The Duck Stream

Reality Visits Via the Polls

2009-02-23T22:41:00.000-08:00

Well, fresh from yesterday's exposure of the teevee media's failings on the stimulus, today the internets gave me this shocker.

Most Americans support Obama's economic plan: polls

In the New York Times/CBS poll, about 75 percent of respondents, including 61 percent of Republicans said Obama has been trying to work with Republicans.

Sixty-three percent said Republican opposed the economic stimulus package for political reasons rather than policy concerns.

Eighty percent of Americans think Republicans should work in a bipartisan way rather than holding fast to their policies, according to the poll.

I highlighted that last point for further review. 80 percent think the Republicans should work to solve our problems instead of marching in lockstep to the failed corporate policies of Rover and Grover and Limbaugh. That number astounds me. And it really tells you how far removed from what people think they should be doing they are.

Those goppers that think they have a chance beating someone like Chris Dodd really don't have a clue. 80 percent tells me a lot about how far the republicans are from the levers of power.

Now that President Obama has broken the gop block, sure, they think it's intact, but it isn't, and every day, like today, the cracks are going to get bigger.

Obama made a point of inviting some of his rivals and harshest critics, using the White House to set up a framework for negotiations outside Congress.

Meeting with the group of about 130 after they'd spent the afternoon discussing federal spending, the president called first on Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., his Republican opponent for the presidency in last November's election.

He's just killing them and they're too self absorbed to even notice.

Mind you, I don't want republican ideas, but I suppose real, as opposed to contrived, concern about wasteful spending is okay, I really don't want republicans until they repudiate their fascist past 8 years and cooperate in jailing BushCo luminaries, just getting them to move out of the way is my idea of bipartisanship at this point, but it is nice to see that America is waking up to the reality of the GOP. Maybe they can force them to act like republicans instead of fascists and narcissists now, that would be nice.

Someone Noticed the Media Isn't Doing Their Job

2009-02-22T22:48:00.000-08:00

Hello readers, after a too long hiatus, I'm back blogging, with greater regularity.

I stumbled on this AP article, and well, it shocked me.

The author wrote this: "To a certain extent, networks could be accused of unimaginative bookings, going to people they know very well" but I would have to disagree to some extent, I think they go to people that fit into their pre-conceived notions of conventional wisdom, and they go to people that swim in their same circles. And that is really the problem, the TV National News is reporting from the same fishbowl it resides in, objectivity is warped by the glass of their own world.

The numbers cited are pretty damning, and wholly typical of what I have seen for many years on TV News, and the quotes from Cameron and Schieffer perfectly highlight what has happened to television news reporting. Losing Cronkite effectively ended LBJ's presidency, and CBS and NBC hounded Nixon during Watergate, but since then,(or not) the TV news has become a useless bastion of Corporate regurgitation of the Republican line, or incestuous navel gazing from the DC Beltway crowd.

"Ian Cameron, executive producer of ABC's Sunday morning "This Week," said the trend had less to do with unimaginative bookings than 24-hour cable's need to draw contrast and promote verbal battles." I have a hard time equating that statement with journalism, indeed, I have trouble believing that he would even say that out loud, let alone that it is a true statement. In short, we don't do journalism, we promote cat fights and finger pointing, and we're proud of it!

But Bob Schieffer's is really the best of all. In fact, re-reading it truly boggles the mind.

"Maybe we should be talking to more economists," Schieffer said. "I've been a reporter now for 52 years, covered everything from hubcap thieves to arms control negotiations, and I generally have an opinion on whether the government is doing the right or wrong thing. This thing is so complicated that I'm not sure what is the right or wrong thing."

Um, maybe someone can mention to Bob, if it's too complicated, then yes, you should be talking to economists. A lot. And perhaps someone should also tell Bob that we all have an opinion on the government's activities, and that we aren't really interested in your opinion, after all, we all have one of those too, and that, really, you're supposed to be reporting on the stimulus, not giving us your opinion, an opinion, I must point out, you've just admitted is worthless.

That the AP published that article is perhaps an indication that the pendulum has started to swing back from Corporate Whoredom to that thing enshrined in our Constitution, maybe. After all, the gravy train left the station November 4th, perhaps now if they want to make money they're going to have to do some work, just like everyone else. Or maybe not. But I find the article a hopeful one, maybe the result of the unending pushback from bloggers on the left decrying the sorry state of the corporate media, and the fact that President Obama called on a Blogger at his first of many press conferences.

We can only hope.

What Off the Table Really Meant

2008-08-24T22:24:00.000-07:00

Speaker Pelosi said that impeachment was off the table because she wanted to focus on the Democrats policy agenda.

It may have been the worst political decision in history, or not. It may have been stupid, or genius. Or not.

Now that it's too late to really do anything about the worst administration ever, an administration who sought power so that they could benefit their corporate sponsors and not to conduct their job as President and Executive Branch for the American People, what have we learned, or rather, what does this teach us about some of the Democrats?

I've thought about this a lot, and it came to me the other day. Pelosi, Reid, the stupid Dem strategists, they made 2 mistakes. One, they failed to understand, in part because they "knew" these people, that Bush was not selected to fulfill the duties and obligations of the President of the United States as enumerated in the Constitution, but rather to give the big corporate oligarchs the budget surplus of the Clinton Presidency, and more importantly, unfetter the Corps from the inconvenient eyes of the government and its bothersome regulations.

Secondly, they listened to the media, in part again because they knew them, conventional wisdom, they responded to the gop frames that partisanship was bad for the Democrats. They were determined to prove that they were not going to go on a partisan witchhunt like the gop did to Clinton (and isn't it amazing that the goppers can turn an acknowledged negative action into a political thrust into the Democrats back?) Partisanship is bad says that worthless git Broder, and the Democratic mainstream leadership believed it, and refused to fight the gop with their own weapons.

So impeachment was taken away, and Pelosi and Co blithely ignored the actions of the gop, ignored their politization of the Executive branch, ignored their lies, ignored Frist campaigning against Daschle, ignored gop filibusters and Bush vetoes and the Joe Lieberman factor, just pretended it didn't exist at all, and went about satisfying their legislative agenda.

But what happens when you ignore reality, when you cast yourself, not head in the sand but body in a bubble?

You accomplish precious little, and you tell the electorate that you aren't real sold on your own principles because you won't fight for them.

So here are the lessons learned.

1) Don't listen to the media, their job is to report what you do, not what you "should" do. Anything else is not news, it's lies and opinion meant to protect their own privlege at your expense.

2) Fight for what you value. If you don't value anything, don't fight, but please go away and let someone else in who will fight.

3) Familiarity should, in many cases, breed contempt, not incredulity.

4) If you don't vote for the Democratic nominee, you are just as bad as Dick Cheney, KKKarl Rove, George W Bush, Grover Norquist, Bob Ney, Monica Goodling, Hans Von Spaskey (sp-don't care), Limbaugh, Savage, Coulter, and all the rest of the Kagens and Kristols and gopper thug trolls and pols that have nearly destroyed our Democracy in its 232nd year.

Why the Media Has Failed

2008-08-21T23:04:00.000-07:00

I just got done watching McCain's daughter talking about the time McCain hosted the DC Press Corps at his Sedona Cabin, via Josh Marshall.

Besides supporting my oft stated position that nothing from the Politico can be trusted, so please don't link to them liberal bloggers, just what the hell is the News Media doing partying with the people they are supposed to report on? I know it's been happening for years, and frankly, that is the root of the problem. Like the Late, Great, Horse said, they're whores.

It's a grotesque conflict of interest and violates everything the press should stand for. Imagine Woodward and Bernstein partying with Tricky Dick, if you can.

The other thing that shows how out of touch these people are, the daughter kept saying their cabin in Sedona, and if you watch the video it's hard to really see the cabin, about the 18 second mark gives you a good shot. That ain't no cabin, people. I just stayed in a cabin in Big Bear, at Big Bear Vacations who I would not recommend ever because they have dirty cabins and don't care about customer service, and McCain's thing is not a cabin, just because it's made of wood does not make it a cabin.

The State of Our Nation

2008-08-07T19:22:00.000-07:00

I've been not blogging for a while, if anybody's noticed, but I aim to be more regular, and more focused. Yes, that's it, a tighter, better blog!!!

Tonight, let's talk about the state of our nation. You may have seen this photo of the Blackwater T-shirted DEA agent during a big medical marijuana bust. And the recent spate of marijuana smuggling arrests trumpeted by the DEA/Justice Department.

Well, I'm sure we're all sleeping better at night knowing that those medical marijuana people and all those dopers are getting busted and harassed for their evil ways, even while that devil Osama bin Laden and his al Queada creation remains thriving in AfghaniPakistan. Right? You all sleep better knowing that, don't you? What, you don't? Well, anyway, if that weren't troublesome enough, I just read this wonderful story about the Mayor of Berwyn Heights adventures with the Marijuana Police. [My bolds]

Mayor Cheye Calvo got home from work, saw a package addressed to his wife on the front porch and brought it inside, putting it on a table. Suddenly, police with guns drawn kicked in the door and stormed in, shooting to death the couple's two dogs and seizing the unopened package. ...[snippage]...

Prince George's County Police Chief Melvin High said Wednesday that Calvo and his family were "most likely ... innocent victims," but he would not rule out their involvement, and he defended the way the raid was conducted. He and other officials did not apologize for killing the dogs, saying the officers felt threatened.

But this line says it all: His [the Mayors] wife spoke through tears as she described an encounter with a girl who used to see the couple walking their dogs.

"She gave me a big hug and she said, `If the police shot your dogs dead and did this to you, how can I trust them?'"

Look. There are several things wrong with these stories. Let's start with the behavior of the police. Yes, we all know they're heroes and put their lives on the line for us, but do they have to treat people and their effects with such disregard? After all, let's not forget, there is first and foremost, a presumption of innocence, regardless of appearances; secondly, the 4th amendment is pretty clear: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Where's the warrant or the reasonable searches, in both of these cases? Does this picture seem reasonable to you?

Pot shouldn't even be illegal, it's a stupid and ridiculous vestige of prohibition, racism (them colored musicians were well known to smoke the stuff and lure impressionable white kids into the evils of Reefer Madness, don't forget), and special interests-cotton, corn, and paper products corporations that didn't want competition from the easy growing weed (good fibers for paper, clothing, seeds for animal feed, vegetable oil etc), hallucinogenic or otherwise.

So instead of going easy on pot growers, instead of mitigating the criminality of the pot industry, we get storm trooper tactics, especially now as Bushco tries to terrorize Americans on general principal I guess as a way of keeping the fear factor going regardless of the source or targets or intents; tension just for the sake of increasing pressure on the American Public.

So I ask you, faithful readers, how can this be, whatever the particulars, how can this be acceptable in America? What has happened to this country of rugged individualists; bold entrepreneurs; no nonsense, hard working, unimpeachable Our Town Americans; that this crap is tolerated, and not just tolerated, but unremarked upon by our media and our leaders?

Is the State of Our Nation one of thuggery, of institutional violence, of the Not Very Great At All Generation? Is that what we have become? And if so, how did we get this way? When did it start, and who started it, and where are these people because I'd like to have them pay a price for what they have wrought. And I don't mean beating them up and inflicting revenge on them, either.

I think we know who I'm talking about, but I'll spell it out. G-O-P. C-o-n-s-e-r-v-a-t-i-v-e-s. I say this not as a blanket condemnation of all GOPpes and Conservatives, but the generation that was started forming during the days of Richard Nixon, all the Post Goldwater 1964 conservatives who just have so much hate in their hearts, all those charming young republicans like Karl Rove and Lee Atwater and the true believers like G Gordon Liddy, the self aggrandizing users like Gingrich and DeLay, the weak cowards like Jean Schmidt and Dennis Hastert and James Sensenbrenner and Yoo and Gonzo and the Kagens, oh I could go on.

They perpetuate the fear and the thuggery, they revel in the casual indifference America seems to have for these outrages, like the recent ICE raids in Iowa, and it makes me sick to my stomach to think that these people are destroying my country, my world, my environment, my life.

What we do about it is uncertain. It's daunting, it's huge, it may be insurmontable. In which case the planet dies as we know it. Humanity gets tossed on the oil patch of evolution, and it won't take that long to happen. By the end of this century, kiddies. But it may be preventable, it may be subject to change, or at least some mitigation. And that won't happen with any, and I mean ANY, Republicans pulling the levers of power.

So think of this as my rambling and unequivical endorsement of every Democratis candidate for every electable political office. Progressive Democrats are much preferred, but I will take any Dem over any Gopper every time. So put that in your bong and smoke it.

Village Elders Have Yet Another War Power Fix

2008-07-08T21:59:00.000-07:00

Saw it on the NewsHour tonight, Baker and Warren Christopher have this fabulous proposal for getting rid of the War Powers Act that "everybody" knows doesn't work and is unconstitutional.

The gist of it is that they would scrap the response to Nixon's illegal invasion of Cambodia with a meaningless response to Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq by demanding that the President consult with Congress before using our once mighty military, and then requiring that Congress vote within 30 days of such action to either support or deny such use of military force.

First, plucky Margaret Warner wanted to know how Congress could be expected to make such a vote as if in a vacuum and ignore the resultant freakout you get today from the warmongering hating frightened children from the right at the merest mention of "not supporting our troops in harms way" rhetoric times 1,000? To which Baker and Christopher pretty much ignored that reality and failed to answer the question.

And secondly, and most importantly, what good does consultation do, if a) the President could withhold all kinds of pertinent information and the Congress would have no means to force the White House to provide said pertinent information, and b) consultation is not a force mechanism and thus utterly meaningless. If the President doesn't listen to Congress during this "consultation," then what? Is there a law that forces him to listen to consultation? The Advise and Consent business in the Constitution has a force mechanism, the Senate has to approve of the nomination in order for them to assume their office. Not so with a "consultation."

So what we have is yet another attempt by the real masters of our domain to advance their concept of presidential power, and why Warren Christopher is there escapes me except as GOP bagman ala Lee Hamilton, which is why it just doesn't matter what Obama says or does, he must be elected because we cannot afford another Republican in the White House for at least 40 years, just like my dumb forbears lost in the desert for 40 years (roughly the size of San Diego and Imperial counties, and it wouldn't take 40 years to wander all over every bit of it) in order to have the old ways die out. Look, if Jim Baker wants it, it's bad for you and I and America, period.

These creeps just don't quit, never stop scheming for ways to amass more power. That's all they do, these monstrosities like Baker and Bush et al, instead of scheming for ways to make the world a better place, more efficient, cleaner, more pleasurable, they spend all of their energies in gluttony and the ever better ways to realize that. It just goes far beyond my comprehension level to fathom what makes these people tick. And frankly, I don't care, except insofar as I wish them to be gone on the ill wind they're creating for us all, and how to achieve that.

And first we gotta elect Barack Obama. And Better Democrats.

What Chairman Nadler Should Have Done

2008-06-26T22:37:00.000-07:00

This evening I sat, transfixed, by the testimony of David Addington and John Yoo, two of the most reprehensible human beings in the Bush Administration.

One thing I noticed, when Addington was talking, is that he sounds and acts just like his boss, Big Time Barnicle Dick Cheney. His mannerisms, his inflections, the tone of voice, and the style of speech are all dead on Dick. Owner and dog I guess.

And having Debbie Wasserman-Schultz call Addington a liar was pretty satisfying, bet she earned some serious hate from the fascists, er Republicans in her district on that one. Didn't seem to bother her that Addington tried to get her to back down (she didn't)

The other thing was John Yoo. In an exchange with Rep Cohen, TN-D on the Bybee memo and international law, Yoo said, at one point, that he didn't know what the international law was on torture so he couldn't speak to the Bybee memo in that regard. Or something to that affect, I'm having trouble finding the testimony, it was after their recess.

If that is true, then what the hell was he doing writing legal memos and justifications as part of the Office of Legal Council? And why would a University like Cal have this moral midget teach law to anybody or anything?

But I digress. Chairman Nadler had to stop several times to make Yoo explain his refusal to answer some questions because the Justice Department forbade him from answering them. After claiming attorney-client privilege, which Nadler said doesn't exist, and pointing out that Yoo was the one testifying, not the Justice Department, what Nadler should have done was this.

Tell Yoo to answer the question, or be in contempt. And when he refused to answer (and he wouldn't have answered, trust me, he is a complete coward and terrified of the Addingtons and Cheney's and all the other associated psychopaths that work in the Bush White House) he should have been cited for contempt and hauled off by the Sergeant at Arms to a jail cell, and for good measure, waterboarded by unknown people under unknown authority.

Then they should have resumed questioning Addington under this changed context, and see what he would say.

The Stupidity of the Free Market

2008-06-23T22:45:00.000-07:00

On CNBC this morning there was some discussion of the potential for the US automakers to provide another kick to the ribs to the US economy as they reported plummeting sales for Trucks and SUV’s. And I see where McCain/Bush has proposed an “award” of $300 million of our taxpayer monies to whoever can build a better car battery.

When California passed that mandate for zero emission vehicles, Detroit responded to the challenge. They responded by fighting against it tooth and nail, spending billions on lobbying and advertising and lawyers and the like; billions in utterly non-productive spending of shareholder equity. Likewise with raising CAFÉ standards, no, must keep the short term profitability of the SUV market over sustainable profits at all costs.

Now, it’s funny, in a pathetic sort of way, but it isn’t as if our present pricing and demand pressure's were unimaginable at the time, after all, that’s why we passed the damn law in the first place. Yet these giant corporations could only see the mandate as a threat, not an opportunity to take advantage of the inevitable future.

So when dickwads like peter and mucky and whatever other vile gopper thugs tell us how great the free market is, remember this. Those billions they wasted fighting against the laws of nature (there’s only so much oil out there-and the demand for the energy it produces far exceeds the supply) could instead have been invested in new battery technology and hybrids and fuel cells and hydrogen infrastructure to meet the mandates of the law.

So instead of avoiding massive layoffs in Detroit, instead of having the new infrastructure for new fuels and battery powered cars in place, Detroit and the Oil industry are tearing this country, and the world, apart. Disruptions caused by the meteoric increase in gas prices, the dilatory effect on the corn and soybean markets vis a vis food production, the layoffs, and especially the crisis in the Middle East rooted in Oil, is pushing us to the brink of a real serious recession, maybe a depression, maybe stagflation, but nothing good. That is the thugs and trolls mighty free market at work.

Are you as impressed as I am?

DNC and Hillary Hysteria

2008-06-01T09:01:00.000-07:00

This is a comment I posted at the Left Coaster. Link is below.

A couple of things.

1) Political parties are not the same thing as the entities laid out in the Constitution. They are, after all, voluntary organizations (spare me any you can always leave America arguments) unlike the United States that we all (voters) live in (except for those abroad of course!)

2) Counting every vote in Michigan 2008 is not the same thing as Florida 2000.

3) I think the Rules Committee can change the rules any way they see fit, if they can get the votes, that's why they're called the Rules Committee!! ;-)

4) What NealB said: You're right, of course. The rules don't cover the situation. That's why the rules committee met today. To resolve a crisis where the crappy rules created a terrible, enigmatic situation. This is politics after all. Politics never has been democratic; it never will be. Posted by NealB at May 31, 2008 06:36 PM

5) None of this would have happened if the media provided a viable balance to politics, but they don't, so they fan the flames of hysteria you see with that absurd woman from New York, Harriet Christianson (?) foaming at the mouth about her "betrayal" by the DNC.

6) If the Clinton camp agreed so readily to the Florida compromise, how can they argue with such absolutism on the Michigan compromise?

7) Just remember, political parties aren't democracy, they are means to an end. They are not in the Constitution as enabled institutions, so they can do as they see fit to achieve their purposes, within the framework of public laws of course.

8) Laws are made to be broken if they do not adequetely address a situation. What would be a fair resolution of the Florida and Michigan delegations that factors in the fact that those citizens votes were tainted by a presumption of futility in their votes, and a lack of attention by the candidates to fully express their candidacy's validity or suitability?

9) Those who think that McCain is preferable to Obama, or that he is the next best thing to Hillary really and truly are giving her a slap in the face. By that argument they are saying that her values and ideals are close enough to McCain's. A lying, pandering, Bush loving republican conservative? Would Hillary embrace Richard Mellon Scaife the way McCain embraced the slanderers of South Carolina or the Swift Boaters? For instance.

10) Think about what you're saying, people. Obama is going to pick a lot of the same people as Hillary would to help him run the government, and that what this is really all about, who is running the actual government. The Lurita Doan's and Monica Goodling's and Abu Gonzales' of the world, or decent Democrats like Tom Daschle or David Bonior or whoever, pick your favorites, Richard Clarke or Valerie Plame.

Jeebus!

Tell All Tells Nothing

2008-05-28T22:00:00.001-07:00

Just from reading this AP article on Little Spinnin Scottie and his book, a couple of simple truths leap out at me.

First of all, this really shouldn't be news. It's certainly not news to me or anybody who paid attention or followed Holden and his Gaggle reporting.

Now consider this statement.

Bush's presidency "wandered and remained so far off course by excessively embracing the permanent campaign and its tactics," McClellan writes. He says Bush relied on an aggressive "political propaganda campaign" instead of the truth to sell the Iraq war.

They're still writing about the tactics, the process, and not about the substance. And that has been the biggest problem with the media coverage of this nightmarish presidency. All we get is how they do things, or not, but no discussion on whether these are worthwhile things to be doing and why. It's just like that Bill Hemmer thing from the other day, where the "reporter" noted the death threat without condemning it in any way, just transcribing the words without thought on the content. And that's pretty much all we're going to get from McClellan: bad choices, bad tactics, bad results, but no thought as to whether the fundamental ideas were right or wrong.

And clearly, in my mind, they are ALL wrong, in every way imaginable.

And of course, there's the comedy angle. "'We are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew,' said Dana Perino."

Negotiating With The Enemy

2008-05-25T06:44:00.000-07:00

I want to go back and revisit the charges made by Bush/McCain that Sen. Obama would negotiate with terrorists if elected, and how that would be such a terrible thing to do. Consider this quote, in all of its Republican trollishness:

McCain showed no such restraint. [He] claimed Obama was "unfit" to be commander-in-chief because of his willingness to negotiate with terrorists, and called on him to explain why he'd meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "a man who is the head of a government that is a state sponsor of terrorism, that is responsible for the killing of brave young Americans, that wants to wipe Israel off the map, who denies the Holocaust."

Take away those last two points and ask yourself where would John McCain be today if Nixon hadn't negotiated with the North Vietnamese, state sponsors of the Viet Cong and responsible for killing 58,260 brave young Americans?

That's what Ms. Duckman asked me, and it would be nice if someone were to ask McCain that same question.

Beyond that, maybe we can find out what he thinks about US troops "negotiating" with terrorists on the ground in Iraq like they have done in Anbar province? Yes, there's a difference between ground troops and political leaders, but how much of a distinction really is there? Of course in Bush's black and white world there is none, and in the minds of many of the GOP faithful there is none, a convenient situation that McCain's hypocrisy will capitalize as best he can.

Pretty Embarrassing

2008-05-18T09:03:00.000-07:00

How else to describe the image of George W Bush lecturing "the Arab world Sunday about everything from political repression to the denial of women's rights."

Better still is one of his proscription for achieving peace in the Middle East, "to stand by Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora against Hezbollah and to shun Iran over its nuclear program."

Irony was invented with Bush in mind. How else can you process things like this:

"He called on Arab governments to free all "prisoners of conscience" and open up political debate, saying Washington was "deeply concerned" about repression of democracy activists and the closure of newspapers and civil society organizations.

[skip] Nour, who unsuccessfully challenged Mubarak in Egypt's first multi-candidate presidential elections in 2005, is serving a five-year jail term for fraud. He says authorities fabricated the case to block him from politics."

We will not fix the problems in the middle east until the war mongers who are prosecuting this ill begotten misadventure in Iraq to further the profiteering of the Global Warming Corporations and the fundamentally flawed world vision of Dick Cheney leave the stage. The problem is that the damage they have caused will make it profoundly difficult for who ever follows to make any progress, let alone undo the damage.

But they must, and they must by engaging all of the parties. Iraqi or Hamas suicide bombers don't grow up with suicide as their career path, it's thrust upon them by their situation and the miserable old men that "lead" them. Yet those old men are the ones who we have to deal with if we want to stop the insanity of suicide bombers.

Those old men, and the poverty and suspicion and betrayals and heavy handedness of the colonial powers still present today, the poverty and over population, an illegal occupation, the exploitation by the Oil Corporations, all of that has to be addressed by the next President. And you won't get that by ignoring the "terrorists," who exist not for the fun of it all, but because of their desparate situation. So long as we continue to ignore that reality, Senator Obama, the killing and dying will go on, this monumental waste of life and treasure will continue to stain the American character throughout the world.

Polar Bears as GOP Tools

2008-05-14T22:23:00.000-07:00

Well, that's how I explain the performance of the latest lying republican to show up on my teevee this evening. Lyle Laverty from the Interior Department, take a bow. He was so gutless he wouldn't even look at Jeffrey Brown when he spewed his lies. His purpose seemed to be to deny gobal warming while acknowledging that there's a problem that needs further study, and in the meantime please don't stop the oil companies activities in the region.

The statement from Kempthorne really bears that out. (My bolds throughout,my comments in italics)

I have also accepted these professionals’ best scientific and legal judgments that the loss of sea ice, not oil and gas development or subsistence activities, are the reason the polar bear is threatened.

Polar bears are already protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act ... The oil and gas industry has been operating in the Arctic for decades in compliance with these stricter protections. The Fish and Wildlife Service says that no polar bears have been killed due to encounters associated with oil and gas operations. Which is a totally irrelevent fact.

The most significant part of today’s decision is what President Bush observed about climate change policy last month. ... “The Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act were never meant to regulate global climate change.” And that is all that matters, to provide an excuse for not taking action.

