If engineers were like pundits

"It's obviously George W. Bush's fault that the I-35 bridge collapsed. This is another Katrina by a thousand cuts. If the President had seen to our infrastructure the way he has seen to Iraq's--"

"Jane, you ignorant slut, this tragic bridge collapse is clearly the fault of the feather-bedding union highway workers, who were too stupid to stop taking up concrete when the bridge wobbled. I guess they were all Wobblies!"

"Dan, you bloated, blithering gasbag, this accident is an indictment of all Republicans. Tom Pawlenty, the Republican Governor, had recently vetoed a plan to raise funds for highway repair. He won't be--"

"Jane, you vicious lesbian hag, it's no wonder you're a socialist Democrat. You can't even get the Governor's name right. It's Tim, you research-free imbecile, not Tom."

"Dan, Tim, Tom, now he's ready to consider a gas tax incre--"

"Jane, you pathetic loser, don't change the subject. Any tax increase, you're for it. Money won't bring those people back."

Ladies and gentlemen, our national dialog.

That said, since I'm an amateur pundit, I have a theory about the bridge collapse, which I'm going to render here, despite a lack of obvious qualifications.

I think the bridge collapsed due to a perfect storm of three factors. Foremost, the pier in the Mississippi on the south end of the bridge had been severely scoured by the turbulent river water flowing out of the lock to the west.

Note: This CNN video was shot from the south end of the bridge, not the north end as the newsreader claims. The position of the Cedar Ave. Bridge (a/k/a 1oth Ave. Bridge) to the east makes that obvious. This position caused the security camera to miss the initial collapse on the south end.

With the pier essentially standing on water, the structural integrity of the bridge relied on the stiffness of the traffic deck to transfer load to other parts of the structure. Once the repaving team started to take concrete off the deck (factor two), the bridge started to wobble. The more they took off, the worse the wobble was.

In short order, the strain was too great, and the steelwork that held the span to the abutment on the south bank, no doubt weakened by road-salt-hastened corrosion (factor three, the least important), failed suddenly. The miracle is that it didn't fail with rush hour traffic on it and kill hundreds instead of tens.

What caused the rest of the bridge to fail? As the deck and truss to the south slewed east, the only remaining sound members of the south span were the tensile members - the steel truss - and they pulled the middle span of the bridge down.

I don't know why the span between the north pier and the north abutment failed. The north pier survived upright; maybe it suffered severe enough excursions south that its steelwork simply failed at the north abutment.

If this turns out to be right, it's still not a validation of Bill Kristol blathering on about subjects he obviously has no clue about.

Philosoraptor comments

I self-assess at (e) Beside self with pissed-offedness and (b) It affects my reasoning/judgment a little bit, but my anger may color my response. One thing that might (or might not) suggest (b) is an accurate assessment of my derangement is that I am increasingly alienated from politics in general and dissatisfied with the Washington Democrats, despite being a lifelong Democrat myself and having long been a party regular. So it's not as if I'm reckoning the Democrats to be halo-wearing demigods the way wingnuts wax rapturous about Duhbya.

The Bushists and other Republicans had more "high-level contacts with Saddam" than al Qaida could ever imagine.

American government policy

Programmers taking pay cuts? Say it ain't so!

A government policy has worked. The point of H1B visas and tax policy that encourages globalization is to deflate American worker salaries and leave more for management and capital.

Stuffed ballot boxes at Internet speed

Now Diebold voting machines are vulnerable to viruses. If something really important were involved, say, dollars instead of the mere lifeblood of self-government, I'm sure Diebold would get something, anything right.

Let's just leave our democracy lying out in plain sight and hope no one steals an election. Oh, crap, too late.

Christian?

Monitoring the courts is their right, but these church-goers would be more effective and more Christian, too, if they took a less punitive approach to drug abuse. Of course, the historical success of the Christian churches has moved many of them from succoring the downtrodden to treading down on them instead.

Comparative advantage

As a market incentive for the Chinese to continue to pirate everything that can be copied, Microsoft has lowered the price in China of Windows Vista by two thirds. No doubt, Microsoft was responding to its particular assessment of how to maximize revenue.

The irony, of course, is that Microsoft has just made it easier to do business in China than in the United States - with an American product. Software piracy is a comparative advantage in the global economy over the relative obedience to intellectual property law seen in the United States.

An American government that was interested in the fate of its people would protect its economy from this perverse incentive. Ours has failed at this under the bipartisan elite consensus that globalization can do no wrong.

Globalization is working out pretty well for CEOs and investors, who are willing to sell their birthright for a mess of pottage. The future of the American middle class looks pretty grim, however.

Why America is in trouble

The Bushists, led by Duhbya the Wiretapper-in-Chief, demagogued this bill (of course). The lily-livered Democrats failed to find any guts at all to protect the Constitution. And once passed, the Bushists continued to demagogue the issue.

This is all about politics, not security. The GOP politics is anti-Constitutional universal surveillance, and the Democratic politics is timidity in the face of Republican willingness (really, eagerness) to call them names.

And both sides say the new law has to be fixed. What needs to be fixed is the ruling class. But an early vasectomy for George H. W. Bush would only have prevented the most glaring part of the problem, not all of it.

Regular guyism

Can you imagine your words transcribed into a headline in a major metropolitan newspaper?

"I heard Rudy was here today," Mitt Romney told Stephanie Burrows, 18, who works behind the counter, as she recalled later. As he left with his ice cream, he said with a grin, "But everyone knows I'm the regular."

Read the rest of it. It's all baloney.

News flash: None of the people running for President are regular guys. The Democrats aren't (and if you think Dennis Kucinich is, you're not a regular guy, either), and the Republicans sure aren't.

But the media insists on force-feeding us this sort of obvious bullshit about favored candidates or candidates with favored PR people or candidates whose regular-guyism happens to fit into the conventional wisdom.

Mitt Romney is about as close to being a regular guy as Paris Hilton. Yet for some reason the media keeps looking for the regular guy in the elite, wealthy Republicans just when they need it. Duhbya is one breathtaking example. Regular guys bear the consequences of their choices; he never has.

You may recall that the agreed media narrative killed Al Gore's much more legitimate image-making about his regular upbringing in 2000. The media selectively attack any attempt by a Democrat to show the common touch.

Still, it's all image-making, and the media get co-opted into it mostly by one side. Oh, I'm sure the Boston Globe will print some hagiographic look back at JFK again soon, but he's really the only Democrat who still gets that kind of treatment.

A bridge (or two) too far

The bridge collapse in Minnesota is not directly Duhbya's fault, but the anti-government environment he and his fellow conservatives have engendered for thirty-five years has succeeded in giving us a media environment in which it's just impossible to imagine actually solving the problem of deferred maintenance (just another form of deficit spending).

Here's Time's take on the insoluble problem:

It would be so expensive to fix hundreds of thousands of bridges that it's just not going to happen. But these numbers highlight the problem of the nation's infrastructure. No word is likely to make taxpayers' eyes glaze over more quickly. As a result, officials at all levels of government tend to defer maintenance on bridges and roadways; the voters wouldn't stand for the required expenditures, estimated at more than $9 billion a year. They might, however, be willing to pay for more frequent and thorough inspections, which could distinguish the structurally deficient bridges in imminent danger of failure from those that aren't.

Some liberal media! Remember when the press reported facts about what had already happened and let the future take care of itself. There was always another day to report the new events of that day.

While I'm skeptical that $9 billion a year would be enough, that's not a lot compared to Iraq. Maybe we'd need more than one month's worth of the cost of that clusterf**k.

Apocalypse now

Everyone knows that Tom Tancredo is an idiot, even if at least one Congressional district is willing to elect him. But to advocate bombing Mecca and Medina is like going all in against a billion people with nothing better than "bring 'em on".

Think it out a little and you have to realize that his willingness to hold holy places hostage would work out in the end to require that we be willing to engage in nuclear genocide. Otherwise, it's pretty hard to overcome the violence that would unleash from the aforementioned billion, who would be about as angry as a billion Catholics would be after the bombing of Vatican City. Tancredo is spouting bin Laden level lunacy. I had no idea that he was so eager to bring the Rapture!

None other than Bay Buchanan is his spokeswoman. She's a frequent commentator on CNN. Can you imagine someone correspondingly insane from the left getting a mainstream media gig that good? Nah gah happen.

Nobody loves you when you're down and out

One trillion dollars, and that's just direct costs, not interest on debt or opportunity costs. You watch, even direct costs will go much higher. Ah, the invasion that was going to pay for itself...

