Drill, Barack, Drill

Barack Obama:

- Against offshore drilling before he was for it.

- For "use it or lose it" before he was against it.

Look, when you have Repub Mitch McConnell saying this is "a step in the right direction", you know the planet is in trouble.

Barack Obama - never met a triangulation he didn't like.

Apparently, he thinks "negotiating" means giving away the farm (or the oceans, in this case) before you even sit down at the table. And, once you've done that, you give away even more - all in the spirit (choke choke) of "bipartisanship". That's what he did with the health insurance "reform" bill which garnered him no Republican support despite the fact that it's basically a Republican idea-filled piece of legislation and a massive giveaway to Corporate America. That's what he can be expected to do with every issue he intends to tackle during his presidency since he doesn't seem to understand that, no matter what he does, the Republicans will never be his best buddies. They don't have to steal his lunch money - he gives it to them willingly.

Some on the so-called American left seem to think this strategy is "brilliant" - that his "biggest problem is being decades ahead of the country he leads". Right. Because selling out every single "progressive" idea you have to the moneyed powers that be must be the brightest thing a US president has ever done! If only the rest of the serfs would catch up and recognize his audacity of wow.

The American left means nothing to this man - the real American left, not the online conservative Democrats who now call themselves "pragmatists" and defend absolutely every decision he makes as they contort themselves into believing that they really don't subscribe to the Daddy Knows Best philosophy of peons who let their leaders walk all over them. Obama lets the oligarchy trample on him, ergo, that must be the right thing for them to do too. Somehow, that translates into "progressivism". Neoliberalism - it's what's for dinner - and they eat it up.

But, don't forget to Send Money Now! to the Democratic party. Because, really, there is no other choice - is there? (And how dare anyone even ask that question!)
 

Assassination Politics

That Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was assassinated in a possible Mossad operation in a Dubai hotel in January seems to be secondary to the diplomatic flap that has arisen as a result of the 11 suspected murderers using fake passports.

INTERPOL has issued Red Notices for assistance in identifying the suspects whom, one would think, someone somewhere by now would have recognized. Yet, there is silence.

While governments fight over who knew what when, the fact that this person was murdered - that he was accused of crimes for which he will now never be brought to actual justice through civilized means i.e. in a court of law - seems to have fallen by the wayside.

But "justice", as a concept to be held sacrosanct, has been rendered impotent by the powerful. Just look at the most recent proclamation by the Obama administration that assassinations of US citizens abroad remain official government policy.

The Obama administration has acknowledged it’s [sic] continuing a Bush-era policy authorizing the killing of US citizens abroad. The confirmation came from Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair in congressional testimony last week. Blair said, “Being a US citizen will not spare an American from getting assassinated by military or intelligence operatives overseas if the individual is working with terrorists and planning to attack fellow Americans.”

That a president who is a former constitutional law professor would support extrajudicial killings is absolutely appalling. Yet this news barely made a blip on the radar screen of your average citizen - no doubt because so many Americans believe that their rights ought to be happily surrendered because, after all, if they're not doing anything wrong, they have nothing to worry about. Even Democrats and so-called progressives (who are busy these days relabeling themselves as "pragmatists" as they realize the "liberal" president they elected is, in fact, a conservative in progressives' clothing) who oft repeated Ben Franklin's quote about those who sacrifice liberty for a little security deserving neither during the Bush years as they watched in horror while their system of laws was being stripped to its bare bones - even those so-called "leftists" continue to support a president who has granted himself the power of a king: the right to determine who shall live and who shall die without even giving that person access to the most basic right - a fair trial.

How did it come to this? That the issue is not about whether murder by government is acceptable but that, in the case of al-Mabhouh and those who will be killed by US government fiat (that we'll most likely never hear about), the politics are the prime consideration?

Murder is murder - isn't it?
 

Why I'm Glad I'm Not American

Well, here's one reason anyway...

Two words: health insurance

Now, as a Canadian, I'm not going to gloat about how we have universal health care and the yanks don't. No. That wouldn't nice. And, since I'm Canadian, I'd then have to say I'm sorry for saying such a thing.

No. This is about the fact that in order to understand what's being discussed in the current American health care insurance "reform" debate, you practically need to have a PhD in economics.

Just look at some of the terms involved:

excise tax
Cadillac plans
co-pays
deductibles
public option
triggers
opt-ins
anti-trust
mandates
pre-existing conditions
donut-hole
exchanges
preferred provider organization (PPO) plans
HMOs
caps
rescission
bell curve

On and on it goes.

It's no wonder that the senate bill is over 2,074 pages long.

That means the Senate bill -- like the one in the House -- runs more pages than War and Peace, and has nearly five times as many words as the Torah.

And does anyone really believe that every single senator actually read that monstrosity before they cast their vote?

And is it any wonder that confusion and anger about the proposed "reforms" reign supreme on all sides of the political divide?

NBC poll, December, 2009:

As the Senate sprints to pass a health-care bill by Christmas, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that those believing President Obama's health-reform plan is a good idea has sunk to its lowest level.

Just 32 percent say it's a good idea, versus 47 percent who say it's a bad idea.

In addition, for the first time in the survey, a plurality prefers the status quo to reform. By a 44-41 percent margin, respondents say it would be better to keep the current system than to pass Obama's health plan.

You know you're headed down the wrong track - policy and politics wise - when the public actually prefers the completely dysfunctional status quo. But the Democrats have decided that the timing of this so-called reform is more important than the actual contents of the bill. Obama had wanted it done by August - an impossible goal. But the senate gave him a Xmas eve present when it completed its sausage-making and deal-breaking and everyone went on their merry way for the holidays.

Now, the push is on to get this wrapped up in time for Obama's upcoming state of the union speech so the Dems will have the months from now until the November elections to try to sell this rushed mess of a bail out to the insurance companies to an electorate that will have to go through he steep learning curve of trying to figure out exactly what it is these congresspeople and this administration have accomplished (or not).

At this point, I just don't see how the Democratic party is going to fit all of the above terms into a 30-second campaign commercial. The voters already (narrowly) bought the Cliff Notes 'Change You Can Believe In' rhetoric that gave control of the white house and congress to the Democrats but it's clear, now that reality has set in, that shine has worn off considerably.

Rather than providing the radical change that Obama had promised: no mandates and a public option as core principles of necessary reform, the Democrats have completely turned that idea on its head. And voters, who are already fed up with giveaways to Corporate America, will see this latest move by an overly Wall Street friendly Democratic administration (with shades of Bill Clinton's NAFTA promises to fix it all later) while the economy and their wages stagnate as falling flat, no matter how desperately the Democrats try to persuade them otherwise.

Perhaps America will never be ready for universal health care since it's obviously been decided by the powers that be that mega-insurance companies are simply 'too big to fail' (the handy phrase used to justify the existence of huge financial conglomerates that the US government is afraid to regulate under threat of losing the millions of dollars they funnel into party coffers).