The President is right. Listing the polar bear as threatened can reduce avoidable losses of polar bears. But it should not open the door to use the ESA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles, power plants, and other sources. That would be a wholly inappropriate use of the Endangered Species Act. ESA is not the right tool to set U.S. climate policy.

The [ESA] neither allows nor requires ... Fish and Wildlife ... to make such interventions. The Service must articulate a causal connection between the effects of any action and loss of a polar bear. As the U.S. Geological Survey has advised me, the best scientific data available (That they care to look at) do not demonstrate significant impacts on individual polar bears from specific power plants, resource projects, government permits, or other indirect effects of activities in the lower 48 states that are potentially reviewable under the “consultation” requirements of the ESA.

And there you have it, why it matters who manages the Federal Government. Because these people are managing it for interests other than our own.

Logic, science tells us one thing, that the loss of sea ice is the reason the polar bear is threatened. And the cause of that loss of sea ice is global warming. And global warming is caused by the unchecked and massive burning of oil and gas, period. So projects that produce oil and gas for eventual burning, are in fact, causes of global warming.

Their argument that the ESA has to show causal effects from specific sources rests on the same thin ice as the polar bears. If the Spotted Owl can have its habitat preserved from deforestation, er, logging, by the ESA, then so too can the Arctic be preserved from further oil patch activities. Remember, people, if it comes from the mouth of a Bush Adminitration official, the odds are it's a corporate serving lie.

Watching the execrable Mr. Laverty lie and refuse to provide even the simplest of answers to straightforward questions is just yet another reason why leaving Bush in power unchallenged by the threat of impeachment was as big a political blunder as unilaterally disbanding the Iraqi Army after our illegal invasion was a military one.

Blackwater Connections

2008-04-28T22:00:00.000-07:00

You all know how the fine people of Potrero defeated Blackwater in their attempt to establish a mercenary/police training camp in San Diego's back country, right?

Of course that was just another battle, now they have a new one, an indoor shooting gallery in Otay Mesa. This time they don't have an outraged community, environmentalists, and Native Americans to contend with, just the usual suspects of liberals and Democrats like Bob Filner and Raymond Lutz.

Filner: "This is a very sensitive area when it comes to human and civil rights. We don't need people who have no regard for human and civil rights to be part of that enforcement. It's dangerous, literally, to the lives of my constituents."

People who don't think that a corrupt, irresponsible, and unaccountable corporation enriched by the blood money of the Bush Administration and their illegal war in Iraq should be training our military, or using their position in an effort to privitize border security.

But that is their goal, and has been for a while. But what makes this even more interesting, is that in the process of keeping under the radar for this indoor training center, using front companies (that's one heckuva web site there, Shoaib) and the like, some strange and troubling connections are emerging.

It would appear that Blackwater is in bed with some folks from Pakistan, our great ally in the great war on terror, or not. Gopper loving Pakistani's who also operate in Saudi Arabia with our good friends the 16 out of 19 hijackers (maybe) Saudi's. Isn't that a great combination, the terrorist progenitor Saudi's and the Obama sheltering, A-Bomb exporting Pakistani's?

So there will be more to see here as this newest battle unfolds. Blackwater wants a piece of the border action. There's money to be made, oversight is limited, Boeing made $20 million(?) for off the shelf crap that didn't work, and Iraq/Afghanistan will give them plenty of practice and an opportunity to work out any bugs in their operation. Look at the specifics in that Army contract.

Blackwater has airships, Brown Field is an Airfield, and the contract tasks are perfectly suited to Blackwater.

A third "sample" task order requires the contractor to develop a program to train border police in Afghanistan to guard crossings, prevent the flow of contraband, and search people and vehicles...

As the work statement in the request noted: "Due to the rapid adaptability of the counter-narcoterrorist threat, special federal government spending authorities are available

They're going to fight for this one tooth and nail, a lot harder than they did in Potrero because this is too much up their alley, and given their corruption, could be profitable beyond belief. If the CIA could start the crack cocaine epidemic in the US to support Ronald Reagan's precious Contra's, what would Blackwater do just for money?

Rice Can't Imagine Success

2008-04-20T20:36:00.000-07:00

Well, that's the gist of it, really, isn't it? Consider this news story from McClatchy on her visit to Baghdad this Sunday. Mind you, recent stories like this pile from NewsWeak would have you believing that once again the Adults are in charge, again, "Rice and Gates are both believers in "soft power," emphasizing economic and diplomatic ties. Some right- wingers complain that the Rice/Gates axis is producing a moderate foreign policy, isolating a small circle of hard-liners around Vice President Dick Cheney," yet somehow, reading the McClatchy article, I just don't get that sense, dare I say, I just can't imagine it.

Calling Sadr a coward, while satisfying perhaps, doesn't help bring this important part of the power structure to the table, and it certainly doesn't qualify as diplomatic or a particularly effective insult. No, the only real insult is to the intelligence of everyone who looks at this disaster with any shred of decency or compassion.

For months we've been told the surge is working. For weeks we've been told what a great thing it was for Maliki to move against the Mahdi Army in Basra, even though the results appeared as a stalemate at best. Bush told us it was "a bold decision." He added: "I would say this is a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq." Defining moment indeed, from the boldest and most defining President ever.

Both articles highlight the same thing though, from the CBS piece we get this: An Iraqi reporter for the New York Times, who managed to get into Basra during the fighting, concluded that the thousands of Mahdi Army militiamen that control most of the city remained in charge. "There was nowhere the Mahdi either did not control or could not strike at will," he wrote.

And from McClathcy we get this gem (my bolds):

The Sadrists have angrily accused Maliki's U.S.-backed government of trying to undercut their movement prior to provincial elections in October, when they will likely win many of the Shiite southern provinces from their Shiite rivals in Maliki's government.

[snip] Iraqi government officials have told McClatchy that Maliki, who gained wide support from Sunni officials for taking on the Mahdi Army, went into the fight with no preparation and now is in a battle that he can't extract himself from. U.S. support for Maliki puts U.S. forces on one side of a bloody intra-Shiite showdown.

Yet Rice has come to praise al-Maliki for that choice. And she knows of what she speaks, as she speaks for the Bush Administration, she speaks for the Surge, for Petraeus, for McCain, for Friedman and McConnell and Lieberman and all those who would tell us, for whatever reason, that the Surge is working, that Iraq is ready to stand on their own.

Even though they are fragile and on a knife's edge and refuse to fight and so on. If things were getting better in Iraq, we would be able to withdraw troops. But we aren't, and come October, so it seems, al-Maliki will have been shown the door, if he's lucky, and we will be faced with the choice of initiating another surge (with what and whom and how I can't imagine, really) or seeing the whole Neo-Con raison d'être become a smoking pile of ashes. The latter outcome, while a good thing by itself, could never be worth the cost in American and Iraqi lives that would be lost or changed forever in the process of crushing the Neo's infantile stupidity.

So it remains for the Democrats to do one thing. Don't support Bush's War. Do not give him anything extra, no matter what he says. Because that was the only reason the puppet Nouri al Maliki launched his unplanned excursion in Basra, so that Bush could pressure Congress for more money for Iraq. Given the control the Bushies have over the news from Iraq, by the time the truth would come out of basra, Petraeus and Crocker would have concluded their dog and pony show, and Congress would be expected to give Bush more funding for his surge and the contractors that support it.

Because that, my lonely readers, I can imagine.

Media a 3 Legged stool

2008-04-18T06:29:00.000-07:00

Via Atrios, the Media gets defensive. Imagine that, when you have no justification for your failure, defend the process, forget the product, at all costs.

What's more important, that Obama does or doesn't wear a flag pin made in China on his lapel, or that Obama is critical of President Carter going to Syria to talk with Hamas leaders?

Wouldn't that be a bit more of an issue you could ask "tough" questions about? The media has decided that their questioning was "tough," that is the Party Line, but is it tough? A tough interview question forces you to think; makes you and the questioner a bit uncomfortable, unpopular even; forces you to give an answer that might reveal something about how you are going to behave on the job, how your actions might cause pain and suffering and harm to other people. I'm pretty certain that questions of symbolism do none of those things.

You know who asks tough questions, or at least he used to? Jim Gray at NBC Sports. Remeber when he grilled Pete Rose on his gambling during the World Series, way back in 1999? That was tough, and unpopular, yet he did the job. Not so Charlie Gibson or Mop Top Stephanopoulos.

And why should those elitists do something unpopular, simething that might harm their precious Q rating? Thus we see the faqilure of the media, the fundamental failure of the whole concept of a free press, and the reasons why the Founding Fathers set up our government the way they did, with checks and balances, not so much that no one group could become more powerful than the others, but so that no one group could escape accountability.

That's why there is Sarbanes-Oxley in the business world, so that no one can create and benefit from a fraud, not without lots of help from other groups outside your own. But the MSM has nothing to act as a check save the whole of the public and the dirty effing hippy bloggers.

So we get the media narrative we get because nobody can touch the media, really. And until someone or thing can reach out and create a counterweight to their self serving crap, nothing is going to change.

The Republic, Religon, and Rights

2008-04-16T20:45:00.000-07:00

A pretty heady topic, I suppose. So I'll start out with this thought. I just started reading this book by Gary Nash, "The Unknown American Revolution" (and I mean just started), but already it strikes a chord.

Thomas Paine said, "As happy as she please; she hath a blank sheet to write upon," in answer to the question of whether America could be happy under a government of her own.

That notion - of a slate wiped clean of historical encumbrances, of entrenched class hostilities, of religious bigotry, of racial oppression and conflict, of conventions about gender roles... - was heady, exhilarating, and filled with latent dynamite... Millennialist preachers, enslaved Africans, frontier mystics, dockside tars, German speaking privates in Washington's army, mixed-and full blooded Indians, urban craftsmen, indentured servants, agricultural workers, ascetic Quakes, disgruntled women, born-again men and women calling themselves Christ's poor-all became caught up in the inner dynamics of the Revolution.

Today we have the Pope posing in the White House with Bush, later "temper[ing] his praise for American religious tolerance on Wednesday with a warning that U.S. society can quietly undermine Catholicism by reducing all faiths to a lowest common denominator."

"Pope says U.S. society can undermine Catholic faith," that's the title of the piece of the above quote, towhich I say, amen you tired old crone. But given the craven and cloying religiosity this country has embraced, I'd would temper that concern with the parochialism that underlies Bennie's concerns.

The founding fathers wanted Papery out of their business, out of their affairs, out of their governance, in whatever form or version it took, and rightly so. The corrupting, dehumanizing, cowardly impact that religion engenders when it intrudes into the affairs of Men can be seen clearly in the fall from reason and decency that America has taken. Look at what we do, as a nation.

We bombed Vietnam indescriminately, used weapons of mass destruction, (Agent Orange is a chemical warfare weapon and meets the definition of NBC-nuclear, Biological, Chemical), razed villages, killed millions of Vietnamese, then left them to sort things out for themselves, creating an incomprehensible genocide in Cambodia as a drive-by consequence of our policies. We unleashed Death Squads in Central America to battle "Communism" when we really were fighting for a small handful of US Corporations, turned our backs on Rwanda's insanity, started a horrific war between Iran and our creature Iraq, then started two wars against Iraq, the last completely unjustified by any rational and legal means, all to maintain some sort of control over Middle Eastern Oil, we've allowed our once sympathetic ally Israel to succumb to the worst of their fears and wage a brutal counter insurgency type of war against the hapless Palestinians (tactically with plenty of "help" from the Palestinians) and other Arabs, and, then, of course, there is our war, The Great War on Terrorism.

Now we torture rights deprived people, men, children, women. Torture them, with the acknowledgement and justification from the President on down the roster of presidential succession. We spy on our selves, we threaten those who choose to exercise their enumerated and implied rights, we allow religious zealots to manage the affairs of the state, we demand some sort of religious litmus test, unannounced or proclaimed, yet demanded by the media mouthparts from our political herd; and like broken dogs we bow and scrape to their alters

The Pope in the White House. We have failed our founders so prophetically that I cannot imagine a way out. Jefferson and Adams would have rather seen George III in the White House than Pope Ratzenberger, the waving little fascist who managed to find fault with some of the actions of the church, but certainly not with the leaders of the church or their precious Codas and Communiques and Bishops. No, rest assured, my fallen American friends, the fault for the Child Molesting Priests lies with us, not the church. Their ravenous institution takes precedent over their people, for it is their institution that sustains them, that bleeds the people so that they might live to feed off of our earthly shells.

Where we once swore to protect the Constitution because the Constitution was the instrument and guarantor of those rights enobled by the hand of Thomas Jefferson in our Declaration of Independence, now we have become like the popes, destroying and torturing and killing to maintain the facade of Rights, even while plainly, clearly, our government has abandoned any belief in those concepts.

So maybe all of those jesus lovers who swear up and down how a life without Christ is Hell, or whatever clever little catchphrase they choose to demean and belittle the un-persuaded, have got it backwards. Maybe life without their crap would be a better thing all around. No humiliation on your knees, kissing rings, whatever; no giving up your responsibility to gods will; no, just a firmer grasp that YOUR actions have meaning and impact; that what YOU do is what matters, not what lip service you pay to give yourself cover and license to do as you choose regardless of the harm.

Do you really think that the choices of George W Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell and Condi Rice and John Yoo and Doug Feith and Ari Fleisher and Monica Goodling and Rachel Pelouse and all the other myriad pack of charlatans and sychophants granted to us by Sandra Day O'Connor are following the precepts they so loudly proclaim as Christs and so holy? Would Christ tolerate Abu Ghraib? A war against Afghanist and and Iraq when a vigorous police action might have rounded up bin Laden 7 years ago? The Patriot Act?

No, i don't hink so. No, I think, when you look at the evidnece, we'd be a lot better off without the religion, a whole lot better off. The evidence is hard to refute.

Torture Is Not In My Constitution

2008-04-10T22:51:00.000-07:00

and Dick Cheney is not the President. I sent this note to Speker Pelosi as a reminder. If Dick Cheney kept that information from Bush, then he has usurped the powers of the presidency, an impeachable offense, or, Bush has abdicated his powers of the presidency, also an impeachable offense.

Not to mention that we are torturing people in the name of freedom, which of course only really works in the worlds of Orwell or Vonnegut.

ABC News, the AP, the New York Times, they all have reported that Vice President Cheney, then Secretary of State Colin Powell, current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Attorney General John Ashcroft, CIA Director Goerge Tenet, other high ranking Bush Administration officials, all knew exactly, exactly, how the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, was torturing prisoners.

I point out Sen. Keenedy's comments: "Who would have thought that in the United States of America in the 21st century, the top officials of the executive branch would routinely gather in the White House to approve torture?" Kennedy said in a statement. "Long after President Bush has left office, our country will continue to pay the price for his administration's renegade repudiation of the rule of law and fundamental human rights."

The United States of America, the nation that gave the world the Declaration of Independence with all of those fundamental rights of man, the United States of America which claims to be a nation of laws, not of men, the United States of America, which once strove to realize the notion that we are all equal in the eyes of the law, that nation now tortures people, mostly innocent people we all know, and everybody from the Vice President on down knows all about it and sanctions it.

But of course George W Bush doesn't know anything about it. But it's okay, because impeachment is off the table, and that single declaration of yours is protecting the country from what, exactly?

What could be worse than crimes against humanity? What could be worse than the Vice President usurping the power of the presidency to promote and advance HIS own agenda? Either Bush knew, or he abdicated his powers to Cheney. In either case he has violated the laws of the Constitution.

And I point out to you that the oath you swore, the same oath that Bush swore, was to that Constitution, and nothing else.

Yet you are too afraid to do what the law demands, what the law and an increasing number of Americans are coming to realize is the only way we can begin to restore the status of our nation as once again, a nation of laws, where all people are created equal.

3 Richards

2008-04-06T22:04:00.000-07:00

I was watching a BBC production of Richard II on DVD, Bush isn't even close to Richard II, really, there's no analog for George W Bush that I can think of when you consider the scope of the impact a President has with, say, a wanton Roman Emperor or a wayward European King or a heedless Persian Potentate.

Well, I broke out my copy of "Northrop Frye on Shakespeare" and was refreshing my mind on the play, its hard to keep the subtexts and what we should know going in when we can hardly remember which way to drive to work in the morning, you know.

But this comment from Frye struck me, talking about the ending of King John, "If England to itself do rest but true"

[W]hich in the context means partly keeping the line of succession intact. You might not find this particular issue personally very involving, but the general principle is that all ideologies sooner or later get to be circumvented by cynicism and defended by hysteria, and that principle will meet you everywhere you turn in a world driven crazy by ideologies, like ours.

Could Cheney and Rove and Rumsfeld be any more cynical, and because of that, would not their reaction to displays of decency and honest though ill-advised attempts at compromise by the left only increase their cynicism? Clearly, yes.

Frye goes on and postulates that Richard, a lawful ruler, created a power vacuum because of his weakness and/or incompetence. Where a lawful, legally in power, but ruthless and unscrupulous ruler would not do so, ala Richard Nixon, a creature like Bush does. How fortunate that the power vacuum was filled without our notice by that 3rd Richard, Big Time Richard Cheney.

That's the central theme of the play, the conflict that arises from the weakness of the king. And the result is war and turmoil and divided loyalties, much as it is today. But who is our Bolingbroke? Who is going to seize the day with humilty yet boldness? That is the question.

Would that George W Bush had the depth of character, the wisdom, the grace, to think this:

"For God's sake let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been depos'd, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd,
Some poisin'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd,
All murder'd-for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp;
To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable; and humour'd thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!"

But I think not. At least the hysteria is starting to fade, as the decentralized nature of our country weakens the power centers of de jure and de facto presidents and corporate retainers. As the corps shed their jobs, they forget that they also lose their influence on the people as well. The vain conceits become tiresome and mocked, the fear of the unknown terrorists fades as the concerns of rising gas prices and job losses and bankruptcy replaces ideologies with realities.

Soon we will be rid of George W Bush and his insane masters. What we replace them with, and what we do to pick up the pieces, will tell the truth about ourselves as a people and a nation.

I hope its a good story, not a Titus Andronicus story.

The Economics of Bush's Fear

2008-03-24T21:39:00.000-07:00

This whole Bear Stearns JPMorgan Fed bailout/buyout has the smell of manipulation rising like the stink from the carcass of a dead whale washed up on the beach and left to rot in the summer sun for about 2 weeks. Or like driving behind a full Honey Truck, i.e. Environmental Services truck, at the end of its daily run on an August day.

“Also, under the new terms, JPMorgan will bear the risk of the first $1 billion of losses if any of Bear Stearns' assets go bad. The Federal Reserve will run the risk for the remaining $29 billion, instead of being on the hook for all of the first $30 billion in losses, as was originally announced March 16.”

Well, that’s reassuring! And a classic in understated reassurance as well. Instead of being on the hook for 100 percent of the $30 billion, we only need to worry about 97% of it! Woo freakin’ hoo!!!

I should’ve known to buy some shares when it didn’t stay at $2 but was up around $4-5 last week. Now what we need to figure out is what this new deal means within the framework of the original deal. Was that original deal just a pure PR move to manipulate the markets as a calming gesture, was JPM greenmailing the taxpayers by demanding that absurd $2 share price, or was that a patriotic move by JPM to help ease the troubled financial markets, and just incidentally almost bagged a billion dollar savings on the deal?

Or was it as good a demonstration as you will ever see of why the almighty Free Market is not infallible, not free, not the answer to our financial woes. Because what I see in this debacle is fear, pure unadulterated fear, manifested as cowardice, a fear that drives a $22 billion market cap corporation a year ago to $237 million a week ago.

The fear that somebody is selling so I better sell too, until that panic selling drives a company over the brink on nothing but that oh so wonderful sense of the Market. The Fed stampeded Bear Stearns to accept JPMs offer because the Bushies are terrified of what will happen if the stock market collapses under the weight of their laisse faire regulation, the greed and corruption of their Wall Street cronies and supporters.

If the American People really take a hit because of the failure of the scams and schemes they have allowed and encouraged, BushCo can forget about privatizing Social Security, they can forget about hegemony in the Middle East, they can forget about a Presidential Library, because all of their deeds will become exposed in the unraveling of the American Economy.

Of course we'll be screwed and all that, we can forget about healthcare for all Americans, and retirement, and ponies, and stuff, but we will all know the truth about Bush's economic plan, and the value of a Harvard MBA.

FISA and You

2008-03-17T22:45:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder for my faithful readers, that between the FBI's abusive NSL's, and BushCo's abuses of the FISA system, you might feel lost and powerless.

Well, the ACLU and the EFF think otherwise, and I suggest that you support both of these organizations if you want to reclaim our power, the power that people like John Adams fought for his whole life, the power of Liberty and Freedom, the power laid out in our Declaration of Independence and enshrined in our Constitution.

Think about this charge from Barry Steinhardt then give and support these two groups who are leading the Fight against this gross violation of our rights, fighting directly against the Bush Administration and its Justice Department, every rotten stinking Republican in Congress, and the masses of ignorant and frightened Americans full of fear and anger and misguided loyalty to their "protectors" on the right.

"Year after year, we have warned that our great nation is turning into a surveillance society where our every move is tracked and monitored," said Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Project. "Now we have before us a program that appears to do that very thing. It brings together
numerous programs that we and many others have fought for years, and it confirms what the ACLU has been saying the NSA is up to: mass surveillance of Americans."

While I was Out

2008-03-10T21:32:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, the news spread like wildfire, Blackwater was giving up on Blackwater West in San Diego's backcountry.

The people of Potrero, population 1047 or so, led by Jan Hedlum and Carl Meyer and many others, and supported by the East County Democratic Club, 77th Assembly Candidate Raymond Lutz, San Diego Democrats, Peace Activists, the Stop Blackwater group, people from Illinois and North Carolina, Jeremy Scahill, all united in stopping Blackwater from setting up their "law enforcement" training camp in San Diego's border wilderness.

First they recalled the Planning Board that had so blithely approved the initial proposal. Then they made a stink, raised public awareness, capitalized on Blackwaters bad deeds and attached publicity, held marches and protests and letter writing campaigns and contended any and every thing Blackwater said, and enlisted strong allies like Congressman Fightin Bob Filner to raise the bar for Blackwater to proceed.

And they just folded up their table as soon as they could wothout looking like they were forced out by Citizens standing up for their community and their Rights.

I was busy on Friday, and on Saturday I was out taking pictures of some local meadows, NTodd, not snow. And it wasn't until late Saturday that I heard the news. Blackwater turned tail before a bunch of angry citizens and Democrats.

Ha, losers! Run away, Illinois is next I think.

Election Insanity

2008-03-04T23:19:00.000-08:00

Or is it hysteria?

Christ, if it weren't so complicating for the general election, the hate that the bloggers on the left spew against Hillary Clinton would be amusingly pathetic.

Well, it is pretty sorry, I have to say.

You would think that the presidency of Bill Clinton was the worst presidency ever until Bush came along, that nothing good was accomplished during the eight years of Bill Clinton's administration at all. That Haiti started moving towards some kind of normalcy until the GOP Congress screwed that all up, that never happened.

Something about budget surplusses, I guess that never happend, and taxing the rich, that never happened either.

That peace deal between Israel and Palestine, that never happened either, or that an Israeli NEO-CON lunatic idiot sabotaged that deal as well.

Never bailed out our southern neighbor and made a profit in the process, that didn't happen, nope.

Oh yes, there was NAFTA, but the Republican Congress keeping the critical side deals on labor and the environment from getting properly made, that never happened either.

Well, you get my drift.

Personally, I don't think he's suitable for the job because I don't think he's got the experience. Being President is as far as you can get from being a precinct organizer, and being an agent for some amorphus change isn't experience or reality. If he wins the nomination, well, he'll have proved he's got some chops, then it will be up to all Democrats to get him elected, up to all Democrats to put pressure on him to be the progressive agent of change you all think he is.

Frankly, all this talk about working with Republicans casts serious doubt on his chops as far as I'm concerned, but time will tell.

Border Security

2008-02-27T22:25:00.000-08:00

It seems like just yesterday that Bush was telling us how he was going to make us safe and secure like 2 year olds nestled in their mothers busom, by building us a fence to keep all those terrorists that keep snaking over our southern border, you know, those scary folks that wash our dishes and pick our lettuce and clean our motel rooms and all of the other things they do that don't involve unimagined Saudi Arabians flying jetliners into buildings. [My bolds throughout.]

Why, just last week, DHS Chief Brownie, er Michael Chertoff, said "I have personally witnessed the value of this system, refering to Boeings $20 million boondoggle of a virtual fence.

Boondoggle I say?

Boondoggle indeed. Note the dates on these articles. 2/22/08 and 2/28/08. You go from A high-tech "virtual fence" on part of the U.S. border with Mexico is finally ready for service and the technology can fight illegal crossings all along the frontier, the Homeland Security chief said, to The Bush administration has scaled back plans to quickly build a "virtual fence" along the U.S.-Mexico border, delaying completion of the first phase of the project by at least three years and shifting away from linked, tower-mounted sensors and communications and surveillance gear, [DHS] officials said yesterday.

That's got to be some kind of record for incompetence, just in the time frame. But it gets better. The physical part of the 700 mile fence BushCo wants to hack across our southern border is going to cost $4 million a mile, but, "The total cost is not yet known," said Richard M. Stana, the GAO's director of homeland security and justice issues, told members of the subcommittee, because DHS officials "do not yet know the type of terrain where the fencing is to be constructed, the materials to be used, or the cost to acquire the land."

They don't know the type of terrain? Terrain? What they're going to use to build the fence, and how much the land will cost? I'm simply not astonished, I picture one of Rummy's 20 something running this project too, after their successes in Iraq.

This article leaves me with many questions, and amply demonstrates the need to remove the Republicans from control of the government. This was just another politicized operation run by political hacks, cronies, and "operatives" from the cesspool of Karl Roves world, a photo op PR campaign to justify the $7.6 Billion they planned to give to their corporate sponsors, while showering us and the media with their yet another heckuva job handjob.