Why we need better Democrats

Every time I read something like this about Washington Democrats scrambling to give Duhbya what he wants, I want to give up, have a nice life, and spend my energy more productively. The Democrats - my Democrats - have the power to take their time and make sure of good legislation, but they are too cowed to use it.

The Washington Democrats:

• believe they have a winning hand for the 2008 elections even though they are fifteen months away
• are standing pat (the Kerry strategy) on that hand in abject refusal to recognize that political landscapes always shift and always require dynamic responsiveness
• fear the admittedly potent smear machine by which Karl Rove and his attack pundits feed the lazy, lapdog mainstream media
• don't trust the American people (with much good reason) to see through the Republican media narrative

I think Americans have finally gotten it. I think they know Duhbya's goading proposals are so much bull, but maybe that's just wishful thinking.

I know if I were in Washington, I wouldn't want to stay there without hope for the restoration of Constitutional government. I'd be pushing for an up-or-down vote on this whole concept of coequal branches of government that the Bushists have so much obvious contempt for. I'd be thinking that if the people don't want that or don't have enough sense even now to see how to get it, then I might as well grow tomatoes.

Cancel Congress's summer recess

Dear Nancy and Harry,

Please do the right thing and cancel Congress's summer recess. I know that you want a vacation like everyone else, even if you don't want it as much as the Vacationer-in-Chief. But it's the right course to stay in Washington and keep after the Bushists, who are rotten to the core.

Stand together in the Capitol rotunda together and make these points:

• The obstructionism of Republican Senators has stagnated the legislation America needs - SCHIP, stem cells, Iraq withdrawal, a dozen others. When the Republicans give up standing in the schoolhouse door, they can take a vacation, but not until then.
• Investigations into the deep corruption of the Bush Administration cannot wait even a day. If your colleagues across the aisle will pressure Duhbya and Darth to give up their ridiculous claims of executive privilege, they can take a vacation, but not until then.
• The Iraqi Parliament may think it deserves a vacation. We disagree. The Republican Party has influence in Baghdad and should be hammering Maliki and his coalition to make some real progress. Americans are dying on a daily basis to keep Maliki in power. The least he and his cronies can do is work toward something on a daily basis. We can't keep the Preznit from taking August off, but the Republicans in Congress haven't earned a vacation and won't get one until they get something done about this, too.
• Yes, we Democrats would love to have an August break. We have families, too. We need time off to recharge and refresh. But we see the sacrifices that normal Americans make, especially the awe-inspiring sacrifices of our uniformed personnel and their families, and we Democrats believe it is a small sacrifice for us to work through August.
• If the press wants to mail it in from Martha's Vineyard, that's up to them. We Democrats aren't looking for coverage, though that would be nice; we're looking for progress.

And since you control the calendar, I'm sure you can schedule your home-state downtime in big enough weekend chunks to do some good. Just don't let the Republicans know until the last minute.

Of course, an important benefit is no recess appointments!

Best regards,
LL

Law and justice

When I first heard of critical legal studies in the 1970s, I was appalled. The law was a noble instrument of social organization, comity, and our shared thirst for justice. Well.

Law could still be those things, but in 21st century America it no longer is.

Hence, obviously crooked practices such as options backdating, which by definition is self-dealing, are "hard to prosecute". American business law is by and large built to take care of those at the top of the economic heap - those who can afford to pay the best lawyers to look after their interests.

Crocodile tears from the oil industry

This is not something I know a lot about. I just have my bullshit detector set appropriately high for the profit-making corruption of modern American business, politics, and media - hard to tell where one starts and the others stop these days...

For some reason, CNN today briefly reposted this piece of propaganda from July 11, probably facilitated by the PR shell called the Petroleum Institute. More evidence that the CNN story was a PR placement is how well it matches the July 22 story from the New York Times that I already commented on in "Trying Too Hard".

So, Trilby Lundberg's claims:

1. Refineries damaged in the 2005 hurricane season are breaking down.
2. More complex environmental regulations raised the poor wittle refineries' costs.
3. Ethanol subsidies push prices up.

I'll start with the easy bullshit first. Ethanol subsidies can't be responsible for a price change, only for a part of the price. My wild guess: less than 5 cents a gallon, possibly less. But, in the interest of not purveying my own brand of bullshit, I got out a little google. USAToday provided the nuggets I needed at the end of this: In March, wholesale gas prices were about 60 cents lower than ethanol. In a 10% mix, that's 6 cents, for 15%, 9 cents. With gas above $3.

Then I found this, which erases even that small cost, assuming it is true.

Even easier BS: More complex environmental regulations during the Bush Administration? That would be funny if it didn't hurt so much.

So, what about the damage from Katrina and friends? Maybe. But I'm always skeptical of "data" that begins and ends with anecdotes about raccoons and possums. How cute for Lundberg amidst her pleading for more serious coverage of why gas prices spike, uh, change.

Nonetheless, I'm no fan of ethanol as a route to much of anything other than higher corn prices. (Hey, a point of agreement.) If it's a net gain of energy independence, it's still a pretty marginal one.

More evidence of a manipulated market? CNN is happy to oblige as long as they don't have to connect the dots. Here's "Why oil is rising but gas gets cheaper". Gas prices went up while crude prices came down; now they're going down while crude prices fall. Sure, that's a free market!

The "analysts" don't know whether their bullshit is coming or going. Witness:

Usually oil and gas prices move in tandem. Yet this time around, analysts say the disconnect is all about refining. If refineries keep churning out gas, and crude doesn't spike too much further, some say motorists could see gas prices under $2 a gallon by winter.

$80 oil lurks

Normal people's heads would explode from all this paradox, but not PR people's heads.

Lundberg thinks conservation is something consumers should "see through". And she is a global warming disbeliever, but even if it's true, she's o.k. with us changing the environment to keep our Hummers.

Let's face it, this is someone who can read, add, and take averages, not skills that demand our trust. Read her numbers, but forget her analysis.

In the long run, Asian demand will force gas prices up much higher than they are now. Of course, Lundberg ignores this inconvenient market force.

The oil industry is just thrilled they've gotten prices where they are in time for this quarter's profits.

Compare and contrast

Bill Clinton certainly lied to the American people when he wagged his finger at the camera and said, "I did not have sex...ual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

When he testified in the Paula Jones lawsuit (in response to salacious tidbits that Ken Starr's team was feeding her lawyers), Clinton was responding to a specific definition of sexual relations that excluded oral sex. Yes, this is hairsplitting.

What Gonzo is supposedly doing is reserving to himself the right to redefine program in whatever way he chooses. He also refuses to clarify anything about the illegal surveillance done by the Bushists so that anyone in Congress doing Constitutional oversight could actually pin him down on such a simple fact as how many programs Gonzales wants to divide the surveillance program into.

The answer, of course, is just as many as he needs to claim after the fact that he didn't lie. His definition of lie is exceedingly narrow. He is only trying to leave himself enough wiggle room that there's some set of facts he can stretch his former answers to fit.

The key here is that lying includes those times when you tell "the truth" in a way intended to deceive. At best, that's what the Attorney General has done before Congress. I'm not for summary execution, but this man needs to do time.

Why should we believe the implication that the Bushists directed the NSA to do data-mining only on phone records? Really, that's basically a few SQL queries, hardly something that would qualify for the label data-mining. We will find in time that the Bushists had the NSA data-mining recorded domestic conversations by computer. They will claim, against all precedent and common sense, that this is not eavesdropping, since no human would ever listen to the innocent calls, only a machine. (Yes, I am asserting this with no evidence, only the thoroughly deceitful precedents of the Bushist apparatus.)

One last point: Clinton was lying about private sex. Gonzo is lying about ignoring the Constitution. What will we tell the children?

One hundred years

In a hundred years, the house I stayed in over the weekend will be so much luxury flotsam. Without global warming, it was already marginal, as the dune it sits on erodes and accretes depending on winter storms.

Maybe I'm just mourning the inevitable mouldering away of all bones, but it seems a crying shame to me that such a lovely spot should be doomed before its time by our collective unwillingness to step back from the deluge. At least Cape Cod Bay will still be there for swimming.

Snow job

CNN reports:

White House spokesman Tony Snow said that members of Congress were trying to "create controversies."

If they'd just believe the lies the Bushists tell them (for their own good), there wouldn't be a problem.