But, was it too much to ask for some decent simple reforms that the public could actually get behind and benefit from instead of a bill running thousands of pages that has who knows how many loopholes for insurance companies to drive a truck through while they laugh all the way to the bank with all of the money from those mandated premiums that Americans will now have to pay? Why was it too much to ask that the age requirement for Medicare be dropped? That women's reproductive rights were non-negotiable? That a handful of conservative Democrats be barred from holding up real reform? That Joe Lieberman should have been forced to take a hike or give up his chairmanship of the Homeland Security committee? That the president not consider the public option to be a mere "sliver" and that he would push for it publicly and forcefully with everything he had?

No wonder so many Americans would rather keep the status quo. What is there in this convoluted mess that's worth fighting for?

I'll leave you with some quotes by Kevin Drum and David Corn who appeared on Bill Moyers show last Friday in a discussion they had about the bank bailouts, but which is just as relevant to the DC attitude towards Big Insurance and to this entire topic of "reform":

KEVIN DRUM: Back in March of last year Congress was considering a bill to deal with bankruptcy and home foreclosures. And the Obama Administration thought this goal was a shoe in. They really didn't think they were going to have any problem passing it. And it failed. And--

BILL MOYERS: Fail? You mean it was beaten?

KEVIN DRUM: It was beaten by the banks. They got the bill rewritten. And in fact, not only did they get the bill rewritten the way they liked it. They actually got several billion dollars of extra bailout money put in at the same time.

BILL MOYERS: This was the cram- so called cram down proposal that was designed to help homeowners who were in trouble get through the hard times?

KEVIN DRUM: That's right. And I think what happened was the Obama Administration saw what happened with a bill that they thought would pass easily, and they realized what they were up against. And so, even their original proposals, I think they were watered down even before they went to Congress. And then once they're in Congress, they get watered down some more. And once it gets to the Senate, it's going to get watered down even more.

BILL MOYERS: So, if we get financial reform at all, it will be financial reform riddled with loopholes to benefit the very people who got us in this mess in the first place?

KEVIN DRUM: It's going to be financial reform on the margins. You know, complexity is the friend of the financial industry. If you really want to control them, you need simple rules.

[...]

KEVIN DRUM: It probably was a good idea to try to exempt ordinary corporations who were just trying to hedge uncertainty. But then they took that and expanded it. They didn't have to do that. They did that because the banks were in there lobbying. And it looked like they could get away with it. I mean, the wording was very, very tricky. I mean, you would never notice it unless you were a real expert and looked at the legislative language and realized that a word here and a word there and a word here changed the whole thing.

DAVID CORN: It's like money in politics, which we're talking about a little bit, too. You try to set up these convoluted rules to deal with campaign cash and deal with constitutional issues and it's almost, you know, it's- I won't say it's impossible — but it's tremendously difficult to do it in a way so that you don't leave openings for others to take advantage of, particularly when they have access to the people writing the laws. I mean- Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster told me, listen, if 99 percent of Americans can't understand derivatives, you can't regulate derivatives in our Democratic process. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. I mean, people have to understand it. If only the people who benefit from them understand what's going on, they have the leg up. And there's no way for average citizens to even enter the process.

Much like when Bush sold the idea of the 'Ownership Society' which many people took to heart and were then shafted by their banks because they didn't realize they had variable mortgage rates than would eventually make their homes unaffordable (to oversimplify the situation to a degree), I now watch as Democrats try to sell this excise tax (which is being married to the idea that employee wages will go up - a non-starter) as the same kind of fine print boondoggle that the banks got away with. And that's just one small part of this whole debacle.

The bottom line is that what's being presented to the American public in the name of "reform" is nothing but a shell game in which Big Insurance invariably wins again and ordinary citizens end up paying - with their premiums, their inevitable lost benefits and some, undoubtedly, with their lives.

So, that's why I'm glad I'm not an American. I'm glad that I don't have to (although I choose to as an interested neighbour) sift through all of the legislative legalese that's now being presented as "reform" to figure out if and how I might be able to some day have affordable health insurance.

As a Canadian, I do have mine and it's all pretty damn simple.

Changing the US health insurance regime to benefit all Americans would not be that complicated if there was true political will in Washington to do it. There isn't. And the Democrats should not be rewarded for this effort as if it is what could have been their best work. It isn't. And they'll hear that message loud and clear this November. Stay tuned.
 

Where's the fight?

Bill Moyers' interview of guests Michael Zweig and Bill Fletcher Jr., who spoke about the current state of unions in America, touched on themes that I discussed earlier this week with someone online who had previously been a paid "netroots" organizer for single-payer style reform to the US health care system. She's now pushing for the so-called "public option". She and others have given up the fight for single-payer because they believe this public option (however it's defined and despite the fact that Obama has called it just a "sliver" of his health care plan) is the best they can get - if they can even get that.

I pushed back.

I asked what would have happened if Rosa Parks had decided on that fateful day to just sit in the middle of the bus - believing that was what she still deserved because to fight for real rights would have been too much of a struggle.

Crickets chirped in response.

The union fight throughout the last century in America parallels, politically, what's happened to the now much-aligned left in this health care reform debate.

BILL MOYERS: Those conservative protestors we saw are not afraid of confrontation. They're willing to use sharp elbows and brass knuckles in fighting for what they believe in. Why isn't labor more confrontational in behalf of those very people, the working people of this country?

BILL FLETCHER: Well, part of it is that there's I know people won't appreciate my saying this. But among many of the leaders, there's really a fear of losing respectability. I mean, you have leaders that have now gained these positions and they're really afraid that if they shake the table too much, that they will be excluded.

MICHAEL ZWEIG: What has happened is that the corporations and the corporate elite have structured what this country is, what's valuable, what's important, how we organize our lives. And labor has not come forth with an alternative set of values.

BILL MOYERS: But why haven't they? Now, that's

MICHAEL ZWEIG: Well, there I think because we used to have that. And all the labor movement did have that.

BILL MOYERS: Solidarity forever, right?

MICHAEL ZWEIG: Well, and the labor movement had a very militant, very aggressive stance in the '30s, '40s, '50s that challenged capital. That got tremendous benefits. You know, the labor movement is the people who gave us the weekend. Let's not forget. The labor movement is what…

BILL MOYERS: The eight hour day.

MICHAEL ZWEIG: Got us the eight hour day, and the social security, and all the other things that we think are so very important, but are just natural. That came out of a labor movement, but a labor movement that was led by people and was fueled by people who understood that there was antagonism. That there was a battle that they were involved in. This was not just, 'Let's sit down and have lunch and figure out what's the best thing to do for America.' This was, 'Here's a group of people who run the country and run businesses. And they have a certain set of interests. And they do not have our interests at mind at heart. They are not for us.'

BILL MOYERS: For the working people.

MICHAEL ZWEIG: For the working people. We have to be organized and be a contrary force, a counterforce that's a real force. That isn't just a debating society. That doesn't just have resolutions that it passes.

BILL MOYERS: A real force to take on capital

MICHAEL ZWEIG: To take on capital.

BILL MOYERS: And power.

MICHAEL ZWEIG: And power.

BILL MOYERS: And why have they lost that?

MICHAEL ZWEIG: Well, because they got crushed.

BILL MOYERS: No one.