This pretty well encapsulates what voting for republicans in general, and Bush in particular, has given us.

He added that the system was developed with "minimal input" from Border Patrol agents, resulting in an unworkable "demonstration project" instead of a operating pilot system. He blamed the DHS for acting too hastily in trying to deliver a working pilot by last June.
...

A nongovernment source familiar with the project said that the Bush administration's push to speed the project during last year's immigration debate led Boeing to deploy equipment without enough testing or consultation.
...

Those running the project "basically took equipment, [an erector set], put it on towers and put it out there without any testing as such" because of the tight deadline.

Feel safe yet?

Just a Small Change

2008-02-25T06:44:00.000-08:00

That's what Steve Leesman said this morning on CNBC, refering to the report by the NABE on the unemployment outlook for 2009. (Not in the article, but on the teevee report graphic-DGR) From 4.9 to 5.2%, just a drop really.

Doing a rough calculus, based on these statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, that works out to around 450,000 more people unemployed.

So if you're one of those folks, you're just a drop and so sorry. To put that number in some perspective, that's a city the size of Sacramento or Cleveland or Kansas City, more than Omaha or Minneapolis or Miami FL.

Just a little statistics for your Monday morning.

Circular Firing Squad

2008-02-24T22:32:00.000-08:00

At least on the blogs. Niw it seems that TalkLeft is a bunch of traitorous assholes. Jeralyn for chrissakes. Karl Rove is laughing his fat, pasty, ass off at the mighty bloggers right now, I guarantee it.

Thank goodness the bloggers aren't running the country, it would be like having a petulent, immature, loud mouthed bully running things.

Oh, that's what we have now.

It would seem that a lot of people are forgetting themselves in their passion for their candidate. I agree that Mark Penn is questionable at best, Hillary shows regrettable judgement in letting him run her campaign, advise, I know, what with his book tour in the middle of her campaign, and someone over at Booman I think suggested that you should never have a bipartisan shop running a political campaign, I agree, which it appears Penn has.

eriposte posted on this Clinton bashing. To me, it's overzealous Obama supporters lifting out of context the whole Clinton presidency, which e encapsulates her pretty well. It's something I've written about many times. What can be said of Bill Clinton can be said about hillary as well. I highlight this graph:

What is fascinating to me is that I sometimes get arguments defending Obama along the lines of "well, he's not doing much more than what Bill Clinton did in the 1990s". Actually, what Obama is doing is strategically much worse for the progressive movement than what Bill Clinton did. Bill Clinton acted as a "triangulator" during an era of conservative dominance and when fighting Republicans (like Gingrich) were on their ascendance. After Clinton's failure to pass universal healthcare, skittish Democrats were afraid of Clinton pushing for very liberal policies and Republicans went on a full-frontal attack, that included blocking legislation (even shutting down Government - a tactic that Clinton fought them on and won) and non-stop investigations against him and Hillary Clinton. During most of that era, the media was firmly in the Republican camp and hated the Clintons and manufactured stories about them, and there was no real "fighting progressive" movement online as we have today, to support and defend progressive Democrats. It was in that era that Clinton tried to keep the Presidency in the hands of the Democratic party by appealing to Independents and Republicans - and interestingly, despite some of the bad Bills he passed, he got through numerous progressive Bills because he and Sen. Clinton knew they would not take the right's attacks and obstruction lying down.

We forget our history at our peril.

Do We Deserve To Win? Internets Out Of Control?

2008-02-18T21:32:00.000-08:00

Those are the questions I have to ask myself after reading some blogs and comments lately. First it was a thread over at the Left Coaster, take your pick, with formerly agreeable lefties just wailing away at each other and the candidates for all their failings and lies and grotesque imperfections.

Then it was this piece via Atrios, and the particularly rancid comment thread that spent a lot of time trashing John Edwards for being a politician I guess. Maybe these were really gopper trolls, after all, Politico is a DC Beltway creature.

Who knows, it's hard to say on the Internets for sure. But I will say this, again and again. There is absolutely no justification for a liberal minded person to not vote for the Democratic nominee for president, none whatsoever. The republicans are greedy, selfish, little creatures, YET THEY ALWAYS SEEM TO VOTE FOR THEIR PARTY.

Time for Demcorats to step up to the plate.

Hey, how about the Congress, eh? Not passing that fear mongered FISA bill, letting it expire? That's what I'm talking about, Nancy! Good job, Steny! Way to pull together as a team, and stick it to the man, man!

That's why you vote for the Democrats, because just when you think that they're hopeless, they do the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons.

The Lull

2008-02-04T21:48:00.000-08:00

between Super Sunday and Super Tuesday. They call it Monday.

Thank the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster the "Patriots" lost, I don't think I could have stomached the endless peons to the perfect Patriots and their brilliant coach, their BMOC Brady, the whole corporate worshipping of the doing whatever it takes to get the job done Belichicks, i.e. industrial espionage, you're not trying hard enough if you don't get caught now and then.

I like football, I can take spectacle and corporatization up to a certain point, but the NFL is just really making it near impossible to enjoy the game. That's why I always root for the least profitable outcomes. But you have to hand it to the marketeers and corpses of the NFL, getting people to voluntarily watch their commercials, that's some good work on their part.

I wish the Democrats would take a little lesson from the whole soulless affair though, and market themselves a bit more relentlessly. And their allies like MoveOn, the Unions, the Lawyers, and the Environmentalists.

You know, instead of letting the corps and their agents paint MoveOn as some radical bunch of liberal crazies, instead of getting smeared as ambulance chasers and derided as being more concerned with the fate of the speckled red titmouse snail than with people, it would be a good idea if we all spent some of the money raised telling people what we do and why, how perfectly mundane and normal most of us are, and some practical reasons why liberal issues are important to our daily lives.

In the long run it would help all of us, regardless of the candidate or office involved.

As for Super Tuesday, I'm voting for Hillary Clinton, and my next choice would be Barack Obama, since my guy John Edwards has quit the campaign. And to anybody reading this who thinks that either candidate is unacceptable in November, would you prefer that John McCain were there picking his appointees from the same gene pool that gave us Michael Brown and Stephen Johnson and Lurita Doan and Harriet Meiers and Condi Rice?

3 Things I learned Tonight

2007-12-21T20:47:00.000-08:00

Perhaps learned isn't the correct word. From the NewsHour tonight.

Harry Reid is not a leader. Leaders extol the virtues of their side, their vision, while highlighting the incorrectness of their opposition. Harry Reid is not proud of his party or its values, because he never talked it up during the painful interview with Ray Suarez. Even Suarez didn't know what to do with Reid, he is such a lame interview.

Given every opportunity to defend his party and place the "blockage" squarely on the shoulders of the GOP, Reid failed. Harry, the problem is that the GOP refuses to change their position. While you, Senator, have flopped and prostrated the Democrats trying to appease the inflexible Republicans. I guess the values of the Democratic Party aren't worth fighting for, the evidence seems to indicate that the Leaders of the Party are more concerned with moving towards the positions of the GOP than fight for your values.

The second thing I learned was that the Democrats simply are too inexperienced in being a majority party after 13 years, that they've discovered that it's easier to block the other party than to pass your own legislation. Which they should have known, seeing as how they did that to George W Bush so many t i m e s s s , in t he p... a. s .. t 7, oh never mind.

And third, there are a lot of obvious questions being left out of the CIA Tapes case. Like, why weren't these two al Qaeda operatives at Gitmo in the first place? That seems like an easy way to get around US laws, doesn't it? Like, why would they only tape two al Qaeda operatives interrogations, and not all of them, or at least some of them, like Khalid Sheik Mohammad, or should we just take them at their word? If Harriet Meiers was there when they were discussing destroying the tapes, she being the Presidents legal counsel at the time I believe, why would we believe that Bush knew nothing about the tapes or their destruction when his personal legal representative was in the discussions?

Could we suppose that the fact that they were discussing this at such a high Administration level suggest that perhaps somebody recognized that destruction of evidence could be construed as obstruction, as a cover-up, that whatever dubious legal excuses they offered to the judge today, that maybe somebody knew this was inherently wrong, and the meetings were meant to provide cover for those involved-see we said they shouldn't destroy those tapes-as well as work on a good and unified storyline to explain it?

Too bad the press never asks those questions. Like given how this latest revelation has played out over the past two weeks or so, why should anybody have the least bit of confidence in an internal investigation by the same agencies involved in the cover-up, like how could this Justice Dept investigation have any credibility, given the immeasurable lies and I don't recalls that they have pawned off on us?

That's the perfect lawyerly counter to whatever justifications the Bushies give for conducting an investigation, in fact. Seeing as how so many of you can't recall much of anything in the way of names, dates, actions, meetings, e-mails, advice, arguments, policies, practices, and so on, it's clear that you couldn't possibly conduct a thorough investigation. We need an outside and credible investigator for the job. And not George Mitchell, please.

Let's dump the horserace notion, please

2007-11-10T10:42:00.000-08:00

[Cross posted over at Daily Kos]

I posted this comment on the recommended thread about the tip heard round the world.

How does her (Hillary) tip story relate to her stance on Global Warming? Or Healthcare? Or her stance on the Constitution? Or anything else for that matter?

Stupid obsession with parsing every word somebody says, every body movement, every event or location they physically appear in, it's beyond meaningful. IT SERVES NO PURPOSE, except to sell crap on teevee and does nothing for the political process.

Just like if John Edwards doesn't win Iowa he is done. How many delegates does Iowa have? And how many are needed to win the nomination?

[ed-this is expanded from my comment hereon down] This is not a game, people, let's try treating it appropriately.

Yet Iowa could destroy his campaign, ACCORDING TO THE NEWS MEDIA and parroted all over the blogs like this one (Daily Kos, not mine fer dogs sake!!).

How does that serve democracy? How does that benefit me? Or you?

Rather than debate whether somebody's healthcare plan plays well with this or that group of voters, lets debate about how to make it happen, what are the best mechanisms or programs or POLICIES that can provide us with national healthcare for all Americans.

Because that's the kind of thing that matters, not who has the best soundbite, the best debate performance, who looked effing "Presidential" under the glare of the camera and under the inane and disgusting self serving questions of lazy fat assholes like Tim Russert.

I hear that somebody is working on making ethanol from tree farms, how does that affect agricultural policy, is ethanol the best route to go for cutting greenhouse gasses and our dependence on terrorist oil? Not the same issues, btw, greenhouse gasses and oil dependence.

Why does it matter if a candidate criticizes another candidate? On their policies, that's what I want to know, it doesn't mean anything except that they don't agree. This isn't the schoolyard, people, yet that's how everybody acts, and it's stupid and serves no purpose except the media narrative. And the media, people, is out to kill us, they are as much the enemy as bin Laden, scrath that, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.

Iowa and New Hampshire do not represent me, and I'm tired of the news media and then all the campaign experts and political operatives who have no real deep abiding values, allowing those states to decide who my parties candidate will be. They did it to Howard Dean, and we got John Kerry, who still beat Bush if everything had been done properly. They did it to Al Gore, they're doing it again, and I say that THIS MUST END.

So long as you all insist that money is the defining aspect of a political campaign, and that's what all this momentum bullshit during the early primaries is all about, then we will continue to get lackluster, half assed, timid politicians, and no leadership.

Here's irony for ya

2007-11-08T10:26:00.000-08:00

This perfectly describes the Bush disconnect from reality:

"You can't be the president and the head of the military at the same time," Bush said Wednesday

Four to five days seems to be about the standard Bush reaction time, gives time for the corporations or the Saudi's or whoever is benefiting from the situation to take care of immediate needs before the Worst President Ever opens his yap. And to be clear, he's the Worst President Ever because he does nothing that satisfies the job description, unless they've slipped corporations all over the place into the Constitution, via some signing statement.

I was watching some show about Reagan's assassination attempt, the medical surgery aspect of it. Reagan, whose nearly every policy was wrong in the long run for this country, was at the least, a leader who recognized his responsibilities. Why, on the day he was shot he was giving a speech at an AFL-CIO convention, can you imagine Bush doing that?

No, I'll say it again, Bush was set up to destroy our government, and aided by stupid Democrats who still think he's an American interested in the fate of our country, who can't imagine that Bush/Cheney doesn't care about people or the nation, that is just exactly what he's done.

Look at Katrina. Look at Iraq. Look at the State Department, backlogged and undermanned, forcing people to work in Iraq because they don't have the bodies to do the job. Look at the Army's stop-loss policies. Look at the Justice Department. Look at Lurita Doan's GSA. Look at the Defense Department. Look at the Budget deficits. Look at the wage gap. Look at how the Veterans are treated.

See any improvements anywhere?

San Diego Burning

2007-10-22T19:47:00.001-07:00

Well my friends, once again San Diego County is on fire, fires to the North of me having burned 145,000 acres and hundreds of homes, a fire to the South of me 20,000 acres and unknown how many homes, but one life has been lost in the area where it started, Potrero.

We're fine, I don't think that the fires are going to head my way, but I'm keeping my eyes open just in case.

A quarter of a million people have been ordered to evacuate, or have evacuated, you never can be sure which it is. But it's a big mess, a true disaster, you look at pictures of the wind whipping the fire, it just doesn't look real, but look at this slide show for yourself. Look at that picture, 16, fire from side to side. Look at some of those pictures of this huge billowing cloud of smoke looming, boiling, on the horizon. Look at that blood red sunset picture.

All real. I've seen that tower of smoke so many times in my life, but somehow the last couple of times have just been disastrous to the people of the county. I remember the Laguna Fire in '70 as a young lad, the air brown and thick with ash, I remember the Cedar Fire in '03, the flames creeping down the hillsides by my house, I remember the canyon behind my Dad's house burning every other summer fior some reason (damn kids and firecrackers, a cherry bomb one year I know because I heard it go off!) and let me tell you, this shit ain't no fun.

But that's how it goes, I always knew that summer was over when the fires started up in the mountains, that's just the cycle we live by in San Diego. Only when I was a kid nobody lived in those areas. Now, they either are subdivisions like San Diego Country Estates, or people building on their remote properties to get away from the subdivisions and housing tracts.

Right now people are setting up camp with their animals, horses and dogs and cats, you just don't realize how many people have horses in this area, but they're all over the place, there are just so many rural areas in San Diego, it's not just this big ol beach town and biotech metropolis at all. The High School by my house is setting up, I'm going to go take a look and see if they need stuff, I'll give an update when i get back.

For now it's all quiet, but like Sunday afternoon, it can go from nothng to something in a matter of moments. Right now they're evacuating the northern beach cities, Del Mar, Solana Beach, Encinitas, so the Northern fire, the Witch Creek Fire, has gone from the mountains to the ocean in a day, not sure when it's going to stop. Pretty freaky.

Update:

Nobody needs stuff, everything seems pretty calm in my neck of the woods. That's it, not much of an update.

In Our Name, Do Not Try This At Home

2007-10-21T09:32:00.000-07:00

Just picture this in your neighborhood, think about what that would be like in your own town, and consider how that might influence your neighbors thinking. I'll highlight the key sentence from this article.

U.S. forces backed by airstrikes raided Sadr City, Baghdad's main Shiite district, killing 49 militants on Sunday as they targeted a militia leader accused in high-profile kidnappings, the military said. Iraqi officials said women and children were among the dead.

The US military is bombing a city, just consider how that works in reality, try to picture yourself on the ground as these innocuous sounding "airstrikes" start falling all around you in the middle of the night.

It's not a particularly comforting image, and it's why we will never "win" in Iraq, not just because there is no description of what "winning" is, but because the Iraqi people will never accept the American presence in Iraq. Look at how long the Jews and Arabs have been fighting in Canaan, do you think the Iraqi's are going to forget what we are doing to them now?

We will be paying the price of Cheney's and the Oil Lobby's stupidity and greed and fear for a long time to come. Thanks to one and all who made this possible.

Why Democrats Lose Arguments

2007-10-19T23:00:00.000-07:00

In response to Mary's post at the mothership, I commented on the article about why the FISA Telcon debate matters. And it's long so I thought to immortalize it here for my edification. With some editorial improvements or additions.

Frankly, I have a HUGE problem with Dean's article, or rather Solove's article.

Yes, it's fine as an intellectual exercise, an underpinning of the philosophical in a broader context.

But that's the god damned problem. It's why people think the Democrats are weak and feeble. And they are. Because they never get practical and down and dirty. They still don't tell people why "I've got nothing to hide" completely misses the point and why it matters to YOU.

Privacy is namby pamby amorphous bullshit. How about it matters because the government can use the information they gather to ruin your life? Give your confidential business affairs to your competitor? Twist your innocent e-mail into a rendition trip to Kazakhistan? Find out about your health issues and use that information as leverage to shut you up?

Suppose you're a random blogger, and the Bushites want to shut you up. You haven't done anything wrong. But they can use information gleaned by spying on you to make you late for a Doctor's appointment, or let your red necked boss know about your political activities, and he can fire you for some bs reason.
They could say, "Steve, we know what schools your kids are going to, we know who you work for, we know what things concern you the most, and we can make sure that those things happen to you."

"Congressman McNerny, we can ruin the business you built, we can make sure that freeway offramp goes by Mr. Issa's car alarm shop, we can find out your scheduled flight and get it cancelled, we can find out where those runaway Democrats went from the Texas Statehouse, and get one of them to switch his vote by threats and pressure and demonstrations of crossing Tom DeLay because look at what power he can access from the NSA, even though he hadn't done anything wrong."

They can threaten to expose reporters sources unless the reporter stops asking questions, it goes on and on and on.

Yes, Solove is correct, that defense only works when you assume that privacy is only used to hide wrong doing. And yes, a lot of what we do is nobody else's business, i.e teenage angst, And yes, a leering, lurking government watcher inhibits freedom of expression.

But that doesn't account for the practical abuses, and that's what the republicans specialize in. Remember, republicans are, at their core, stupid and/or ignorant (at least the ones we have to deal with today). They don't trouble themselves with high notions or concepts. They only want to know how they can make MONEY from the deal. Who is on your side and who isn't. Who is helping Blackwater set up shop in Potrero, and who is working to stop them

Give practical reasons for why this spying must stop. Not because it's wrong, and runs completely counter to the basic core of the Declaration of Independence and our Bill of Rights, which it is and which it does, but because they can use it to screw over innocent Americans who get in the way of their greed and lust for power.

Why do you think republicans always seem to get the best deals, the best contracts, the best jobs? Dumb luck? Because they earned it? Please.

So, to sum up, don't just make the philosophical argument, make the practical argument, and make the practical argument first, then buoy it up with the deeper underpinnings. I'm sure you all can think of real examples of how all that gathered information can be used against perfectly innocent Americans, so use them instead of the touchy feely weak ass stupidity that Democrats usually use and lose with.

Thanks, rant off.

San Diego's own Bush

2007-10-12T22:30:00.001-07:00

I'm tellin ya, readers, the rest of you got nothin on San Diego.

Long ruled by Building Developers, we're finally getting to the point of unsustainability. Everybody wants to live here because of the weather, never mind the realities that make it possible to actually live here, like water and housing and infrastructure. There were plenty of jobs thanks to the Navy, airplane pioneers like Ryan and Lindburgh, Jonas Salk, and others. There was lots of open land to build on, and so we grew, and grew, and grew, 600,000+ when I was a lad to 1.2 million today, just for the city mind you, county population growth is even bigger.

Lots of changes, twists, turns, as America's Finest City has become Enron by the Bay. And you might have seen the sinkhole/landslide/slippage recently in La Jolla, up on Mt Soledad specifically, CNN had it I'm sure, and like all good teevee journalists, they showed the disaster, then left.

But what really happened there? Did this just suddenly appear overnight? Were there no warnings? Mountains (okay, it's a tall hill, covered in houses) generally don't just move on their own, so what preciptated the move? Mayor Sanders was quick to deny City culpability, that evil bastard City Attorney Mike Aguirre said we better look into it.

Could it be that maybe the developers have built in places they shouldn't be? Like on an earthquake fault, hillside slip zone? And could it be that the bought and paid for mayor, former Police Chief and Savior of the corrupt Red Cross of San Diego is working overtime to protect the developers and the city from assignation of fault? Because if the city gets assigned the blame, more questions arise, like who let them build there, who wasn't doing their jobs, and how much money did the developers spend to get their way?

Look at these e-mails and tell me that the City, and by extension, the Mayor, weren't aware of a looming problem on the Mountain.

The designated area of concern, the 5700 block of Soledad Mountain Road, is on the verge of possible catastrophic failure due to continual ground movement caused by an unknown condition...

Which is why they were letting a quarter million dollar sole source request for monitoring ground movement in the area, on 9/27/07. And the slide occured on 10/3/07, and the city's responses had been band-aid at best.

After all, they were getting reports about problems since June, there had been serious slides in the area in the past, and yet, the Mayor was vacationing, er, sitting in a classroom, sorry, lobbying in Washington DC when the slide occured, and nothing had been done to address the problem, or prepare for an inevitable problem.

So the next time you think you have it bad, think about San Diego. We have the worst President ever, the most evil Vice President ever, a horrible actor as Governor, and Mini Me Jerry Sanders Bush as Mayor, a real trifecta if there ever was one.

Corpirate America

2007-10-09T19:44:00.000-07:00

I typo'ed that title but it seems appropo so I left it!

Looking for something to do? Strike a blow against the corporations. Just got a Cisco proxy material in the mail, perusing the Board of Directors to elect, I had recently decided to just vote no against all directors regardless, but then when I was looking at the list I thought that might dilute the impact of my no votes, so I did my due diligence.

Anything to do with Wal Mart ever, "No" vote. Stanford University, until they repudiate Rice, "No" vote. Bankers, "No" vote. Too many boards already, "No" vote (although none of Cisco's fell into that category. Michael Powell, "Noooooooo" hold on, can I vote twice?

Yes, that feckless, soulless, lever on Dad's soul, Michael Powell. They list the committees the members sit on, and guess what, Michael Powell doesn't sit on a committee. He just gets his $50,000 fee and $69,699 option award to do nothing, to show up at a couple of posh board meetings and agree with everybody else and pocket over a hundred grand.

So, my fellow ducklings, if you happen to own Cisco stock and get to vote your proxy, please vote no against Michael Powell. And should you happen to be at the shareholder meeting, ask them what it is that he did to earn that money.

Airport Security Isn't

2007-10-03T07:24:00.000-07:00

This story just outrages, me as it does you all I'm sure. There's just no excuse for this kind of crap happening in this country, just imagine if that had been Bob Filner getting treated that way, as it probably almost was.

Authorities have said Gotbaum, who was handcuffed and shackled to a bench, may have accidentally strangled herself Friday.

Does that sound like a likely scenario, shackled to the bench and handcuffed she somehow managed to strangle herself?

Just another dead American to chalk up to the Republicans fear and cowardice and greed.

Free Trade with Columbia on CNBC

2007-10-01T08:42:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm still alive, faithful readers.

Just watched a bit of debate about the looming free trade agreement with Columbia. What I love the most is that the reporter had a pro and con and some business talkers on, and as soon as the con started talking, she, the reporter, had to talk over and interrupt her because she wanted to argue with what the woman was saying. Was I watching O'Leilly all of the sudden?

Say what you will about Jim Lehrer (I won't, much) but the strongest part of his show is that the reporters DO NOT become part of the report. When they do, they get axed, like Stuart Taylor did some years back to be replaced by Jan Crawford Greenburg.

Back to CNBC. The great Gen. McCafferty said, "Polls, schmolls" when asked to comment on the fact that the majority of Columbians oppose the agreement, because the business community is all for it. And we know who matters in the world, right, great General? Then some Wall Street guy started talking about how it helps keep cheap, low cost goods available for Americans. To which I say, WE ALREADY GET THAT POISON FROM CHINA, why do we need somebody else's?

Then the reporter was all happy, at which point I cursed the teevee and turned it off. Better Democrats, better reporters, how about better JOURNALISM SCHOOLS?

It's Going To Be a Long Campaign, People

2007-09-05T05:51:00.001-07:00

Talking Points has this discussion about some comment that Bill Richardson made about God and Iowa the other day. I would be happier if god were not a part of our elections at all, in fact the more irreligious the candidate the more I like them, which pretty much leaves me out in the cold these days, so I have to go by other criteria.

I won't even characterize Richardson's comments as a mistake, dumb, bad joke, whatever, it's just a comment that the bloggers want to blow up into something else. Tongue in cheek or irreverent sarcasm perhaps. Yet, people on the left are attacking one of our own as if it's the worst thing ever said. Today. Brilliant! (Which reminds me, is it too early for a Guinness?) Well, I posted a comment, which I'll repost on MY blog, that pretty much sums up my feelings about the matter. Then can we move on to more important matters, like attacking the Republicans and trying to get OUR Democratic Senators and Congressmen to stop Bush from attacking Iran? Huh, how about it? Please.

What Malangali and Not the senator said. We need to stop with the Alpha Girls behavior, let these people talk, and stop getting your panties, that's right, PANTIES, all in a wringer because a candidate said something imperfect or unfunny or unappealing or what you found offensive.

Jeebus effing christ, parse this! They all say crap like this, if they don't there's something seriously wrong with that person. I do not want a robot as president, an uptight, scripted, automaton (Hillary) who never speaks in a more direct manner to people, who calculates all.

In fact, that's the problem with our politics today, the candidates get placed on some sort of platform where all of their utterences are given such weight, that they lose their connection to reality. I want a guy who, yes, I said GUY, because that's my generic for person, christ give ita rest already, might speak more directly and colorfully, maybe stumble and mumble once in a while, not like a retard like Bush, and yes, I said RETARD coz that's the euphemism for god damned effing idiot in my book if that's okay with you, so get off the guys back already.

