence will show he knew to be false. These assertions, false assertions, impeachable, those who misbehave. Those who "behave amiss or betray the public trust."

James Madison again at the Constitutional Convention: "A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution." The Constitution charges the President with the task of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed, and yet the President has counseled his aides to commit perjury, willfully disregard the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, conceal surreptitious entry, attempt to compromise a federal judge, while publicly displaying his cooperation with the processes of criminal justice. "A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution."

If the impeachment provision in the Constitution of the United States will not reach the offenses charged here, then perhaps that 18th-century Constitution should be abandoned to a 20th-century paper shredder.

Has the President committed offenses, and planned, and directed, and acquiesced in a course of conduct which the Constitution will not tolerate? That's the question. We know that. We know the question. We should now forthwith proceed to answer the question. It is reason, and not passion, which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision.

*I yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Chairman.*

youtube debate?

2007-07-23T18:37:00.000-07:00

Watched it - mostly. Mostly ok. Mostly the questions were like real questions - good and bad and lame. Biden got best line - "If that is that guys's baby, he's got a problem".

Cooper stayed out of the way mostly.

How do they pick what videos to show? Can't wait for more "production values" to seep into the format.

Man our Republic is a mess. We have the most democratic video medium in history in a presidential debate and it is mediated by what? A corpora-cratic news medium. The worst part is I don't know if that is progress or not. I sorta feel like it is 20 minutes later but I don't know for sure.

Iv'e been thinking about where we are in our political moment. Wondering mostly. As I see the wanton lawlessness of the Bush syndicate I think back on the earlier crises in my political awareness. OK yes, Nixon. But really before that. I am thinking of the days of Rampart Magazine. A wild-eyed national - imagine that! - leftie rag. They as I recall anyway called the lie on the Viet Nam War long before the establishment - now called the MainStreamMedia - caught on.

Maybe my pattern craving mind is too facile but I see our moment as about 5 years from a major correction. Meaning the W walks. The prick. The next president does something stupid - like takes advantage of what W has wrought - and gets nailed.

This isn't predicting a Republican victory in 2008. What it is predicting is that it doesn't matter. Power begets power - you got it you use until you can't. In 2008 the dems will get a veto proof Congress and a bunch of Chairmen who are now Chairmen who are not "movement" certainly not like the RICO wing of the GOP and will not owe anything to whoever occupies the white house and who will want some of that mojo back that the 106th-109th Congresses gave away to Bush like sex for crack.

So I figure 2011 - 2012 we will start to see the re-emergence of the Republic. Serious Congressional hearings, a president in disgrace - who might even be aware that he is... Will it require "the young people" to take to the streets? I dunno.

History is an accurate mirror but never a perfect one.

Everybody knows

2007-07-04T19:29:00.000-07:00

I was asked by my local daily as a “man on the street” just last Sunday about Bush and Putin meeting in Kennebunk Maine, not far up the coast from where I live. In my snap response I called Bush "wrong headed" and Putin a "thug".

Once again I misunderestimated George Bush, for just over 24 hours later he did the most thuggish thing of his entire presidency: he commuted Scooter Libby's prison sentence for obstruction of justice, perjury and lying to a grand jury.

President Bush has so little shame or fear that he will be held to account for what is itself a willful act of obstruction that he didn't even bother to make up a good story.

“Excessive” he called the sentence – not pretending to challenge the correctness of the verdict, even though the sentence meted out to Mr Libby was within the bounds of the law that he has supported.

“Excessive” he called it even though in a nearly identical case decided two weeks ago by the Supreme Court, a decision in the case of Victor Rita in nearly all aspects identical to Scooter Libby's (except Rita is not an administration insider) was held neither excessive nor warranting any remedy – Rita is doing the time.

In one short statement late on a Monday afternoon George Bush finally became a gangster. Mark the date: July 2, 2007. For the second time President Bush has deliberately derailed an investigation into the actions of his White House. The first was by denying his own Justice Department investigators the security clearance necessary to pursue allegations of illegal wiretaps.

Now he has willfully short-circuited a case decided in a federal court in public trial; a case that turns on national security issues that legally stops nothing short of treason. That is of deliberately outing an undercover CIA agent.

Left standing is the guilty verdict itself until of course President Bush issues a pardon – which he has deliberately not ruled out doing. Left standing is a 250,000 dollar fine which Libby will never have to pay thanks to an over 5 million dollar defense fund fed by Bush's minions.

In short left standing is the tattered shreds of a verdict that is not worth the paper that it was written on. And most importantly, left standing is Scooter Libby's silence in a matter that could show that the chief executive of the United States and his vice-president have committed treason.

"I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors." President George H.W. Bush.

Straight Talk Express Indeed

2007-03-16T20:45:00.000-07:00

John McCain proves he is not merely a pathetically bad panderer. He is just stupid.

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”

Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception – I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.”

The zen of New York

2007-02-05T19:47:00.000-08:00

From Overheard in New York - http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/

White guy with dreads: Think about this -- taking a shit is the one thing in which all people of all races, sexes and religions are truly equal.
Hippie girl: Not exactly. Some people shit on solid gold toilet bowls while others shit in a bucket.
Little boy at next table, standing on booth seat: I shit in my pants! Hahaha!

--Wo Hop, 15 Mott St

Overheard by: Big Larry

sometimes it really is that simple

2007-02-05T19:42:00.000-08:00

The Rude One nails it - A shamelessly too easy pun but really what else can you say?

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2007/02/understanding-nie-and-global-warming.html

The News Blog says it

2007-01-24T17:58:00.000-08:00

Steve Gilliard seems to have sucked the marrow out of every military campaign since Napolean decided Russia would be a pushover and I think he sums up Bush's "plan" pretty well - it ain't one.