MICHAEL ZWEIG: Because the people who tried to do that. And the people who did do that were leftist. They were people who had a class analysis of society. Many of them were socialists and some of them were communists, but not all. But that sentiment, that understanding of the basic structure of society as divided by class interest. That there's a working class that's a majority of the population in this country. And they have interests. And they have a set of values that that convey those interests. That are very different from the corporations. They're very different from capital.

And if the people who held those views and mobilized the labor movement at an earlier point in our history. Those people were pushed out. And they were pushed out by the labor movement, internally, because there was great division and splits. And so then the labor movement got drawn into an era of cooperation. An era of, "Well, let's all sit down. And we'll all be reasonable. We'll all figure out what to do that's best for America." And it turns out America is not one thing. America is divided by these deep class antagonisms that we are now living with.

The AFL CIO, by the way, voted to support single payer last week.

But Democrats and their so-called "progressive" online members and supporters of the party have managed to accomplish, systematically - by buying into the decades-long demonization of "liberals" and "the left" by the corporate right - the wholesale abandonment of their golden opportunity for real change in their health care system. Even Obama dismissed the "fringe" elements of the left because he wants to be that "reasonable" man who appeals to all. He only has to read a newspaper to see that that idea has already failed.

This new "progressive" (conservative), fear-based American left has lost its fighting spirit.

Zweig and Fletcher explained how that's affected the union movement as well:

BILL FLETCHER: Well, first of all, I think that the election of Richard Trumka has a great deal of potential. Because

BILL MOYERS: The new president of the AFL-CIO.

BILL FLETCHER: The new president of the

BILL MOYERS: Why?

BILL FLETCHER: Because Trumka comes out of a history of militancy. He you know, in terms of his vision of the United Mine Workers that he led. His emphasis on organizing. His clarity on the nature of the economic crisis that we've been facing. And what he has articulated so far. And all I can say, this is a hope, is the notion that we have to engage in that confrontation that you're describing.

We have to do much more massive organizing. Particularly of the poor, the increasingly poor sections of the working class. So, I think that there's a vision here. And I can't overstate this issue of vision. Because it's not simply the technique of unions putting resources into organizing. People have to feel compelled that there's a vision of success, but a vision of a different kind of country. And indeed, a different kind of world.

MICHAEL ZWEIG: It's also a different understanding of how you do politics and how you exert power. It's one thing to say, "I'm the leader of an organization of eight and a half million workers. I'm the head of the AFL-CIO. We have eight and a half million members in our affiliates." And I'm going to sit down at a table. And I'm going to say, "I have eight and a half million members out there." It's another thing to have eight and a half million members out there, who are in the streets, who are not just sending in letters and not just signing petitions. But who are actively engaged in exercising power, in building power in the streets, in the communities, in the schools.

BILL MOYERS: And we don't see that happening. Why? Why isn't that happening?

MICHAEL ZWEIG: But see, I think that Rich Trumka understands something about the need to do this. And we'll see where this goes now. But, you know, it's hard to change culture.

BILL FLETCHER: Right.

MICHAEL ZWEIG: It's hard to change the way we understand how things should happen.

Online Democrats are doing busy work - sending those letters and signing petitions while also contributing donations to politicians they think they can influence with their $5 or $10; politicians who've been raking in money for also standing up for this lowest-common denominator form of health care reform with enforced mandates resulting in fines which will only be a boon for already massive insurance companies. A public option that may have a trigger or the latest incarnation: a useless, regionally-based trial run.

Where are the left's health care reform protests? Surely they must be able to match the numbers that turned out for last week's right-wing tea party protests? One would think...

But as Zweig pointed out, it's hard to change culture. And the culture that permeates the majority of these online activists is one of timidity - the same posture embraced by their leader, president Obama.

They'll tell you that they'll be grateful to get whatever table scraps that come their way as a result of this battle and that later - sometime way later in the future, I guess, when the Democrats again control the white house, the house and the senate - then they'll push for more.

People are dying.

Just how much longer are they willing to wait?

This culture of self-imposed defeatism is at the root of despair for millions. Yet they call it "hope".

They'd be wise to learn from history: that when you push away the voices around you who demand the absolute best (those "fringe" dwellers), you cede a tremendous amount of ground to your adversaries that may well take you twice as long to get back. And you also find yourself living in a state of compromised principles that doesn't serve you or the ones you claim to fight for - regretting that you didn't try harder when you had the chance.

If we'd seen that kind of attitude in Canada during the 1960s, we never would have achieved universal health care. Tommy Douglas must be rolling over in his grave over this debacle currently going on in the United States. He knew that if you wanted reform, you made it happen. You changed the culture.

America needs a Tommy Douglas. But if he did materialize there today, the Democrats would just write him off as some fringe radical and go back to the table with their corporate overlords in the guise of doing what's "right".
 

I'll see your crazy...

...and raise you twice as much.



Remember this?

Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I've heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.

- Ezra Klein, January 2008

These days, Klein is reduced to fighting back against cries comparing Obama to Hitler by examining actual Nazi-style health care.

And then there was this:

"I give all praise and honor to God," Obama began. "Look at the day the Lord has made."

Obama's wife, Michelle, opened the rally with a description of her husband that could, at moments, have been a description of Jesus Christ.

"We need a leader who's going to touch our souls. Who's going to make us feel differently about one another. Who's going to remind us that we are one another’s keepers. That we are only as strong as the weakest among us," she said, echoing biblical passages.

Winfrey also touched on Christian themes that had not been highlighted in Iowa.

"It's amazing grace that brought me here," she began, adding that she was "stepping out of my pew" - television – to engage in politics.

It isn't enough to tell the truth, Winfrey said. "We need politicians who know how to be the truth."

- Politico, November, 2007

When you decide to engage in a high-stakes poker game called My Saviour is Better Than Your Saviour, expect blowback.

Does this excuse the right-wing extremism that's been going on? No.

Does it (at least partially) explain it? Yes.

The Obama administration has been busy throwing everybody and his dog - including his so-called progressive base - under the bus for years yet his staunch followers blog about how they will bow to his genius, how they cry every time the man gives a speech, and how he can stop a child's cries. Oh. The weeping!

And then they wonder how some right-wingers have come to be so crazed?

Bush had his 30-percenters; people for whom he could do no wrong.

Obama has his too. And they're just as fanatical. They might not be packing heat and making death threats, but they're equally as out of touch with reality.

You expected "unity"? "Bi-partisanship"? "Post-partisanship"? Kumbaya with the Repubs accompanying the Dems on guitars, maybe? Really? Just because of who (you thought) Obama was?

Well.

The next time you're up for a game of real poker, give me a call.
 

Surprise!