For those who don't remember, here's a reminder, read it and weep at what might have been if not for this bs:

Al Gore and the Alpha Girls

We Have the Wrong Book

2007-08-28T22:22:00.000-07:00

My commute to work lately has gotten ugly. It's not parking lot commute, worse, traffic moves, but everybody out there seems intent on driving in my way, I'd go so far as to say they're all out there trying to kill me! And on the way home, it's worse, they all have nothing better to do than sightsee, yack on their phones, anything that keeps them on the road in my way, and not at home.

That sounds like somebody, and since I'm reading the book again, I know who. Yossarian

Early in the book, Capt. Black, bitter over the fact that Major Major was given the squadron replacing the dead Major Duluth, embarks on a power play, The Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade. And here's the clincher

Without realizing how it had come about, the combat men in the squandron discovered themselves dominated by the administrators appointed to serve them. They were bullied, insulted, harassed and shoved about all day long by one after the other. When they voiced objection, Captain Black replied that people who were loyal would not mind signing all the loyalty oaths they had to. To anyone who questioned the effectiveness of the loyalty oaths, he replied that people who really did owe allegiance to their country would be proud to pledge it as often as he forced them to. And to anyone who questioned the morality, he replied that "The Star-Spangled Banner" was the greatest piece of music ever composed. The more loyalty oaths a person signed, the more loyal he was; to Captain Black it was as simple as that, and he had Corporal Kolodny sign hundreds with his name each day so that he could always prove he was more loyal than anyone else.

We've been thinking it was an Orwellian World, in reality it's a Catch-22 World. Pessimist has a great piece there, I just googled the GLOC and that was the number one listing. It's been a while since I read Heller's book, where Orwell is more matter of fact and ironic, Heller is much more deeply insane, capricious, careless, selfish. And that seems a better fit for the Bush crowd, as we approach Katrina's 2nd anniversary it's pretty clear to me that what we have, if you just look at their operations, is no government whatsoever. Just little fiefdoms operating at the whim of whichever petty little tyro Bush has annointed to destroy the function of that particular department.

THAT'S WHY HE SHOULD BE IMPEACHED.

He hasn't earned the least bit of respect or admiration, he sucks as a CEO, as a leader, as a spokesman, as a cheerleader, as a judge of character, his impeachment and conviction and unceremonious kicking to the curb won't damage our American Psyche, split the nation asunder, or destroy our way of life. Au contrare, it will be the first step back to sanity and away from the insanity of Catch-22

John Edwards

2007-08-27T22:28:00.001-07:00

I'm in. Sen. Edwards is the only candidate who wants to take on the forces that need to be brought to heel, the corporations and the top 1 percenters. And who has the chops to do it.

This speech lays it out:

[The system is] controlled by big corporations, the lobbyists they hire to protect their bottom line and the politicians who curry their favor and carry their water. And it's perpetuated by a media that too often fawns over the establishment, but fails to seriously cover the challenges we face or the solutions being proposed. This is the game of American politics and in this game, the interests of regular Americans don't stand a chance.

Can Hillary say that? Does Obama get direct like that? Does Dennis Kucinich have any sort of chance to win the nomination? Does Chris Dodd have that fire? Does Bill Richardson have the rhetorical skill and presence?

Don't get me wrong, I like all of the candidates, they all have many great qualities, strengths, values. They have experience, knowledge, and by Spaghetti Monster if we elect an idiot ever again in this country instead of somebody with an IQ higher than their blood pressure we deserve every bad thing that happens, but they also have issues. Edwards has shown to me that he is right on target, and has correctly identified the problems that face this country. And they aren't a bunch of religious manipulators trying to take control of their own part of the world. And he's willing to fight them.

And that's what I want, somebody not afraid to go after these things, these leeches and viruses destroying our freedoms and our way of life to preserve their mammon worship.

Things to Consider

2007-08-27T19:55:00.000-07:00

Michael Vick made his statement, and the little piece they put on the teevee news showed him speaking, not reading, what he had to say. I'm going to give him some consideration for his statement, he did seem to recognize his mistakes, not sure if he recognizes the wrongness of his actions, but hopefully he will. And he should never play professional football again, as sorry and redemptive as he may be, just because he found god suddenly does not cut it, but he needs to be a role model for how money can corrupt you.

If professional sports can learn that giving these kids this kind of money is in some ways unconscionable, if they address the absurdity and warped priorities that puts so much wealth into these games, then maybe some good comes of all this.

There was a rally in support of San Diego's KLSD Air America Radio station today, a couple hundred people, maybe more, showed up to challenge Clear Channel to keep one progressive radio station in San Diego County. It was a pretty good turnout and event given the 4 days we had to prepare for it, organized, orderly, passionate.

Now, if only we owned some radio stations and wouldn't have to subject ourselves to being at the mercy of some corporation, that would be progress. Keep pushing them, sign the petition, something, call Clear Channel and tell them of your support, call or write advertisers tell them you're glad they advertise on KLSD and will look favorably on their business for doing so.

Let's see, Mike Vick gets a $130 million dollar contract, and we can't keep one lousy radio station because of what, $10-20,000 a month? A fraction of what one guy gets paid to star in the NFL.

Clear Channel Silencing Free Speech in San Diego

2007-08-24T07:05:00.000-07:00

Rumors have been flying about San Diego's Air America station, 1360 KLSD, home to The Stacy Taylor Show and all of that liberal /progressive talk in a region of 3 million people and no liberal media save this one. Here's a link to an action page of sorts for info and things to do.

Clear Channel seems to be intent on shutting down Air America and all that liberal talk in San Diego, and many people are determined to stop them. Do what you can, contact their sponsors and nicely encourage them to put pressure on what is really a bad business decision to alienate one third of the San Diego market.

3 million people, 1/3 Dem, Indy, repub, that's a million potential customers with no radio station to listen to. Is that good business sense?

Media Hackery, West Coast Version

2007-08-19T23:27:00.000-07:00

Via Atrios and TPM, this editorial by a journalism professor is a fine example of just what is wrong with the news media today. Because if a professor is teaching people what he's demonstrating in this editorial, the news media, as we all know, has some problems. I was suitably moved to write to the Times in response, and as The Offspring might say, "it came out sounding something like this."

That's a lovely paean to journalism, and a rather gratuitous and un-informed slap at bloggers Mr. Skube has written. For the record, I'm a blogger far down the list, but people might know my handle if they saw it. But not today.

Debate is going to save us? And too much information is a bad thing? I'm reading this in the LA Times, but discounting it as quickly as possible.

What nonsense. Given the near absolute secrecy of the Bush Administration, given the manufactured and empty debate that the news media is giving us for the past 30 years or so, you would think that a reporter might thank the bloggers for carrying on an actual debate of issues, he certainly isn't going to get it from the journalists of the news media, for the most part.

On today's politics page there's this: "Ah, those fickle Nevada Republicans" reporting on POLL Numbers, "Key is that since March, Romney has gained 24 points while Giuliani has dropped 20 points" and Oprahs Obama party instructions and something about the Supreme Court Justices and their "funny" robes, and a no doubt breathless piece on Fred Thompson's hometown getting ready to capitalize on his impending candidacy announcement.

I could go on, but do you see the debate there? Or you could go to Daily Kos and see debate on psychologists and torture, the real meaning of the Minnesota bridge collapse and the Utah mine disaster and some solutions, debates on student loans, NASA, Iraq, and of course all of the presidential candidates.

If you have paid the least bit of attention the past six years you would realize that the news media truly does need watchdogs. Reporters have been in turn uncritical of the GOP; cheerleaders and enablers of the Bush Administration; threatened, terrorized, and corporatized.

The abuses and failures at Walter Reed didn't just happen in 2005, yet until a blogger talked about it, nobody knew. If it weren't for bloggers asking questions about the firings of the United States Attorneys, we wouldn't even know about how Karl Rove has politicized the Cabinet Departments, how Gonzales tried to manipulate a sick John Ashcroft to sign off on what had been declared illegal wire-tapping, that they were decimating the ethics division of the Justice Department, and so on.

I quote here from your article, '"What democracy requires," Lasch wrote in "The Lost Art of Argument," "is vigorous public debate, not information. Of course, it needs information too, but the kind of information it needs can only be generated by debate.'

When all you get from the White House is countless legalistic variations of 'I don't remember,' 'That's under investigation so I can't tell you', 'Homeland Security,' and 'Executive Privilege,' there is no public debate. Except on the blogs, where, funny enough, the public debates. And sometimes that debate spills over into the physical world or the journalism world, and actually furthers the cause of a badly abused democracy.

And on an aside, could Mr Skube kindly either, a) identify who "Some" are who reject that label, or, b) stop using that dishonest and uninformative and meaningless argument. Last time I looked, "Some" could be anybody or any number of body's, and a professor of journalism ought to know that terminology has no business being in a piece of journalism, opinion or otherwise.

That Primary Schedule

2007-08-19T08:06:00.000-07:00

Ms D and I were watching Rep. Oberstar try to explain why the House hadn't done anything about fixing our bridges since some bill he had passed as the chairman of the Transporation committee in 1987. Yes, 1987. Which sent Ms. D off on how the D's aren't all that either since they've had the chance but hadn't done anything, which prompted me to say that we need to primary these people, Better Democrats Please should be our refrain right alongside Impeach Bush, which got me to thinking.

Suddenly it occured to me that one of the consequences of this ridiculous primary train wreak that both parties are creating is, in reality, a massive incumbant protection plan. Think about it for 10 seconds, if you haven't already.

Incumbants already have cash on hand, but challengers do not. And all the fund raising of the campaign committees is really geared for the general election in November 2008. So who will benefit the least from a compressed election priimary schedule?

That's right, challengers of incumbants. When Oberstar proposes a damaging and regressive and oh so typical solution to the sudden bridge crisis in this country, raise gas taxes, and thereby demonstrates his uselessness to progressivism, when Steny Hoyer and company utterly fail to protect the Constitution by either gross incompetence, ignorance, or cowardice, or worse (and I haven't bought the conspiracy argument yet), and we see the need for shaking up their complacency and ineffectiveness with primary challenges, we wake up and realize it may be too late, the primary is right around the corner and reasonable challengers are hard pressed to raise funds and build name recognition in their communities, there's just not enough time, and Steny Hoyer in his $1000 suits is safe for another 2 years of bad job performance.

What can be done, I don't know, but if somebody is on the fence thinking about running a primary challenge, the time to get off the fence is now, not later.

Mine Safety-The Bush Legacy

2007-08-16T22:33:00.000-07:00

We remember the Sago Mine disaster as rescuers continue to look for the 6 trapped miners in Utah. George W Bush's MSHA is a different entity than the one of Bill Clinton's.

Consider this:

“This mine [Sago] should have been closed… the record is very clear,” says Jack Spadaro, former director of the National Mine Safety and Health Academy.

Instead, MSHA continued issuing fines and the managers at then-owner Anker Mining Co. simply wrote them off as a cost of doing business on the cheap. It made perfect sense for the corporation's bottom line; the fines for those 205 violations total about $25,000. This was a pittance to Anker, never mind International Coal Group (ICG), which bought the Sago mine last November. ICG's most recent quarterly earnings were $158 million, meaning the average fine levied in 2005 -- about $150 -- equals a few seconds of income.

Don't kid yourself that Bush putting a mining executive in charge of the Mine Safety and Health Administration is any better than putting Heckuva Job Brownie in charge of FEMA. Because protecting the corporate bottom line trumps all.

And look what's happened. More miners die. And add on to the men trapped below, this tragedy utterly preventable. It sounds as if this mine was even more recklessly operated than the Sago Mine, and the mine owner as care less to the safety of his miners as they were back in the 10's and 20's and 30's.

What I understand is that the miners leave pillars of ore to support the roof, and as a mine plays out they start mining the pillars on the way out the door, as it were. This sounds incredibly dangerous, a mining practice that should exercise the highest level of operational safety actions. Yet that doesn't appear to bethe case, and for this big time Bush supporter, people die because of his failure to place the safety of his employees above the profits from his mine.

That's the Bush Way, my friends. Ms. Duckman was telling me that somebody said, I think it was on Kudlow and Cramer this afternoon regarding the stock market correction, that the best solution (as if there is something wrong with a stock market correction) for this market volatility was, yes, to do away with all regulations.

Well, that's what we've pretty much had for the past 6.5 years, how's that working out for us all? Do you think that guy has the guts to ask the family of that rescue worker? Or some Iraqi family brutalized by some Blackwater Mercenaries? And I could go on and on. The Bush Legacy-Death and No Taxes for the Rich.

Jon Stewart Shames the Press-Again

2007-08-16T21:49:00.000-07:00

While Broder is whining about how bad partisanship has been, I guess he means that since the GOP has been stuffing partisanship down the country's throat as one of their many legacy's that makes the GOP bad for the country, right? Well, whatever, while that's going on in the Preserve OUR Corporate Cash press, Jon Stewart shows us yet again how an honest interviewer could approach a topic, and even with his obvious bias, still do his job.

Stephen Hayes was on talking about his book about Dick Cheney, and Jon had just gotten done, ala Timmeh Russert, showing old clips of Dick Cheney from 1994 talking about why we didn't go into Baghdad after Desert Storm.

Because it would be chaotic and deadly and would not end up with any kind of clear resolution that would advance American interests in the region.

Stewart hit on the clearest point, not that Cheney lied us into the war, not that Hussein wasn't a threat to the US or that he didn't have WMD's, not that 9/11 changed the world view or situation that faced our interests in the region. No, he stuck to what Dick had said, to demonstrate the essential truth of Bush/Cheney's actions after 9/11.

"Given all of that, given that he knew that in 1991 removing Hussein would lead to chaos and unforseen consequences in Iraq and the Middle East regardless of the circumstances at that time, why would they not plan for what they knew would happen if we 'took out' Saddam Hussein?" [I'm paraphrasing here-DGR]

And when the author tried to defend Cheney, Stewart would have none of it, and kept repeating that point, if they knew bad things would happen, why is there a total absense of any kind of effort to plan for and act accordingly? And Cheney's admission of miscalculation and mistake does not qualify as a satisfactory answer in any way.

Their failure to do so tells you everything you need to know about what their intentions were/are in Iraq. How they few human life, Muslims, Iraqi's, geo-politics. Like Josh Marshall keeps saying bout Romney and Guiliani, they don't have the least bit of comprehension about the area, and the White House doesn't have one either, nor do they care.

Such callous ignorance makes you wonder what the hell they're doing over there in the first place. And like I told Ms. Duckman this evening, they're there for the oil, in one way or another. And that is an impeachable offense, and contrary to the Geneva Convention.

Barry Bonds and Bud Selig, Rummy and Saddam

2007-08-06T22:08:00.000-07:00

I can't help it, but when I see Barry Bonds getting snubbed by Bud Selig, I see and hear Donald Rumsfeld raving against Hussein. Then I see this picture and see the hypocrisy and complicity of the Republicans in this nightmarish facade of lies and greed.

Just like Barry Bonds is getting denigrated by Official Major League Baseball, not Henry Aaron who is perfectly well within his rights to snub Bonds, but the greedy owners and their Executive Committee, you need to remember that once upon a time Bud Selig and company turned a blind eye to the destructive actions of some of their players, to save their precious toys and their even more precious investments.

Because it’s high time, too, for the suits running baseball to come forward and admit complicity in a scandal they did little to stop and everything to profit from.

Maybe Bud is doing it because George W Bush wants to get tough on steroids. Maybe because he doesn't like a cheater. Maybe because he has no way of reconciling his past actions with the present situation created by those actions. I think that's what they call cognitive dissonance.

I realize that the crimes aren't the same, baseball being a game slowly having the life squeezed out of it by people like Selig and Sandy Alderson and the Corporations and ESPN, while the lives being squeezed in Iraq are real, once living and breathing, now dead at the hands of George Bush and Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld and Colin Powell and all the rest of the enablers, Bremer and Kristol and Kagen and Limbaugh and Drudge and all the rest.

Yeah, Bonds cheated. But his bosses told him too, one way or another. He'll get the record, for how long is debatable, but at a personal cost way out of proportion to that deserved by his arrogant and sometimes churlish behavior. Ken Caminiti paid for it with his life, Manuel Noriega rots in a Miami prison, Iraq is ripped to shreds, it's all a matter of scale, but the motivations seem pretty much the same.

We're just tools to be used, abused, and tossed onto the garbage heap when they're through with us. Because they have the power.

We need to take that power away. Every way and every day.

Larry King and Sicko

2007-07-31T22:44:00.000-07:00

The vice president, who'd you think I was talking about?

I watched King's interview, he does ask questions, just doesn't follow up real well, but just listening to Cheney, Dick sounded much more like a sick old man than the LegoExecuto of Death he normally sounds like.

And as for what he was saying, we've heard it all before, the guy is just so full of crap it's amazing to me that it doesn't ooze from his eyeballs. Hillary has no business asking for operational details on any evacuation plans, when that really isn't what she asked, now was it? (my bolds-DGR)

Dear Mr. Secretary:

On May 22, 2007, I wrote to you to request that you provide the appropriate oversight committees in Congress - including the Senate Armed Services Committee - with briefings on what current contingency plans exist for the future withdrawal of United States forces from Iraq. Alternatively, if no such plans exist, I asked for an explanation for the decision not to engage in such planning.

Pretty clear there, isn't it? Tell what kind of plans you have, and if not, why not. But Cheney can only twist words to make them fit his delusioned reality, he must attack and destroy anybody who opposes him, because that's all he has, that's what he is, a sick, dying, terrified old man. Did I mention selfish? And since the world is centered on him, if he's scared, than we all must be scared.

Even Larry King can expose the man what for what he is. Larry wasn't scared of the guy, he seemed pretty skeptical really. Yet the Democrats can't beat this guy?

Oy.

Feingolds Censure Violates HIS Oath

2007-07-22T21:56:00.000-07:00

Sen. Feingold sent me an e-mail, talking about his latest attempt to censure the President. I will add this argument, then post what I sent him in reply.

If you're going to take the time to do something, you ought to do it right. Censure is meaningless, Impeachment is not. My response follows.

Dear Honorable Senator Feingold,

Your response to the actions of the Bush Administration is deeply disappointing.

How can telling President Bush and Vice President Cheney that what they are doing is wrong, and that they should feel really bad about it, have any impact whatsoever on their actions? How can it be that censure, which has no real consequence, holds them accountable for anything?

We all know who the President and Vice President are, we all know the absolute lack of regard these men hold for the institutions of this government, how could telling them that they've been bad little boys have any impact whatsoever?

The fact is, and I quote, "the blatant disregard President Bush has shown for the rule of law on which our country was founded" tells you exactly what their reaction to censure will be, doesn't it? If they disregard the Constitution, the highest law in the land, what is a meaningless rebuke going to do?

You argue against impeachment, I say you are dead wrong. Is there really any doubt that what they are doing goes far beyond high crimes and misdemeanors; look me in the eye and say otherwise.

I argue three points on impeachment. One, since it is clear that they have violated their oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, that they have usurped the powers enumerated in said Constitution rightly the provence of the House and the Senate, that their lies and cover-ups have led us to this miserable failure in Iraq, YOU, Senator Feingold, would be in violation of YOUR oath of office if you did not impeach the President and Vice President.

You have sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, these men are violating it and destroying it on a daily basis, and you think it isn't in our nation’s best interest to UPHOLD YOUR OATH? That there are more important things to do than that?

Two, you say there are more important issues that would be delayed were impeachment to go forward. Like what? Since your friends and respected colleagues, the Republicans, are filibustering most Democratic Legislation, and that anything you do pass is going to get vetoed by the President, and sustained by the Senate, or, even worse, is a priority of the President, the Constitution violating President, I cannot think of any issues that shouldn't be put on the back burner. We can’t pass ours, who wants to pass theirs? And as for Presidential appointments, from a man who violates the laws of this country daily, none should be approved, so, again, what issues are there that cannot be put aside?

Three, while that man remains in office, what guarantees are there that he won't initiate military actions against the State of Iran on some Gulf of Tonkin type incident? Or that he won't pardon every member of his administration prior to any potential indictments or impeachments? Or that he won't use illegal wiretaps and other illegal means to violate the rights of innocent Americans who are working in opposition to the Bush White House, to include Senators like yourself, financial supporters like a George Soros, members of the press like a Dan Rather, so as to maintain their control of Executive Power even after an election?

Who is to say, given their past actions, that such a thing would not pass? And who would allow such a thing? By not taking the proper, right, and Constitutional action, that would be you Senator. Because you and your colleagues did not fulfill the terms of your contract with the American People, to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. You wrote: "Some may disagree with that, but at a minimum we can agree that censure resolutions, holding the President and his administration accountable for the actions I've outlined above, are needed." I wholeheartedly disagree. Censure is a total waste of time, means nothing, does nothing. By what mechanism would it hold them accountable? Shame? Embarrassment?

The American People have figured this out, and we're not asking you to lead us in this, we're asking you to do your job, fulfill your oath.

Most Sincerely,
etc.

Young Republicans-Worse Than the Adult Form

2007-07-18T21:24:00.000-07:00

Watch this video, think about it, and figure out who might benefit from watching this video of Young Republican Values, and get them to watch it.

Not fellow Democrats, but fellow Americans, Teachers, Professors, Psychologists, Grocery Store Managers, College Recruiters, somebody who can make use of this view of the basic cowardice of those young people, and do something about it.

Somebody is giving those people scholarships to go to college. And that is a tremendous waste of money.

A Disturbing Game

2007-07-14T21:28:00.000-07:00

I just watched the end of a truly disgusting baseball game, and I'll tell you why. To recap, the Padres were winning in Arizona 4-1, All Star Chris Young had just completed another stellar outing, and the vaunted bullpen was taking over. A scratch single, 4 line drive hits and a sac fly, and it was tied. So much for Chris Young and his great effort.

The Pads come up after blowing the lead, and the middle of the lineup meekly gets out 1,2,3. The Diamondbacks come up next and double, single, boom, Snakes take the lead, the Pads do nothing in the ninth (I didn't watch, for obvious reasons), Arizona wins.

The disgusting part? Tomorrow, they'll go out and play like nothing happened, win some lose some, we're professionals going about our business. When what should happen is that somebody gets at least as pissed off as I was watching them lose a game they should never have lost. But they won't. Neither the team Leaders nor players and coaches have shown they have the passion and desire to win it all. They might win the division with their pitching and defense, but they'll never win the World Series, they just don't show the heart or the will.

I've seen the teams that do. The Red Sox, the Yankees under Joe Torre's leadership, the Mets in 1986, all, at some point, refused to lose and broke the other team with their own will to win.

Just like the Democrats. Yes, they'll investigate and issue subpoenas, and, yes, they'll force Republicans to vote for Bush's War, but they've yet to DEMONSTRATE that they have the fire, the desire, the passion, the Will, to do what it takes to save this country from the corporatists, the brainwashed, and the traitors to our Constitution.

Ms. Duckman was saying to me this afternoon, Pelosi needs to remember, her and all of the old men, that they have taken an oath to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States, and that making a political football of it to score points for the Democrats isn't a whole lot better than what Bush and Cheney and Rove do.

It isn't their failure to act that bothers people as much as their failure to show they care about the their Oaths of Office. We're all furious with what these criminals and psychopaths are doing, why can't the leadership get a little fired up? We can't make them take action, lord knows we've been trying, we can't impeach Bush ourselves, or load the troops up in the back of the pick-up and bring them home, all we've got is our passion, and trying to get the Leadership to reflect that, to show that they feel as strongly about the Constitution and our Violated Rights as we do.

Playing politics isn't cutting it. Toothless Senators waving meaningless subpoenas in the air isn't doing it either. People will forgive a lot if they think you're trying, we love the less talented guy who makes up for it with hustle and desire and sacrifice.

Nobody thinks you're trying, Democrats. That's why you poll at slightly above Dick Cheney. So what are you going to do about it?

Brooks Reveals a Bit of Truth

2007-07-13T21:03:00.000-07:00

On tonights News Hour David Brooks exposed yet another angle on Bush's Presidential unfitness, an unfitness I talked about the other day. Consider what he's saying here:

DAVID BROOKS: That's a good point. And as I was listening to the president today, I was remembering a past interview. And he said, "General Casey is a good man." You know, there have been a series -- and the president, when you hear him talk about world affairs, he looks at other people. And he sees it as, "Do I trust that man? And if I trust that man, he probably has the right views." Well, it could be you could trust somebody and they don't have the right views, so it is a bit of a crapshoot.

I've bolded the critical parts. All Bush's talk about the Generals, and he's run through quite a few trying to find one that tells him what he wants to hear, boils down to his trusting them, as Bobo said, and their judgement.

The problem here is that Bush is totally reliant on that judgement because he has no sense whatsoever, no capacity to judge for himself, no real savvy on what would actually work, or even a rudimentary grasp of the issues involved.

Think back on America's past. FDR led the war effort, he had a pretty good sense for what was right, the strategic imperatives and implications on the ground, the goals and strategies to employ. He knew, for instance, that the focus had to be on Hitler, that Japan, because of the geographical situation and the size of the forces engaged in China, could not threaten the Soviets or the Allies in Egypt and the Middle East and could be held off with the forces at hand, 4 Aircraft Carriers, a Division of Marines and a handful of submarines.

As Brooks has pointed out, Bush, not so much. It's a pity that the Corporate Whore Press is, well, what they are. Perhaps after the Revolution we can fix that. Let me close with this beautiful summation from The Freeway Blogger.

Maybe Another Democratic Senator

2007-07-12T20:52:00.000-07:00

Question:

If GOP Family Values Vitter has to go spend more time with his real family, will Governor Blanco appoint a Democrat to replace him?

Coz the Gopper thugs will go overboard trying to pressure her to appoint a like minded Gopper to replace Vitter even though if the shoe were on the other foot a Republican Governor wouldn't hesitate to appoint a Gopper to replace a Democrat, why it happened in California with our Democratic Secretary of State who resigned, and we even had Democratic Majorities in both State Houses, and we still got a Gopper replacement.

