Rick Perry (R-Duhbya was a genious) believes - if he could only get elected President - he could unilaterally abrogate standing law. Can we go ahead and make Texas governors ineligible to be President? By Perry's hazy, ignorant idea of the Constitution, Barack Obama could make that happen with the stroke of a pen.
This moron doesn't believe in law. He believes in power, wingnut power.
This bullshit, Bushist signing statement by Barack Obama is completely wrong and unconstitutional. Here is the Constitution's actual view of the power of the purse:
The Congress shall have Power ...This is not even slightly gray. Congress has the power to specify how its appropriations are used. Otherwise, why bother with budgets - just give the executive all the money.
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Indefinite detention on the unchecked say-so of the executive is just as wrong when the executive is Obama as it was when the executive was Darth Cheney, uh, Duhbya.
For Mitch McConnell (R-Squirrel Brains, KY), it's all Duhbya's fault that the Republican Party is unpopular. Mitch himself? Didn't screw up at all.
Never mind that McConnell worked in lockstep with Duhbya for his entire disastrous reign, that he believes in the exact same platform as Duhbya, and that he even forgot his jealously guarded Senatorial prerogatives by dropping even the pretense of Congressional oversight of the Executive. McConnell's not going to take responsibility. He's from the party of everyone else's personal responsibility.
Instead, here's what we'll hear from Tobacco Mitch:
The AIG "retention" bonus scandal is the Democrats' fault, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. They had the power to prevent it, and they took just such a measure out.
Never mind that the Bushists in the fall were just as bad. I voted for change from that dismal, corrupt bunch, and this doesn't qualify.
Let's see what they do about it.
(One lesson to remember: In America, executive compensation is not about performance. It's about sweetheart deals. The government should be preventing those - they're bad for capitalism.)
Democrats are claiming that there's not much they can do about the AIG bonuses, which are tantamount to theft. Bullshit. They need to try harder, and Ch. 7 is an option with the appointment of a trustee.
In every other circumstance, employees are the last people to be taken care of by a bankrupt corporation. Usually, that's unjust. In this case, though, the very same people who are still profiting wildly are the people who made and managed the stupid investments that brough AIG to bankruptcy and bailout. Instead of ruin and a return to the middle class of people who have to work, they're still somehow entitled to $165 million.
By the way, if you were still dense enough to think that executive compensation is about results, these bonuses and all the bonuses that Wall Street is still milking out of illiquid companies prove once and for all that that is bullshit. Executive compensation plans are a huge case of mutual masturbation with no connection to real performance. The mess is all over us, and that pisses me off.
And I mean exceptional in the sense that used to be a euphemism (and may still be) for the hardest special ed cases.
Donald Trump can't make money from gambling. Either that, or someone's skimming. I guess he is exceptional enough to have his own TV show alongside so many other blowhard, self-important jerks (Glenn Beck, anyone? How about Chris Matthews?).
In the category of that explains a lot:
[Las Vegas economic woes] led to a 10% decline in gaming revenues for Las Vegas casinos in 2008. (This year might not be much better either, especially if big banks receiving TARP money stop flying loan officers to Las Vegas for "annual recognition events.")No wonder they all wanted in on the high-risk securitized mortgage market! Owww. (Atrios would add, "The stupid, it burns.")
Timothy Geithner may have, uh, misfiled his taxes, but he hits the bullseye here:
“Excessive executive compensation that provides inappropriate incentives,” Mr. Geithner said, “has played a role in exacerbating the financial crisis.”CEOs with captive compensation committees have been ripping off their shareholders. Legally.
The Bushists run out the clock on another legal proceeding. For a long time now, we've needed to speed up the glacial pace of the courts in this country.
Don't remember that we've fucked up everything we've touched. Give us a $700 billion line of credit to spend as we see fit. Pleeze! We've only moved the line up 40% since yesterday.
No Congress worth a sou would give any Executive, much less this particular disaster of an Executive, this sort of unchecked, unsupervised, and expensive authority. I don't care if Henry Paulson leaves his balls as collateral.
Of course, our Congress is probably not worth a sou.
Picking up a theme seen around the liberal blogs, where does the Fed's authority to bail out all these financial institutions come from, obligating taxpayers to many billions in new debt that we already can't afford? When did Congress approve the takeover of Freddie and Fannie? When did Congress extend rescue authority to insurance companies? Or did it come from the Authorization to Use Military Force, the way every other power the government wants was allegedly ceded by the Legislative branch?
The roots of our democracy and our liberty are in law. Without law, we are already sliding into arbitrariness and government by personality.
I'm not arguing against strong measures in the financial markets, including some bailouts. I'm saying that there's a lawful way to do it, and of course the Bushists are not pursuing the messy, difficult business of actually framing a law that allows them to do these things legally. They just don't care.
The largest irony is yet to come. There will come a time again some distant day in the future when Republicans are well-regarded again. At that time, after the worthless assets have been paid off to their foolish investors, the GOPers will suddenly realize that it's creeping socialism for the government to actually hold the valuable assets, and they will stamp their feet and wail that those assets should be privatized in a fire sale to their cronies.
And they'll all get rich yet again.
Update: The Bushists didn't even brief Congress on the AIG bailout. Congress, we don' need no stinking Congress.
Republicans, meanwhile, are already setting up their complaints to cash out in the future.
Nothing new in the Bushist claim that executive privilege protects Duhbya and Darth from ever having to explain anything, so I changed the spelling to Duhb's illiterate version.