White House officials said they were surprised and frustrated by the reaction to a speech they said amounts to an educational pep talk.
- the WaPo

Democrats also say that for all their preparations, they never anticipated Republicans and their allies rolling out incendiary accusations that the Obama plan would empower "death panels," help illegal immigrants and raid Medicare.
- the WSJ

"I don't understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo," said a senior White House adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We've gotten to this point where health care on the left is determined by the breadth of the public option. I don't understand how that has become the measure of whether what we achieve is health-care reform."
- the WaPo

"I am surprised, compared to where I started, when we first announced for the race, by the number of critical issues that appear to be coming to a head all at the same time," Obama said on a question at a press conference on the occasion of his completing 100 days in office.
- DNA

Vice President Biden voiced surprise at the criticism some House liberals have voiced about the administration's economic stimulus plan and said yesterday that he is holding out hope that the final version of the measure will attract support from "more than a handful of Senate Republicans and more than a couple dozen in the House."
- the WaPo

Within 24 hours of calling Rush Limbaugh “incendiary” and “ugly,” RNC Chairman Michael Steele had bowed down before the radio host, declaring, “There was no attempt on my part to diminish [Limbaugh's] voice or his leadership.” When Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about the episode today, Gibbs suggested Steele’s reply proved that Limbaugh is in fact the head of the Republican Party:

GIBBS: I was a little surprised at the speed in which Mr. Steele, the head of the RNC, apologized to the head of the Republican Party.
- Think Progress

The Obama Daughters Surprised With a Swing Set
- ABC News

(Okay. That last one is stretching it a bit but you get the point.)

Well, I’m shocked and surprised at their shock and surprise.
- Paul Krugman, the NYT

An anonymous White House source added that they were also surprised to learn that the movie All the President's Men was based on a true story and that former Senator Joe McCarthy wasn't Jenny McCarthy's dad.
 

The New Wonderland

"I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views."
- Barack Obama

"I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of that is--'Be what you would seem to be'--or if you'd like it put more simply--'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'"

- Alice in Wonderland (Chapter 9)

ACLU: Obama Administration Reverses Promise To Release Torture Photos

Obama Breaks Major Campaign Promise as Military Commissions Resume, Says Amnesty International

Greenwald: Obama's kinder, gentler military commissions

Obama mulls 'indefinite detention' of terror suspects

Death in Libya, betrayal in the west

Obama supporters up in arms once again simply cannot claim that they weren't warned. They just refused to pay attention when it really mattered.
 

Quote du Jour: Paul Begala on the Democratic Primaries

From his Wednesday nite appearance on Larry King's show:

BEGALA: Super delegates do exist. I don’t like them. James [Carville] is right. It’s a house of lords. With all respect to Robert Wexler, who is a congressman and a super delegate, I don’t like that system. I don’t like anything that’s anti-Democratic. I also don’t like the proportional system.

I think it should be winner take all the way the electoral college is. Instead, the Democratic party has now organized their party like five-year-old t-ball. sally [sic] gets a trophy and Jimmy gets a trophy and Timmy gets — no, it should be like the World Series, winner take all. It’s tough, but that’s life.

Amen to that.
 

FISA: More of What the Democrats Have Wrought

It was bad enough that the Dems caved on the FISA bill, but now more details of exactly what that bill entailed are coming out and they show just how much power Bush was really given by that rush to avoid looking like cowards.

Via the NYT:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 — Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include — without court approval — certain types of physical searches on American soil and the collection of Americans’ business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said.

So, how did that happen, you ask? Simple: if the Democrats had actually read and analyzed the bill before they decided to please almighty Bush by dealing with it before they left for their summer vacations, they would have discovered (and some did, obviously) just how many more rights they were giving away on behalf of their constituents.

The new legislation is set to expire in less than six months; two weeks after it was signed into law, there is still heated debate over how much power Congress gave to the president.

“This may give the administration even more authority than people thought,” said David Kris, a former senior Justice Department lawyer in the Bush and Clinton administrations and a co-author of “National Security Investigation and Prosecutions,” a new book on surveillance law.

Several legal experts said that by redefining the meaning of “electronic surveillance,” the new law narrows the types of communications covered in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, by indirectly giving the government the power to use intelligence collection methods far beyond wiretapping that previously required court approval if conducted inside the United States.

And this cannot just be blamed on the so-called Blue Dogs. Dealing with this bill could have been deferred by Pelosi and Reid until the "heated debates" about what they were offering for approval were exhausted. Instead, after the bill was passed, Democratic leaders just told their angry cheerleaders to just wait six months, they'd fix it all then.

Well, now that word has gotten out about just how much they've royally screwed up, it's wait until September while Bush spokespuppets pretend they had no idea (gosh, darn, golly) that this bill would give the boy king even more power.

Bruce Fein, who has been pushing for impeachment spoke to the NYT about the possible ramifications of this bill:

At the meeting, Bruce Fein, a Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration, along with other critics of the legislation, pressed Justice Department officials repeatedly for an assurance that the administration considered itself bound by the restrictions imposed by Congress. The Justice Department, led by Ken Wainstein, the assistant attorney general for national security, refused to do so, according to three participants in the meeting. That stance angered Mr. Fein and others. It sent the message, Mr. Fein said in an interview, that the new legislation, though it is already broadly worded, “is just advisory. The president can still do whatever he wants to do. They have not changed their position that the president’s Article II powers trump any ability by Congress to regulate the collection of foreign intelligence.”

And this quote certainly describes the bottom line here:

That limitation sets a high bar to set off any court intervention, argued Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, who also attended the Justice Department meeting.

“You’ve turned the court into a spectator,” Mr. Rotenberg said.

I really have to wonder (and since I've almost run out of pejorative adjectives to describe the willfully ignorant congressional Democrats and their cheerleading, lapdog supporters, I won't turn this into an overly long screed) why - after these Dems have refused to impeach, refused to do everything possible to end the Iraq war, refused to stand up to this dictatorial "president" and refused to act like they work for the American people - why anyone continues to support them. Just how many second, third, fourth and fifth chances do they get to prove themselves to be the protectors of human and civil rights they claim to be?

They have failed. Continually. And the only thing they can offer is "wait".

For what??

If someone has an answer to that question, I'd sure like to hear it. And before you even think about saying that Election '08 will change everything if a Dem president is elected - think again. That's what they said about the Dems winning back congressional power in '06. Oh but this is all Joe Lieberman's fault, right? No. It isn't. When you willingly support and elect conservative Democrats who are willing to kiss Bush's ring, that's exactly what you get. Pushovers who will assure that Bush has just as much power as he wants. And when your congressional leaders play the waiting game with peoples' constitutional rights, they impact all Americans directly. Just how much of that new power do you honestly think a possible future Democratic president might be willing to roll back? Honestly.

All right. I promised this wouldn't be a long screed and I'll keep my word, but think about this: I'm a Canadian citizen. And, while only some of what your boy king does actually affects my rights (and we're feeling it here, believe me), I think it's safe to say that I'm probably more outraged about all of this than a lot of Americans who actually should be are. And I find that deeply disturbing.

h/t lyger and infowarrior.org's mailing list
 

'LSD: Lame, Spineless, Democrats'

Flashback, 2002: The Perils of LSD: Lame, Spineless, Democrats, Tom Stephens

A plague has seized the Nation. It emanates from Washington, D.C., and is spreading wherever People try to come to grips with the abuse of power there by the most dangerous government corporate money can buy. Symptoms (particularly among People committed to real democracy, social justice, and non-violence in our relations with others) include barely controllable rage, enormous frustration, organization of third parties, and ultimately a sense of total scorn for mainstream electoral politics as anything other than a personal career. The name of this malady is Lame, Spineless Democrats (LSD). Friends don't let friends enter the hallucinatory, pseudo-powerful world of LSD and its pushers in the Democratic Leadership [sic] Council without strong mutual support.