Does Blanco have enough sense to take advantage of the situation, or will she go all noble and stupid and give a criminal administration yet another handout?

A Failed President 5 Years and 9 Months Later

2007-07-10T22:50:00.000-07:00

Here in San Diego County we have a Blackwater Problem. The President of the East County Democratic Club, Ray Lutz, is LEADING opposition to Blackwater. Ray sent out a notice about a referral proposal for employment opportunities with Blackwater, here's a link to the Blackwater job posting Ray references. Read this language and see if it sounds like they're training security/police forces.

Dear Friend,
In order to staff a current contract, Blackwater Worldwide is offering a $1,000.00 referral fee for a limited time.

[snip]

SECURITY POSITIONS

Qualifications
Note -These are hard requirements! Please do not apply if you do not not meet these basic requirements.

· 8 years of Military service with qualifications in one of the following: US Navy SEALS, Army Special Forces or Rangers, Marine Force Recon, Air Force PJ or CCT
· Must have or be eligible for US Government Secret Clearance. Must be a US Citizen!
· Must have a minimum of one year experience in Iraq or Afghanistan
· Must be proficient in small arms and be in excellent physical condition

Air Force PJ's are Pararescuemen, "the only Department of Defense specialty specifically trained and equipped to conduct conventional or unconventional rescue operations." And CCT's are highly trained certified air traffic controllers who are an integral part of the Air Force's ground combat team, that specializes in unconventional missions.

These people are not going to be guarding corporate execs or flatbed trucks, now are they? This sounds like Blackwater is gearing up for military black ops in Iran, recruiting highly trained elite troops fully versed and experienced in military action behind the lines. Maybe Blackwater has won the contract to "capture" bin Laden, maybe they're going to participate in strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, whatever it is, this is not a group of flatfoots patrolling a beat or guarding high value targets.

How does this relate to Bush, you ask? Well, Ray sent a link to a YouTube split screen video showing Bush in action while the Two Towers were being destroyed by those sick Saudi religious fanatics. I watched Bush again, knowing the futility of telling people how this proves he's inadequete for the job. We know that. But I want to put it into a context of what we have today, and why Bush needs to go.

5 Years and 9 months, that's how long it has been painfully obvious that George W Bush is profoundly unsuited to be president. And that's how long Rove and Cheney have been working on creating their unaccountable co-presidency.

Why else do they keep every document they can away from the light of day?

Rove knew he had a crisis on his hands, he used all of his twisted skills and cronies to prop up a lifelong failure; maybe the country really needed the image of a stable presidency after 9/11, maybe not, you have to think we're stronger than that after all, but Rove, lacking basic humanity and empathy, not understanding people's fundamental decency, did what he knew best, deceit and division and cronyism. Hence the priorities and messianic cultism of Bush in the early years of his "presidency." Up until his response to Katrina DEMONSTRATED Bush's true nature.

Cheney, on the other hand, just took advantage of the realization of just how unsuitable Bush was to advance his own corporate neo-con lunatic agenda, all the while succumbing to the corruption of near absolute power. Dick Cheney is a very sick man, dark and twisted, rotted by the power that he felt he had to assume from the incompetent puffed up frat boy creation of Karl Rove.

That's what I saw in that video, even before Card spoke to Bush about the 2nd plane; you can see the barely contained panic in Bush's eyes, and afterwards, that empty stare as he realized he had no idea of what to do, even not having the sense to get up from the classroom and returning to DC poste haste.

That's why we have to deal with a mercenary army trying to gain a foothold in my backcountry. That's what leadership does to us, be it good leadership or bad. That's what all of our battles with the Bush/Cheney regime are rooted in, the fact that Bush is a figurehead who thinks he's in charge, and that we have to deal with two power centers, one an amoral and heartless little schemer who lacks human depth, and the other a deeply bitter man, probably brain damaged from his heart problems, paranoid and corrupted by too much unchecked power.

Rove and Cheney have unleashed the worst of our American impulses, racism, greed, a yellow press, robber barons, Manifest Destiny, you name it, that's what their leadership has wrought.

And that's why people are so mad at the Democrats, not because they're just like the Republicans, tho some may be, but because they won't provide forceful and effective leadership against these fools. We don't want simply incrementalism and investigations, we want bold, broad strokes, an overarching theme, a goal to put a man on the moon (I have seveal fine candidates for a return mission to the moon) as it were. That's the appeal of Al Gore, and not the appeal of the Democratic Field, except for Edwards maybe.

That's what a failed President has given us 5 years and 9 months later.

Hamas and What Could Have Happened

2007-07-05T22:45:00.000-07:00

McClatchey has this article about BushCo in action, this time in Palestine. It's like what reporting should do, expose government actions to the scrutiny of somebody in America. As we all know, BushCo isn't about governance, they're about furthering the interests of their sponsors, Corporations. At the same time though, they show us how costly and tragic such a government is for the people they're expected to govern.

I think Athenae touched on it yesterday, others today. The government of Jefferson and Madison and Hamilton and Adams et al, has been taken over by a bunch of maniacs of two versions; one, the greed mongering MIC supporters, whose world view consists of quarterly reports and the amoral and immoral and impractical ravings of a movie character, one Gordon Gecko, and; two, the foaming ravings of neo-cons like the much beloved Elliot Abrams, a world dominion of the mighty American Exceptional Empire, and in the process of achieving that goal completely forgetting, nay reversing, the very things that make us exceptional, our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and our freaking principles as embodied by the Declaration of Independence.

McClathcey looks at Palestine after the Hamas electoral victory and BushCo's deft handling of the situation. While they didn't say it, as good reporting doesn't tell you what should have been done, they let you figure it out on your own. And I figured it out at the time, and I'll repeat it here.

Embrace Hamas, congratulate them for their victory, give them the aid they needed to make the lives of the Palestinian people they were representing a little bit more tolerable, and see if we could co-opt or ameliorate, or at the least, engage them in dialog regarding their relations with Israel. Be mature and respectful from the get go, not be forced or shamed into doing the right thing, but do it because it is the right thing, like it or not. Because by all accounts that election was perfectly valid, even more so than our elections of recent memory.

But no, that wouldn't have fit into the needs of the BushCo crew, no, not at all.

Hamas, a violent Islamist movement whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel, had won Palestinian parliamentary elections — elections that were deemed free and fair and a cornerstone to President Bush's initiative to bring more democracy to the Muslim world.

For the next 17 months, White House and State Department officials would undertake an all-out campaign to reverse those results and oust Hamas from power.

Instead of undermining Hamas, though, the strategy helped to exacerbate dangerous political fissures in Palestinian politics that have delivered another setback to the president's vision of a stable, pro-Western Middle East.

…
At its heart was a plan to organize military support for Abbas for what opponents of the strategy feared could have become a Palestinian civil war, according to officials in Washington and the Middle East, and documents.

What would have happened, do you think, if, instead of immediately ostracizing and blockading the legally elected Hamas Government, the US had accepted the results of the election, and worked to ameliorate Hamas’ more egregious stances, against the State of Israel, and their radical religious underpinings?

You only have that first opportunity, that first impression to establish a foundation for future interactions, what signal does cutting Hamas off at the knees send as opposed to releasing foreign aid after the successful election and starting a real dialog with them on the subject of Israeli recognition?

Imagine your own life. You’re asking your Supervisor for some time off. Your Supervisor wants you to get all of your work done before you go. So you finish your work, let’s say you work in an accounting office in the Payables section. Alas, your Supervisor gets pissed off at you for spending all of the companies money before you go on vacation, and as punishment, denies your vacation request, and what’s more, starts sending negative reports to your manager on your job performance, negatives not necessarily true or on items already addressed in the past.

And then your Supervisor dumps a load of work on you and expects you to do it right away, accurately and correctly.

What are you going to think of your Supervisor? And more importantly, how are you going to work with the asshole?

Real diplomacy could have worked with Hamas, because underlying all of their bullshit, their shelling and suicide bombings, their religious ravings, is the abject poverty of the people of Palestine. Most of those people just want to live in peace, have a decent way to raise a family and live their lives, eat 3 meals a day, get out of the heat, have some social activity, get a decent nights sleep, and dream of a better live for them and theirs. Address that and the anger melts, the fanaticism fades, the death grip of religion weakens.

But there's no profit in that, is there?

Long term, the U.S. effort to oust Hamas has further deepened doubts in the Middle East about the administration's understanding of the complex region.

"America is so far away, they are completely misinformed about what is happening," said Munib Masri, a Palestinian businessman allied with Abbas. "The more they do against Hamas, the more power they (Hamas) get from the people."

[snip]

But Abbas argued that elections wouldn't be credible without Hamas, and Washington went along, said one of the senior U.S. officials, who agreed to be interviewed only on condition of anonymity due to White House-imposed ground rules.

Was that a mistake?

"Maybe," he said. "The question was debated at the time."

Once Hamas was elected, the White House gave almost no thought to accepting the results and trying to co-opt the hard-line Islamist group, which the U.S. government deems a terrorist organization, current and former U.S. officials said.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, "I don't think it was ever possible emotionally, ideologically ... for this administration to consider reaching out, probing" Hamas, said Aaron David Miller, who advised six secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations.

Instead, Rice orchestrated an international financial boycott of the new Palestinian government, an action that failed to weaken Hamas or force it to moderate its views.

Destroy the village to save it, all over again. It's like when the troops kick down the door of some Iraqi's house, turn over the place, wave guns around, push and shove, break a few things, then give the kids a candy bar. Friends for life, right? G Gordon Liddy's jack booted thugs that the extreme right wing racists hate so much, should they expect any different kind of reaction from the Arabs and Iraqi's and whoever else in the Middle East?

But, then again, there's nothing like a little civil war for stirring up some business for GE and friends, is there?

But we shouldn't impeach Cheney and Bush because that might be too radical for some people, too overarching, too divisive, right?

Media, Bush, Betrayal

2007-07-02T23:29:00.000-07:00

Now we know why the Washington Post printed this wretched, pathetic, absurd article about Bush.

To show him as a deep thinker, so that when he commuted Libby's conviction to nothing but tax cut chump change, really so Libby could still plead the fifth, we might feel his anguish as he struggled with the decision of what to do about his loyal aide.

What a pity party Baker's article is, a pity party and a stand-up routine of jokes that strain only our credulity, not our bellies.

Bush has read 3 bio's of George Washington. Bush convenes nightly debates with leading scholars and experts and thinkers on weighty subjects like the nature and meaning of good and evil.

Not generally known for intellectual curiosity, Bush is seeking out those who are, engaging in a philosophical exploration of the currents of history that have swept up his administration.

Not generally known? You could say that. And Bush is comfortable, according to this article explaining what happened, sortof. Note that this time though, the great thinker Bush acted quickly to commute Libby's sentence when the judge ordered him to start serving his time. And nobody knows what Cheney was telling Bush, or Rove, like they hadn't already discussed the possibilities?

Bush the Mighty Thinker, that's going to be his legacy alright.

So then, I have to ask, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NOW, SPEAKER PELOSI AND LEADER REID?

ACTIONS OR WORDS, what'll it be?

Another Media Genius

2007-07-01T21:56:00.000-07:00

Michael Barone was on C-SPAN today, I was working outside but listening and here's all you need to know about Barone.

He's a blogger.
Well, he's a blogger with an editor, according to Barone.

He cited a blogger as an example of good blogging.
It was Instapundit.

He has an opinion on Dick Cheney.
He thinks the charges and coverage is overdone.

Barone writes for US News and World Report.
And he contributes to Faux News as well.

Barone wrote an article on how we pick vice presidents.
But he managed to not talk about how Dick Cheney yanks Bush around like a cat with one of those catnip balls on a string. And he closes the column with a totally gratuitous slam on John Edwards, coming from that multi-loser Bob Shrum.

Gratuitous? Yes, because he mentioned every other VP choice since 1972 without a signle comment about them, not Eagletons psychiatry, not Quayles stupidity, not Liebermans sanctimony, no, just a slam on Edwards from a self serving source of little trustworthiness.

Broder is shocked that Cheney is running Bush like Harvey Keitel ran Jodi Foster in The Taxi Driver, Barone ignores Cheney altogether except to disparage one of the Demcoratic challengers for President, yes, the DC Pundits really further the principles set out by Jefferson and Madison and Paine and Adams et al, if you think that Corporations and Elitism were what those men were writing and dying about some 231 years ago. Yes, George Washington and Nathanael Greene would be proud of the patriotism and honor that the DC Beltway Pundits shower on our country; as brave soldiers die needlessly in Iraq, for a war sold on a pack of treacherous lies promulgated by said pundits; as an elite class built on accumulated wealth gains greater control of our country thanks to the Orwellian writings of the aforementioned DC Pundits (Death Tax anyone?); yes Barone is a great patriot, isn't he?

C-SPAN runs these turds all of the time, Heritage and AEI hacks, it shows that we have a long ways to go, but putting pressure on these people helps. So write Barone, maybe one of his editors will notice.

And it's one, two, three, What are we fighting for?

2007-06-29T06:46:00.000-07:00

That's what Country Joe and the Fish asked in 1968, and Wednesday, (I just heard it this morning on the SPAN) that fraud of an expert, Fred Kagan, when asked by the Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs whether Iraq had posed a terrorism threat to the US before the invasion and occupation, told the subcommittee chaired by Mr Ackerman, No, they did not.

Now, I've heard of flip flops, but that one was a size 16 double E one, since bush and cheney and rice and powell et al were all telling us what a threat Hussein was prior to this disastrous for America War of Aggression. kagan, being one of the architects of this nightmare, and much to the surprise of Mr. Ackerman, repudiated all of those lies, the whole bush strategy, from Invasion to Mission Accomplished to the Surge, and nobody really seems to have noticed it. Ackerman paused after kagan's answer, he should have tossed in an oh really but didn't, then proceeded, but the words had been spoken, the lies revealed, the pointlessness, in the real world not bush/cheney's corporate fantasy world, of the death and destruction laid bare.

It's not often that I quote from bush's website, but here you go:

Tonight I want to take a few minutes to discuss a grave threat to peace, and America's determination to lead the world in confronting that threat.

The threat comes from Iraq. It arises directly from the Iraqi regime's own actions -- its history of aggression, and its drive toward an arsenal of terror. Eleven years ago, as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi regime was required to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, to cease all development of such weapons, and to stop all support for terrorist groups. The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations. It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. It has given shelter and support to terrorism, and practices terror against its own people. The entire world has witnessed Iraq's eleven-year history of defiance, deception and bad faith.

We also must never forget the most vivid events of recent history. On September the 11th, 2001, America felt its vulnerability -- even to threats that gather on the other side of the earth. We resolved then, and we are resolved today, to confront every threat, from any source, that could bring sudden terror and suffering to America.

Members of the Congress of both political parties, and members of the United Nations Security Council, agree that Saddam Hussein is a threat to peace and must disarm. We agree that the Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons. Since we all agree on this goal, the issues is : how can we best achieve it?

There you have it, Hussein is terror and threat of the most horrible sort, yet, one of the brains behind this operation just told us he wasn't.

And that is the foundation of this most base and profound wrong this nation has undertaken, as bad as the mistreatment and genocide of the Native Americans, the Slave Trade, the War against Mexico, all of it. This time the lie was the justification, even though economic gain was the goal as in all the other cases, everybody knew that at some level. This time, all of the people were fooled all of the time, until now.

GOP Exposed as Incompetent

2007-06-25T22:32:00.000-07:00

Yes, you have to love the California GOP. Okay, you don't, I certainly don't, but you have to love that Ron Nehring, one of the GOP's golden boys is, well, not really very smart.

How else to explain that he picked Michael Kamburowski, an Australian immigrant who served as the California Republican Party's chief operating officer, and also served some time as a guest of the State of New York, is an illegal immigrant, isn't an American Citizen and can't vote in an election, but he's the best that Nehring could find to fill the job of COO for the State GOP. And make no mistake, he's Nehring's boy.

The 35-year-old Australian citizen was handpicked for the post by Nehring, who became party chief in February.

Kamburowski is a former registered lobbyist for Americans for Tax Reform and a top operative for the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, both founded by conservative activist Grover Norquist. Nehring -- also a former senior adviser and consultant to Norquist's Washington, D.C., operation -- worked with Kamburowski at Americans for Tax Reform in the 1990s.

That's Nehring's claim to fame, Grover. Nehring, who as a board member of the Grossmont Union High School District wants to privatize the district, charter schools they euphamize it as, but privatize is what it is, disorganize the district the better to run his cronies and contractor favorites into the public trough being the goal.

Always keep that in mind. That's what they do it for, to perpetuate the Rove machine, the culture of greed and power. At the Left Coaster, the talk is about the predator class, that sounds as good a desription for these creeps as any. I remember the Enron tapes of those guys laughing at Grandma Millie, smiling as they killed. That is the GOP of Rove and Cheney and GE and Exxon et al. Never forget that.

Sure, their incompetence isn't always an advertisement for the evils of government, sometimes it's just the level of their fundamental stupidity coming to the fore. Not only is their Party COO illegal, but their Political Director is a Canadian here on one of those coveted H1B visas. Another American Job outsourced, even as the California GOP rails on and on about those illegals taking our jobs, hell, immigrants in general taking our jobs. But it isn't hypocrisy, because that would require a human belief system, an assumption that government has a role, that unbridled capitalism cannot solve every ill or problem.

Nehring's belief system was instilled into him, one of Karl Roves Little College Republicans thoroughly brainwashed into a good little soldier following orders. Without that crap drilled into Nehring's brain, Nehring would be a nobody of consequence. Instead, ironically enough, that anti government banner he operates under is making him an agent of destruction for the California GOP.

Now, if we can only get him off of the school board...

[update 6/26/07 11:02 pm-As the anonymous commenter so smartly points out, Nehring is not on the Board as of the November election, so, poof, presto, he's off the school board, yee-haw. Now, if we can only get him out of the State of California...]

An Apple A Day

2007-06-24T22:35:00.000-07:00

Mom, Apple Pie, Red White and Blue, with the 4th of July what could be more patriotic than that eh?

Oh, about those apples, eat 'em if you got 'em, apparently they're going to be coming from China pretty soon. Which makes great sense, given the impending devastating effects of global warming, for us to import a product like apples that we grow in abundance here already, right? Right!!!??

That's the thrust from this AP article. Needless to say, I will not be buying apples from China to further that insanity. But of course, since corporations are involved, they start with a less redily defined product, apple concentrate. Used to sweeten processed foods, make juice and jelly and pies and lord knows what all else.

Questions come to mind regarding this. In light of the melamine scare, what assurances are there that the concentrate from China is any safer than the feed and wheat gluten coming from China?

How would I know where the concentrate is coming from?

And most importantly, who really is profiting from these imports from China? Because that seems the critical question. China didn't just decide to flood our markets with apples and apple products, now did they? Increase their apple production 400 percent in 10 years or so? This sounds awfully a lot like another offshoot of the glories of Wal Mart driving prices down with no consideration of the consequences long term.

Buying locally is what we need to do, is part of the solution to not just Global Warming, but impending energy and food crisis-if all of our corn goes to ethanol production, what is Kellogs going to make Corn Flakes out of, or where are our corn bread and corn tortillas going to come from?

[T]he prospect of China flooding the U.S. market with their fresh apples -- an event many believe is inevitable, even if it could be years away. That is the problem, why is such a thing inevitable? Well, so long as all of the costs are not factored into the economic decisions of corporations and governments, maybe so. Who champions us against these inevitable and inaccurate economic assumptions and events? That's who we need to pressure.

Who are the many in the article who think it inevitable, I have to wonder, big corporations unconcerned with the harm this sort of globalization causes, like Wal Mart, the Chinese, who? Let's figure out that answer, then maybe we can start having an effect on Global Warming and Big Oil, Big Corporations.

Maybe the guy I heard on the SPAN this morning, John Perkins, has some answers on who "They" are?.

Extra Constitutional Cheney

2007-06-21T23:14:00.000-07:00

What strikes me about this latest revelation about Cheney, is how consistant it is with all of the most serious issues and events that have occured during this long national nightmare.

When Dick Cheney, as head of the Bush Campaigns Vice Presidential Search Committee tabbed himself as the one, we should have done more than laugh it off as a typical Republican manuever, which it, admittedly, was. It was just Phase One.

Having seen how easy it was to just do something that a reasonable person might view as wrong, Cheney continued to seize power, just by taking it. That is how those things work, the person running the search committee is unimpeachable because of his total disinterest in the position. Yet Cheney managed to tab himself as the best choice. That's what those Sarbanes-Oxley rules are all about, so that the CEO doesn't sit on the compensation committee and give himself and his crony's big fat raises. Sure, the level of disinterested on Wall Street Boards is open to debate, but that's for another day.

During the Florida Vote Fight, Cheney just plunged ahead as if he were indeed victorious, picking officials and department chiefs, planning galas, the whole nine yards. Bush/Cheney had won, of course he knew because he had essentially counted the votes himself, after all, so no time like the present for making hay. Energy Companies, let's talk, nobody will ever find out, unless one of you talks, and that would be very bad for your health.

Every time someone asks for documents from the VP, he snarls, fuck off, and refuses to give them up. When he deems it necessary for a policy for torturing possible terrorists, despite every law imaginable making it illegal and un-American, he tells that "Law Professor" Yoo to make something up, then he tells Heinrich Himmler reincarnated (Gonzales) to implement it, by just doing it. And thus Gitmo and Abu Ghraib were born.

They just make it up as they go along, with absolutely no regard for laws or precedent or decency or reason or anything else even remotely in line with the laws and norms of society. Whatever they want, he wants, they just take it. Signing statements, that's just a sop for Georgies senses. No matter what he does, shoot a guy in the face, then run away til the booze wears off, no problem, like the commercial says, they just do it.

Now, what that makes Cheney remains up to debate. Sociopath, Megalomaniac, Driven, Socially inept, I don't know, but whatever it is, it's time that the Democrats really force this misshapen little man to face the reality of life. He really is not an entity of the Executive Branch. And that cannot be borne in a free and democratic society.

Congress needs to defund his office immediately, since he is not a part of the Executive Branch, nor the Legislative Branch. Then, predictably, when he just keeps doing what he does, hopping in Air Force 2 for some back stabbing and double dealing, don't fuel the plane. Take away his limo. Take away his desk, jhis undisclosed locations, his defibs and his healthcare plan. Take everybody in his office by the scruffs of their necks, and I'll bet you can get some DC Police to do the job, and throw them out onto the street. Let Dick snarl away, let him run to Fat Timmeh, but make it clear that the monstrosity that has become Dick Cheney can no longer be tolerated. But take away his money first, that'll really get his blood surging.

What Corruption looks like

2007-06-19T22:32:00.000-07:00

I was reading about Sen Stevens and his upcoming fall from grace over at TPM's Muckraker blog and I wanted to read that article where Stevens said this:

''We invite people we think can afford to put a contribution into the till,'' [Stevens] said, ''and people they want to meet.''

Did he really say that? On the record? This is why the corrupt culture of money and lobbyists is so pernicious, so like arundo is in our local waterways, choking out the natives so it can propagate itself in perpetuity.

Clicking on the hoped for link, though, led me to something else. The sponsors for this fishing "event." Just look at that list of sponsors, for a fishing tournament to save a sportfishing river. Think about this for a moment, if you will. The 3 Generals, GE, GM, GD, Big Oil, Boeing, United Technology, SAIC, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, quite an impressive list so that a bunch of fat cats can continue to sports fish on their Alaskan River, something beyond the reach of most Americans I'd presume to say.

Compare that group to this group, for Stan Humphries Charity Golf Tournament. It's a pretty big event, proceeds benefit Rady Childrens Hospital, the sponsors are mostly local, lots of service and consumer goods corporate sponsors, but you don't see the Big Oil, Big Military Industrial Complex types, many based in San Diego, on the list of sponsors, do you.

It's this sickening contrast that tells you where the priorities lie, plain as can be. Buy a Senator, the Big Boys show up. Help children, you get just some people who care a little, who at the very least, realize that it is for a "good cause" and well worth the cash they toss at Stan and Childrens Hospital.

Marshall notes that Stevens didn't just suddenly become corrupt, on a whim as it were, no, he's been as vile and un-American as can be for quite some time. And the reporters are just now glomming on to that?

How the hell do you think republicans keep getting elected in this country, because of their good works, their good deeds, their wonderful legislative records? Their generosity and compassion as evidenced by their actions to help out the victims of Katrina?

Nope, it's by having slush funds all over the country, fattened by the policies they push, the tax cuts and business opportunities overseas that mark the ways and means of the Bush Presidency. How they sleep at all escapes me, how they justify their crimes defies me, but someday, somehow, these people are going to get theirs. Ted Stevens is in a race with Doolittle and Lewis for the next gopper thug pol to go down, I'm rooting for a three way tie.

Wanker of the Day

2007-06-19T07:02:00.000-07:00

The guy on MSNBC talking to the Dem and Gopper Thug "Strategists" about the Democratic candidates at the AFSCME forum in DC today.

He spews talking points from Drudge like we spew CO2, he gives that Gopper apologist more time to talk and cuts off the Dem when he tries to interrupt, he's everything wrong about the media, and he has no name here because I have no time to pursue it. Just this one bit. He said that the forum allows the candidates to make their campaign speech, as if that speech is some entity that exists outside the body politic, and that giving that speech is a bad thing.

Those campaign speeches summarize what the candidates stand for, what they hope for, what they want to change and want to keep, and are important anchors for what kind of leaders they hope to be. Expanding on their stump speeches in a less formal manner is critical in explaining themselves, even under the gentle ministrations of Chris Man Crush Matthews. It's called communications, it's too bad that the people in the communications industry have such contempt for America that they only desire one way communication, them speaking from on high, as opposed to dialogue and debate.

Wankers all.

Rebrand This, or, How to Get Out of Iraq

2007-06-18T20:40:00.000-07:00

[cross posted at Daily Kos]

In response to a Left Coaster post, I posted the following comment. It’s an improved version of that comment, edited for clarity, and with additional content. In short, we need the Democrats to do the savvy and politically brave thing.