"But in the end, it doesn't matter if the surge happens. It won't change anything but who dies in Iraq." (http://www.thenewsblog.net/2007/01/its-time-to-buy-clues.html)

As some of the few remaining supporters of this disaster (usually these are Joe Lieberman) like to say - "Freedom isn't free". But in Iraq you can still die for nothing.

Don't hide anymore

2007-01-24T16:48:00.000-08:00

Chick Hagel stock goes up. Sure he was maybe just a stomach rumble in the great fart that was the Rubber Stamp 109th but now he is pissed: at Bush and his colleagues the Great Enablers. This tirade directed at Lugar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3cwQYx9hDU&eurl=

"I want... 100% of us to look in the camera right there and tell our people back home what we think."

The Lieberman Death Tally

2007-01-20T17:20:00.000-08:00

I guess we can call this the first day of the Lieberman War In Iraq.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/1/19/221444/921
It links back to an NPR interview but here is the money quote (also from KOS)

MS. BLOCK: Can you imagine a scenario where you would join in with a Republican filibuster to stop the resolution, if it comes to that?

SEN. LIEBERMAN: I can because I think that it – this is this important.

So there you have it. Mark it Friday the 19th of January 2007.
According to this site: http://antiwar.com/casualties/list.php there were 2 deaths on the Lieberman War on that day.

Today the 20th there are 21 more reported. Already St. Joe has 23 deaths and that doesn't even count the 3000+ assists.

Oh yeah and, Thank you Connecticut for sending the Great One back to the Senate. A Grateful Nation casts its eyes upon you.

from the AP

2007-01-18T17:04:00.000-08:00

• House Dems Close the First '100 Hours'
• House Dems to Support Iraq Resolution
• House Democrats Beat 100-Hour Clock
• House Rolls Back Oil Company Subsidies

Top 4 AP headlines at 7:30 p.m.

I guess they ain't used to a Congress that actually tries to do something other than fetch George Bush's paper.

Blowing the 2 year warning

2007-01-17T20:08:00.000-08:00

In 2 years (and 36 hours and 49 minutes) as I write this will be the Constitutional end of the Great American Bush Disaster. Oh, not that we'll be done with the legacy of George W Bush. We're gonna live with that shit for the rest of my life and in a generation they will still cursing the Bush legacy - a phrase that will be uttered with the same staccato spit that one uses when saying "Nixon Presidency" - back in those days president's didn't have legacies they just tried not to fuck things up too much.

But anyway, on Sat January 20 - this Saturday - it will be exactly 2 years to when Bush turns over the throne to another - that is of course if he doesn't in his deciding decide to stay.

But anyway, being the 2 year mark to that glorious day (plus 2 years) I think the occasion should be marked. Like maybe with that most emblematic of all Bush sounds - the fart. He does like him some fart jokes that jolly old sport of a president of ours .

No wait that probably won't work. Probably won't make much of impression on anyone other than the guy standing next to you even if you do it while shouting "Only 2 more stinking years of George Bush!" at the top of your lungs.

But you will want to mark the day when George Bush - the war criminal - loses whatever immunity he has as a sitting head of state and can be arrested in whatever country he visits. I realize the chances of the notoriously incurious George actually leaving the US once he leaves office is pretty slim. But to live is to dream - no?

But anyway, it might be interesting on that day to use the other Bush sanctioned noise machine, I mean of course the automobile. Well, the horn really, no one will notice the noise of your normal car unless you rip the muffler off. You have fixed that muffler haven't you?

But anyway, perhaps it is worth a beep while you are out and about on Saturday. When you are in traffic driving along or passing a gaggle of pedestrians. you can use you own judgment what to make your horn do but might I suggest SOS? In morse code that would be ... --- ... or 3 shorts, 3 longs, 3 shorts. Why SOS? Because it will take a foreign country to bring this criminal to justice. God knows our own Congress will never truly do their Constitutional duty and bring this rogue administration to heel.

Or don't like SOS? You can try this ----- that's 5 longs. That's morse code for zero which exactly equals George W Bush.

Happy 2 and counting.

semiotic first blush

2007-01-10T18:46:00.000-08:00

Bush throws his Hail Mary and it MUST be important. How do I know? There was no American flag (except the old lapel pin). And he stood in front of real (apparently) books.

George Bush? In front of books? Is he serious? Oh yeah, he must be. There are books.

Finally and most important, George Bush did not say "Good night and God bless America."

That, or some variant has been, if my memory serves me, in every presidential speech since at least His Goodness Ronnie Reagan if not before. Absent that phrase there was NO mention of god in this speech. He did refer to the "author of freedom" but hell that could have been Thomas Jefferson for all we know*.

Once again, the staging is more important than the speech itself. Bush and his team want us to know that there really is no room for political code here. Is the absence of code, code?

Well. Let's look at the history. Everything the Bush Administration does is political. That is Karl Rove's job and legacy after all. There has not been one staged event from Mission Accomplished to Katrina where George Bush did not stage it without absolute attention to detail.

This is one more. The message this time? George Bush grows up.

Of course in both those cases as a MAJOR HISTORICAL WAR PRESIDENT and as a MAJOR HISTORICAL REPAIRER OF NATURAL CATASTROPHES George Bush has shown that the pictures he makes never measure up to the message and most importantly to the actions he achieves.

So we can expect that George Bush as a MAJOR BIG PERSON will fail.

Let us be clear what this speech was all about. George Bush the consummate jock is playing out the clock. On Jan 20th 2009 at 12:01 PM the Iraq war will be someone else's war to lose.

* I was most amused by George's ability to keep a straight face while he was talking about responsiveness of the Iraqi government and the need for freedom while of course His Highness has done everything in and out of his power to defeat same in his own country. Nice touch George.

Bush wants earmarks cut in half for fiscal 2008 - day 1

2007-01-03T19:59:00.000-08:00

So the George said.