Today's comments

On Philosoraptor:

As I watch Gonzales (until my own retching distracts me), I see a man supremely confident of his safety and position. He knows Duhbya has his back personally.

Rummy may have been arrogant, but he didn't have this same confidence, even though he was a Cheney man. Maybe being a Cheneyite made Rummy know that he was disposable at some level. Scooter Libby surely knows that.

I don't think Duhbya would initiate a plan to scooterize his own wounds by sacrificing Gonzo. Rove might, however, and no matter what Gonzo might think as a loyal courtier, Rove is the only indispensable staffer in the White House.

Inertia is a more likely reason for Gonzo's thumb in Congress's eye. The Bushists are so used to giving everyone the finger they can't stop.

Impeaching Gonzales would make impeachment of Duhbya and Darth more likely, not less. Get a little momentum going, turn over more rocks, and find the inevitable dirty dealings, and there will be more popular pressure for a real remedy.

Will it be enough? I only hope so.

Duhbya and Michael Vick

How is the typical NFL star athlete like Duhbya?

They've both been protected all their lives from the consequences of their own actions. Eventually, that can lead to the making of a big enough mess that no one can bail the coddled brat out. Duhbya has obviously done this, and Vick has allegedly done it. Both look stupid for it, but they're just acting on what their environment has taught them. (One purpose of academic learning is to widen your perspective beyond the operant conditioning of your own life, but how much of that has either actually done?)

If you said that both are inarticulate, you're thirty years too late. NFL athletes used to sound like idiots whenever someone put a mic in front of them. They don't any more. Duhbya owns that field. (Say all you want about the duplicities of Tony Blair, but give him this one thing: He could actually handle questions put by Parliament.)

Today's comments

On KnoxViews:

What RWGs (rich white guys) have

Lawyers, good ones. They set up obviously phony deals like the one-vote annexation, and the courts find in their favor anyway - because some paper filing was unassailable or because some other paper filing missed a deadline.

RWGs don't bother with transparent travel expense pretexts. They know how to set them up right. Lawyers (and doctors, too, by the way) combine personal travel with professional activities - seminar over breakfast and golf in the afternoon in, oh say, Hawaii. Then they deduct the expense or get reimbursed for it without quite offending our sniffers.

That still doesn't make the alleged behavior right, but it does turn a black-and-white (ahem!) story into shades of gray.

One more thing: I'm surprised no one has mentioned Cherokee Country Club. Going out on a limb, I don't think any of the women in this thread are members. Just sayin' is all.

Party before country

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.

"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.

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.

"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.

[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."

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.

Now, over in the Senate, Arlen Specter did blast Gonzales pretty hard, hard enough that Fox - oopsy - labelled him a D. But a grandstanding statement from Specter and $4 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks. What is he prepared to do about it? Nothing.

And, by a god I don't even believe in, I'm praying I'm wrong. But I'm not betting a dime on those small pagan prayers.

This is why no voter should vote for any Republican for any office of national significance.

"Jesus: The Guantanamo Years"

Some reviews just write themselves. Here's one. The reporter sees the show, interviews the comic, and puts in the best jokes, at least one per paragraph.

Here's the scenario:

Philbin Bowman spins his tale of the Son of God who returns to Earth as a stand-up comic and runs into a spot of trouble at US Immigration -- he's a bearded Palestinian, after all, who's willing to die as a religious martyr.

Outrage needs a good night's sleep

There's never a day the Bushists don't deserve my outrage, but some days I'm just too tired of it to wax choleric. Alberto Gonzales is a disgrace to lawyers everywhere. Are there enough Republican Senators who might be proud enough and conscientious enough to impeach a man who openly lies in their faces and dares them to do anything about it?

Democrats should gore them on the horns of that dilemma.

Today's comments

On Eschaton:

The purpose and ethos of the mainstream media is to reinforce the conventional wisdom. This can be true only because so many citizens have turned off their bullshit detectors.

That's what I don't understand. It's not hard to see through the Bushists' lies, yet many people still don't.

Duhbya takes questions

The Democrats took questions from real human beings who don't need access - see the Boston Globe.

Duhbya's going to do the same thing. Yeah, right.

How long before the Republicans are willing to take blunt questions? I wouldn't bet on it.

Torture is the policy of the Bush Administration

Vanity Fair (by way of Altercation)...

It's good to have details piling up from several sources, but the fact of torture as policy from the top has been obvious for close to four years simply from the public statements of Rummy, Darth, Duhbya, Gonzo, and John Yoo. And, of course, the nasty bastard Antonin Scalia is prepared to rule in favor of anything that looks like Jack Bauer.

None of the Bushist willingness to phony up transparent legalistic justifications changes the Nuremburg precedent that all of these guys (except Scalia, dammit), not to mention Mitchell and Jessen, can be prosecuted as war criminals.

Today's comments

On Philosoraptor:

Right on.

However, the time for the Democrats to show Duhbya their power was in May and June, while debating the supplemental for Iraq. Instead, they caved, and it still demoralizes me.

Also on Philosoraptor:

You have to ask yourself what you would do if Rudy Giuliani, who seems to be inheriting the authoritarian Bushist mantle, were to "win" the Presidency next year despite polls and exit polls again showing that he shouldn't have.


It's a Philosoraptor day:

This is largely the fault of American conservatives

Amen, brother.

The America-is-despicable left is neglible. It exists, but it is not represented in significant numbers in the Democratic Party. About as extreme as Democrats get is the America-is-infallible-right-is-despicable.

The Republican Party, on the other hand, panders to its base, which has a huge number of tribal members of the America-is-infallible faction.

A little humility would win us many more friends

Duhbya ran on this foreign policy, but it was a lie from the beginning. Otherwise, the Darth Cheney and the neocons would not have been pre-positioned to exploit 9/11 for the goals they already had.

Democratic surrender of social class

The easiest to analyze of the four reasons that explain America's slide from relative enlightenment to the schlerotic brink of fascism is the Democratic surrender of social class as a potent political weapon and, oh by the way, the uniting principle of the post-Depression Democratic Party.

For more than fifty years, the Democratic Party was universally acknowledged to be the party of the little guy. It was a grand coalition of union laborers, farmers, and wage slaves against the plutocracy. It included lots of uneducated people, patronage hacks, ruffians, yeomen, the salt of the earth, teachers, colored people (the polite label of the time), factory workers, and anyone else you can imagine who needed a little help or wanted a little protection when faced with the superior forces of wealth. Even poor Southern whites were comfortable with the general run of Democrats, even though they were more racist than their midwestern allies.

Sometime in the 1970s, Democrats began to renounce "class warfare" (how's that for a slanted framing?). Owing to the power of incumbency, this change didn't happen overnight. Instead, class-conscious politicians aged out and weren't replaced. What we got instead were colorless technocrats who claimed they were more competent governmental managers. Michael Dukakis was the prime exemplar.

Technocrats lit a fire under almost no one, just good government affluent educated liberals like me, and there aren't nearly enough of us to win elections. Besides, even when our fires are lit, they don't burn as brightly as the fires of people who have more at stake, and let's face it, we already have pretty good lives. If the government cuts outlays, we don't go hungry.

Most writers essentially agree with Zell Miller and with his less lunatic brethren: The Reagan Democrats didn't leave the Democratic Party; instead, the Democratic Party left them. They point to the multiple social upheavals of the 1960s (in rock and roll time, 1964 to 1976) and the Nixonian claims about a silent majority.

There's some truth to this, but it's mainly limited to the old Confederacy and mainly related to race. While racism remains a strong thread and a threat in American politics, its force is diminishing, at least regarding African-Americans.

The silent majority hypothesis also fails to explain the continuing dominance of Democratic policy ideas about the economy, the role of government, and civil rights to name a few. Even when the media crowned Newt Gingrich's bomb-throwing Republican Party the "party of ideas", Americans polled in favor of neutrally worded Democratic ideas of government. The only "Republican" idea that is dominantly popular is tax-cutting, but the voters remain much more responsible about tax cuts than the Grover Norquist drown-the-government-in-the-bathtub Republicans.

Other writers blame George McGovern and his liberal-dominated 1972 coalition for pushing the common man out of the party. I've met McGovern and knew his chief of staff, Owen Donley, and they held no hostility toward the common man. Donley once told me a story of a carefully crafted compromise position that McGovern threw over because of a conversation he had with a porter in the Senate subway.

No, Democrats gave up their unity voluntarily as a result of the marketplace, not of ideas, but of campaign contributions. They passed post-Watergate reforms in reaction to the financial abuses of Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), but they ran afoul of unintended consequences.