Okay, that may be a problem. My comment follows:

Steve, I can't agree with that redeployment branding bit. Except for the Media, incapable of doing news, branding is all they know, so anything "branding" related, well, that's got to be IT!

And it isn't a refocused effort to catch bin Laden either, they never tried in the first place. I remember Tora Tora Bora.

We used a handful of Special Forces troops and let the Northern Lights Alliance do the hard work, some story about respecting their sovereignty and strengthening our alliance and tales of how hard it would be to get a large force of Americans into the region quickly enough to catch OBL.

And besides, how fast could the guy run hooked up to a dialysis machine?

No, the solution for the Democrats is simple.

Bush had no intention of catching bin Laden, he just wanted to turn the Middle East into a nightmare cauldron of death and destruction, of hate and fear, of nationalism and fundamentalism and vengeance, for in such chaos is great opportunity for the right man, the right man with the WILL to stride across the stage of history and prove his greatness.

At least that's what Karl "Edgar Bergen" Rove must be thinking.

The Dems need to pound the notion that there is no war on terror (which is as stupid as it gets anyway), and that if there must be a war, let it be a war on al Queda. They need to say out loud and repeatedly that Bush has failed us in dealing with their threat, as in all things, failed us (but not his corporate masters I point out yet again), and everything we stood for as Americans. Look, American Exceptionalism isn't per se a bad thing, certainly not a bad ideal to aim for in a proper form, clearly, and with horrible and tragic predictability, the great comic book thinkers of the Right have no conception of what the proper form might be.

The Dems need to pound the reality, that al Queda is not a threat to Democracy and America and our way of life, that they have no intention of "following us home" when the goal of the 9/11 attacks have already been realized, to manipulate us into uncorking this nightmare, currently NOT playing itself out on your teevee screens I add, in the Middle East by removing the largest military and secular force in the region, just so OBL can play out his own insane fantasies of overthrowing the Sauds and putting his name on the throne and the oil. Perhaps 1984 is the wrong Orwellian analogy here, maybe Animal Farm might be a more appropriate one for at least some of this madness.

Okay Democrats, keep it simple. Yes, there is that wee little problem the Democrats need to overcome, and it's a problem that they keep repeating. Please. STOP DIGGING!! Put the shovel down and back away. Now. Acknowledge that you were wrong about supporting Bush and his illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, admit that all of your votes to "support the troops" were politically done and horribly misguided, well intended as they were, and that the only prescription for the region is a withdrawal of all of our forces from Iraq and a redeployment to Afghanistan where we would rebuild the country as we should have to begin with; an end to our blind and foolhardy support of the Likudniks in Israel; and massive support of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Hamas included, and Jordan; and finally, real diplomacy conducted by people of character, people like Jimmy Carter and Bill Richardson and Bono, Nelson Mandela, Queen Elizabeth perhaps, I'm trying to think of a Republican of true character but I'm sorry, none come to mind, but that's what the Dems need to do.

They've so undermined themselves with their stupid support of Roves Rhetoric that they lack credibility without full recantation, but, there we are, we've gotten into a pretty huge hole, it's going to take some serious changes in the way we operate to get out, or a razing to the ground of the established house and rebuilding from the ground up.

Listen up now, this is important.

We have got to stop buying Roves rhetoric, that's all there is to it. Bush can no longer be allowed to describe what the situation is. The Democrats need to start making the narrative, no more copying notes from the stupidest kid in the class, and however they can do that, all the albatross carcasses hanging around their neck notwithstanding, that's how we're going to stop Bush and Cheney and the Corporations, by essentially ignoring Bush and his heralding strumpets, er, trumpets, and just telling our own story. Not in response to Bush and Limbaugh and Drudge and Couric and Blitzer, but on our own merits, like Frankie says, "My Way."

This countries foundation is okay; it's all the binding lies and cathedral monuments to glory and the rotten incestuous organization charts piled up on top of it that's causing the problem. Adding to it won't help.

Whichever American starts telling their own story and never mind the harpies right left and center, who truly rejects the stupidity and fear and cowardice that erupted after that day, when the black smoke of death still stained that incongruously beautiful blue of that fall morning, and does it with a serious plan for fixing things that really addresses our problems, is the one who takes home the prize. Or else we get whoever can buy the most shit.

Gonzo

2007-06-11T22:41:00.000-07:00

Saw a piece of Chuck Schumer bashing Gonzales, and all I can say is, well, impeach him.

I don't know if Senate Rules allow for filibustering or not on an impeachment, but hey here's my game plan.

The House impeaches Gonzo, since the Dems can pretty much do whatever they want in the House, they've got the Rules and the Votes, so they impeach Abu innumerable counts of perjury, for dereliction of duty, for ignorance of the law, for gross incompetence in running the Justice Department, for a failure to properly manage his department and for his repeated failures to uphold the laws of this country.

I think a case can be made on those charges. So then, it goes to the Senate.

Again, we have the Rules and the votes, if todays toothless exercise is any indication. During the impeachment proceedings you make the case for his failures, so that by the time it gets to the Senate, the public has gotten a good taste for what a miserable excuse of a human being Gonzales is, for what a miserable excuse of a lawyer, a manager, an officer of the Court, an upholder of the Constitution, and so on, he is.

If the GOP wants to filibuster, let them talk all about how wonderful Gonzales is, what a great lawyer, how competent he was in upholding the laws of the land when he advocated for warrentless wiretaps on Americans, when he advocated for the denial of habeus corpus, when he advocated for torture of innocent people as it turns out, when he arbitrarily and without standing dismissed the Geneva Conventions, oh yes, let us let the Republicans talk all about a defense for Alberto Gonzales and his actions.

If they would rather not filibuster, fine, we can still talk about all of his high crimes and misdemeanors, his violations of the Constitution and the Laws of the land, his pathetic management of the Justice Department (which we all realize is purposeful, right?), and his politization of the Justice Department to benefit Republicans at the expense of more than half of the country's population, you know, Democrats and Independants and all parties not GOP.

After his conviction and removal, of course, comes the hard part. Telling Bush that his replacement will be someone to the Democrats liking, someone like John Edwards, not someone like any Republican that exists mind you, and sticking to that demand.

See, isn't that simple? And it works on many levels of simplicity and complexity, and I'm not holding my breath in anticipation of it happening. But it should.

Leadership

2007-06-05T20:06:00.000-07:00

I was watching the NewsHour tonight and Kyl-R AZ and Menendez-D NJ, were talking to Lehrer when Kyl, at one point, told Jim and Bob that Bob's amendment wasn't going to pass. Very matter of factly as if Kyl were in charge of the committee or the Senate itself.

A more apt DEMONSTRATION of why the Democrats should not work with Republicans I could not think of.

Why are the Democrats working to give Republicans victories for their 2008 campaigns? Why is Obama saying in that last debate that George Bush has done some good things?

Why are the Democrats so god damned stupid when it comes to politics?

I guess it takes a long time to hone political skills, but c'mon, people, this is ridiculous. We're so tied up in trying to do the "right" thing, like this immigration bill, that we fail to do the right thing, and the right thing, as the blogs have been saying from day one, is to oppose the Bush Administration and the Republican Party. It's really that simple. We don't need bipartisan, we need a party that DEMONSTRATES our principles of fairness and equality and freedom, of acceptance and diversity and recognition that someone else may have a better idea, or that their way may be just as good as your way even though different, that life isn't fair but that if we work together or support each other it's a lot easier to bear.

Is it fair that Steve Gilliard is dead at the age of 41? I don't think so, yet the support of the blogosphere will sure help Jen and Steve's family deal with this tragedy. I'll bet his folks had no idea how many people he's touched in his too short time, and it has to be of some comfort to know your kid did pretty good with the time he had.

I'm pretty much done with the Democratic Party for now, until they start doing the right thing, or until Al Gore gets into the race for the White House. Because when he does, and the best thing about it, is that he won't really need the Democratic Party, the DLC, the useless consultants like Shrum and Carville (the snake who signed Scooter Libbys appeal letter with his compassless wife)(sorry snakies) and Brazille, ABC or CNN, none of them, because he's going to have an army of volunteers and supporters unlike any candidate we've ever seen.

Until then, good luck with that cuddle up to the Republicans Democrats, whatever you do, don't kick them when they're down, by all means give them a hand up, heck, bend over and pick up the shiv they were going to stick you with and hand it to them and then turn around for them, yeah, that strategy always works.

Fantasy Land

2007-05-31T22:56:00.001-07:00

Joe Klein wants people to be nice to David Broder and discuss Broders editorial on it's merit, so says bigger bloggers than I.

The problem being that his eds have no merit, except as a window on the delusions of the DC Beltway crowd, people like Klein and Broder and what not other rag tag riff raff Dowds and Sally whats her name that make up our Conventional Wisdom.

So I sent him a note, I tried, as always in respect of his old age, to keep the vitriol at a minimum.

"Iraq War at an end?"

The widely trusted Gen. Petraeus? That's the tip off that you're talking out of your imagination again David. We don't know the good General from David, do we? Of course you Beltway folks know him oh so well, right, but David, you know that DC is just a speck of the population of this country, so widely is a relative term, don't you think?

But on to the meat of my missive. Dude, you just live in a total fantasy land don't you. Haven't you heard Bush repeat ad very nauseum that we aren't leaving Iraq while he's President? Don't you understand the Korea metaphor? What part of "leaving it for the next President" don't you get?

Centrists exert leverage? All 8-12 of them? And John Warner, has he yet done any more than sputter some protest than fall directly into the Bush line on vote after vote after vote after vote? Ken Salazar, the rookie turncoat from Colorado, you think he has any heft with the Democratic Party?

Bush wasn't cool to the Baker-Hamilton recommendations, he said they were a good start, then proceeded to ignore and reject every aspect of them out of hand. That isn't being cool to something, that's spitting all over the plan and its progenitor's.

But I guess in the Purple Fantasy Land you live in, that calculated disrespect means something else. I suppose that's how you can sleep at night, by living in a world so far removed from the reality that everybody else, mostly, lives in.

Give it up Broder, you're not unlike the pathetic and delusional people like your brilliant friend Paul Wolfowitz, except that you have no power and no impact whatsoever on the events of this day and on this miserable and misbegotten administration you find so comforting and competent.

Centrists and leverage, there's a breakfast combination you don't see every day!

I'm sorry, but Bush isn't leaving Iraq unless we somehow force him to, maybe a revolt of the military, maybe a sign from the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster, and the United States Senate, for the greatest part, is fully infected with the disease that Al Gore is talking about, what Jimmy Carter called a malaise, what explains the desperate grasping at things that give so called meaning to our lives, like god, or money or i-pods or more and more material crap, this endless and frantic soccer mom mentality of running your kids from one event to another and having no time to spend together as a comminity, be it a family or a neighborhood or social gathering to exchange ideas of import and substance with our fellow human beings.

What did Bob Simon say to Bill Moyers, he was too afraid to speak out on the shoddy intelligence, the gaping logic holes, the false premises of Iraq as terror master that led us to this pass today, too afraid to lose his precious job of news reader because, I don't know, he would've died or suddenly had no value as a human being if he didn't have that wonderful particular job?

And I wonder how it is that these raging idiots and fools and woefully uneducated people like Bush and Goodling and Doan and Cheney and DeLay and Wolfowitz can beat the tar out of the Democrats for the past 7 or 27 years?

Missing from the Health Care Debate

2007-05-29T21:49:00.000-07:00

One thing I've noticed that seems to be absent from all the grand and wonderful solutions to our "broken" healthcare system and the "debate" it is generating (yeah, go ahead and laugh, I saw some debate on the NewsHour, so there).

Can anybody guess?

Give up?

How about, the knife in the back Insurance Companies?

Employers pay into a pool, or provide their employees coverage. Employees pay, the Government pays, employers pay, everybody pays. And who do they pay to?

Why, yes, the knife in the back Insurance Companies.

Employers pretty much hate paying for health insurance, why should they pay for their employees or their sick kids, after all, they aren't their kids, are they? They never call out sick, why should their employees? Never mind that healthy people work harder and longer and more productively, the same if their kids are getting cared for when they're sick or injured. No. it seems like it's always better to try to weasel out of paying for anything if you can, even if it does benefit your company in the long and short run.

And what has always puzzled me, is why business votes for the Republicks on this issue. Do they enjoy paying those premiums? Do they enjoy all of the paper work, researching better or cheaper plans every year, all of the time and money that goes into the whole insurance process? You wouldn't think so, but somehow, that's what they do.

And all this while, the insurance industry just rakes the profits. And does everything in their power to stop the notion of universal health care, of Medicare for everybody. Because, of course, if that were to happen, profits would dry up to bare levels, their investment monies would go away and they would become weak and no longer the feared decider of our fates.

Got a pre-existing condition? Fear your insuror. Wrong disease, or taking the wrong drugs? Bow down to the insuror. Have a favorite care giver who really knows his/her stuff, who knows you as a patient and a person, your history and your prognosis, who's seen up your ass and saved your life because of it? Better hope your employer doesn't change plans, or you can always pay the higher premium and still see your favorite doctor.

So far, what little I've heard of Obama's plan, and all the others, employers and patients make all the sacrifices, and nothing is required of the insurance industry, except to take your premium dollars.

And that is what is wrong with all of the proposed solutions. One party gets all of the benefits and gives up nothing in return.

It's like the time when these 7 Democrats went into this bar after a long day herding cats. Tired and thirsty, they bellowed for beers and whiskey. The bartender said, "sorry boys, all I've got is this here sarsaparilla and this Shirley Temple drink."

"Shirley Temple and Root Beer?!!?!" cried the catpokes, "are you out of your developmentally disabled disease vectored head? Scotch and Guinness or we'll take our business elsewhere."

Such unanimity couldn't be abided by the barkeep, he laughed and said, "go ahead, take your business somewhere else. Where you going to go, to the local gin mill and micro brewer? And risk getting their filthy common germs on ya? No, go ahead, leave if you must, but it's naught but Pink Drinks for you, not even the sarsaparilla is on the bar now."

The angry Dems got up and left, reluctant to pass on the glistening pink glasses lined up at the bar, but soon enough they all left. 2 minutes later they were back.

"The moonshiner was making a run, we couldn't wait for him to come back, so we'll take your Shirley Temples, but the next time, we really mean it when we say we're going to the competition. Really."

Fire Fighting in the US

2007-05-27T21:31:00.000-07:00

Somebody is finally going to look at the consequences of building in wilderness areas, and the expectation that maybe the fire departments shouldn't be killing themselves to protect somebody's house that probably shouldn't be there in the first place.

A blaze that killed five federal firefighters last year has emboldened those who question the cost of saving the ever expanding number of homes on the fringe of wilderness.

From the report on the firefighter deaths: The Twin Pines community is identified in the Mountain Area Safety Taskforce (MAST) Report as a very high to extreme threat area for potential destructive impacts from wildland fire due to physical orientation, surrounding dense chaparral/Manzanita, exposure to upslope winds, and alignment with potential Santa Ana winds. We're building in places just asking for trouble, with no regard for the consequences to those expected to safeguard that dream home mountain retreat. And people die, good people, for someone else's property. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Let me add this. Mixed in with the bravado and Smokey the Bear and the Machismo and what all else, every time the reporters talk about fires, they use the same, wrong, language.

A fire engulfed Griffith Park on Tuesday, destroying about a quarter of the hilly urban refuge before being brought under control Wednesday night.

Somehow or other, a fire laid seige to a town. It's like when you declare war against a tactic or emotion. It doesn't help or clarify or explain, it just sensationalizes without informing. And that is what is wrong with the news media. Fires don't destroy land, they're a natural part of the cycle of things. Houses and buildings get destroyed, but time after time after time the teevee especially, talks about the acres destroyed, when fire is a needed part of a healthy ecosystem.

And it's this ignorance and sensationalism that cheapens and weakens our discourse in this country, that keeps us from doing the right thing in so many cases, like in Iraq.

Immigration, Some Deal

2007-05-18T07:35:00.000-07:00

Just pretend that you, dear readers, are told that you can keep your job, that doesn't pay all that great and has no real advancement opportunity, but you'll have to pay "the man" 8 grand in fees and fines, and you have to leave the job after 2 years and sit out for a year before you can go back to work.

But the incentive is that you'll get to vote against the GOP 5, 10, or more, years down the line, get to pay income tax, and so on.

Never mind any of the other provisions in the bill, tell me how that part of it is going to work?

Because immigrants and illegals aren't here to get citizenship, they're here to work, because their own countries are so fucked up they can't get decent jobs there.

Whatever your feelings about illegal immigration, and the Democrats misread the anger a lot of people have towards illegal immigrants, its real and very palpable, I know, I'm living and working in the middle of it, until the problems that drive these people to look for work here are addressed, no ridiculously convoluted immigration bill is going to work. Enforcing laws on the employers isn't going to fix it, building bigger fences isn't going to fix it. Getting Mexico to get their shit together and create decent jobs and opportunities there, will fix it to a large part.

Until then, I expect to see Democrats get beat up over championing decency and fair treatment for illegal workers in this country ad nauseum.

Food

2007-05-13T09:37:00.000-07:00

Why are we buying basic food products from China? Food products we produce in this country in large quantities, like wheat gluten?

Citing advice from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Nelson said any melamine the fish consume is likely to pass out of their systems in a matter of days, won't accumulate in their bodies, and poses no danger to people who might eat the salmon, which wouldn't be consumed until after returning from the sea years from now.

I trust the FDA, don't you? They would never put politics ahead of food or drug safety, would they? No, not George Bush's FDA. A quote from the first one, read the second link about silicone breast implants, VIOXX and Kessler.

Despite recommendations from FDA and independent scientists that the drug was appropriate for [s]ale OTC, the FDA declined to approve it. Virtually everyone involved knew this was a political pay-off to Bush's right wing conservative base. So the FDA is being sued by the Center for Reproductive Rights. As part of this suit, the CRR's lawyers have been taking depositions of FDA officials. On Thursday it was to be Crawford's turn.

[But on] Wednesday Ms. [Barbara] Van Gelder, who is his personal lawyer, asked for a delay, saying she would instruct him to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights.

Cause he was being investigated for criminal charges of selling stock of companies he regulated.

Why is the Bush Administration still in office? When every branch they run is corrupt and just a tool for the corporations, run from the top as long and as hard as they can get away with it? Thats what's happening at Justice, that's what's happening at FEMAS or HSD, at the FDA, Interior, Defense, well, I guess Frank Rich wrote about it today too, hopefully somebody has broken the barrier to share.

Missing

2007-05-13T09:30:00.000-07:00

If 10,000 Americans went missing, say since 9/11/01, do you think anybody would care? Do you think the press might launch a real investigation? Do you think that if it was suspected that it had something to do with the Bush Administration and/or one of their allied groups, like their religious believers, like Dobson and Robertson, and/or Blackwater type groups, the American People might wish for a different Administration, an end to the influence of their proxies like the Shia, er, Pat Robertson or the Sunni, oops, Blackwater, and the departure of these forces from our midst?

Probably how the Iraqi's feel.

Here's an idea

2007-05-10T20:30:00.000-07:00

Ms. Duckman left me this note yesterday, it sounds far too sensible, but hey, it could happen, right?

I have an idea. Why don’t we get the GOP (the rich ones that benefited so much from the tax cuts) to show some of that “compassion” they’re so proud of bragging about and help Kansas and New Orleans by actually giving their money to the victims of those disasters.

Just think of it, they could also send their company employees and equipment and use their own “expertise” (CEO knowledge) to do the work.

Just think of it! They could increase their sinking poll numbers overnight, if not in 18 months for the elections. They could actually keep those areas safe and secure from the Global Terrorists!

The National Guard in those states really could use some more resources, not to mention local hospital, fire, police, schools, justice, etc.

Do you think it could work? Hell yes!

Do you think they’ll do it?

Or better yet-what about all those rich Dems that benefited from those tax cuts? They may even be worse.

Leaving the Dems out of it for a moment, I just don't think that the people who are looting this country blind and broke are overly interested in helping anybody out. That's what you get for living in Kansas, they'll tell you.

Or you could take Colbert's attitude. I think he can explain it better than anyone. And he's so very clean and everything. Humble and modest too.

An Inappropriate President

2007-05-08T07:43:00.000-07:00

Even when its not politics or policy, but fulfilling his ceremonial functions as Head of State, George Bush is an embarrassment and unsuited for the job.

Not having enough sense, after all his years around Presidents and heads of State and as President (gulp), the fool still has to be forced to do the right thing.

What does that tell you about his sense, and his understanding of his job?

Worst. President. Ever.

The Bush Federal Government at Work

2007-05-02T21:36:00.000-07:00

And yes, I know, it probably wouldn't be much different if Kerry were President, but he isn't, and that miserable failure is, so, I love the logic that permeates the Bush Administration Executive Branch.

Via Raw Story writer Miriam Raftery, we get this story from the WaPo on Bush keeping us safe.

Hey look, they're only chickens, you don't eat chicken every day do you, it's only 5 percent of their food that was contaminated and chances are you won't be eating those particular lucky chickens anyway.

Sure, we're going to destroy, that's kill in non Bush speak, 100k chickens still alive, but, hey, nothing to worry about. As for the 2.4 million already on the market, well, best of luck to you.

That small fraction, and the fact that people, unlike pets, do not eat the same thing day after day, suggests that consumers who ate contaminated pork or chicken would probably have ingested extremely small doses of melamine, well below the threshold for causing health effects, officials said. Experts conceded, however, that they know little about how the toxin interacts with other compounds in food.

Do you feel the confidence growing? Nothing to see here, move along people.

And isn't this just another argument for the grandness of globalization? And could somebody please explain to me why it is that the United States of America, the greatest producer of wheat and corn and soy, is importing this crap from China?

Could our oil addiction be spilling over to the food supply, causing our farmers to sell our food to ADM for them to make ethanol instead of feed products? Could that be why we import food products from China, melamine poisoning central, bird flu central, SARS central, lord knows what other diseases central?

And while you're explaining that one, explain to me again how George Bush is keeping us safe from the imaginary monsters in the closet as opposed to the very real monsters running loose on Wall Street.

Blackwater Opposition Grows

2007-05-02T07:44:00.000-07:00

Jeremy Scahill is in San Diego talking up his book about Blackwater, and he'll be in La Mesa tonight at the joint La Mesa Foothills/East County Democratic Club meeting talking some more.

Even though the State Convention failed to pass a resolution opposing Blackwater and any other private armies from building in California, the subject is on the floor, and will be discussed at the LA County Democratic Central Committee meeting coming up in a few weeks.

From Scahill's Tuesday talk, consider this report from the UT, my bolds throughout.

Scahill told the audience that Blackwater is one of 180 private corporations working in Iraq, making this conflict the most privatized war in the nation's history.

“When the Bush administration failed to build a coalition of willing nations, they built a coalition of billing corporations,” he said.

Despite the increasing opposition to Blackwater's plans, Gordon Hammers, chairman of the Potrero planning group, said he is even more convinced that the training center will be good for the community of about 850 people.

In December, the Potrero planning group voted 7-0 for preliminary approval of Blackwater's plans. Since then, opposition to the project has intensified. More than 360 residents have signed a petition opposing the training center.

Nearly half the town oppose the mercenary camp, yet one guy with money thinks it'll be great for the town. Most likely because what's good for Gordon is good for Potrero. That's how conservatives think. Hopefully Hammers will walk the walk, and move to as close to the camp as possible so he can experience firsthand all the goodness a bunch of mercenaries shooting guns and driving defensive training courses and helicopter assaults and night operations can provide.

I Think They Call It Plausible Deniability

2007-04-30T23:28:00.000-07:00

(Headline fixed, thanks for correcting my spelling, y'all!)

Murray Waas somehow has dug up some damning documents from the Justice Department, you may have heard.

Let me add this. It gives Gonzales the ability to say with a straight face that he knew nothing about the firings, he just approved the decisions made without being a part of them. He didn't know anything, which is why he can't remember anything when questioned.

But ask yourself this, if you had a manager working for you who had no clue about what was happening in his office regarding personnel, would you keep him on, or fire his sorry ass and let one of the people doing the work take over. And that raises another question.

What does Gonzales do with all of that taxpayer money he gets from his salary? People issues always take up a lot of management time, that's really what managers are there for anyway, right, making sure people show up to work and work within the rules. And planning strategy and monitoring the activities of the department. So what the hell does that useless man do with his time?

Somebody needs to ask him that question.

Bill Moyer Returns

2007-04-26T06:56:00.000-07:00

I got home from work last night, turned on the teevee to see if there was anything fun on C-SPAN, but Moyer's new show was on first, and that's as far as I got.

Just in time to see Moyer's carefully and respectfully questioning "The Media" about their failed coverage of the propagandizing the cause for a war with Irak (Timmeh).

When you go back and think about it, how and when did Iraq get into the dialogue anyway? When did we go from getting the terrorists to obsessing over Hussein's intransigence, his drive towards NBC's (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, aka WMD's).

When the Beltway, Teevee media kept reporting what the White House was telling them without question. And Moyers gets those guys to expose their cowardice, their laziness, and their selfishness, every single one of them. Bob Simon, Tim Russert, Walter Isaakson, Dan Rather, all too scared of Bush and his Bullies Rover and Big Time to do their jobs.

"We might have gotten fired" or "the people would rise against us" or "our corporatations would lose access and money money money" they whined. Simply overlooking that if they had reported the truth, the facts, the relentless and never ending lies, if they hadn't buried the precious little important stuff they did report on page 18 and such of their papers or after the funny cat video, then maybe the American People could have figured things out instead of getting swept up in a war fever thanks to the utterly one sided propaganda of the Bush Administratin and the Big Time Media.