Yet the George Bush War In Iraq has been run almost completely off the books (i.e. as an earmark). According to the National Priorities running tally The Bush Earmark has spent $355 billion on the Iraq fiasco. Much of it off the books. In other words, if you were a budget wonk and took all the earmarks by the the 109th Congress - The Most Corrupt Congress in History (tm) I would guess you would have to build a lot of bridges to nowhere ($315 million) to match what George Bush has achieved.

George Bush is of course full of shit. If he wants to control spending, he has the power to begin - even within the Constitution. How's that for a change! When was the last time you got to think "George Bush" and "acting legally" in the same thought?

He can stop pissing American lives and money into the earmark called "Iraq".

swing low...

2006-12-29T17:09:00.000-08:00

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.

George Bush - homunculus

2006-12-23T21:37:00.000-08:00

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.

A modest proposal

2006-12-18T19:32:00.000-08:00

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.

jeff greenfield hearts Iran?

2006-12-12T18:39:00.000-08:00

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

No bones about it

2006-11-15T20:05:00.000-08:00

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?

COWARD

2006-10-19T19:25:00.000-07:00

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.

Our very own Nero

2006-10-19T19:08:00.002-07:00

Is it too early to start figuring out how we can undo the damage caused by this one?

From Daddy Party to Creepy Uncle Party

2006-10-02T20:19:00.001-07:00

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.

rethinking the approach

2006-09-29T22:30:00.000-07:00

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.

join 'em

2006-09-29T17:26:00.000-07:00

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.

latest letter

2006-09-27T19:20:00.002-07:00

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

latest letter

2006-09-27T19:20:00.001-07:00

latest letter

2006-09-27T19:20:00.000-07:00

Arlen. Ain't he the funny one.

2006-09-25T19:54:00.000-07:00

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.

this is enhanced interrogation

2006-09-25T19:48:00.000-07:00

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.

hit my limit

2006-09-23T17:10:00.000-07:00

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.

All Hail Billmon

2006-09-19T19:41:00.000-07:00

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.

running scared

2006-09-18T20:07:00.000-07:00

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.

It's kinda heartening really...

2006-09-14T20:02:00.000-07:00

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.

bye bye bobbie

2006-09-14T18:51:00.000-07:00

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.

Senator Collins rises to greatness

2006-09-14T16:41:00.000-07:00

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.

Karr flooey

2006-08-28T18:54:00.000-07:00

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.

Rules of engagement?

2006-08-16T20:50:00.001-07:00

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?

Rules of engagement?

2006-08-16T20:50:00.000-07:00

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?

a future maybe?

2006-08-05T20:46:00.000-07:00

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.

The ghost in the machine

2006-07-02T20:35:00.000-07:00

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.

Calling Bullshit on Obama

2006-06-28T20:44:00.000-07:00

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?

your Congress at work

2006-06-28T20:40:00.000-07:00

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

GOP Congress says: Not OK to burn flag but OK to piss on Constitution

2006-06-28T19:27:00.000-07:00

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.

Don't know the gentleman

2006-06-07T21:13:00.000-07:00

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?

neocons decide they got conned

2006-05-31T17:17:00.001-07:00

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.

neocons decide they got conned

2006-05-31T17:17:00.000-07:00

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.

Bush the contrite = or he plays one pn tv.

2006-05-26T21:58:00.000-07:00

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.

Gee George shows vulnerability

2006-05-26T19:07:00.000-07:00

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.

The Great Debate

2006-05-23T17:43:00.000-07:00

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.

Phony John McCain

2006-05-19T19:54:00.000-07:00

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.

giving due where it is due.

2006-05-16T20:35:00.000-07:00

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.

fragile democracy

2006-05-15T20:35:00.000-07:00

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.

high times and misdemeanors

2006-04-29T20:17:00.000-07:00

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.

I report... you decide

2006-04-25T16:47:00.000-07:00

It's spring. Time to clear the brush?

2006-04-19T19:16:00.000-07:00

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.

what happens the day after Bush attacks Iran?

2006-04-11T20:02:00.000-07:00

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.

tom delay goes on the lam

2006-04-03T20:56:00.000-07:00

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,

back from the brink

2006-04-01T22:25:00.000-08:00

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?

about letters

2006-03-25T22:04:00.000-08:00

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?

We write letters

2006-03-25T21:17:00.000-08:00

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.

A change in the wind?

2006-03-21T21:54:00.005-08:00

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.

A change in the wind?

2006-03-21T21:54:00.004-08:00

A change in the wind?

2006-03-21T21:54:00.000-08:00

So the Washington Post hired themselves a blogger. A right winger. It’s 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.

Implosion ain't pretty

2006-03-21T20:14:00.000-08:00

Maybe it is just that it is spring. Maybe it is because we are now one quarter way into an election year. Maybe the American people have finally had enough of the Bush bullshit: malfeasance, incompetence, lies and his rubber stamp Congress.

Maybe it is none of those things but it seems Russ Feingold’s motion to censure the war criminal in chief is causing the collective head of the Washington wise guys to explode. It took a while. At first it was ignored, then the rubber stamp leadership in Congress brought out the blowtorches. Then we had the spectacle of the Democrats in the Senate surrendering before the battle was joined (so far it sounds like business as usual). But before the Democrats could round themselves up and send themselves to a re-education camp something extraordinary happened.

The polls that show that Americans are willing to consider censuring Bush over his illegal and unconstitutional habits (just as they are willing to consider impeachment for same) started to seep into the consciousness of the pros in Washington.

The seepage maybe was aided by Bush’s favorability ratings tanking yet again. But whatever. The meme is taking hold. Not that I expect that there will be a real up-or-down vote to censure Bush in the Senate. What it will do though is more effective if not as satisfying.