Democrats could no longer raise large chunks of money from wealthy ideological sources; they now had to spread their fundraising to wealthy business interests who were much more likely to play the access game.

The power of incumbency again masked this effect, particularly since Democrats were completely dominant in Congress after Nixon's impeachment-driven resignation. Many moneyed interests with business in Washington continued to give against their natural political inclinations because it was in their financial interest. This was a temporary situation, waiting only for the Republican Party to revive its national competitiveness. Karl Rove knew this, which was one lever he and Tom DeLay saw available to achieve their now-lost "permanent Republican majority".

Nonetheless, populist Democrats, especially those with national ambitions, found they could not raise the smaller but still non-middle-class contributions they needed to fund their ambition. I'm sure the Democratic consultants realized this dilemma, too.

So, it was campaign finance reform that led Democrats to discard social class as a weapon and unifying principle.

The Republicans had no such dilemma. They could still raise ideological contributions and business-oriented contributions, and the more power they gained, the more these contributions would swing to them. They had no need to discard social class as a weapon and they have continued to wage aristocratic war on working people ever since, mainly in the form of reduced social safety nets and radically reduced taxes on the wealthy.

As if that were not enough, the Republicans went one better. They embraced faux populism in the form of brush clearing, pork rinds, and planned displays of apparent stupidity (real cupidity). This was supposed to prove that they were really the party of the little guy; it has always been bullshit, and the Roves of the world know it, but they will continue to claim that you'd rather have a beer with them than with the Democrats as long as the media sells that cockeyed idea and as long as the voters buy it.

Why is bin Laden still alive?

The Bushist and neocon target was always Iraq. Their goal was always permanent bases in the Middle East but outside of Saudi Arabia. (Relocating our bases outside of bin Laden's oyster was actually a rational desire among PNAC wishful thinking.) Iraq has the perfect location, had it only been empty of those pesky and fractious Iraqis.

The purpose of invading Iraq was not to spread democracy - that was pure marketing - or to topple Saddam Hussein - beneficial ceteris paribus but also a marketing feature. The true purpose was the projection of American power into this region so essential to our economic security without any consideration of change in our policy with respect to Israel.

I still have trouble understanding why the Bushists didn't fear the voters enough to make sure they got bin Laden anyway. It would have made their GWOT cover story more credible.

I guess they thought they could manipulate opinion however they needed to. That worked for a while, too.

(On Philosoraptor.)

Trying too hard

The New York Times Business section tells us that the refiners are trying so darn hard to keep up with demand for gasoline that they're breaking their plants, which limits supply and drives up prices. Reporter Jad Mouawad manages not to quote one single skeptic about the oil industry's claims. The closest he gets is anonymous:

Some critics of the industry have theorized on Internet blogs that the squeeze on gasoline and other refined products points to a deliberate effort among oil companies to bolster profits by keeping supplies tight. But experts point out that the companies have little incentive right now to hold back on fuel supplies.

The common assumption of business writers everywhere is that the myth of the invisible hand keeps industries from manipulating prices. No one remembers the scandalous conspiratorial theft by deregulated electricity producers in California (obligatory disclaimer: alleged). That was yet another reason that Enron was a terrible rapacious company that demanded, but didn't get, rational regulation.

Like many articles in business sections across the U.S., this one is biased in favor of the industry instead of the truth.

The end of dowry

Sex discrimination in Asia, married with technological sex selection of fetuses, is going to have unintended consequences. In the Boston Globe:

While India has had several women in positions of power -- most notably Gandhi and her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, who was elected to the more powerful position of prime minister in 1966 -- women still face rampant discrimination.

Many Indian families regard daughters as a liability because of a tradition requiring a bride's family to pay the groom's family a large dowry of cash and gifts. As a consequence, their education is often neglected, and many don't get adequate medical treatment when ill. If they are widowed, they are considered a burden on their children or families and face even more discrimination.

International groups also estimate that about 10 million female fetuses have been aborted in India over the last two decades as families show a widespread preference for sons.

There's already a significant surplus of males in India - and in the rest of south and east Asia. What will the future bring? A few predictions:

• Emigration - an additional reason, but not by any means the only one
• Exogamy
• The end of dowry, though probably not its reversal - there's still to much economic discrimination
• A larger supply of potential suicide bombers
• War, the last refuge of surplus males

No one can change the demographics. Is there anything anyone can do to mitigate their ill effects?

'Troubling'

Al Qaeda has had free run of large parts of Pakistan, our ostensible ally, since 2003, and all Duhbya can say four years later is that it's "troubling". Seriously, this man could not find his own ass with both hands.

How did we get here?

In 1978, there was talk of electing a veto-proof Democratic Congress because the President was too conservative. That President was a Democrat, Jimmy Carter.

In 2007, we have at long last in Duhbya-world a Democratic Congress. The voters elected the swing Democrats because it was finally clear to enough people that Iraq was a debacle. Even though cool heads had amply predicted every last problem that has beset Iraq, the jingoistic march to war had shunted them aside - off TV and radio and even mostly out of newsprint - as so many unhonored Cassandras.

One issue was more important to me than Iraq, though not to the voters. That was the utter, total, absolute, and complete failure of unified Republican government to retain any semblance of separation of powers, so great its fealty was to the Bushist cult of personality. During their dominance of American politics from the 1930s to the 1970s, Democrats in the Congress repeatedly refused to be handmaidens to the President, whether Democratic or Republican. The Republican Congresses of 2001 to 2006 had no interest in leaving the country and the Constitution better off, as long as they could leave the conservative movement better off. And, oh yeah, as long as they could fatten up their friends at the public trough.

Oversight? Are you kidding me!

How did we get here?

I see four reasons:

• Republicans concluded that their program of government could never get them into the majority if presented honestly, even after forty years of halting movement to the center, so they built a political apparatus that was primarily concerned with marketing.
• Democrats unilaterally surrendered their most potent political weapon and the unifying attribute of their political coalition - social class.
• The media gave up the difficult work of separating truth out of the routine lies and bullshit of politics and made its purpose the reinforcement of conventional wisdom.
• The voters turned down their bullshit detectors. Or off. (Some examples.) So many people were telling them that self-government is too hard that they believed it.

I'll get into each of these in time.

The phony editorial

True to its neocon form, the Washington Post blames Democrats for the Republican filibuster.

To quote Vincent LaGuardia Gambini, "Everyt'ing that guy just said was bullshit."

If Fred Hiatt had an ounce of conscience, he'd resign in disgrace and go to Washington cocktail parties as the former editorial page editor.

Cheney stands up

... now that Duhbya is lying down. What branch is Darth in today?

On Blue Mass. Group.

Better Democrats

One reason the Bushists have found so little effective resistance as they have culminated forty years of Republican movement into fascism has been the lack of strong liberal Democrats, willing to buck the tide of often ill-advised compromise.

Jamie Eldridge, currently running for Congress in the Massachusetts 5th District, is a better Democrat, the kind we need. He's of course not above compromise, but he knows there are good deals and bad deals, and bad deals should be refused.

I'd love to see him in Washington.

Karl Rove...

... covered in it? Now there's a happy thought!

On KnoxViews.

Neo-confederates, part 2

Really, it has to be an accident that the Alabama Republican Party is so fond of the jack flag. Sure.

No more GOP

No one should ever again vote for a Republican.

The Republican Party has proven over the last forty years to be a party of fascist criminals. It should be subject to a RICO indictment and stipped of all assets.

Whoa! Isn't that too extreme for Americans! (Nope, just too unstintingly accurate and unpleasant for television.)

Here's the evidence: Four of the last five Republican Presidents engaged in banana republic subversion of the Constitution. Gerald Ford, the sole exception, was appointed by dint of negotiation between a Democratic Congress and the first of the criminals, Dick Nixon. And even he participated in the no Republicans held accountable plan.

Let's review!

Nixon, who left Washington one step ahead of impeachment and conviction, cast himself above any law, used the power of the IRS and the FBI against his political opposition, tampered with evidence (oh, please, you believed that Rosemary Woods cock and bull story?), egged goons to assault citizens, and was deeply involved in a criminal conspiracy to select and destroy his reelection opponent.

St. Ronnie, who left with dementia setting in, had only implausible deniability (and our fundamental dismissive assumption that he was a mere figurehead) between him and Iran-Contra. Even Ollie North, whose only respect for brown Latinos stems from their affection for juntas made up of colonels, didn't believe Reagan's daft denials. Democracy? Law? Who needed 'em!