Yes, you need to watch the video. Moyers destroys them all very politely, pointedly, yet he asks the questions and gets answers that no invective blogging would ever get. He shows those fat cat and useless media tools exactly how you balance being on the inside and asking tough questions, he shows Tim Russert precisely, by demonstrating on ol Timmeh, how he should be doing his job, still keeping access, but actually holding up the powers that be to the light of truth.

Well done.

On the Defensive?

2007-04-22T21:12:00.000-07:00

Just read this piece from the Huffington Post via TPM.

How excited were we to have our first opportunity ever to talk directly to the Bush Administration about global warming.

We asked Mr. Rove if he would consider taking a fresh look at the science of global warming. Much to our dismay, he immediately got combative. And it went downhill from there.

I just can't let that pass, because it tells so much about the way things have turned for the Bushites. Turned towards the good for the country. Because 2 years ago, we would never hear about such an exchange. And Rover would never have been so nasty in public either. The rich and powerful don't respond to the will of the amorphus "people." They respond to power. He's wrong, of course, as his salary does come from the US Treasury, of course how much money he's making on the side remains to be seen, maybe White House advisor is a side job for him, eh?

As Josh has noted earlier, Abu's testimony didn't do anything for the White House, I was listening to the testimony this morning when Sen Feinstein asked him who made up the List, because somebody had to put the names down, and since Gonzales couldn't remember but said it wasn't him, and since Sampson testified that he was an aggregater but never put anybody on the list, and Battle knew nothing about it, attention has to swing to the White House for authorship.

And that can't make Karl too happy. And it's long past time for the country to see that odious man under the glare of the camera lens, long past time. That's part of what sank McCarthy, it didn't do Nixon much good, and it should have buried Bush after the first debate with Kerry, so seeing Karl in all of his glory should just about seal the deal, I'm thinking.

Why, you ask? Because Karl isn't Karl when he's being Karl, if you follow me. He's being himself when he's manipulating and managing somebody else. That won't work when he's the one under the lights, now will it?

They're Not Indispensible

2007-04-19T22:36:00.000-07:00

Two men, same story. Both soft spoken to the point of insipidness. Both feckless, fawning, toadies to the Bush/Cheney Axis of Venal. Both consider themselves as more important than the institutions they serve.

Says Bush's favorite death enabler, “I am committed to working with you in trying to restore the faith and confidence you need to work with me,” as if keeping his job was the main thrust of the hearings.

Says the neo-con warmongering ideologue, [l]ook, I believe in the mission of this organization, and I believe that I can carry it out. I've had many expressions of support, as well as the things that you referred to. I come back to what we agreed to in that communique, which is that we need to work our way through this, because it's more important for him to stay on as Bank President then it is to restore the credibility of the Bank. Really. Look, it's been a painful time for Paul. He said so himself.

Not only was this a painful personal dilemma, but I had to deal with it when I was new to this institution, and I was trying to navigate in uncharted waters.

Yes, that's right, ladies and germs, it hurt him deeply to get his girlfriend a big fat raise and a nice position out of his spit shined hair. Jeebus.

Gonzales, of course, takes the cake. In this version of the AP story they quote this gem: "The notion that there was something that was improper that happened here is simply not supported," Gonzales said, but, as they also noted in the article, you have to wonder how he would know that, given the [s]eventy-one times he fell back on faulty memory, saying he could not recall or remember conversations or events surrounding the firings.

After weeks of highly intensive "preparation" (another instance of a word reaching new heights of redefinition by the Bushites) this was the best that Gonzales could come up with? I still don't effing remember? In a normal world such a miserable memory would be cause for the removal of such a manager as simply intolerable. In the real world you don't become a powerful manager by being unable to remember the details and content of important meetings, it just doesn't work that way.

So clearly there is something else to this. Part of the strategy to impede, stall, and delay, justice and any rollback of the multi headed Bush/Cheney/Corporate/Neo-Con agenda, and part to keep in place those people who will carry out said agenda as long as possible. Look, there are plenty of people who could preside over the World Bank as well as and even better than Wolfowitz. Likewise for Gonzales. (D'oh, ya think?) But how many would carry out the corruption, the protection, the delusions, the coverups, and the abuse of those institutions for benefit of the Axis of Venal like Abu Gonzales and Wolfie?

The World Bank doesn't have a mechanism for removing the President. But they don't have a mechanism for NOT removing him either. So here's a suggestion. Get together, agree that he's a blight and an embarassment and a pox on their credibility, and fire his ass.

Congress does have a solution for Gonzales. Monday, the House should begin impeachment proceedings against him, then impeach him, then send him over to the Senate, where they can convict him for lying serially to Congress and obstructing justice and perjury.

Then let's see Bush pick replacements with integrity. Hahahahahahahahahahahaha ha!!!!

For Blacksburg

2007-04-16T21:16:00.000-07:00

Darkness, Darkness
Be my pillow
Take my head
And let me sleep
In the coolness of your shadow
In the silence of your deep

Darkness, Darkness
Hide my yearning
For the things I cannot be
Keep my mind from constant turning
Toward the things I cannot see now
Things I cannot see now
Things I cannot see

Darkness, darkness,
Long and lonesome,
Ease the day that brings me pain.
I have felt the edge of sadness,
I have known the depth of fear.
Darkness, darkness, be my blanket,
Cover me with the endless night,
Take away, take away the pain of knowing,
Fill the emptiness of right now,
Emptiness of right now, now, now
Emptiness of ri-ight now.

Darkness, darkness, be my pillow,
Take my hand, and let me sleep.
In the coolness of your shadow,
In the silence, the silence of your deep.
Darkness, darkness, be my blanket,
Cover me with the endless night,
Take away, take away the pain of knowing
Fill the emptiness of right now,
Emptiness of right now now now
Emptiness of right....
Oh yeah Oh yeah
Emptiness, emptiness
Oh yeah

Poem 58

The way you talk
The things you've done
Make me wish I
Was the only one
Who could ever have made you laugh now
Could have made you
Made you want to cry
To have been there the day
You first whispered "I love you"
Yes I love you

When you discovered
All those new things
And when you first
First met the world
When you felt beautiful
And you said hello
To everything you saw
If I could have been all
So I could have known you all those times
I love you
Yes, I love you
Yes I do

Jimi Hendrix said that Terry Kath played better guitar than he did. I dunno, but he certainly takes your breath away on that song.

My condolences and thoughts to the people of Blacksburg.

What Bush Has Accomplished.

2007-04-16T07:26:00.000-07:00

Watching CNBC this morning, they were talking about how the Market has hit a "New Seven Year High" and how great and wonderful that is.

Just to put that in some sort of perspective, what that really means is that under the Bush Administration auspices, the Market has rturned to levels that were last seen during the Clinton Administration. So basically, we're back where we left off under the leadership of the last President with a functioning frontal lobe.

Despite all of the record profits for the Exxon Mobile's and all, and I mean all, of the money that private equity firms have corraled from Bush's tax giveaways to the rich, we're as a nation of investors no better off then we were before this disastrous and deluded and wrong thinking presidency usurped their way into power.

Here's a decent business friendly run down of private equity firms, just note this tidbit:

The headlines about private equity have focused on the dollars rushing in. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts proposes buying Vivendi for $50 billion, a record-sized deal that would have been unthinkable just a year ago. Blackstone Group announces that it's raising a $20 billion fund, the biggest ever. Private-equity firms already own a growing stable of America's most famous companies - Hertz, Neiman Marcus and Toys "R" Us, among others.

Yes, private-equity deals are making investors rich. In the 12 months through last June, investments in PE firms returned 22.5 percent, vs. 6.6 percent for the S&P 500, says Thomson Financial.

Over the past ten years, the score is 11.4 percent a year vs. 6.6 percent; over the past 20 years, 14.2 percent vs. 9.8 percent. Those are significant differences, and some critics charge that huge fees and sweetheart deals with management are siphoning value from public shareholders.

That's what Bush has accomplished. He's enabled the transfer of vast sums of public equity and public earnings into the coffers of the rich and the richer. Never forget that fact.

Peeling Back the Web of Lies

2007-04-13T21:34:00.000-07:00

You never know where an investigation is going to lead you, and this business about the USA's is a classic example of that.

What started out as a series of questions about the firings of a handful of US Attorney's has gotten out of the control of Rover and his team of bankrupt bullies. A bunch of people, including Republicans, have said that if they had told the truth from the beginning this would have all blown over in a week or two. Me, I'm not convinced of that, first of all, if it comes from the right it's a pretty much some flavor of lie, excepting the foma they would never use, second because I don't believe that they could just tell the truth.

Not because they're incapable of truth telling, a not unreasonable conclusion to arrive at, but because there is no acceptable version of the truth to this story that wouldn't have started this ball rolling, once the Democrats regained control of Congress. And why? Because the people they wanted to fire, specifically Carol Lam, were right in the middle of serious investigations that would require explanation from Congress. And telling them they fired her because they wanted to was not, and is not, cutting it.

But they had to fire her, because her road was going to end up in Dick Cheney's office, hell it already has, so they came up with a cover story to obfuscate, confuse, muddy the water is todays term, delay, trivialize, delay, and so on. Even if it costs them the Presidents favorite counselor, Alberto Gonzales, a willing sacrifice no doubt.

Ah, Dick Cheney, can't you just smell the sharp tang of petroleum products in the air at the mere mention of his name? Here's a reminder of what all of the actions of Bush/Cheney really boil down to, a story I don't recall seeing much, Laura Rozen linked it from her article above, but you really should read it to see our government in action. It has all the ingredients, and here's a taste.

"There were statements made: 'Don't bother the oil companies,' " Maxwell told the House Natural Resources Committee, which is investigating allegations of mismanagement in the royalty program run by the Minerals Management Service of the Interior Department.

[snip...]According to Interior Department data, enforcement revenue averaged well over $100 million a year during the 1990s, peaking at more than $331 million in 2000. In the six years since then, enforcement revenue has averaged about $46 million a year.

[snip...]The inspector general estimated that the Interior Department had reduced the number of auditors by 15 percent since 2000 and was completing about 22 percent fewer audits than it had six years earlier.

"It does appear that we're getting ripped off, plain and simple," said Rep Nick Rahall 2nd., a Democrat from West Virginia ...

The Interior Department is under fire for other problems in the royalty program as well. It is struggling without much success to correct leasing mistakes that could allow oil companies to escape $10 billion in royalties over the next decade or so.

And so the US Attorney investigation rumbles on, and now it has Rover in the crosshairs. for violations not directly related to the Purge, 5 million freakin e-mails????? Over 6 years, 50 people would average 45 e-mails every day of the year to write that much stuff. Peel the Bush White House onion and everything turns to ashes, lies and deceit. Everything. That story above, they were ripping off Indian Tribes too, you wonder who was involved in that? We don't need a special prosecutor, we need Elliot Ness to clean out this whole rat's nest of RICO violations. The Democrats need to start impeaching Bush's Patriot Act replacement USA's. They need to start removing Bush's appointees wherever they can, but Justice is the place to start. This simply cannot continue, we can't allow them to run out the clock. And don't think I'm criticizing Congressional Democrats at all, I'm not. I'm just saying what I think they need to do.

The thing that I fear, and you can see the media and rover setting it up, is that when the soulless Gonzales resigns to go back to spending time scrabbling in the dirt he "rose" up from, is that will be the end of these investigations.

Rover is setting up Gonzales, he being the perfect empty vessel following orders from his leaders, as the focus of all things evil in this White House. The media, being at turns complicit, lazy, shallow, insipid, and corporate, will certainly sniff at Gonzales' fall, then search eagerly for the first distraction to toss over his still warm carcass, but will Congress, the Blogs, and the Real Media do the same?

Not if I can help it, me and my legion of readers.

More US Attorney purge

2007-04-11T08:58:00.000-07:00

Yes, I can't get enough of it, and so, dear readers, neither can you!

I just wanted to bring attention to this graph from Glenn Greenwald's piece yesterday. For all the apologists and trolls who think that having a Justice Department that you can't trust to do the right thing regardless of the political party being investigated, explain to me why, if this is a whole lot of nothing, why Gonzales and company can't cooperate with the Congressional investigators? [My highlights]

Much of the evidence is, admittedly, circumstantial, but that is so precisely because we have not yet had full hearings with the key witnesses/culprits and full disclosure of key documents. And the reason the pool of information is still so incomplete is because the White House, cheered on by the national media, has steadfastly refused to reveal what it knows (and what it did), choosing instead to hide behind precarious assertions of "executive privilege."

Just like the Libby trial and conviction, there's nothing here yet because the Administration is hiding, covering-up, and probably destroying, the evidence.

And that tells us why there's no there there, because they don't want us to discover the truth. It's just like the stupid Anna Nicole paternity thing, the guy trying to block the DNA testing did so because he knew he wasn't the father. It's really as simple as that. We all can understand some reluctance to air out dirty laundry on the part of normal people, but this intransigence goes way beyond reluctance. It's part and parcel of how the Bushites operate, and they do it for a reason.

Because their actions are not in the least bit concerned with the interests of the American People, with our Nation, our Laws, our Traditions, or our Founding Principles. It's all about keeping the power they essentially stole and using it to perpetuate their corporate and neo-con and insane fundie wet dreams. Plain and simple.

Demonstrating Values

2007-04-10T22:39:00.000-07:00

Here's a post from DKos that bears repeating, it's something I've been saying for years. It's a modest proposal that works on several different levels at the same time.

Devilstower argues that the money being raised for the 2008 election, some $1 billion dollars is an early estimate for the presidential candidates, is not spent very efficiently. The law of dimishing returns and our experience tells us that the 7th phone call to vote for Bill Richardson, the nth repetition of the same commercial, the 49th flyer stuffed in the mail box and deposited directly into the recycling can have a marginal impact that belies their cost, and that a candidate would be smart to do something else with that money. And he's right, I've done phone banking, and people get tired of the repeat phone calls rather quickly, nobody reads the mail crap after a while, and the commercials lose their grip after a while.

So Devilstower suggests that the candidates give a tenth of their campaign contributions to charity. As a DEMONSTRATION OF THEIR VALUES, although he didn't say it that way, that's how I've been saying for years. Rather than give their money for endless and destructive teevee commercials that tell the voters nothing, give it to charity, and get free publicity for doing it, I mean, of course the teevee would cover John Edwards giving Katrina Reconstruction $5 million dollars, that would rebuild a couple of houses and roads in New Orleans, or Barack dumping $5 million into the coffers of the MLK Foundation, or whatever charity these people like.

And the best part of it? The Networks and Cable Companies get none of that money. The Networks and Cable Companies who have attacked and smeared and trivialized and denegrated and marginalized Democrats for the past 20 years or so, ever since the Big Corporations sold out to the tawdry lures of the GOP.

Yes, I think it's a grand idea, it doesn't need to be charity per se, it could be funding Yearly Kos, or a Blogger Conference on Ethics, or Air America, or to staff a Democratic Think Tank, or to Broadcast Al Gore's movie, whatever, the point being to DEMONSTRATE DEMOCRATIC VALUES without buying a bunch of air time from the same people trying to destroy our Constitution and freedom loving way of life.

Politicizing Function

2007-04-10T22:07:00.000-07:00

That's what this USA Purge is doing in the long term, even as the White House uses the US Attorneys to push their bogus voter fraud schemes, their Democratic investigations, and stopping their Republican investigations.

Way back in 1982 or so, I saw the Reagan WH doing the same thing to the environment via James Watt and his disciple Gail Norton, and that's when I got involved in politics, in my own small way, opposing the politization of the Executive Branch, opposing their corporate giveaways, opposing their unending violations of precedent and reasonable decorum. Looking back, of course, I realize what pikers they were, or maybe since they didn't own Congress it was just a matter of limitations imposed on them by a slightly less corrupt Democratic Congress.

Regardless, what we see today is the fruits of those labors begun in earnest by the Reagan Republicans. This CBS News article makes the case for the damage being done at the Justice Department. The writer is particularly blunt in his words discussing the actions of the Bush Administration. He concludes thus:

When you populate an office with ideologues and partisans and underachieving talent, you get an ideological and partisan office with underachieving results. And if there is any department in our federal system that can least afford to be ideological and partisan and underachieving, it is the Justice Department. This sorry state is true today, regardless of how and when the scandal over the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys is resolved. Of all the dismaying legal legacies left by this administration, this one surely ranks near the top.

Read the article, because it gives a deeper layer of context to the United States Attorney Purge. It shows the shortsighted and destructive consequences of the Mayberry Machiavellis, whose determination to seize and hold political power for their corporate masters and their stupid, ignorant, and just plain stupid and deluded ideology has led us to this point in history. The Corps, they don't mind the stupidity of Bush/Cheney/Rove and their ideology since they profit so handsomely from it, but for real, caring, human, people, we pay twice for their insanity, once to the Corps, once to the consequences of their wilful destruction of our government and its many and varied agencies, like our military and our justice system.

If you want a reason to impeach these fuckers, pardon my french but there it is, look no further than the Justice Department. And when Bush nominates his replacement for the faithful cur Alberto Gonzales, press your Senators, no blank check, no free pass, no uncritical deference because that crank is the President and he deserves the cabinet he wants. Screw that, he deserves nothing but a one way plane ticket to Amersterdam, which is in the same country as The Hague, if you know what I mean.

Local Politics Same as National Politics

2007-04-09T10:20:00.000-07:00

Talk about corporate welfare, check out this beauty from the sleepy confines of not very sunny today San Diego.

First, a brief backgrounder. San Diego is a former Sleepy Navy Town that has been long dominated by Developers, Developers who would be perfectly content to pave over every inch of San Diego County if they could make money on it. With the drawdown in our military forces since the collapse of the Soviet Union, all of that juicy military property is a Grail of some sort for the developers, right on the bayfront of downtown San Diego, in places like the Broadway Pier Complex, right next to the cruise ship terminals, Ruth Chris Steakhouse, the USS Midway Museum, the Seaport Village tourist trap, Petco Park (home of the Padres) and an astonishing number of new high rise condo projects; and Liberty Station, former home of the USMC Recruit Depot, a scandal just waiting to be exposed, but not here.

And with development comes infrastructure, comes more development, comes taxpayer "improvements" meant to, well, improve the facilities and accommodations and constructions and businesses of the developed area. And of course, taxpayer money.

Take this noise abatement boondoggle in the article. From an estimate of $3.5 million to $16.7 million in two years, but that's okay, coz [t]he Centre City Development Corp. will pay for the Quiet Zone and nearly 60 percent of the suspension bridge with property taxes collected from downtown redevelopment. So who made the initial estimate, and the subsequently revised one in November for $7 million? And how did that revision get it so wrong, did I mention it was in November, electoral November, 4 months ago? But it's okay coz it gets paid for by property taxes for downtown redevelopment, remember? I'd like to see a breakdown on how much individual taxpayers are putting out to satisfy the downtown condo developers and how much the developers are paying. Might be revealing to see who is really paying for this, and it might be revealing to speculate on what tha extra money could get for the citizens of the City, like beginning to address the chronic sewer system failures or fixing the sorry road system in Downtown San Diego. As opposed to the Downtown Developers garnering the vast majority of the benefits, thanks to the kindness of the taxpayer. Now, I know what you're thinking, there goes Duckman ranting against the evil corporations.

Well, yeah, I am. I know that they aren't all bad, in concept, but the fact is that they have garnered so much power that they are totally out of control, so I oppose them, I rant about them, I try to show the disparities wherever I can, big and small. So these Downtown Developers who have been running San Diego County, not just the city, for decades, earn my ire.

You want more? Here's another oneThis article is just a part of the battle, as city attorney Mike Aguirre battles with other developers who basically want to take over the Municipal Airport on Kearney Mesa for development, it is a big chunk of flat ground and all, that's what this Sunroad brouha is all about, yet another example of Developer malfeasence and influence and even control of the government of San Diego. I mean, follow the story line for this garbage.

Jerry Sanders is oh so popular with San Diegans, thanks to his stint as Police Chief, and a successful(?) re-org of the local Red Cross after Their past financial scandals. He seemed moderate and reasonable, an upstanding citizen. Then along comes this strong mayor proposal that passes with the voters, and suddenly Sanders starts acting like a low level George W Bush, not sociopathic I'll grant you, and it's business as usual. The Developers are in heaven. It's like Michael Corleone and Hyman Roth's owned government in Cuba, only slightly less messy.

Check this out, does it sound like nothing to see here?

But first to the search warrant, and its case against Story:

Story left City Hall in July 2005 (though he continued getting paid into November).

He was told by a city Ethics Commission staff member in October that for one year he was restricted from contacting city officials on any project that he had worked on at City Hall.

Story soon was hired as Sunroad's vice president of development. His qualifications were solid: Before becoming Mayor Dick Murphy's senior policy adviser and chief of staff, he was a deputy planning director. In that role, he worked on a development agreement for the site where Sunroad is constructing its too-tall building. In his first year away from City Hall, Story e-mailed former colleagues seeking their help with his project. He also contacted city employees through intermediaries. In attached e-mails, city planners seem to bend over backward to help out Sunroad – or as one put it, to “make Tom Story happy. :)”

(Yes, that's a smiley face.)

The lobbying restriction was created precisely to prevent such favorable treatment – the kind the rest of us never get.

But the police chief didn't serve the search warrant, he called Mayor Sanders, the guy Story used to work for. And then all and sundry spent the next week slamming the City Attorney for serving the warrant and then outing the duplicity of the police chief.

Not attacking the warrant so much as, does this sound a wee bit familiar, the guy who proposed it. Is this anything different than Gonzales and Rove and Cheney and Feith and Libby and Novak and Boehner and Matthews and Russert and DeLay and Hunter and pretty much every stinking Republican in this country?

And it isn't about religion is it? It has always been about the tool of money, of power and greed and corporate control of our nation. Big or small, they all follow the same pattern, abuse of power to favor those who put you into power.

AND RIGHT NOW IT IS ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY A REPUBLICAN OPERATION, so spare me the Democratic examples.

Finally, an unrelated, maybe, question for those who get this far. Why is it that teevee always shows the Ten Commandments on Easter weekend? I mean, Moses came along before Jesus, right? And while Passover does fall around Easter, it varies quite a bit. So why do they always play the Jewish Story on Jesus' Weekend? One has relatively nothing to do with the other, yet that's what you can expect to watch on Easter Weekend, Chuck Heston all shiny with sweat and reluctant to take on the responsibility laid out for him by God. Or is it just a conspiracy of the Hollywood Jews to subvert their will over the Christians on Resurrection Sunday?

And I know it's all just a spring holiday celebrating the rebirth of plants and good weather and what not, and I understand that Jesus was a Jew andthe Last Supper was probably a Passover dinner, but really, the Ten Commandments story has nothing to do with Christ, so, what gives?

Issa Trip Exposes WH Irrelevence

2007-04-06T08:07:00.000-07:00

[Cross posted at DKos. And all bolds are mine.]

That's really what Darrell Issa has done, and judging by Bush's comments, it's obvious even to him, well, maybe his handlers. Funny, on the same day that Dick Cheney is trotting out that absurd canard about Hussein and al Qaeda being linked in unholy matrimony, Issa is in Damascus saying this:

He told reporters in the Middle East that Bush has failed to promote the dialogue necessary to resolve disagreements between the United States and Syria.

“That's an important message to realize: We have tensions, but we have two functioning embassies,”

As the reporter writes,

Whatever else Issa's trip may have accomplished, it seemed to take what little air was left out of the partisan rage over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's meeting with Assad just a day earlier.

President Bush's sharp criticism of Pelosi for her visit left the White House little room to move when asked about Issa's travels.

Events are leaving Bush behind, his policy of isolating Syria serves no purpose except to make war more likely and peaceful solutions to the chaos in Iraq less likely. Which, as we all know, is the Bush Administration objective, and why they need to be removed from office, as soon as possible, rather than later. When Cheney keeps trotting out his delusion speak to try to wrest the dialogue back to his perverted view of things, and when faithful soldiers like Issa slap Bush policy in the face, you know these guys have lost their standing. Like the chicken dashing about sans head, they just haven't had the reality sink in yet.

Consider this comment from Cheney's interview. He's also said the same thing if the bills are loaded up with pork, on nonessential spending. That would be to veto the supplemental spending bill of course. And by non-essential spending Cheney means funds for the victims of Katrina and FEMA, funds to ameliorate some of the devastating effects of the drought on our farmers, gosh, funds to improve the care and treatment of the Veterans maimed by Cheney's delusion run rampant and Veterans from past service to this nation. Yes, that's mighty non-essential isn't it?

Look, this Administration has been, in actual political reality, wrong or totally inappropriate on everything they've done or decided. Granted that they have done all of these things to perpetuate their clawlike grip on power for their real constituency, Wall Street and the Corporate Boardroom, that world is not the everyday world of people's lives, and those more or less removed from their rovian world are showing some inclination to try to return this country back to reality for the people.

Those most invested in BushCo, like limbaugh or Dobson or Doolittle or Lewis or Hatch will not change, but the tide of history is starting to turn against these lunatics, because what they want to do is not sustainable in the real world. We will see more and more of the Issa's of the country turn against these guys, and not a day to soon.

This business with Syria is a perfect demonstration of the realities, and the criminal values of Bush's "policies" as they play out in that real world. It's absurd, and detrimental, and only serves one purpose, to further their war, and all of the benefits that BushCo derives from that. Money, Power, Junkets, House and Senate Fiefdoms, Radio Talk Show Fiefdoms, did I mention Money and Power? And I don't think a place in heaven with virgins and grapes and what not is a part of what they want for themselves.

Time and Religion in the Schools

2007-04-03T23:18:00.000-07:00

I got an e-mail from DEFCON today, and i sent Time a response on their cover story about teaching religion in schools. I also read most of the first of 4 pages of the article from Time. After swallowing some vomit I dutifully sent Time a letter, the essence being that, well, read on please, I'll bold my favorite parts.

There is no reason to be teaching the Bible in public schools, carefully or otherwise.