When the issue of warrantless domestic spying starts to fade, Feingold gives it new life. And he did it just as the Republican rubber stamp was crafting a bill to make the illegal activity legal – I guess you could call it the Bush exemption. And on top of that is the just breaking news that says that operatives didn’t just wiretap but may have in fact illegally physically searched not only those that were the “targets” (Peace Groups) but the target’s lawyers office’s. Shades of Watergate.

And now Republican Washington has a problem. Despite their rubber-stamping habits, the Republican Party needs desperately to distance itself from Bush. His numbers are falling faster than he does riding his bicycle. Americans have decided that they really don’t like this man. They don’t believe him. And after 3 years in Iraq (going on forever) and the Katrina disaster they wouldn’t trust him with the responsibility of feeding their gold fish without proper supervision. Republicans must start deserting the ship – and soon but they can’t completely look like rats doing it.

Then along comes Feingold whose motion to censure turns Bush into a tar baby. If you are a Republican up for re-election do you stand by the president the leader of your party who even your constituents use words like “idiot” and “incompetent” to describe him? Or do you run as fast as you can, knowing that the way this White House operates you are going to get hacked to pieces in the right wing noise machine.

As W. has said – It’s hard.

Meanwhile Bush has decided that a pre-emptive strike on his legacy is all that matters. Debt and an economy that is rending the nation into a two-class society (very very rich and everybody else), a health system that is collapsing almost as fast as Iraq and oh yes Iraq – not to mention a military that is likely broken for at least a decade, a foreign policy whose disarray would make a Pollack painting seem organized and a Constitution in shreds all need spinning so that he can tell historians what to think about the facts he is leaving behind.

And spin he has decided to do. In the name of drumming up support for his Iraq albatross he has actually taken questions from real people and real reporters in two consecutive days. That shows you how afraid he is that his presidential library fund may be in jeopardy. Because he has no intention of placing anything he might have heard into his own thinking (I use that term in its biological sense). And he has every intention of placing all the domestic blame on Congress (that would be the rubber stamp Republicans) and defer as much Iraq blame as possible.

Good old George. A slacker from the start. He knows how to get a passing grade from the prof when he is failing. He has no doubt had much practice. And now he is trying to do it again as his administration sinks into the scum that is the government he has created.

no nuke race in south asia?

2006-03-06T18:43:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I just have to wonder how much oxycontin W and friends are taking. That has to be the only explanation for this: US insists India nuclear deal will not spark arms race . Really what are they thinking? Are they thinking in any meaningful definition of that word?

Last year The Atlantic published a multipart series by the insanely anal William Langewiesche (I mean that in a good way. He is/was a pilot and like all the pilots I have known he shares an obsession with detail that despite how much air travel sucks makes me feel good that people like him are driving).

Langewiesche documents the rise of A. Q. Khan the Father of Pakistan's Nuke. That is not too much to say. Pakistan honors him as such. Like a George Washington of megatonnage.

Langewiesche's article produces this one quote which puts the lie to the Bush pollyanna insanity and points the way for the next two decades in South Asia. Here it is - sadly subscription required - go to the library and read it (The Wrath of Khan) if you must.

"Bhutto, who was then the foreign minister, uttered the now famous remark that Pakistanis would eat grass if necessary, but they would have their bomb."

Thanks to Khan, Pakistan has its bomb. Khan and Pakistan helped North Korea, Iran, and Libya in their pursuit of a nuke. Today Khan is under house detention. Off limits to not only the IAEA but to Musharef's allies in the War on Terror - the US.

And now George Bush has insanely given India - whose success in developing a nuke was the entire reason that Pakistan felt it too must have an "Islamic" (that's how Pakistan got the money for it) bomb - the green light to build as many bombs as it wishes.

Please someone anyone tell me what the fuck is George Bush thinking? How can this development lead to anything other than a more intensive nuke race between India and Pakistan? The arms race between these two countries has been ongoing since the partition of Pakistan from India. The nuke race was an organic outgrowth.

Now George Bush has told India it is ok for them to openly build nukes. But not Pakistan. What does any sentient being expect Pakistan's response to be? What would your response be? (The issue of how George Bush has the international authority to even grant such a right is an open question.)

I have political and philosophical difference with the Bush junta on every issue - but this one has me phlummoxed like no other.

Granted Bush desperately wants India as an economic partner (India was famously non-aligned during the cold war). For what reason Bush sees good things coming economically from India eludes me seeing that so far India seems to be absorbing U.S jobs like a sponge. And has no discernable market for America's all but phantom manufactured goods (nuclear technology excepted). But ok globalization is good. I can suspend my disbelief.

And I can understand the Bush wants India as a bulwark in Asia against China.

But Pakistan's dictator Musharef is a great friend of democracy - just not in Pakistan - and of the United States (kinda/sorta) in the war against terror. What meaningful sanctions are going to be placed on Pakistan when they seek parity with India? We can't even get Musharef to turn over Mullah Omar, nevermind Osama Bin Laden.

The next major catastrophic Asian conflict is not going to be in Asia proper. It is going to be in South Asia. India and Pakistan will once again skirmish. Both have nukes now. Soon, thanks to George Bush both will have more nukes and India has the green light to build them; Pakistan will be desperate to build them and they no longer have to steal the technology to do so.

I have said this before but now it is more pertinent than ever: God have mercy on George Bush's soul. He has condemned South Asia to a holocaust.

George Bush - failure in chief

2006-02-25T18:49:00.000-08:00

Iraq is falling into the abyss that so many of those his machine has called traitors and un-American and terrorist coddlers said that it would. And whether their reasons were absolutist anti-war or pragmatic geo-political or straight ahead anti-Bush they are being proven right in their dissidence with each disaster.

And seemingly each day more and more of his architects ( here ) and willing executioners ( here ) are bailing out of the Bush disaster.

In a single week we have seen it once again and in its starkest turn to date. The bombing of the most sacred Shiite site in Iraq is a turning point for Iraq. The selling off of the (evidently 21 instead of the oft mentioned 6) ports in the United States to the UAE is just such a turning point in the United States.