Duhbya's father, Bush I, said he was "out of the loop" on Iran-Contra, meaning of course that he was definitely not in Chicago at the time. Well, not downtown anyway. HW carried his water in the ongoing criminal conspiracy by pardoning Caspar Weinberger's substantive perjury. People like them (including Scooter) aren't criminals; you can't send them to jail just because they broke a few eentsy-weentsy Democratic laws.

Duhbya, the worst, the apotheosis of the criminal Republican, has a rap sheet unrivaled since at least Grant, maybe ever:

stole the 2000 election - set out to do it and succeeded using the resources his father had pre-positioned

neglected his duty to protect the country

chose to invade Iraq on the basis of lies in order to implement the PNAC plan for empire

effectively ended judicial oversight of surveillance of American citizens

made torture the policy of America

drove a truck through habeas corpus

used the "Justice" Department to install cronies who would trump up politically motivated charges against Democrats

robbed the Treasury for the benefit of the most wealthy Americans

sat by while domestic energy cartels almost openly manipulated prices for vast profits

brought partisan politics deep into law enforcement

reinfected the military with propaganda

subverted intelligence gathering

exposed secrets and a covert agent for short-run political gain

refused the just oversight and jurisdiction of the other branches

asserted the kingly power of the "unitary executive" to control the access Americans have to information

Could the Republicans in Congress be salvageable? Consider:

the trumped up show trials of Bill Clinton

the complete abdication of oversight and separation of powers

the constant willingness to side with the rich against the rest of us, all while pigging out on their slops

the end of any concern for environmental impact of any kind

steady defense of Bushist lies on every topic, large or small

By all means, America will have a conservative party. The sleepwalkers, sheep, and mouth-breathers need representation, too. I recommend that conscientious former Republicans, who are similar to former Iraqi Baathists in this, start with the Democratic Leadership Council. Joe Lieberman has been pretty lonely. You could make his day; give him something to do besides moping around Baghdad in a flak jacket.

Dog bites man

On KnoxViews:

Darth Cheney has been President in all but name for six and a half years. A colonoscopy is Duhbya's just desserts. Maybe they'll find his head up there. If so, it'll probably look like a tumor!

White House credibility

On Philosoraptor:

Nothing out of the executive branch can be trusted.

Pranks

On Philosoraptor:

These Hummer owners who have vanity plates that reinforce their vanity deserve a little monkeywrenching. Now, I wouldn't advocate spray paint or other vandalism, but a toothpick holding open a tire valve is easy to get away with and merely a temporary though hopefully enraging inconvenience.

Bend over as if to tie your shoe, and this shouldn't take more than a few seconds. Do it on the driver's side so the idiot doesn't blithely drive away on three tires. You don't want anyone getting hurt by this.

Sure, a brick through the windshield might be more satisfying viscerally, but think how long you can laugh about this milder prank without joining your victim in assholery.

Fear

On Philosoraptor:

They're looking for someone to tell them they're safe, even if it's a lie.

Journamalism

On Philosoraptor:

Mystic, the problem of course is that the news media view their job as reinforcement of the conventional wisdom - as in, "Don't challenge your audience, or they'll turn you off."

Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable? How quaint.

Justice

On KnoxViews:

McCain swallowed his pride and kissed tons of Duhbya and wingnut ass. This is the thanks he gets, the just desserts of the way he put ambition before honor. Now he gets to live with his regrets.

Rudy the authoritarian gets it next. At some point, someone is going to make a commercial using all the stills and videos of Giuliani in a dress.

After that, it's either Fred or Mitt. Either one will say anything to get elected, so they're perfect Republicans.

Right on, but...

On KnoxViews:

The future of democracy demands that we impeach these authoritarians, and it's always good to have allies in that fight, even those from the propaganda machine that propelled them to power. However, what we really need is for Democrats and liberals to understand and accept that they are going to be attacked for doing what is right - and for them to do it anyway. That's the only way to restore America to Constitutional democracy.

By the way, the interview can be seen at Crooks and Liars.

Demagogue

What would Jagger do? Miss you...

Chickenhawk

On Crooks and Liars:

The truth about required ages of enlistment: 17 to 41. Chris Vucovich is eligible and a damn chickenhawk.

Don’t believe me? Try the Army.

Neo-confederates

On Crooks and Liars (now redacted):

The Montgomery Co. GOP, of which Vucovich is secretary, has an interesting seal. Brings to mind the Confederate battle flag, ya think?

Justice delayed

A friend writes:

I started the new Congressional term thinking, why bother with impeachment. Now I feel that since Congress isn't doing anything else, at least let's tarnish Bush's image a bit. Is it too late to impeach Reagan for Iran Contra? Conducting a war explicitly banned by Congress was the ultimate act of an imperial president.

I think there was once an impeachment after the fact, though I doubt the defendant was dead at the time, which would run pretty hard against our tradition. Since Ken Lay’s Enron convictions were on appeal when he died, they were vacated by the court after his death. I find that a little extreme, but there it is.

Impeachment is necessary. Unfortunately, it’s probably also impossible. I agreed with Nancy Pelosi that it should be off the table, though I didn’t think it should be entirely out of the kitchen. I hoped instead that investigations would bring a popular groundswell that would put it back on the agenda. Every time the Bushists stonewall – which is really all they have left – make them do it in a way that exposes their brazen criminality.

Then try Duhbya, Darth, Rummy, and Gonzo et al for war crimes (torture, mainly) after they leave office. (Yeah, like that’ll ever happen.)

More on "Justice Denied"

See Better late than never.

The reason I didn’t want Miers was her complete personal fealty to Duhbya. Mr. President, you want the prerogatives of an elected king, whatever you say I’ll agree. This – not Iraq, not for heaven’s sake abortion, not even the galloping plutocracy – is the number one issue of our day. All the others are symptoms of the fundamental dysfunction of our polity, which is slouching into fascism. Are we going to govern ourselves, or are we so tired of the petty details and hard facts that we’re going to hand over the power to corrupt men like Darth Cheney to do with us what they will – so long as we get to watch Survivor?

Did the Times advocate a filibuster of Alito? That’s the real question. As Jimmy Malone said while choking on his own blood in The Untouchables, “What are you prepared to do about it?” The media has a mania for bipartisanship (‘Broderism’), which mainly translates into Democratic restraint and lots of tongue-clucking about the Republicans’ lack of restraint. My mania is for Constitutional democracy, and that’s not a value I’ll compromise in the vain hope of comity with a bunch of would-be tyrants, even in the name of Liebermanesque bipartisanship. Especially not in the name of anyone who enables Republican abuses like Lieberman.

Too bad the Washington Democrats still hope for comity. They should at every turn be fighting political war instead of thinking about responsible governance. The only path to that is to throw the rascals out and install some lesser rascals.

That includes judges. We need to clean house by all legal means – and some extralegal means, too. You think any of the Supremes are on the Palfrey phone list? God, I hope so.

By the way, I think David Vitter is toast. Another Harvard man bites … the dust.

Why does everyone hate Michael Moore?

On KnoxViews:

I don't get it. Moore stands up for what he believes, and the Wolf Blitzers and Sanjay Guptas and Lou Dobbses of the world pillory him for it - even after time has proven him right.

Right-wingers totally get in their faces, but CNN invites them back to panel discussions, even though they manifestly have no facts and no expertise. This happens over and over again. They have even given Glenn Beck, a raving moron, his own show. Then, despite the fact that no one watches it, they let him guest host for Paula Zahn, replacing vapid with rabid.

Some liberal media.

Wolf promised Moore a correction if Gupta was proven wrong. This is as close as CNN will get. They restate a few issues, making it seem as though Gupta and Moore are in violent agreement, and Gupta and CNN never admit they got anything was wrong, though it's obvious by omission.

CNN does a non-correction correction, but they steer wide of any fact-by-fact comparison. Moore, on the other hand, sources his facts. Isn't that what journalists are supposed to do?

I haven't seen SiCKO, and I don't agree with everything Moore says about health care, but I do know this: You can't believe anything just because it is on TV. (Aside: I do agree with Moore that every second story on CNN looks like a product placement or a corporate tie-in.)

We're on our own, folks. The fourth estate has sold us out.

Out of context, but...

Comment on what?:

Taking a wicked nixon on the ideals and the work of the Founders...