Thanks to leading Democrats who misplaced their spines, their passion, their intelligence, and their guts, the Republican Party seized total power over all three branches of the United States Government in the 2002 mid-term elections. With Republican control of the Senate we face federal courts packed with ultra-right wing ideologue judges (enjoying lifetime appointments) for at least a generation. It has been said that for evil to triumph it is only necessary that good People do nothing. The national leaders of the Democratic Party, the Tom Daschles, Dick Gepharts and Joe Liebermans who have been trying to win elections for 20 years now by beating the Fat Cat Republicans at their own corporate bribery game, let America and the world down. These uncertain trumpeters failed to grasp one very simple and fundamental fact about the type of electoral "democracy" that prevails today in America. If you let your political opponents define the key issues and control the timing of which issues will dominate the agenda, while you avoid providing any clear answers to their inflammatory and flagrantly misleading rhetoric about "freedom," "security," and "evil," you will get your ass kicked. Duh.

Some of the names have changed - today it's the Harry Reids, the Nancy Pelosis and, still, the Joe Liebermans - but the results are the same: lame, spineless Democrats caving to Bush's agenda just as they've done again this weekend.

LSD, circa 2007:

The Senate bowed to White House pressure last night and passed a Republican plan for overhauling the federal government's terrorist surveillance laws, approving changes that would temporarily give U.S. spy agencies expanded power to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a court order.

The 60 to 28 vote, which was quickly denounced by civil rights and privacy advocates, came after Democrats in the House failed to win support for more modest changes that would have required closer court supervision of government surveillance. Earlier in the day, President Bush threatened to hold Congress in session into its scheduled summer recess if it did not approve the changes he wanted.

The boy king had a tantrum and the Democrats let him have his new toy. It's only a 6 month temporary measure, they said, as they gave more power to the most corrupt AG in US history - Alberto Gonzales.

The poor house Democrats can't stand the pressure either, but it's the politics of the situation - not the civil rights - that they're concerned about.

With time running out before a scheduled monthlong break and the Senate already in recess, House Democrats confronted the choice of accepting the administration’s bill or letting it die. If it died, that would leave Democratic lawmakers, who have long been anxious about appearing weak on national security issues, facing an August fending off charges from Mr. Bush and Republicans that they left Americans exposed to terror threats.

They look weak on security because they keep buying into Republican talking points that portray them as being just that. If they had any actual courage, they would have told Bush to screw himself and would have all gone home.

There was no indication that lawmakers were responding to new intelligence warnings. Rather, Democrats were responding to administration pleas that a recent secret court ruling had created a legal obstacle in monitoring foreign communications relayed over the Internet. They also appeared worried about the political repercussions of being perceived as interfering with intelligence gathering. But the disputes were significant enough that they were likely to resurface before the end of the year.

Democrats have expressed concerns that the administration is reaching for powers that go well beyond solving what officials have depicted as narrow technical issues in the current law.

“They have got us in a vise,” Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the Rules Committee, said as she left a Saturday afternoon meeting where senior Democrats were debating how to handle the issue in the final hours before recess.

No, Louise - you put yourselves in that vise. And make no mistake, you've given the Bush administration carte blanche again to illegally spy on your countrymen - a crime Bush had previously admitted to that should have spurred his impeachment (along with the many other criminal activities he and his administration have been up to) but your party has conveniently, for this war criminal president, taken impeachment off the table. Honestly, what the hell is wrong with you?

Just what does the Bush administration have on these Democrats? Some of us out here would seriously like to know because there just isn't any other way to reconcile this continual pandering to a megalomaniac of a president who would would prefer to be a dictator - which you are enabling him to be.

Democratic lawmakers have been deeply suspicious that the Bush administration was seeking a broader and more controversial expansion of surveillance authority by making changes that were vague on important issues. Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Friday that the administration-supported bill would allow wiretapping without warrants as long as it was “concerning a person abroad.” As a result, he said, the law could be construed as allowing any search inside the United States as long as the government claimed it “concerned” Al Qaeda.

Are you an American thinking of e-mailing me, a Canadian? Well all Gonzales has to do is claim your e-mail somehow "concerns" al Qaeda and bingo - your communications will be under surveillance - as will mine. Think that's far-fetched? Just look at what they did to Maher Arar. You can't trust these Republican bastards with any power.

Just what will it take for the Democrats to realize that? An illegal war? No. Torture? No. Bush burning that "god damned piece of paper" (as he refers to the constitution)? No.

And just when will the majority of Democratic party fans - too many of whom believe that "winning" actually solves anything - actually wake the fuck up and realize that their party is nothing but Republican-Lite?

Have they even seen the latest poll numbers outside of the little orange bubble that they live in as they all hail their Democratic leadership at their YearlyKos convention this weekend? (It's true: willfully ignorant partisanship kills brain cells.) Democrats OUT: Apply directly to the forehead.

You really might need to read this twice to believe it if you're once of those brainwashed partisan hacks:

Oh this is hilarious. I thought Bush’s approval at 34%, Democratic Congress 14% was funny, but the new numbers from the Zogby poll are ridiculously low.

Nelson Muntz said it best.

The survey said:

Survey shows just 3% of Americans approve of how Congress is handling the war in Iraq; 24% say the same for the President

Bush’s Iraq policy has 8 times the support the anti-Bush policy of Pelosi-Murtha-Clyburn-Reid-Byrd.

And it gets worse: 94% of Democrats polled absolutely detest, loathe and hate how the Democratic-led Congress is handling the war in Iraq.

Yet the Democrats think the way they can increase their poll numbers is to roll over and play dead whenever Bush puts pressure on them?

3%??

Does it get any more insane than this?

With these Democrats, you can count on it.

Related: ACLU Condemns Senate for Passing Spy Law Changes

“We are deeply disappointed that the president’s tactics of fearmongering have once again forced Congress into submission,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU. “That a Democratically-controlled Senate would be strong-armed by the Bush administration is astonishing. This Congress may prove to be as spineless in standing up to the Bush Administration as the one that enacted the Patriot Act or the Military Commissions Act.”

The legislation that passed would allow for the intelligence agencies to intercept – without a court order – the calls and emails of Americans who are communicating with people abroad, and puts authority for doing so in the hands of the attorney general. No protections exist for Americans whose calls or emails are vacuumed up, leaving it to the executive branch to collect, sort, and use this information as it sees fit.

“It seems that political cover is more important to our senators than the rights and privacy of those they represent,” added Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “The administration is on the verge of reviving a warrantless wiretapping program even broader than the illegal one it conducted before.

Video: Olbermann - Is Gonzo gonzo?

Let's hope so.



Related:
Cheney Hails His Pal Al

And what does Nancy Pelosi think about impeaching Gonzales?