It is a funny thing about history. There is no equivalence among various causes to their respective effects. Rome may fall and wipe out enlightened civilization for 1500 years and a butterfly may cause a hurricane. As Kurt Vonnegut famously said: "So it goes."

As dissimilar as those two events are coming as they do at this time in the Bush mal-administration indicates once more the failure that this man is capable of.

And so goes the Bush Administration. We are at last seeing the meltdown of yet another W failed-enterprise. Sadly the damage that he is doing to this nation that we love and the Constitution that we cherish-just as he has damaged Iraq-will take years to recover from.

Iraq may never again be a nation after what George Bush has done to it. America may never again be the nation it has always prided itself in being after George Bush.

For Iraq, my angst is a humanitarian one. The destruction of a society, albeit a dictatorship, condemning it to generations of civil war will cause a personal calamity for millions of people. People like us that are just trying to live their lives.

George Bush in his misguided and ultimately criminal acts has destroyed that. He thought that he could remove Saddam with a wave of the hand and everything would be all right. Despite the fact that nearly all of the responsible estimates said that was not possible.

Saddam is and was an evil prick. But to make him a trophy for a president whose only real goal was to establish for himself a Lincolnian status is criminal.

For our own nation, George Bush's intent was to achieve his Lincolnian status by solving one of modern history's big problems. Any problem would do as long as it involved war. That it would be the middle-east , we can thank Osama.

In the end George Bush shows that he has a monomaniacal desire to be called "great." For whatever reason: Oedipal syndrome; spoiled child syndrome, we may not know in our lifetime.

That he has not the intellectual tools to do the work of greatness matters not to him. Attaining those tools is not a thing that he considers necessary. He thought and still thinks that just because he has the seat of power, he has the wisdom and ability to use that power.

To George Bush the Presidency is like fairy dust. He sprinkled a bit of great president fairly dust on himself and thought he could fly among the greatest leaders that this nation has produced.

It is through George Bush's personal failings, for which he himself is ultimately criminally responsible that the American people once again (like George Bush himself) learn that greatness doesn't come with the job. Greatness begins with what you bring to the job.

It is for the American people ourselves to finally come to terms with our own hubris in allowing such a criminal as George Bush free rein to plunder in our name.

Cheney Consistency

2006-02-12T17:21:00.000-08:00

The Vice President proves that he is as careful with a shotgun as he is with national security

Cheney Shoots Pal

Speaking Truth to Bullshit

2006-01-31T18:26:00.000-08:00

Krugman:
The scale of the scandals now coming to light, of which the Abramoff affair is just a part, dwarfs anything in living memory.

Just read it.

The Vote for Tomorrow

2006-01-30T19:27:00.000-08:00

Honor Roll
Bayh (D-IN) Nay
Biden (D-DE) Nay
Boxer (D-CA) Nay
Clinton (D-NY) Nay
Dayton (D-MN) Nay
Dodd (D-CT) Nay
Durbin (D-IL) Nay
Feingold (D-WI) Nay
Feinstein (D-CA) Nay
Jeffords (I-VT) Nay
Kennedy (D-MA) Nay
Kerry (D-MA) Nay
Lautenberg (D-NJ) Nay
Leahy (D-VT) Nay
Levin (D-MI) Nay
Menendez (D-NJ) Nay
Mikulski (D-MD) Nay
Murray (D-WA) Nay
Obama (D-IL) Nay
Reed (D-RI) Nay
Reid (D-NV) Nay
Sarbanes (D-MD) Nay
Schumer (D-NY) Nay
Stabenow (D-MI) Nay
Wyden (D-OR) Nay

Wall of Shame
Akaka (D-HI) Yea
Alexander (R-TN) Yea
Allard (R-CO) Yea
Allen (R-VA) Yea
Baucus (D-MT) Yea
Bennett (R-UT) Yea
Bingaman (D-NM) Yea
Bond (R-MO) Yea
Brownback (R-KS) Yea
Bunning (R-KY) Yea
Burns (R-MT) Yea
Burr (R-NC) Yea
Byrd (D-WV) Yea
Cantwell (D-WA) Yea
Carper (D-DE) Yea
Chafee (R-RI) Yea
Chambliss (R-GA) Yea
Coburn (R-OK) Yea
Cochran (R-MS) Yea
Coleman (R-MN) Yea
Collins (R-ME) Yea
Conrad (D-ND) Yea
Cornyn (R-TX) Yea
Craig (R-ID) Yea
Crapo (R-ID) Yea
DeMint (R-SC) Yea
DeWine (R-OH) Yea
Dole (R-NC) Yea
Domenici (R-NM) Yea
Dorgan (D-ND) Yea
Enzi (R-WY) Yea
Frist (R-TN) Yea
Graham (R-SC) Yea
Grassley (R-IA) Yea
Gregg (R-NH) Yea
Hatch (R-UT) Yea
Hutchison (R-TX) Yea
Inhofe (R-OK) Yea
Inouye (D-HI) Yea
Isakson (R-GA) Yea
Johnson (D-SD) Yea
Kohl (D-WI) Yea
Kyl (R-AZ) Yea
Landrieu (D-LA) Yea
Lieberman (D-CT) Yea
Lincoln (D-AR) Yea
Lott (R-MS) Yea
Lugar (R-IN) Yea
Martinez (R-FL) Yea
McCain (R-AZ) Yea
McConnell (R-KY) Yea
Murkowski (R-AK) Yea
Nelson (D-FL) Yea
Nelson (D-NE) Yea
Pryor (D-AR) Yea
Roberts (R-KS) Yea
Rockefeller (D-WV) Yea
Salazar (D-CO) Yea
Santorum (R-PA) Yea
Sessions (R-AL) Yea
Shelby (R-AL) Yea
Smith (R-OR) Yea
Snowe (R-ME) Yea
Specter (R-PA) Yea
Stevens (R-AK) Yea
Sununu (R-NH) Yea
Talent (R-MO) Yea
Thomas (R-WY) Yea
Thune (R-SD) Yea
Vitter (R-LA) Yea
Voinovich (R-OH) Yea
Warner (R-VA) Yea

Hedge Hogs
Ensign (R-NV) Not Voting
Hagel (R-NE) Not Voting
Harkin (D-IA) Not Voting

What is the state of the union?