Better late than never

Justice Denied ($) indeed:

In the 1960s, Chief Justice Earl Warren presided over a Supreme Court that interpreted the Constitution in ways that protected the powerless — racial and religious minorities, consumers, students and criminal defendants. At the end of its first full term, Chief Justice John Roberts’s court is emerging as the Warren court’s mirror image. Time and again the court has ruled, almost always 5-4, in favor of corporations and powerful interests while slamming the courthouse door on individuals and ideals that truly need the court’s shelter.

Yep. Not a single wrong thing. These people want to return to the 1920s or even the 1880s. They’re bad people, willfully ignorant of those they feel are lesser than they, even if the Bushists do have good manners and nice, toothy upperclass smiles. They will rule in favor of the unitary executive, and then pissing around with legal arguments won’t get us anywhere for 40 years. I always thought big brother would come here in America from fascism long before communism.

What Harry Reid should say to Joe Lieberman

"Back our candidate or you're fucking out of the caucus."

And then, come 2009, throw him out anyway.

On Roger Ailes.

How to impeach the Bushists

Our Constitutional democracy is in grave peril. Dick Cheney and his sock puppet, George Duhbya Bush, claim that they want to restore the powers of the Executive Branch. In this, as in practically everything they say, they are lying.

The continued safety of our bold American experiment in democracy requires that we reject the Bushist despotism explicitly and legally. Otherwise, the Cheney-Bush precedent will be that the words of the Constitution are just words and that they can be redefined at will to mean whatever the Executive Branch wants them to mean.

The final remedy the Constitution provides for a President who refuses just and legal oversight and separation of powers is impeachment.

How can patriotic Americans accomplish this act of loyalty to our founding ideals?

The powers that Cheney and Bush have usurped for what they call the unitary executive are powers that the Founders feared to repose in any branch of government, particularly in the Executive, since its power is concentrated in the hands of a few. The Founders rejected exactly the sort of despotic power Cheney claims, which is the power of a king to be beyond the oversight of the other branches, beyond any law, beyond all accountability to the people. It is also the power to make war on whim and to extend the battlefield's fetters on liberty to citizens at home in the United States.

What we have seen over the past six years has been an autocratic restoration in slow motion. With the connivance of Republican Congresses and the elite media and with the acquiescence of frightened Washington Democrats, this restoration has swept away 231 years of shared and separated powers. We now have authoritarian rule, not democratic governance.

Resistance to the Bushist misrule must come from the people. The Democrats are far better than the Republicans but, even so, they are too timid to push through impeachment on their own. They think they're winning and don't want to risk their lead or their fragile coalition, and they accept the false equivalence between Clinton's hysterical, disproportionate, unwarranted impeachment and Duhbya's warranted impeachment. The fundamental difference is that Bill Clinton betrayed his wife, while Duhbya has betrayed our entire system of government with his serious public crimes.

Even so, we require the help of the Washington Democrats. The people have awakened to the incompetence of the Bushists in Iraq and to their arrogance at home, but even I don't think they understand the full story of corruption at the heart of this administration - of how fast and loose they've played with our liberty, our money, and our lives.

The way to reach the people is a steady drumbeat of investigations. The Bushists will stall and stonewall every one. Just as they did in 2000, they will try to run out the clock.

The Democrats in Congress must make Duhbya defend his imperial Presidency and its shameless secrecy every week for the next eighteen months. Congress must constantly stand firm on its demands, must find the White House in contempt, must use every process and finding to refuse its tacit assent to Cheney and Bush. If that means no more confirmations to any office, so be it, and that will mean no more recesses at all, lest Duhbya make recess appointments.

Once the people see where their taxes and the blood of their sons and daughters have been going, there will be outrage. That's the ticket. The Constitutional crisis that has been simmering along since 2001 will come to full boil. It will hurt, no doubt, as all surgery does. Sadly, the time we could have had a painless remedy was December 2000, when Florida was in limbo. Or, maybe that wouldn't have been painless, either. The media could have covered Al Gore fairly in 1999 and 2000, and then Duhbya never would have won the Presidency 5-4.

To win conviction of Bush and Cheney and remove them from office requires many Republican votes. Joe Lieberman will never be one of those votes for conviction. It's a high burden, reachable only if enough angry constituents threaten to take their votes and their money to another candidate. Much as I would rejoice to see President Pelosi, conviction would probably require a deal that would make that temporary at best.

If this deal requires keeping the Bush Cabinet (shudder!), Alberto Gonzales must also be impeached. Any deal must also forbid pardons.

If this fantastic, difficult (impossible?) scenario does not come to pass, there is one more way to hold the Republican would-be tyrants accountable to the law. They have broken laws that carry punishments:
· FISA
· war crimes statutes against torture

We should have learned from Watergate that crimes unpunished are crimes encouraged. Dick Cheney and the Republicans certainly learned that lesson. Now they stonewall every subpoena with the same lame rationales that Richard Nixon could not make stick. They evade all disclosure, and evidence mysteriously disappears. The same news media that foamed at the mouth about the missing Rose law firm records (yes, the ones that confirmed Hilary's story) ho hums at the White House's thoroughgoing evasion of official recordkeeping laws. As the Republicans have done ever since Gerald Ford let Nixon off the hook, they pardon their convicted cronies - Caspar Weinberger, Elliott Abrams, and now Scooter Libby.

This is not a time to play it safe. This is a critical point in history. We face the same scale of gamble that the Founders faced - our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. Or we can watch "reality" TV and forget about running our own government.


Corrected version of what I originally posted on KnoxViews.

Respect for law

Unpublished letter to the Boston Globe:

George W. Bush gave Scooter Libby quite a present yesterday. Bush should have put Americans first instead. After all, it's our country's birthday this week.

Of all the people who might deserve mercy, it's just a coincidence that Bush would give a get out of jail free card to another Republican felon. The one guy too delicate for prison is also the guy who could expose the truth about Dick Cheney's plan to out Valerie Plame.

You have to admit that Republicans take care of their own. If you make them choose their cronies or the law that the rest of us have to obey, they'll choose special treatment for their own kind every time.

Impeachment is the only remedy we have for the arrogance of Republican power. Bush and Cheney have proven that they will stonewall the lawful oversight of Congress at every step. Every subpoena they refuse, every political secret they hide, every law they breach takes us one step closer to a banana republic.

Those of us who care about the ideals of the Founders are the true patriots. We must demand the removal of these scoundrels from power.

Abuse of process

On KnoxViews:

Darth Cheney's bullshit rationale for exempting himself from the law is just as transparent nonsense as the $67 million dry cleaner pants lawsuit. In the abusive pants lawsuit, the presiding judge awarded some costs to the defendants. I hope he will award their legal fees, too.
Cheney is simply trying to escape oversight. Clearly, Duhbya is not up to supervising his boss and never has been - what a poser!

Not only does Cheney preside over our country, he also presides over a coup d'etat against the Constitution, executed in slow motion by the banana Republicans.

Cheney believes that all he has to do to escape the consequences of his illegal actions is to get his papers into escrow in Duhbya's presidential library. (Would he dare build a vice presidential library in recognition of his regency?) Look for even more restrictive Executive Orders on the confidentiality of presidential and vice presidential papers in Jan. 2008.

What Cheney forgets (and Duhbya is too oblivious to know) is that he is a war criminal. He (and Alberto Gonzales via David Addington) may define torture as anything short of major organ failure, but U.S. law does not, and Cheney is criminally liable for at least these crimes (along with Rummy and Duhbya).

I hope to see these SOBs in orange, and I don't mean I want them to visit Neyland Stadium. (Yeah, either one is a long shot.)

Don't be an idiot

Oh, too late, you're a Cheney supporter.

The Vice President is part of the Executive Branch. You and the Cheneyites might try reading about the office in the Constitution instead of repeating obviously moronic spin that pretends they can change the meaning of words to fit their anti-democratic desires.

The Vice President's occasional role as president of the Senate doesn't make him a legislator. He only has a vote in case of ties, he doesn't sit on committees, he can't submit a bill on his own, and his very office is described in Article II, the vesting of the Executive power. He works in the [expletive deleted] White House, at least when he's not at an undisclosed location (Transylvania?).

Furthermore, Executive Orders come in many forms. A huge number of them direct the Executive Branch in implementation of statutes, as is true in this case.

The Vice President is subject to law, to Executive Orders, and to the Constitution. If we didn't live in [expletive deleted] Animal Farm, that would be obvious even to watchers of Fox "News". Cheney should be called to account for his assault on the legal basis of American liberty and government.