I heard a couple of people claim tonight that Presidential elections don't make a difference. What I don't understand is how anyone can claim that after the last seven years.
Here are a few items that would be different had Florida's will been done and this man been rightly elected President:
It's unambiguously within Duhbya's power (for once) to reverse Gerald Ford's executive order, but it perfectly illustrates his preference for spying without restraint or transparency.
Even when the board had teeth, they were just dentures in a glass by the bed. It's not as if they restrained the Bushist surveillance state in the slightest.
The Globe's illustration for the story is perfect:
Never mind what the law says. Duhbya wants a less restrictive new standard, so the legislature be damned and science be damned, too, so he's going to have what he wants. And to hell with those of us who breathe.
This is almost certainly a lie, too:
When asked about Clement's role, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said: "The White House sought legal advice from the Justice Department and made its decision based on that advice."The White House modus operandi is to tell Justice what advice they need and only then to happily use whatever bullshit rationale Justice concocts.
The Republican Party from top to bottom says with their feet and in one voice, "We are the party that opposes all Congressional oversight of the Executive."
Of course, President Barack or Hillary will need oversight, like ... Bill Clinton's penis.
Not sure this guy is as "qualified" as Duhbya, but he's on the gravy train.
For those who still believe the sainted market corrects executive compensation to its actual value, bullshit!
Saw the Bourne Ultimatum the other night. It's gripping, and the fights are as well choreographed as the two previous movies in the trilogy. But, despite fawning reviews, it's not as good as Identity or Supremacy. In fact, it steals quite a lot from them, and it's repetitive on its own, too.
I still enjoyed it. That's the way of action movies.
Ultimatum has a political point of view. The Bushist executive-power black bag bodyguard of lies tell-you-I'd-have-to-kill-you covert types are the bad guys. But it's still a very small part of the movie.
The question the movie, like many before it, posed for me is this: There are clearly men who have the will to power, who inhabit powerful positions and are willing, even eager, to act in the dark. Are transparency, the open society, and a politics based on real, not manufactured, consent even possible? Has my belief in them been head-up-my-ass naive?
Republicans in Congress are loyal, I've got to hand them that. The problem is that they are loyal to their party - and to Duhbya and Darth - above their country, the Constitution, and the Congress as any essential American, democratic institution.
CNN headlines "House inches toward Constitutional show-down", as if the Bushists' use of the Constitution as if it were the fricking pirate code, "more like guidelines, actually," just something to be gotten around in the most nefarious, expedient way possible. As in: Davy Jones says, "Call John Yoo, I want to torture Orlando Bloom without any serious organ failure."
What do Republicans say when the smarmy, smirking Duhbya crony of an Attorney General lies to them repeatedly and the gang in the White House refuses to let anyone talk on the record to Congress ("coequal branch, my ass - they have fewer divisions than the pope")?
Here are a few:
White House spokesman Tony Snow called the contempt citations "pathetic" and said the citations are "not likely to go anywhere." He said the Democratic leaders of Congress have been pursuing a "fishing expedition" over the firings that has turned up nothing.Who's doing the insulting here? Really, though, turned up nothing? Congress has already found at every turn that the Bushists' story was a lie. A few examples: Gonzo wasn't involved in the US Attorney firings. The White House wasn't involved. Politics wasn't the reason, and while that's not proven, there are piles of very suspicious correspondence.
"What you have right now is partisanship on Capitol Hill that quite often boils down to insults, insinuations, inquisitions and investigations rather than pursuing the normal business of trying to pass major pieces of legislation, such as appropriations bills," Snow said.
"How can the majority say they want answers and then pass up the opportunity to get those answers?" asked Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the committee.Smith is either a complete moron (he is a Republican from Texas...; Molly, I miss you), or he knows this is bullshit. If the Bushists will lie in open session under oath, and we've all seen it whenever their lips move and sometimes when they don't, what kind of answers is Congress going to get without the threat of perjury indictment. (Note: It's not a perjury trap if you tell the truth.)
Some Republican committee members expressed fears that moving ahead on a contempt citation in the U.S. attorneys' investigation would weaken Congress' position in future confrontations.CNN couldn't get this total nonsense on the record, so they needed the handy-dandy "some x" construction. This argument boils down to: We can't use subpoenas because we maybe can't make them stick, and then we couldn't make them stick in the future. The difference is not trying and silently assenting to the authoritarian ideas of the Bushists.
"The majority knows that it would leap to the barricades of executive privilege if a Democrat were in the White House, just as it did when the Clintons were there, bobbing and weaving in Whitewater, around Paula Jones and away from Monica Lewinsky -- trying to sweep it all under the rug," Smith argued.This guy will say anything at all. How many Democrats from the Clinton White House testified before Congress in answer to subpoenas? We defended Clinton from a witch hunt about his sexual behavior that was cravenly and hypocritically politicized by a bunch of Republicans whose behavior was also bad (Newt, Livingston, Hyde, etc.). We didn't therefore buy all of his privilege claims, and somehow the testimony happened under oath in open session despite those claims.
Here at the Bush Administration, we make up the law as we go along - whatever is easiest for us, that's what we say the law is.[T]he Justice Department on Monday sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee saying that it will not present the citations to the court even if the House votes for them.
Brian A. Benczkowski, principal deputy assistant attorney general, said the department's position was "that the criminal contempt of Congress statute does not apply to the president or presidential subordinates who assert executive privilege."