2006-01-30T15:02:00.000-08:00

At some point during the State of the Union speech that president usually more of less explicitly declares what his opinion of the state of the union is.

In 1999 President Clinton said, “My fellow Americans, I stand before you to report that the state of our union is strong.”

In 2002 George W Bush said, “Yet the state of our Union has never been stronger.”

Of course whether the state of the union was strong in 1999 and indeed got stronger in the next 3 years, is a question for history to judge.

I wonder how the president in his fifth year is going to characterize the state of this union now in 2006. Is it stronger still? Is it strongest? Is it secure? Prosperous?

He could say any these things. He could say all of these things. And he would be lying. But then that never stopped him before.

How would you characterize it? And how do you think George Bush will?

The game that's fundi to play

2006-01-24T18:22:00.000-08:00

The right wing wind machine has been working hard at forging the recent Osama tape into a weapon to bludgeon those of us on the side of truth and justice and (to be redundant) against the Bush junta.

The Bush-approved lexicon uses the word islamo-fascist to describe those of Osama’s ilk. Despite the fact that those right wingers are full of shit and know it when they accuse the left of wanting anything like Osama’s beliefs anywhere near this continent. But we still must deal with that awkward term islamo-fasctist. It isn’t that it isn’t fitting. Even though technically fascism is corporatism with a catchy name (according to the coiner Benito Mussolini), Hitler refined the concept and gave us the notion of fascism that we know today. So, in the vernacular sense islamo-fascist describes Osama pretty well.

But you know that term just doesn’t do it: Islamo-fascism. It sounds like stuff you want to get out of your mouth as quickly as possible despite the fact that you know that the thick white ooze that’s left on your chin will be wicked gross in the mirror.

So let’s instead look at what Osama believes and go from there.

For one thing he believes in the return of the Caliphate – a semi-mythical time in Islam when one person wielded both secular and religious power and spoke for God (or so he said).

And then there is Osama's belief that the Koran speaks for all situations and all times in its exact words. No interpretation. No changing with all the things God might not have mentioned because humanity didn’t know about it back in 600 A.D.

And there is his fundamental belief in the wickedness of humanity. Woman must be suppressed to control their wiles. Men are so weak they cannot be made responsible in the face of unrestrained women who are free to behave as equals with the weenie men.

So there is Osama and his followers and many others apparently in Islam who are less lethal but just as rabid in their fundamentalist beliefs. And also there is the word that best describes Osama’s approach to Islam: fundamentalist. So to abstract we have a fundamentalist fascist or to coin a term: a Fundi-fascist.

Unlike some who sling the term islamo-fascist around like so much hash, I am not anti-Islamic and the beauty of a term like Fundi-fascism is that it doesn’t describe any particular creed. What it describes is, 1: a belief in a golden age when everything was better because fundi-fascism was the defacto law of the land. 2: the scripture of the fundi-fascist’s choice is to be taken literally – more particularly that is, literally according to the fundi-fascist who is doing the interpreting, and 3: People are fundamentally (there’s that word again) weak and wicked and cannot be allowed to take responsibility for themselves.

So there we have an abstraction: fundi-fascism. For any good abstraction to be successful, it must be applicable to entities other than that which was used to derive the abstraction.

I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to see if there are other instances of this abstraction.

Alito Vote: My Phone Message To My Senators

2006-01-24T15:49:00.000-08:00

I live in Maine. My Senators are Snowe and Collins. Both of them are known as Republican moderates. Below is the voice mail I left with their offices. If you feel you might have any sway over your senator's vote please call (better) or email (still good) the senator's office. Feel free to use this script as a template. I spoke pretty fast because I didn't know what kind of cutoff on voicemail there would be. Both calls went through in entirety.

The message:

I am dismayed but not surprised that the Judiciary Committee has approved the Alito nomination for consideration by the full Senate.

I am asking you to oppose this nomination. I understand that it will be a difficult vote for you to oppose the combined force of your senate leadership and a president from your party.

I believe Judge Alito is the wrong person to elevate to the Cupreme Court on several counts.

One is his minimal belief in the individual rights of Americans. He eluded many questions during the hearings but his statements and decisions in the past make clear to me that he will be instrumental in rolling back our hard won liberties of the last half-century.

As minimal as his beliefs are in the individual rights of Americans, his expansive belief in the power of the executive is frankly dangerous to our republic. His notion of the unitary executive if accepted as constitutionally valid will give the president seemingly unlimited authority to do whatever he pleases. In fact it is not too strong a statement to say that if the senate does vote to elevate Judge Alito to the Supreme Court you may as well all pack up and go home because you will have effectively voted to make the senate a superfluous body.

Please you must oppose Judge Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

juat another good day to go shopping

2006-01-13T21:51:00.000-08:00

Am I despondent? No. Not quite. Am I distressed over what is going on? I guess that answers itself.

I look out over what our nation could be and what our nation has become and I am distressed.

Where did all those people come from who would sacrifice their very freedoms for the blatherings of politicians?

What is it that has made our Constitution so superfluous and apparently expendable that people at every turn are willing to give it up. That is even despite the fact that the very fabric of what they enjoy in life is made possible because of that same Constitution.