But Dick Cheney wants to run a shadow government from beyond the reach of any light, just like the cockroach he is. So he makes these patently ridiculous claims, and his sycophant supporters nod at the absurdity as if they've always known the VP is the fourth branch of government and defend him like the fearful lemmings they are.

Originally posted on KnoxViews.

Pseudonyms

I have to say, I have decreasing respect for those who only populate the comments sections of blogs and never put themselves out there by writing something in a form that more than three people read. Take a stand. Show some guts. Stop hiding behind anonymous screen names. Show us who you are. And stop pretending to be know-it-alls.

Waaah! If you can't beat our arguments, an ad hominem will have to do, well-spiced with aggrieved elitism at our poaching on your pundit's unearned preserve.

Screen names? C'mon, graduate from AOL.

We're pretending to be know-it-alls? Sheesh.

Now for substance in response to your lack of it: I suppose you have decreasing respect for Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Paine, etc. They didn't sign their given names either. Probably wanted to avoid the useless ad hominems of defensive frauds like you.

(Originally posted here.)

Thought experiment

Suppose there were a Republican who is a paragon of personal virtue who thinks well and moderately about foreign and domestic policy. Suppose that nonetheless this man (we are talking about Republicans, after all) could win the Republican nomination for President. Frankly, I think he'd have to stuff the ballot box at the RNC to get anything approaching reason past the fundies, the anti-tax fanatics, and the PNAC imperialists (not to mention the industrial and tribal pro-war interests).

So, with those ridiculous counterfactuals in a suspension of disbelief that J.K. Rowling would laugh at, what government would you get? You'd get the permanent policy apparatus of the Republican Party. This is what gave us Dick Cheney, Elliott Abrams, the vast and vapid neocon network, among others. You'd also retain the permanent political apparatus of the GOP, and you'd better believe that Karl Rove is just the tip of the iceberg.

This is no sale. There is no Republican for nationally significant office who deserves a vote. Not a single one.

Originally a comment on Philosoraptor.

Tax free

It's really bad public policy when theme parks are tax exempt just because they call themselves religious. It's the kind of nonsense that leads to L. Ron Hubbard.

Originally a comment on KnoxViews.

Against type on this

I have no problem with stripping prison libraries of Islamist, Christian Identity, or Kahanist literature. And there's certainly no reason we should pay for it out of our small enough budgets. Cons don't gain the right to whatever book they want simply by conviction of a felony.

I don't think anyone is going to be rehabbed by the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion or the The Turner Diaries, much less by radical Islam, Christianity, or even Judaism posing as religion when it's really revolutionary politics. They want that crap; let 'em wait until they're out.

Originally a comment on KnoxViews.

The NRA vision

Hey, c'mon, an armed society (Iraq) is a polite society. Yep, them Hatfields and McCoys always a-treated each t'other with the utmost respect.

Originally a comment on KnoxViews.

We have become what we forswore

Time magazine, not lately a paragon of hard-hitting journalism, published this yesterday.

The lead is:

Many of the controversial interrogation tactics used against terror suspects in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo were modeled on techniques the U.S. feared that the Communists themselves might use against captured American troops during the Cold War

This happened in 2002. Anyone who has disbelieved my assertions that torture has been the Bushists' policy can now step up to the crow buffet. Personally, though, I'm too sick to my stomach to eat.

(Originally a comment on Philosoraptor.)

Gonzo and Duhbya in a rowboat

Torture and the death penalty are in the same boat. And Alberto Gonzales is rowing Duhbya around in both of them. (What an ugly twist on The Life of Pi!)

Certainly, there are convicts who deserve death, for whom even death may be too good. There are also easily imagined scenarios where torture is obviously and overwhelmingly utilitarian and thus has a claim to morality and even obligation.

Alan Dershowitz has argued that we need torture warrants and a legal review process to approve them sparingly and justly. I look at our attempts to administer the death penalty justly and fairly (and I'm just not relying on the banality of evil seen in Gonzo and Duhbya), and I don't have great confidence in the usefulness of a legalism that permits torture.

In fact, the central problem of torture under the Bushists is that they made it the policy of their regime. They didn't just wink at it or tolerate a few excesses; they wrote memos justifying it legalistically (note: not legally) even while, for public consumption, they claimed that 'torture' meant only 'maiming or killing', which allowed them to make the Orwellian claim that they were not, oh no, torturing. And they promoted successful practitioners from Gitmo to Iraq.

In extremis, torture may be permissible, but it's not permissible to legalize it. Those who are closest to the need must take the risk if they think it is worth it, and we must have the right to second guess them and even punish them if we disagree. That's the harsh reality. (24, by the way, even agrees, or it did in Day 4 anyway; I found Day 6 unwatchable.)

A good analogy is how we handle cannibalism. We don't legalize it and define the circumstances when it is appropriate (Alive!, say). We recognize that it is illegal or at least immoral but accept a necessity defense. So it should be with torture.

Not every act-utilitarian moral act is subject to rendering into rule-utilitarian law.

The precedent punishment for torture in pursuit of war, particularly war of choice, is the death penalty. Reason forces me to acknowledge that both Gonzo and Duhbya are eligible for prosecution, along with Rummy and Darth Cheney, among many others.

It was for reasons such as this that the Republicans during the Clinton years refused to join the International Criminal Court at The Hague. When out of office, the Bushists also might want to consider not travelling to Belgium, for example, to avoid its almost American sense of its own jurisdiction. No ex post facto problem there!

If these alleged war criminals are ever duly convicted convicted, I'd be satisfied with them receiving the same punishment as Rudolf Hess. Hell, I'd be ecstatic.

(Originally a comment on Philosoraptor.)

True paranoia

Originally a comment on Crooks and Liars.

The U.S. Constitution is no longer in force. The rule of law is only for the little people like us.

Comey was impressive for his visible conscience, for his care for the law, and for his concern for John Ashcroft as a defender of America. We are in really deep shit if Ashcroft is our best defender. It just goes to show that there are no depths the Bushists won't stoop to.

The Bushists are undoubtedly data mining all our phone conversations, emails, and blog postings. I don't have direct evidence, only the persistent evasion about illegal wiretapping. Is there any law they won't violate with the flimsiest, most patronizing rationale?

The job the Congressional Democrats face is unpleasant. They must provoke enough outrage in ordinary American sheeple that the fascists in the Executive will take off the gloves. And that's really a suicide mission; they won't even have the Magna Carta left to protect their cushy positions in the old order.

The upside of this is that it might be the quickest way to get the troops home from Iraq. Small upside given that they would come home to suppress democracy. Or maybe it would be safer for the White House to hire Blackwater and leave the disgruntled soldiers in al Anbar.

We may think we're anonymous, but they have enough computing power and data to associate "lovable liberal" to my meatworld identity. They know who we are, and we'll be among the first arrests. Mitt Romney's double Gitmo won't be nearly large enough. See you in the gulag; we'll trap rats together for dinner.

It was a good 212-year run for the old Constitution and a good 210-year run for the old Bill of Rights. Flawed though they are, what comes next will be worse.

Who you calling a mob, punk?

(Responding to this.)

You need to check your definitions. Citizen journalism could conceivably lead to mob rule or could be exploited by fascism, but the real danger of fascism is in the corporate-compromised so-called mainstream media. This is the media that beat the drums for war in Iraq (including the Washington Post and the New York Times, mind you). This is the media that still, after the Democrats have won Congress, overrepresents Republican and conservative points of view, especially on television. This is the media that until very recently rolled over and asked the Bush White House to scratch its belly in exchange for childishly credulous access to the latest Rovian spin - and was willing to type up that spin as if it were true even when the reporter *knew* it was a lie. This is the media that stridently dumps on the earth tones and the haircuts of prominent Democrats, while fawning over Duhbya playing dress-up as a fighter pilot, a rancher, or even a man in control.

So, while I still read widely in the daily press, no one who wants to be informed can omit the citizen journalism of the Internet, particularly the blogs. The virtue of the Internet, at least, is that there is more than one mob. The mainstream media practices much more "journamalism" than real journalism anyway. When the mob comes, if it does, the mainstream media won't protect us from fascism.

Small adjustments

Emergency funding bills to keep the military open while deciding other issues is a good approach.

However, no war in Iran without a separate vote of Congress should be in every bill. This is the critical Constitutional separation of powers and cannot be allowed to lapse. The Bushists have argued that the original Iraq resolution gives them everything in their wildest dreams; words in black and white have to be down on paper denying that authority.