The Bible is a compilation of moral and religious teachings. Public schools are for educating minor children in the fundamentals of reading, mathematics, scientific methodology, engineering, artistic expression, logic, and reason. You know, tools and building blocks for future growth.

You can't "teach" the Bible in the schools without including all of the moralizing, the values, the dogmatic belief systems, the faith, and the righteousness. Not to mention, whose Bible are you going to teach? The Jewish Bible (hey, it came first you know), the Catholic one, the Methodist one, what about the Koran or the Hindu sacred texts? What about something for the atheists or the deists, what kind of Bible are you going to bring for them? Somebody else’s?

For a magazine that has more time for writing articles then a newspaper, it's pretty shocking how shallow you have become. It's like you're trying to compress seven days of car chase stupidity into a weekly magazine, instead of doing in depth and truly thoughtful and well researched work.

Why didn't Time do the story on the conditions at Walter Reed, instead of a daily newspaper? Why hasn't Time researched the purge of the US Attorney's and the lies and dissembling from Gonzales and Crew that have followed the revelations of the Purge? How many people have resigned from the White House so far because of that story, and yet you want to write dreck about teaching that damnable book in Public Schools?

I guess because the religious fundamentalists of America have been screaming and shoving their precious Bible down our throats, it behooves the public schools to cave into that fundamentalist revisionism and start teaching their creed, since, to quote your lovely piece, "But then religion rushed into the public square."

All by itself it rushed into the public square, right? Dobson and Falwell and Robertson and Reagan and Bush evangelicalizing and fomenting their neo-fundamentalism on America, and we're expected to accept that frame and buy into the notion that Religion, IXOYE style, is an intrinsic part of the American psyche, so gosh, we better teach it in the public schools.

If Thomas Jefferson were alive today he'd probably spend all of his days fused to his toilet, vomiting in despair and revulsion at what America is becoming, the antithesis of what the American Revolution was all about, a revolution of mind and spirit that Jefferson expressed in our Declaration of Independence. Teaching religion in the schools because a bunch of hypocritical blowhards with access and influence want to propagate their insidious fundamentalism hardly seems like a reason for rejecting the very foundations of this country.

But hey, your religion writer had a deadline to meet, right?
[Was that too harsh for Time? Think they'll publish it?]

Brent Wilkes Plays Carol Lam Card

2007-04-03T07:05:00.000-07:00

Brent Wilkes lawyer, Mark Geragos, the same guy trying to screw the city of San Diego for Alex Spanos, has his hand in the Brent Wilkes Randy Cunningham scandal too. Now he's playing the card dealt him by A Gonzales for his client, Brent Wilkes.

A lawyer for former Poway defense contractor Brent Wilkes told a judge yesterday “there is no way” his client will plead guilty to charges stemming from the Randy “Duke” Cunningham bribery scandal.

The lawyer, Mark Geragos, also said he planned to seek dismissal of the case because he has reason to believe former U.S. Attorney Carol Lam may have leaked secret grand jury documents to the media.

Even though Ms. Lam's dismissal for cause has been well and truly repudiated, the issue opens enough of a door for a snake like Geragos to stick his foot in, with this claim that Lam leaked grand jury documents, he hopes to get Wilkes off without a trial.

So far, the judge doesn't seem to be buying it, and given what I remember from local reporting, I can't recall any reporting based on GJ leaks that amounted to anything more than the whisper that Wilkes and Foggo were going to be indicted, and given that we all were quite familiar with their involvement, that wasn't much of a leak.

But it's enough for Geragos, that suggestion of impropriety, and he's going to try to use the Democratic investigations of the USA Purges to bolster his case.

In court he referred to e-mails – unearthed as part of the congressional investigation of the controversial firings of Lam and seven other U.S. attorneys – that supposedly bolster his position. After court, he would not elaborate.

Fortunately the case seems to be proceeding, and I have to like the comments later in that article that suggest Geragos is full of it.

A scenario in which Lam was thwarted by the Justice Department, then leaked documents to the press to ultimately obtain indictments, seemed far-fetched to some lawyers familiar with the office's protocols for obtaining indictments.

“If the Justice Department balked, I would think they would not give approval and she wouldn't have returned the indictment,” said defense attorney Charles LaBella, a former San Diego U.S. attorney. “I just can't imagine a U.S. attorney would ignore the approval process. It's not consistent with how Carol operated.”

But consistent with how a Bushite would operate. So the judge will hear arguments on May 14, and he's set a trial date before September.

Just remember, Wilkes is the one with all of the dealings with the Congressmen, Hunter and Doolittle and DeLay etc. He's the one involved with the CIA, he's the one who probably is/was CIA, and with his procurement buddy Foggo, he's the one that can uncover a lot of the general corruption of the Republicans in Congress. I don't know who's a bigger fish, Wilkes or Abramoff, but it's worth a full scale investigation to find out. Here's hoping the Interim USA for San Diego is a professional and not a crony. More on that later.

An Amusing Sensibility

2007-04-01T21:39:00.000-07:00

I can't get past this paragraph in the latest battle over this Sunroad building being constructed near Montgomery Field, a commuter airport in the busy commercial district of Kearney Mesa here in San Diego. Home to Cubic and Titan and many other corporations, Sunroad has risen like a blight on the airport.

Despite FAA objections, but with the support of unnamed City planners, the building continues to reach skyward, 180 feet, alas the FAA has a limit of 160 feet, but nobody seems to care. Read the article, it gives a pretty good rundown of the machinations of business getting what they want despite governmental objections, but take especial stock of this graph and my bolded part:

Those permits were issued before the FAA was made aware of the building and declared it a hazard. City building officials have said they had no indication before the FAA's declaration that a tall building near the airport would be dangerous.

No idea at all!

The problem here is twofold, one that the City Planners are entrenched conservatives who have always favored business over the public and the community, and secondly that business is a part of the community peripherally at best. You can see that play out time after time, when Ford plays town after town against each other for the latest factory, when a Circuit City devastates their workforce with their disgusting job cut/pay cut proposal, when Blackwater tries to run roughshod over some tiny little mountain/border community in order to build a "training" facility, one that would sure make privatizing the Border patrol all that much easier.

Yes, it's as old as civilization, the dangerous overreaching always laying in wait to seize advantage and accumulate the wealth of the community for its self. Which is why we must oppose it, to restore balance and equilibrium. At all levels of society. From DC to SD to NOLA and all points in between.

The Bush Administration and You

2007-03-30T23:29:00.000-07:00

I cite these articles to remind you what the Bush Administration is all about. If you thought it was about Christ, you're wrong, Christ is just a tool these people use to activate their base for the dirty grunt work of signs and thuggery and intimidation and bal, er, envelope stuffing.

If you thought it was American Exceptionalism, well, that's just propaganda for the patriotic people too busy trying to keep afloat to pay attention.

Thinking it was geopolitical hegemony to protect our oil, well, that's closer, but it's more a symptom than a cause.

No, this is what they're all about, and don't forget it.

Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans – those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 – receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows.

The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.

Everytime you hear Sen. Grassley toss aside a comment about how well the economy is doing, everytime the Wall Street Trumpeters wax poetic about the greatness of the latest chart topping DOW number, just 30 companies out of the thousands traded on the stock markets or in private hands you realize, recognize that they aren't talking about you or I.

Now that gas has gone over 3 dollars again, and is likely to stay there, let's see, it's gone up about 50 percent in the last 2 years say, but has your income gone up that much in the same time frame? Talk about priorities, how's this for priorities?

“The nation faces some very tough choices in coming years,” he said. “That such a large share of the income gains are going to the very top, at a minimum, raises serious questions about continuing to provide tax cuts averaging over $150,000 a year to people making more than a million dollars a year, while saying we do not have enough money” to provide health insurance to 43 million Americans and cutting education benefits.

Here's some other stats to choke on: The new data also show that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. That's about 1 percent of our population of around 300 million people making as much money as nearly half the country, 150 million Americans.

And the same thing seems to be happenng in Canada too. Coincidence? I don't think so. The fact is that everything the bushites have done has been to strip this nation of her wealth and put it into the hands of a select few. Hell, of the world really. That's why trouble makers like Hugo Chavez cause such vitriol. That's why Rove plots and schemes and lies and intimidates to perpetuate republican control, why Dan Burton gets so pissed off at Henry Waxman for pounding that hapless tool running the GSA, that's why Carol Lam gets fired for doing her job their way until she started looking at them, why my least favorite Senator ever, Orrin Hatch, licks the boots of Kyle Sampson for the Bush regime.

What did Bush do when he first got into the White House? Loosen all the bonds of responsibility he could for business, especially big business, and push those big tax cuts, "right away!"

This is the rhetoric about the economy: After meeting with economic advisers and members of his cabinet at his ranch here, Bush said the economy is humming in large part because Republicans cut taxes aggressively during his first term in office and are ahead of pace to cut the deficit in half by 2009. "The economy of the United States is strong and the foundation for sustained growth is in place," Bush told reporters. Yet at the same time the PEOPLE say this: Yet the economic gains have not translated into political benefits for Bush, as recent polling shows a majority of Americans are not satisfied with the president's handling of economic issues. People are expressing concern to pollsters about several economic factors, including gas prices, health care costs and whether the housing bubble is about to burst. That's because of this, from the Times article above, read those bold numbers and weep.

[A]verage incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent. The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.

That's what the Bush administration is all about. Money for them, none for you.

Grilled Mueller with Avocado Butter

2007-03-27T22:24:00.000-07:00

I just got home and I was watching an enjoyable performance on the teevee. No, it wasn't some symphonic masterpiece, a reunion concert of a bunch of old and withered rock stars, not even the running of a classic black and white Japanese Kurosawa film. Nope, it was simply a display of elective consequence.

Robert Mueller was squirming under the disbelieving questions of a handful of Senators, trying desperately to justify and explain the actions of the FBI, aided of course by that Senator from Alabama, Sessions, and the whiner from Utah. Last year, Mueller would have had a couple of glare downs with Sen. Feinstein, maybe some curt words with Sen. Leahy, and that would've been that. Just another drive-by bricking of America's windows, and soon done.

But not this time. And it was a pleasure to see.

It happened, Mueller said, because of "mistakes, carelessness, confusion, lack of training, lack of guidance and lack of adequate oversight."

Then came this line, which senators didn't find reassuring either:

The FBI's use of inaccurate information to obtain secret search warrants? The problem was "very lengthy documents . . . with thousands of facts."

See, this is what we voted for, an end to this nonsense. Feinstein and company aren't buying the incompetence canard so much, because they don't have to. And when you look at the forces peeling back the layers of corruption being revealed by the purging of those US Attorney's, you see substantive, concrete, changes thanks to 11/7/06.

Just listen to the bleating from the Bobo's and Broder's out there, trying in their own timorous ways to head off the Democratic investigations threaten their grip on power. They know that once this train gets a rollin there will be no stopping it. And know this, my friends, for all of its horrors and heartbreak, for all of the destruction being wrought to both Iraq and the United States, the Iraq Invasion and Occupation is not the heart of the matter, is not the purpose and mission of this Administration.

Iraq, al Qaeda, Incompetence, US Attorney's, NSA spying, Evolution in Kansas, Mexicans at the Border, all these things are symptoms or distractions or both for what they really want, a Corporate Government. They don't want to do the actual governing work, that's too tedious and quaint. They just want to be the puppet master greasing the skids for their access to all of that USA cash.

That's what is a the center of the US Attorney purge, Carol Lam's investigation. Josh Marshall has been all over this from the get go, and every day it gets darker and higher up the food chain. Don't think this is about Alberto, no this is all about stopping Lam's investigation, and if we have to fire some decent people and gut 6 or 8 other investigations in the process, so be it.

Consider this piece from Copley News Service

First came the May 11, 2006, exchange between Justice Department officials suggesting Lam's removal, the day after she notified them she would serve search warrants on former CIA Executive Director Kyle “Dusty” Foggo.

It was a week later that Mercer revealed in an e-mail that Lam's situation “now has Frist's attention” – referring to then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Republican struggling to ensure his party retained control of the Senate in the upcoming November elections.

Two weeks after that, Mercer questioned the wisdom of giving Lam more resources.

The day after this Mercer missive, Sampson directed Mercer in an e-mail to have a “heart-to-heart” with Lam about “the urgent need to improve immigration enforcement in San Diego.”

“Put her on a very short leash,” Sampson wrote. “If she balks – or otherwise does not perform in a measurable way by July 15, remove her.”

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what's happening here, it's all about the contracts and the access and the jobs for spouses and the burnishing of the image with those lavish charity dinners that cretins like Randy Cunningham wallowed in, the dismantling of the structures and reputations of our government so they can replace it with something more lucrative. That's the Heart of the Matter. And that's what these investigations are going to reveal. Because they've stepped on too many people to get to this place, people once on their side but now tossed aside or under the bus, and much like an Iraqi whose home has been invaded by American GI's, revenge is their coin.

Senatorial Embarassment

2007-03-21T23:38:00.000-07:00

Watched VP Gore tonight talking to the Senate. Inhofe musta made ol BartCop proud with that performance. He truly torpedoed his efforts by being such an asshole about the whole thing, I don't think he earned many points with his folks back in OK with the respectful way he treated the former Vice president and Senator and Academy Award Winner, and if my memory serves me, at least this is what the GOP is always preaching about folks in the heartland, it's that they are respectful of people like former Vice Presidents. Not so Jimmy Inhofe.

Call it what you will, wankery, ignorance, fundy fruitiness, general rudeness, I think it was just an act by a desperate man fronting for his masters, Big Oil and Big Utilities. Because Mr. Gore talked about the one thing that can truly get us off of the oil monkey, truly impact global warming, really move in a way that makes us all part of the solution not the problem, that empowers Americans in ways the GOP can't really internalize (to use a phrase from Mr. Gore today) at all.

Distributed energy production. Instead of one big power plant we all shackle ourselves to, Gore thinks we need to have distributed power, and guess who loses in that scenario? Corporations, that's right. And thus we get that ridiculous performance by Inhofe. He's not crazy, he's not even that stupid (yeah, I know, he is that stupid, but a different kind of stupid bred out of greed and fear and personal cowardice), but in reality he's just a tool of the money that doesn't want anything that gives power to the people, literally in this case, at their expense.

You want to get back at those guys? Buy something solar powered, get a little wind generator for the backyard, something that moves you towards distributed power and away from centralization and the attractive colors of its lures, away from those fur lined handcuffs dangling before you courtesy of Springfield Power, away from the tempting Power Company Marlboro Man.

That's what they fear, and that's why they seek to destroy Al Gore, environmentalists, why they attack the very notion of global warming. Why, it's the same strategy they used when Kerry said that nice thing about Cheney's lesbian daughter, attack since the contradictions exposed by Democrats would fracture the GOP coalition of the insane and the insatiable.

It's the same strategy they use for everything they do, the war, US Attorneys, Aids, Global Warmng, Cafe standards, you name it, attack so you won't look at the reality and fracture their untenable coalition of the insane and the insatiable. I repeat that coz it sounds kinda catchy!

Nixon and Bush

2007-03-20T22:56:00.000-07:00

[cross posted at DKos]
As I was reading this AP piece, I couldn't help but visualize Richard Nixon solemnly swearing that these stacks of transcripts

In these folders that you see over here on my left are more than 1,200 pages of transcripts of private conversations I participated in between Sept 15, 1972, and Apr 27 of 1973 with my principal aides and associates with regard to Watergate. They include all the relevant portions of all of the subpoenaed conversations that were recorded, that is, all portions that relate to the question of what I knew about Watergate or the coverup and what I did about it.

[...]

As far as what the President personally knew and did with regard to Watergate and the coverup is concerned, these materials—together with those already made available—will tell it all.

Bush says this:

The president cast the offer as virtually unprecedented and a reasonable way for Congress to get all the information it needs about the matter.

"If the Democrats truly do want to move forward and find the right information, they ought to accept what I proposed," Bush said. "If scoring political points is the desire, then the rejection of this reasonable proposal will really be evident for the American people to see."

You want it made more clear? Try this, first Bush, then Tricky Dick.

Bush said he worried that allowing testimony under oath would set a precedent on the separation of powers that would harm the presidency as an institution.

"My choice is to make sure that I safeguard the ability for presidents to get good decisions," he said. "If the staff of a president operated in constant fear of being hauled before various committees to discuss internal deliberations, the president would not receive candid advice and the American people would be ill-served."

Tricky

Ever since the existence of the White House taping system was first made known last summer, I have tried vigorously to guard the privacy of the tapes. I have been well aware that my effort to protect the confidentiality of Presidential conversations has heightened the sense of mystery about Watergate and, in fact, has caused increased suspicions of the President. Many people assume that the tapes must incriminate the President, or that otherwise, he would not insist on their privacy.

But the problem I confronted was this: Unless a President can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs.

This principle is recognized in the constitutional doctrine of executive privilege, which has been defended and maintained by every President since Washington and which has been recognized by the courts, whenever tested, as inherent in the Presidency. I consider it to be my constitutional responsibility to defend this principle.

Other than the fact that Nixon could speak without sounding like an idiot, is there really any difference between these two Presidents, the heretofore reigning Worst President Ever and the Hands Down New Champ?

The discussion and overanalysis of the "Constitutional Crisis Question" will continue regardless of what I say, but NOW is the time to back up the Democrats on this. Bush's "offer" is an insult, a joke, a charade, to not just Congress, but to every American living or dead, an insult to the troops dying for greed and hubris, an insult to the taxpayers who fund this government (He [Bush] added that federal prosecutors work for him and it is natural to consider replacing them. [Actually they work for the American People you feckless git]), an insult to my Dad who taught 6th grade for 30 years, my Mother who taught me decency and compassion before she passed, to my sweet little Gramma who taught me about family and homemade desserts and scratching each others back while watching Hawaii 5-0, yeah, that was some offer he made. No oath, no press, no transcript, pretty much never happened.

Here's the link to the House Judiciary Committee, here's the link for the Senate Judiciary Committee, and here's its contact page. Use it.

More Lies From the GOP

2007-03-16T22:45:00.000-07:00

You have to love House Democratic Whip James Clyburn's comments yesterday about Abu Gonzales and company from this AP screed:

"They don't know anything about running government. They're just political hacks," Clyburn said at a news conference in Columbia, S.C. "Gonzales is just a political hack."

Their hackery goes beyond The Purge, and Plame, and Iraq, and Tax Cuts, of course, and here's another one.

Via The Wilderness Society we get an example of another way they operate. The National Wildlife Refuge System is getting stressed to the breaking point, and here's how they do it.

The Land and Water Conservation Fund is intended to fund acquisitions of areas of value to the refuge system, yet of the $900 million from oil and gas royalties available, Bush and the GOP Congress spent 16 percent of that, and Bush has proposed to spend 6 percent next year. Of course the new Democratic Congress will probably reverse that trend, but the fact remains that the Bush Administration is not a good steward of our lands, our laws, or our people.

They've done this same dodge with Aids in Africa, and countless other programs, budget a bunch of money but never spend any, the only purpose being to claim they increased the budgets, even though they didn't spend the money. It's just another LIE from the mouths of George W Bush and his soulless coterie of fiends and hacks and incompetents, just to prove that government doesn't work so we need to privatize it.

That's all they do. See, we increased the budget, and the place still fell apart. Government can't do the job, private industry can ride to the rescue better and cheaper. Of course, as Scout Prime is chronicling about the latest New Orleans Katrina outrage, and gee, guess what, the Bush's are involved, well, maybe if by rescue you mean liberate millions from the taxpayers for the corporate coffers in return for supplying goods and services that don't work.

I really don't like these people, at all.

Attorney's and Corruption

2007-03-15T23:08:00.000-07:00

Paul Krugman raises a good question, and i was very happy to hear Chuck Schumer make the same point today during the Judiciary Committee hearing. What about the ones not fired? For instance,

[T]he subpoenas that Chris Christie, the former Bush “Pioneer” who is now the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, issued two months before the 2006 election — and the way news of the subpoenas was quickly leaked to local news media.

The subpoenas were issued in connection with allegations of corruption on the part of Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat who seemed to be facing a close race at the time. Those allegations appeared, on their face, to be convoluted and unconvincing, and Mr. Menendez claimed that both the investigation and the leaks were politically motivated.

Then there's this piece from New Mexico regarding a local Democratic scandal involving courthouse construction. Here's the key line in the article, after all the Rove involvement is discussed: The courthouse controversy has yet to yield indictments.

We've all heard about this study that out of 375 investigations, 298 involved Democrats. Seeing as how there's some rough parity of elected officials party affiliation across the country, you would figure the numbers would be more like 200 GOP and 150 Dem and the rest others, but then you wouldn't be thinking about who's involved here. Karl Rove, Mr politics is policy.

I have to hand it to the committee today, Schumer made that point, Feinstein made some good points about the obvious politization involved here, and she countered when that jackass Kyl threw in the Clinton fired all 93 US Attorney's canard. And I have to question that based on this article from Minnesota Public Radio, (my bolds) to wit:

Tom Heffelfinger resigned his post as U.S. attorney in Minneapolis last February. He had served two stints -- the first from September 1991 to April 1993, and then again from September 2001 to February 2006. President Clinton took office in January of 1993, so there's one USA he didn't fire, it would appear. I'll bet there's others who they asked for and received resignations from, but who then stayed for a while until replacements were found. After 12 years of Reagan and Bush you know damn well they needed replacing by Democrats, that's just too long for one party to control their positions, especially given the corruption and cronyism, a pale spectre of Bush/Cheney's but present nonetheless, of Reagan and his Spymaster Bush.

Somebody at TPM Muckraker said that Abu would resign and that would be the end of it. But I say no. Perjury is a felony regardless of your employment status, and there are too many threads of corruption running around this issue to be satisfied by the scalp of that wretched little man Gonzales. Not that he's ever going to talk, he knows what would happen to him if he did, there'd be no spider hole deep enough for him to hide in, but putting the squeeze on him and his wretched flunkies is bound to achieve results. Hey, it worked for Khalid Sheik Mohammed, right, it oughta work for Abu G.

GOP Demonstration

2007-03-15T07:17:00.000-07:00

Just heard Trent "Where's My Porch Brownie?" Lott waxing on about how the Senate can't get anything done, blah blah blah. Two things came to mind. One, then vote for the Democrats bills you petulent hack, and, more tragi-comically two, if only the Democrats had acted this way as a minority party.

It would have been so simple in so many cases to just say no and not allow debate to stop on anything of substance, to just block the GOP, there weren't 60 Republicans at any time, even counting Joe Lies A Lot, sorry, that's Condi's handle, Joe Lies About His True Values (Kiss kiss, smoochie smoochie Goeorgie poo!).

But alas, the Democrats haven't quite gotten the knack of putting your values, as represented by your Party, ahead of your own personal ambitions or beliefs, in order to place yourself in the POSITION OF BEING ABLE TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. Maybe if they had 80 Senators and 350 Congressmen they might be able to push forward with getting what 60 to 70 percent of the American People want, us out of Iraq.

Certainly the *Blue Dogs* haven't figured it out, and yes, it's been a long standing Democratic traditiion to circle the firing squad and act like a bunch of cats on catnip, but now is the time to break that tradition, don't you think?

Instead of a Donkey maybe the Dems should adopt a frightened hen as their fetish, for all the good they APPEAR to be accomplishing. And that's the root of the problem, they keep on ceeding the PR battle to the Goppers, they continue to reinforce the Gopper framing of what is a Democrat, and you don't win friends and influence getting framed as a s bunch of gutless wimps, Henry Waxman and bouncing Abu Gonzales notwithsatnding.

I mean, it won't be the Democrats who get credit for purging us of Little Himmler, it's going to be John Sununu and the other "Brave" Republicans who cross the lines to get rid of that terrible liability hanging around Bush's scrawny neck, which of course further insulates Bush from responsibility for his own administration and its multitude of crimes and outrages. Now if the Democrats were to lead the charge they could hammer both Little Abu and Lil' Boots mercilessly and DEMONSTRATE Democratic vs Republican values, but that would require some fortitude and unanimity so lacking in the Democratic brain stem.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but I'm not going to withhold breathing waiting.

Media Tidbit-CNBC Hearts Fox

2007-03-12T05:00:00.000-07:00

Joe Kiernan, on Squawk Box had this little filler thing, the 3 "reporters" sitting around, talk show like, showing off the woman's legs, and Kiernan went off on the Dem's cancelling the Nevada Debate on Fox "News", although he tried to make it sound like it hadn't been cancelled. He defended Fox, questioning those nasty bloggers like Markos, those dirty hippies like MoveOn, wanting to know why the Dems want to associate with those off the chart wacko's instead of the mainstream massive majority of Democrats who should treat Fox as a fully legimate news organization. And of course they pooh poohed Ailes Obama / The Murderous Terrorist Bush Has Failed To Find slur, rightly viewed as an excuse for the pullout, but also NOT acknowledged as very indicitive of the nature of Faux "News."

Unbelievable, the hackery. He posited what next, the GOP boycott CNN???

Stop it Joe, yer killin me!!!! [sniff, wipes tear from eye]

There was no reason for this segment they had, it was just killing some time at the end of the hour, yet it accomplished many things for the corporate press. Legitimizes Faux, deligitimizes MoveOn and Kos, and confuses the border between the pure "news" divisions of the various networks, and their corporate activites like branding and ratings for their shows, etc. Faux running a political debate is not "news," it's a business function, and that's fine, there's nothing wrong with it, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with Democrats responding to the people they represent and deciding that it would be inappropriate to support that business function of a lying, smearing, pandering, bootlicking outfit like Faux News.

But CNBC "reporters" apparently got their marching orders from GE HQ, and decided that shilling for Faux was more important than journalistic integrity. Faux, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, all legitimate "News" operations, and don't you dare think otherwise, oh, and don't listen to that huge number of dirty filthy hippies who believe in democracy and a free press and actual news reporting like the sort that Dana Priest has demonstrated with her Walter Reed stories.