In the first question of the morning, Pelosi was asked if she supported a proposal by Washington Rep. Jay Inslee to impeach beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The Speaker looked down and rubbed her temples wearily. "I would like us to stay focused on our agenda this week," she said. Today the entails finalizing ethics and lobbying reform. Tomorrow it will mean expanding children's health care and boosting Medicare benefits. By the end of the week the House will likely pass an energy bill and legislation will be brought to the floor that reins in the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program.

Pelosi's no fan of Gonzales or his bosses. "The Administration wants the Attorney General to sign off on what can be collected," she says of the wiretapping proposal. "Absolutely not."

She is greatly disturbed by the lawlessness of this Administration and its contempt for checks and balances. "I take an oath to defend and protect the Constitution, so it is a top priority for me and my colleagues to uphold that." [not when it comes to impeachment though. -catnip] She notes the vigorous oversight hearings held by committee chairman like John Conyers and Henry Waxman.

But Pelosi sees impeaching Gonzales and his superiors as a distraction from the ambitious agenda she has crafted for the House. "If I can just hold my caucus together," she says, "I can take them to this progressive place."

Oh just go home, Nancy.
 

Quote du Jour: Impeachment

Jimmy Breslin via Newsday (the entire editorial is worth a read):

Say impeachment and you'll get your troops home.

That's where the disconnect is as far as the Democratic leaders go. It's either/or. They won't impeach. They won't defund the war. Perhaps if they squeezed the Bush administration hard enough and actually began holding impeachment hearings, Bush would stand up and take notice, but the Democrats are too afraid to even try.

Meanwhile, one of the "liberal" heroes of the left blogosphere, Russ Feingold, just wants to give Bush a slap on the wrist by censuring him. You'd think that toothless gesture would be something even the rest of the Democrats could get behind, but no:

Feingold's own party leader in the Senate showed little interest in the idea. An attempt in 2006 by Feingold to censure Bush over the warrantless spying program attracted only three co-sponsors.
[...]
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Feingold's proposals showed the nation's frustration. But Reid said he would not go along with them and said the Senate needs to focus on finishing spending bills on defense and homeland security.

"We have a lot of work to do," Reid said. "The president already has the mark of the American people — he's the worst president we ever had. I don't think we need a censure resolution in the Senate to prove that."

They are incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.

Spineless, spineless, spineless, and nothing but a dereliction of duty as the Democratic party seems to have taken an oath to protect itself rather than the US constitution.

As for Feingold's intentions with his censure resolution:

This is an opportunity for people to say, let's at least reflect on the record that something terrible has happened here," said Feingold, D-Wis. "This administration has weakened America in a way that is frightful."

Yes. Let's "reflect". As thousands more people die in Iraq. Let's "reflect".
 

Impeachment: The responsibility of the citizens

Via Bill Moyer's Journal, July 13, 2007:

JOHN NICHOLS: --back in 1974, after Nixon had resigned, and said, "We must continue the impeachment process." It's-- it is under the Constitution certainly appropriate to do so. And we must continue it because we have to close the circle on presidential power. And the leaders in Congress, the Democratic leaders in Congress at the time said, "No, the-- country has suffered too much." Well, this is the problem. Our leaders treat us as children. They think that we cannot handle a serious dialogue about the future of our republic, about what it will be and how it will operate. And so, you know, to an extent, we begin to act like children. We, you know, follow other interests. We decide to be entertained rather than to be citizens.

Well, you know, and Bruce makes frequent references to the fall of the Roman Empire. You know, that's the point at where the fall comes. It doesn't come because of a bad leader. It doesn't come because of a dysfunctional Congress. It comes when the people accept that-- role of the child or of the subject and are no longer citizens. And so I think this moment becomes so very, very important because we know the high crimes and misdemeanors.

The people themselves have said, if the polls are correct, that, you know, something ought to be done. If nothing is done, if we do not step forward at this point, if we do not step up to this point, then we have, frankly, told the people, you know, you can even recognize that the king has no clothes, but we're not gonna put any clothes on him. And at that point, the country is in very, very dire circumstances.

According to the latest American Research Group poll on impeachment, only ~46% support beginning impeachment proceedings against George Bush: 69% of Democrats; 13% of Republicans and 50% of independents.

Only ~46%.

“As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.”
- Adlai Stevenson

There is no doubt that the paternalistic aura of the American presidency, in which the president is viewed not as someone elected to serve the needs of the country's citizens but to forward his own agenda on behalf of his party with a "father knows best" approach, has continually relegated the citizenry to the role of subservient children. And, as has been seen with every power grab, every law the Bush administration has flagrantly and so brazenly broken, too many citizens accept what they seem to believe is their ultimate fate.

The fact that the new pseudo-mother of the Democratic party, Nancy Pelosi, and her senate mate, the kindly, soft-spoken Harry Reid have refused to initiate impeachment proceedings on behalf of party members who clearly wish otherwise also illustrates the parent/child dynamic that so pervades politicians in leadership positions. Although it's not as if Democratic party voters weren't warned when Pelosi made it blisteringly clear prior to the election that impeachment was "off the table". The moment she made that assertion was the moment there should have been a huge, public revolt against the Democratic leadership, but the idea of finally reclaiming congress (as if that meant much of anything, as we've seen with the Democrats' absolutely dismal performance since that happened) was more important than standing up as citizens to reclaim their country.

When your leaders tell you they will not work on your behalf or when they have the power and refuse to use it, the job of a citizen is to hold them accountable. That applies to all leaders. That has not happened in a very public way amongst the American citizenry and it's doubtful that it will in any meaningful way.

If the Democratic leaders had actually done their job and started impeachment proceedings when they gained subpoena power, perhaps the evidence they could have brought forth to this point would have convinced more than that 46% of citizens overall who are now in favour of impeachment. One would think, as I certainly do, that Bush's own statements about how he knowingly broke the law in the case of the secret CIA prisons and the illegal wiretappings of American citizens (not to mention the illegal Iraq war) would have been enough for a massive groundswell of support for impeachment. Apparently not.

Of those citizens who do favour impeachment, their voices are simply being ignored - especially the 69% of Democrats in that poll who favour the proceedings. But, at the same time, perhaps the citizenry isn't making enough of an effort to be heard. One only has to look at the amazing protests held in other countries when a leader goes astray. It's as if, and is likely the case as Nichols pointed out, that they have foregone using the power they have after being treated like and acting like unruly children who are just a nuisance to democracy. After a while, you believe that any effort is just futile when you're subjected to authoritarianism.

Add to that the fact that at the largest so-called "progressive" site on the internet which exists to get Democrats elected - Daily Kos - kos, the owner, stated last December that talk of impeachment was "impeachment porn" and that those who have supported impeachment there have continually been bullied into toeing the Pelosi/Reid party line that impeachment would just take time away from the other "important work" the congress has to do (which, as we've seen with their failure to force an end to the Iraq war with anything resembling strength, has been a lost cause) and it's no surprise that Republican/conservative-style authoritarianism has been accepted as being the norm by far too many citizens - across the political spectrum. The "children" must be controlled. Barring that, they must be silenced.