Ordering withdrawal and the toothless departure goal are more negotiable, so Congress could play monthly games with those.

Originally a comment on DailyKos.

How do you know Rove is lying?

Yes, of course, as in the old joke, his lips are moving.

When his memory is hazy, that means he's worrying about perjury.

Originally a comment on DailyKos.

Too soon

Of course, it's not too soon legally to impeach the criminals of this executive branch, but it's too soon politically. Nancy Pelosi was spot on to take impeachment off the table. Only a groundswell of opinion from ordinary voters, not from Dennis Kucinich, however right he may be, can put impeachment back on the table.

This is especially important if the process might lead to a Pelosi Presidency. To be legitimate, it must be popular.

Originally a comment on DailyKos.

Down the rabbit hole

(Adapted from Philosoraptor.)

I've had Duhbya fatigue since the first time I ever heard his blend of patronizing arrogance and resolute cluelessness. I kept listening for a while, but now I can't anymore. The likelihood he will say those words I could listen for - "I resign" - are so slim it's not worth the time and upset. So I won't even watch the State of the Union until he's gone.

...

The Dems, especially in the House, need to wield their subpoena power like a scythe, show daily the thoroughgoing corruption that the Bushists have worked both in dollars and in democracy, and let the people demand impeachment. Or not.

I suspect that the people won't. I think we're too lazy to care about the principles of self-government any more; just give us widescreen HDTV.

But if we do, there'll be hell to pay. Hello, President Pelosi!

The real hell would be the possibility that a large number of right-wingers might well stage armed rebellion. We've had a Constitutional crisis simmering along with the lapdog media too focused on Liebermanesque faux bipartisanship to report it. This would be too visible and violent to ignore.

For once, I hope I'm just paranoid. But the "responsible" right never accepted Clinton's election and immediately set to work to undo it. Would they accept the (necessarily Republican-aided) impeachment and conviction of Darth and Duhbya? I doubt it.

...

Oh, TVD, how sweet of you. Except you've before pointedly declined assent to the "defend to the death" hyperbole. Still, I wasn't expecting you to take part in the violence either way.

I promise you that I would rather not be Cassandra.

But, since you've shunned me, a couple of rhetorical questions:

• Who has the guns in the U.S.?
• Who has engaged in recent political violence against people in the U.S.?
• Which side has prominent advocates who urge political violence?
• Has there ever been widespread political violence in the U.S.?
• Can it happen here?

You don't think Duhbya is like Putin. I think you may be wrong.

All in all, though, it's an unlikely scenario that we'll get to impeachment, even though by any reasonable legal standard we should.

Patron saints of CW

Man, I'm sick of the media viewing its job as constantly reinforcing the conventional wisdom and then disclaiming all responsibility.

(Originally posted here.)

Blogging for dollars

Delay's blog is just a way to cash in, the grandchild of the book deals that used to be so common, so remunerative, and so pulped.

Originally a comment on Crooks and Liars.

Rumor and the MSM

Obviously, the MSM shouldn't publish unconfirmed rumor - sorry Drudge. But to fail to take advantage of Google is arrogant, stupid, and short-sighted.

Of course, reporters need to learn how to distinguish fact from fantasy in cyberspace. But they pride themselves (not always justifiably) with the ability to do that in real life, and this is just one more domain they need skills in.

I'll try to check with my MSM contacts to see whether they avail themselves of the internet. The tiny paper I wrote for in a semi-pro capacity up until 2000 didn't have any web resources. It was so technically backward the editor preferred that I file by fax!

(Originally here.)

"Stand there and bleed"

stand there and bleed is a great counterbranding of the Bushists' insane war strategy.

(Originally here.)

Bklsnarg

Bklsnarg has been the policy of the Bush Administration. The fact that bklsnarg includes all the elements formerly pertaining to the word 'torture' does not mean that U.S. policy allows torture, since that definition has now been changed.

We'd let you read the new definition, but it's top secret eyes only, so we would have to imprison or shoot you if we did let you read it. You wouldn't want that, now would you? No? Thank you for your democratic consent to the policy, which conforms to all the laws of the land, except for those we don't have to obey, which really is all of them in time of war. And the war could last forever, and its battlefield is everywhere.

But of course we're fighting for your freedom.

Originally posted here on Philosoraptor, and there's more to boot.

Trying to get someone's (pet) goat

Fun times slinging jibes on Attytood about Duhbya's deer-in-the-headlights Sept. 11 look...

To stop swiftboating

Go the the Vietnam Memorial, roll up your sleeves, and say, "I have friends, friends that I served with whose names are on this wall. George Felix Allen didn't serve. He has never heard a shot fired in anger. I have. If he would like to compare his patriotism to mine, let him come down here and settle it with me, one on one, man to man. Pause. He doesn't have the guts."

Call the asshole out. Kick his ass. Win Norfolk and Bristol, not just Northern Virginia.

Originally a comment on DailyKos.

Insurgents v. party regulars

Over and over again in the history of the Democratic Party, insurgent candidates and their people (Patrick, Bonifaz, Dean, Reich, Bradley) butt heads with party regulars and their people (Reilly, Galvin, Kerry, O'Brien, Gore). I've been on both sides (Patrick, Galvin, Dean, O'Brien, Gore), so maybe I have some useful observations, and hopefully they'll be unifying.

Regulars are often too insular. Many of them think they own the party and actively resist the arrival of new people. C'mon, these are reinforcements. We need the fresh blood of patriots - but unspilled.

Insurgents are often too self-entitled. Many assume that anything that goes against them is nefarious and illicit. C'mon, the regulars have been fighting the good fight for years; you can't expect to show up and run things just because you're young and beautiful and impatient. Good ideas are just talk unless you work to put them on the agenda and try to pass them.

Regulars carp that they've never seen the insurgents until they just showed up at a caucus. Insurgents sometimes encourage this by winning once and then never coming back to do the steady work of reform from within.

Insurgents often think that some ideal of fairness that they grasp intuitively can override the rules. They may be unhappy if you exclude them from voting at a caucus because they missed the deadline for registering as Democrats, as if the regulars are supposed to be able to see in their hearts that they really were Dems in time.

Process reforms can help these relationships work better. Transparency is a big one. I've been to at least six Mass. Democratic Conventions so I'm prepared for strange delays while the power brokers put the fix in. New people are very put off by this. I don't like it either, but the rules permit it. My desire to change those rules doesn't mean I'm blustering about changing their outcomes this time around.

Politics is both competitive and cooperative, a combination of hard ball and burying the hatchet. The rules are the rules, but we need to help each other when the primary is done.

Often in the past, we haven't helped each other. Scott Harshbarger would've been governor if both wings of the party regulars had cooperated. (Can't blame insurgents for that one.)

Modern campaigns need such deep organizations that those organizations have to be permanent. They can't be put together overnight. As Democrats, we are waaaay behind the Republicans on this.

My challenge for regulars and insurgents alike:

Build your organizations. Don't settle for precinct captains; we need eyes and ears and eventually voices on the street (or apartment building floor) level. But prepare something lasting; don't worry about ideological purity or a long history of working with the party. Unify. Come September, be ready to hand over as much of your grassroots as possible to the nominee and the local party committees. That's one part of the formula for winning.

Originally posted on Blue Mass Group with this poll attached:

How many times in the 5 listed contests were you an insurgent?

o Never (hack!)

o Once

o Twice

o Three times

o Four times

o Five times (Green!)

Convention transparency

After the 2002 convention fiasco, we Dems spent four years working through the McGovern-Dukakis process to reform approval and endorsement of primary candidates. On the plus side, voting on the floor was smooth and efficient. But what was the net result?

All candidates gained the ballot. Counting fewer than 5000 votes still took so long that the convention lasted into the evening. Each of the gubernatorial candidates is a credible candidate; I will support the winner after September. So, what's wrong with the outcome?

The problem is that the process is dishonest - or looks dishonest. Votes delivered by power brokers to give razor-thin margins of approval matter more than the rest of our votes.

A fair and above-board process would have the following features:

No counting of votes until all votes are recorded. No changing of votes once voting closes. All challenges during the convention must be made in view of the convention by identifiable delegates. After voting has closed, the only admissible challenge is teller accuracy. Counting must take place in public view of the convention. The tallying should be complete in fifteen minutes. And then we could get on with convincing the electorate.

Originally posted on Blue Mass Group.