We shall soon have yet another judge on Supreme Court who believes that George Bush is a quasi-King. That makes six. It took five to get W there to begin with in 2000. No that plus Alito will (I was going to say can but no it is “will”) sanction the executive depriving Habeus Corpus. Whenever he fucking wants to. It will sanction his ability to play commander in chief of the universe to torture anyone he wants, to eavesdrop on anyone he pleases. It will let him do this without requiring him to tell you that you are even a target.

Where the fuck did America go? It seems like just yesterday we were debating the nature of expanding civil rights–of realizing the potential of minorities as first class American citizens. Now in 2006 we are debating our BASIC RIGHTS AS UNITED STATES CITIZENS.

And no on cares. Your Congress certainly doesn’t care. Your President is the problem. Your Judiciary is – starting from the top – more and more in the bag to the corruption that IS GEORGE BUSH.

We as a people, as a nation, as a beacon to the world, are well and truly fucked.

So the right wing wins – America loses. And we can all go shopping.

The birds - the sequel

2006-01-07T21:15:00.000-08:00

Maybe it is just the nature of tipping points.

I was close to despair thinking whether our nation could fix itself. The headlong rush into lawlessness that is Generalissimo George’s administration, his incompetence (by any measure it is almost breathtaking), his stupid, demeaning (for the United States) swagger that signals to the world that we are a paper tiger.

The abuse is rampant. The enablers in the media are relentless. The Generalissimo’s willing executioners in Congress seem in complete charge.

Then almost at a stroke, the chickens come home to roost. It is funny that it should be chickens that would be the epitome of retributive justice for an administration of swaggering bullies. But God works in mysterious ways. It created evolution after all. But I have to say this is starting to look like a chicken remake of The Birds as envisioned by Mel Brooks.

The Generalissimo’s regime got its first um, splatter when D.A. Ronnie Earle in Texas indicted Tom Delay for Delay’s successful money laundering scheme to fund the gerrymandering of the Texas legislature.

The next splat came when it was discovered that Jack Abramoff had the bad sense to get involved with business associates who might place the people they disagree with in the trunk of a car with a bullet to the head at the same time he was running a slush fund for Republican officeholders and committing fraud (The last is what he pled guilty to. The other two are under investigation–Abramoff has agreed to cooperate). If one wonders what government employees do all the time, for a good long time a flock of them are going to be investigating the House that Jack bought.

In between that we have the Chief of staff to the Vice President being indicted for obstruction of justice in a national security case that may also involve Karl Rove and possibly the big bird–Dick Cheney–himself.

And if that isn’t enough, we have the Generalissimo. Admitting to breaking the law to spy on Americans. Pretending that he can dictate the meaning of the law with his Crayola signing statements. And as always raising the bloody flag of 9/11 to keep his minions in line.

Iraq…2 to 3 trillion dollars. The Generalissimo impeached…priceless.

In the face of disasters spawned by his naming incompetent cronies to positions of authority (Iraq, Katrina, the Sago mine disaster) who do not care to do the job as it was intended to be done but rather to do it according to their peculiar ideological brain fever, the Generalissimo signs a slew of recess appointments that do nothing but keep the tradition of incompetence alive.

Even now, I can almost feel the push back as the chicken little Republican majority in Congress decides that if they want to keep their jobs they have to pretend to fly right and even stand up to the lame duck Generalissimo (I know that is a lot of metaphors to take in at one time).

So I am not happy as a lark but I am guardedly hopeful. I am hopeful that the Generalissimo and his willing executioners will finally feel the weight of the Laws of the United States upon their backs. Now I know that justice is never really done at the upper echelons of power. And until the Generalissimo is impeached he can pardon anyone he wants - just like dear old dad.

But little by little as each chicken comes to its nest (and there will be more) another obstacle blocks the Generalissimo’s plan to turn the Constitution into his personal birdcage liner.

Generalissimo George Bush

2006-01-05T19:16:00.000-08:00

Generalissimo George Bush has just made recess appointments for nearly 20 appointees to various positions in his administration. That is within his power to do as a technicality in the law. In fact Generalissimo George Bush is using it to once again circumvent the Constitutional command that the Senate “advise and consent” to these positions. Like the John Bolton elevation to the Ambassador to the U.N., I can understand that Generalissimo George Bush would be piqued that his anointed candidate would be held up by something as trivial as the United States Constitution. After all he is the Commander in Chief of everything and stuff so he can do whatever he wants. Even Supreme Court nominee, Samuel Alito has said so. So hey, it has to be right.

What I notice though is that some of these appointments were never placed before the Senate for confirmation. Well they must be pretty important to require the unusual prerogative of a recess appointment. Right?

So important in fact that they cannot wait for Constitutionally proscribed procedure, which would begin when Congress reconvenes in February. (stop me if this rush sounds like the unconstitutional FISA violating wiretaps). Let’s see.

We have two people appointed to the FEC. That is the Federal Election Commission. Very important in this time of war. Can’t wait there for proper advice and consent.

Then there are those who have had issues raised on their appointment. One is the Assistant Secretary of State of Refugees, population, and migration. There were actual senators that had questions about her credentials for the job. Can’t wait to resolve that.

Not least is the appointment to the Homeland Security Department's office of state and local preparedness that even Joe Lieberman had reservations about. You’re doing a heckuva job Joey- but hey I am the Generalissimo around here.

Are recess appointments in the President’s power? Yes. Is judicious (and relatively rare) use both a tradition and a requisite for using that power? Yes. Does Generalissimo George Bush believe in anything that our Constitution stands for? In my most humble opinion the answer is no.

In 2002, Bush said, “There’s nothing wrong with a dictatorship, as long as I am the dictator."At least for once Generalissimo George Bush has told the truth. In 2006, Generalissimo George Bush appears to be aiming to prove it.

2006 - new year prediction?

2006-01-04T19:24:00.000-08:00

Put on your tinfoil hats kids. Or make new ones if you have already worn out the old one 5 years into the creeping coup that is the Bush administration. Now I am not claiming that George Bush is attempting a coup against the Constitutional government that is the United States. No. We all know that he is not almost anything enough to be able to pull that off. But Cheney is.