The Impeach Bush site is planning a September 15th protest in Washington as a follow up to their protest earlier this year in March. But two protests in an entire year are just not enough either to rally more widespread support among a citizenry that Nichols characterized as preferring to be "entertained".

It is very likely that the Bush administration members who should be investigated for impeachment: Bush, Cheney, Gonzales and anyone else suspected of deserving such punishment - will walk away scott free in the end. That failure will rest on the shoulders of all Americans: that the most blatantly criminal administration in America's history was never held to account for the crimes it perpetrated on its own citizens who chose to enable it rather than to confront it - and that the failure to demand justice on behalf of the citizens of other countries who have also been the victims of those crimes will certainly not be forgotten.

If you want your country back, take it.
 

The Dems' Poll Numbers Take a Nose Dive

That's what happens when you're elected to do a job and waste your time playing political games.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the eyes of the public, Congress is doing even worse than the president.

Public satisfaction with the job lawmakers are doing has fallen 11 points since May, to 24 percent, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll. That’s lower than for President Bush, who hasn’t fared well lately, either. [33%]
[…]
The 24 percent approval rating for Congress matched its previous low, which came in June 2006, five months before Democrats won control of the House and Senate due to public discontent with the job Republicans were doing.

Just two months ago, 35 percent of the public approved of Congress’ work.
[…]
While the public’s approval of Congress has dropped 11 points since May, the percentage of Democrats who are turning up their noses at Congress - like Lambirth - nearly doubled. Among Republicans, though, not so much.

Approval among Democrats fell 21 points, from 48 percent in May to 27 percent.

It remained low among Republicans, at 20 percent, and has not changed significantly in the past two months.

If they keep this up, pretty soon their numbers will match Cheney's and you just don't get much lower than that.

Impeach the bastards and stop funding the Iraq war!
 

Wexler to File Resolution to Censure Bush

Via the congressman's site:

(Washington, D.C.) Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL) has drafted and will file a Congressional resolution censuring President George W. Bush for his egregious and politically motivated commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence. The censure resolution, which is attached below, will be formally introduced in the House of Representatives on Tuesday July 10, 2007 when Congress reconvenes from the 4th of July recess.

You can read the text of the resolution on Wexler's site.

Here's the last "whereas":

Whereas in commuting Mr. Libby’s sentence, President Bush has finally and unalterably breached any remaining shred of trust that he had left with the American people and rewarded political loyalty while flouting the rule of law: Now, therefore let be it --

Resolved, That the United States Congress does hereby censure George W. Bush, President of the United States, and does condemn his decision to commute the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison, his unconscionable abuse of his authority with regard to the deceitful chain of events concerning the falsifying intelligence on Iraqi nuclear capabilities and the exaggeration of the threat posed by Iraq, his involvement in the clear political retaliation against former Ambassador and Ms. Wilson, and his decision to reward the perjury of Mr. Libby, which effectively protected President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other Administration officials from further scrutiny.

This comes on the heels of the announcement that the judiciary committee will hold "a full committee hearing next week titled, “The Use and Misuse of Presidential Clemency Power for Executive Branch Officials.”

Now, I don't know why it's taken Libby's sentence commutation to finally push the Dems into doing something to punish this pResident considering there are so many crimes they should be impeaching him for, but it's about damn time.

And, as a sidenote:

Before the holiday, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton asked lawyers on both sides of the Lewis "Scooter" Libby case to submit briefs outlining their positions as to whether the former White House aide should still be required to spend two years on probation now that President Bush has decided to overturn his 30-month prison sentence.

"Strictly construed, the statute authorizing the imposition of supervised release indicates that such release should occur only after the defendant has already served a term of imprisonment," Walton wrote Tuesday.

So, even though Bush said Libby would be on probation (after admittedly not consulting with experts on these issues in his justice department) the only punishment Libby may actually "suffer" is the fine he paid today.

Censure via wiki:

Censure is a procedure for publicly reprimanding a public official for inappropriate behavior. When the President is censured, it serves merely as a condemnation and has no direct effect on the validity of presidency, nor are there any other particular legal consequences. Unlike impeachment, censure has no basis in the Constitution, or in the rules of the Senate and House of Representatives. It derives from the formal condemnation of either congressional body of their own members.

If the Dems can't even manage to find a majority to support this slap on the wrist censure, they might as well pack their bags and sit out the rest of their terms at home.

Don't hold your breath on this one though. The Dems refused to get behind Feingold's call to censure Bush over the illegal wiretapping last year - a crime he admitted to.

Feingold, defending his censure plan today on Fox News, said: “I’m amazed at Democrats, cowering with this president’s numbers so low. The administration just has to raise the specter of the war and the Democrats run and hide…too many Democrats are going to do the same thing they did in 2000 and 2004. In the face of this, they’ll say we’d better just focus on domestic issues…[Democrats shouldn’t] cower to the argument, that whatever you do, if you question administration, you’re helping the terrorists.”

Well Russ, they're still doing it. Having the majority hasn't changed a damn thing.

Related: The Center for American Progress has more about Libby's commutation.
 

Quote du Jour: Pelosi - Bush Not Worth Impeaching

Nancy Pelosi explains why she won't move to impeach Bush, via Mike Stark's diary at Daily Kos:

I made a decision a few years ago, or at least one year ago, that impeachment was something that we could not be successful with and that would take up the time we needed to do some positive things to establish a record of our priorities and their short-comings, and the President is... ya know what I say? The President isn’t worth it... he’s not worth impeaching. We’ve got important work to do... If he were at the beginning of his term, people may think of it differently, but he’s at the end of his terms. The first two years of his term, if we came in as the majority, there might be time to do it all...

You, Mrs Pelosi, have no greater duty than to uphold the constitution. If you don't think impeaching Bush for his crimes is "important" enough for you to deal with, you should resign.
 

Gitmo: The Dems Write a Letter

Lobbing yet another softball from their bottomless satchel of cushy weapons, the Democrats sent a letter to Bush on Friday asking him to close Gitmo - because we all know that when Bush gets a letter, he cringes in his faux cowboy boots.

Right.

I'm sure he'll be extremely bothered by that bit of prose as he BBQs ribs on July the 4th while wishing the noise of the fireworks would end so he could hear himself think his ever-so-deep thoughts about humanity. Because that's just the kind of "compassionate conservative" guy he is - except when he's busy being this heartless bastard.

Anyway, someone else has written a letter about Gitmo too - a child whose father is a detainee there who her family fears is close to dying and who, unlike the Democrats, has absolutely no power or visibility to actually do something serious about closing that gulag so she can hug her father again. All she could do was to write a letter, but: "The children decided not to post it in case it prejudiced their father's case".

...it was Shaker's idea to leave their London home in the summer of 2001 because he felt frustrated at not having a proper home to bring up his family.

"The council couldn't find us a flat or house in London so we decided to leave. Shaker was always helping people in England and he wanted to help the children of Afghanistan, but wasn't sure whether he should be teaching or help build a hospital."

For a few weeks, the family shared a house with Moazzam Begg, a Briton who was freed from Guantanamo in 2005, who had also gone to Kabul to help children in Afghanistan. But when the American invasion started, the country became a very dangerous place to be.

"The bombs were falling every night and we had to leave the city to stay in a village. The children were terrified and kept telling us to be quiet in case our noise made the bombs come.

"Shaker was frightened too and I can remember his face now, it was almost as pale as the colour of the cream suit he was wearing. Shaker left the village to find a safer place for us. But in the middle of the night the villagers told us we had to go with a group travelling to the safety of Pakistan."

Zin recalled: "I was pregnant with our fourth child and we were all scared. In the end, I just went. I didn't see Shaker again. Sometimes I regret that decision. What if I stayed - would we all be together now?" Shaker was captured in December 2001 by the Americans, who claim he was fighting with the Taliban. Reprieve, the human rights group with is representing him, maintains that he was sold by villagers to the Northern Alliance who in turn sold him on to the Americans.

From there he was taken to Bagram airbase and later flown on to Guantanamo Bay. He has never seen his youngest son.

Nancy Pelosi, who likes sports analogies too, assured Americans on Friday that when it comes to dealing with the Iraq war: "We have many arrows in our quiver, and we are sharpening them". The only quivers I see from the Dems are the shakes they get when they think about strongly opposing Bush on anything.

Why are they sharpening arrows while pitching out softballs? And just how long does it take to sharpen arrows anyway?
 

The Madness of King George

And his sidekick, the Prince of Dickness.

On Friday, the White House (of course) defended Cheney who raised more than a few eyebrows earlier in the week when it came to light that he thought the watchdog office pushing for access to his office's documents should be abolished.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Cheney is not obligated to submit to oversight by an office that safeguards classified information, as other members and parts of the executive branch are. Cheney's office has contended that it does not have to comply because the vice president serves as president of the Senate, which means that his office is not an "entity within the executive branch."

"This is a little bit of a nonissue," Perino said at a briefing dominated by the issue. Cheney is not subject to the executive order, she said, "because the president gets to decide whether or not he should be treated separately, and he's decided that he should."

In response, (useless DLCer) Rahm Emmanuel has issued this threat:

The argument that Cheney's office is not part of the executive branch prompted ridicule by many administration critics. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a group that has been highly critical of the White House, suggested that Cheney is "attempting to create a fourth branch of the government." If he is not governed by executive branch security requirements, the group asked if he is covered by Senate rules.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) said he plans to propose next week, as part of a spending bill for executive operations, a measure to place a hold on funds for Cheney's office and official home until he clarifies to which branch of the government he belongs. Emanuel acknowledged that the proposal is just a stunt, but he said that if Cheney is not part of the executive branch, he should not receive its funds. "As we say in Chicago, follow the money," he said.

I think it should be more than just a "stunt".

And as if that WH arrogance wasn't enough to make you bang your head against the wall, check this out:

WASHINGTON — The White House said Friday that, like Vice President Dick Cheney's office, President Bush's office is not allowing an independent federal watchdog to oversee its handling of classified national security information.

An executive order that Bush issued in March 2003 — amending an existing order — requires all government agencies that are part of the executive branch to submit to oversight. Although it doesn't specifically say so, Bush's order was not meant to apply to the vice president's office or the president's office, a White House spokesman said.
[...]
"Our democratic principles require that the American people be informed of the activities of their government," the executive order said.

Yes, "government" - not the royals in the WH.

Spin, spin, spin...watch them spin.

Fratto conceded that the lengthy directive, technically an amendment to an existing executive order, did not specifically exempt the president's or vice president's offices. Instead, it refers to "agencies" as being subject to the requirements, which Fratto said did not include the two executive offices. "It does take a little bit of inference," Fratto said.

And this guy tries to dispute the WH's interpretation, but he's a scientist. Everybody knows the WH loathes science and prefers faith-based "reality":

Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' government secrecy project, disputed the White House explanation of the executive order.

He noted that the order defines "agency" as any executive agency, military department and "any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information" — which, he said, includes Bush's and Cheney's offices.

Oh stop being so bloody logical, will you?

Now I know that on some fronts I am simply suffering from outrage fatigue. Thus the maniacal laughter that emanated from my mouth when I read that Bush declared his office was exempt too. Every time you wonder "what's next?" with these guys, you're guaranteed to find yet another part of the constitution that they've taken their black marker to while adding their own penciled-in-blood revisions in the margin.

The unitary executive is no longer a "theory", it's reality. "This theory has no support in American history or the Constitution, and is a formula for autocracy," an editorial in the International Herald Tribune states. Anyone who still believes that the US is a democratically-functioning country is just fooling themselves. It stopped being that the moment Bush was selected by the Supremes.

Democracy in the US is just as "quaint" an idea as the Geneva Conventions, according to this administration. And, let's face it, since Nancy Pelosi took impeachment "off the table", all the Dems can do is write angry letters (that Bush and Cheney will continue to ignore) while pulling political "stunts", as Emmanuel plans to. Their country is going down the toilet at the hands of men who believe they are untouchable and the Democrats don't even have the will to fight to save it. Maybe outrage fatigue has gotten to them too - but - that's no excuse for enabling Bush and Cheney to get away with the worst administrative power grabs in American history, which the Dems were supposedly elected the last time around to end.

Congress sits at 14% approval while Bush (somehow) still hangs onto 26% (whoever those braindead people are). In almost any other country, that would be a recipe for a revolution. In America, it means "wait til '08, then we'll show 'em who's boss!". Yeah. How did that work out in 2006? And how much more damage will be done between now and then? I really don't think a lot of people care anymore. It's just "politics", after all. It's not like it all affects their lives or anything.

I think insanity is more than hereditary. It's contagious. And it's spreading outward quickly from its source: Washington, D.C.

At some point, we all become Alfred E Neuman. What else can we do?

What, me worry?
 

Friday Fun

Apparently, Nancy Pelosi has decided to support increased funding for Canadian troops. (h/t Wonkette)

From her website:


The Dems seem to really like our troops, as this old pic from their party's site shows as well:



And, in the spirit of Free Stock Photo Trade™, the Canadian government has returned the favour by having a pic of the infamous American "Everywhere Girl" on its website:


(She's the one in the purple hat on the right. Who knows where the rest of those people are from?)

No doubt this is all just another sign that North American Integration is upon us. (But we'll always have better maple syrup and bacon than those yanks.)

Related (in my mind, anyway): Speaking of bacon, the Calgary Stampede breakfasts are back. Free food. All over the city. Check out the listings here and go stuff yourselves! [Insert obligatory "Yeehaw!" here.]
 

Reid on Iraq: Whoops

Via mcat's blog:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Anti-war Senate Democrats Tuesday plotted a new showdown with US President George W. Bush over Iraq, but admitted they had erred by making supporters think they could end the war.

Pick your jaw up from off the floor. I'll wait.

You see, they just "erred". They made a little mistake. No big deal.

Reid said...that Democrats, saddled with a thin majority in Congress, had raised unrealistic expectations about their ability to end the war, among supporters who powered their takeover of Congress last year.

Just say it, Reid. You lied. End of story. Except for the thousands who have been and will be killed while you and your fellow Dems continue to play political games with their lives - still expecting people to actually trust you to get anything done.