Here’s the deal. Cheney was named by Bush to find a VP when candidate Bush was heading to the Republican nomination in 2000. Cheney looks across the length and breadth of this great continental nation and lo he finds the one person, the best person, the person uniquely capable of being Vice President in a George W Bush administration–Dick Cheney.

Actually what Cheney found was George Bush the tool. George Bush is the perfect potemkin president. He lacks curiosity. He lacks intellectual capacity and more importantly he lacks interest in developing his capacity. He is a spoiled, brash scion of privilege and wealth that throws tantrums and swaggers and is a bully. In short a good straw-leader.

So, Cheney becomes the shadow president. Not so much to rule behind the scene but to effect the erosion of Constitutional government. I won’t venture that Cheney had something to do with 9/11. For that one would need a cap made of stronger stuff than tinfoil but he did take ample advantage of that singular event.

Suddenly throughout government very extreme ideas become mainstream. Justice officials determine that torture is ok. U.N. rules against it are outdated. They determine that the president can do whatever the fuck he wants. Oversight by the Congress is a burden and an abridgement of executive prerogative. War making power rests in the hands of something that the executive branch calls the Commander-in-Chief, a position with powers that to normal Americans appears to be something very different from what we understand that position to entail.

The media over time is inured to the breach each time because the creeping coupists have hitched themselves to a very successful political machine in the national Republican party. This isn’t to say that the RNC is a co-conspirator in this creeping coup. Instead the Republican party instead is merely a willing executioner. I mean how much really did George Bush have to do with the Republican party? He was a behind the scenes guy for his dad’s campaign. Texas state politics is really an ecosystem unto itself and being governor of Texas is like being manager of a very large Burger King–all the real decisions are made somewhere else. The RNC can be nothing other than an instrument of convenience in this plot.

So what comes next? George Bush should watch his health. Does that sound extreme? Maybe but consider this: George Bush has an accident (he has had several wounding injuries including choking on a pretzel in his own home in the last five years). The usual suspects are rounded up, meaning everyone the NSA has tapped. And of course it is a national emergency so everything–not just what remains of habeus corpus-but everything gets suspended. We already see that according to the president’s “consent decree” when he signed the McCain amendment that he could ignore it (and consequently any law he wishes to circumvent) at his will. So what is to stop the next president–the newly sworn in President Cheney from just carrying on. You know, to protect the American People.

So there it is. I am not claiming that this is in fact what is happening. I have no idea. But there are a lot of dots and when you connect them just right… well I’m just saying.

what will the new year bring?

2006-01-03T17:55:00.000-08:00

Well Happy New Year in what may prove to be the last year of the Republic. Oh I suppose like ancient Rome the nominal republic may go on for years or even decades. But we have seen in the elections of the last several cycles, that money buys power, influence to a degree that hasn’t been equaled since Rome. And now we are seeing that that same money and power buys immunity from the very Constitution that elected officials are sworn to uphold.

Just as Caesar was immune to law because he was Caesar and ultimately named Dictator for Life, we are seeing George Bush (is it even meaningful to call him “president” anymore?) step all over the Constitution in the name of his WOT. A war whose parameters only he can define and whose end only he can declare and which gives him ultimate power to do anything he damn well pleases. At least Caesar had to be named Dictator for Life by the Senate–a formality admittedly because he had become that in fact anyway. Our Constitution gives the President the title of Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States (Article II section 2). That stipulating phrase at the end of the title seems to be a nicety that C-I-C Bush thinks is unnecessary citing as he has his authority as C-I-C to do everything from drilling for oil in Alaska to tapping domestic phone calls and even possibly monitoring Quaker meetings.

Although it took Caesar to tip the Roman Republic into dictatorship and finally empire, he was just the final enabling catalyst. The polity that was the Roman Republic was almost republic in name only before Caesar. It happened because the monied, aristocratic class wanted to be an oligarchy. To call Rome a democracy would do injury to the word but it did offer rights and protections for all non-slave classes. The oligarchs eroded that and ultimately Rome’s politics became a turf war among the powerful and the connected–a turf war that ultimately brought Caesar to power. I suppose without Caesar there would have been another thug to step up to the task of fully dismantling the Republic, but that is academic for there was Caesar himself to do the job. By the time of his assassination that task was mostly complete.

In the power vacuum his murder left came civil war then Octavius who would become Augustus. And with him the transformation was complete. Rome became an Empire. Although even Augustus viewed himself merely as “First Citizen.”

Now we see C-I-C Bush admit to breaking the Constitution and boasting that he would continue to do it. at the same time we see that the likelihood that he will be held to account for his illegal and unconstitutional actions to be distant. Like Caesar I guess it didn’t require George Bush to destroy the American Republic, as I said it has been going on for a while. But we do have George Bush. And we have our oligarchs in the majority party that like the Senate in Rome thought they could control the beast that they were bringing to life. Of course they can’t. Oligarchy is a very unstable form of government and ultimately devolves into dictatorship.

Perhaps we can rescue ourselves from this fate. Perhaps the institutions have not been destroyed to the point where their resilience has been totally compromised. Perhaps the oligarchs will realize that they are no more precious to the all powerful executive than the fawning masses he would use to populate his preening appearances. Already we have seen that he completely disregarded the oligarchs in his plan to illegally wiretap Americans. Perhaps the American people and the Press will realize that times are critical and will stand up against a marauding executive, and demand that he be held to account like all citizens–whether First or last.

Our Constitution is a powerful document but it is merely parchment without the backbone of the people and those sworn to uphold it to ensure that the law of our nation is upheld and that this nation shall endure.

Happy 2006

A Public Service Announcement

2005-12-29T07:52:00.000-08:00

Someone has to take the Constitution seriously