London Calling

The Clash in New Jersey - London Calling

First, because ever since Nosy put up the post below I've wanted to create this juxtaposition. Second, because we need a new Open Thread.

TAGS: London Calling, The Clash, Music Video

Paris Responds

Like, this needs to go viral really quick:


See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Send this to every GOPer you know and love!
TAGS: McCain, Paris Hilton, Viral Video, Ridiculous Republicans

Eroding Soul

These soldiers don't realize it at this moment, but they are losing their humanity.

Notice a couple things here:

- The tank soldiers aren't worried about the taxi being a car bomb or anything. They would be inside the tank, rather than popping their heads out of it and reversing to crush the taxi again. Also, those who are filming arent worried about it being a car bomb, and exclaim "Do it again!"

- Way at the back of the alley, observe closely and you will see several Iraqi kids come out to see what's happening. In their eyes, is this not wanton destruction and cruelty? It sure is in mine.

We can't get the military out of there fast enough.

And by the way, just my opinion, I don't think we should redeploy to Afghanistan either. It will just be more of the same. Deprogramming these kids, both sets, Iraqi children and American soldiers, from the horrors that they've either seen or inflicted should be one of our highest national priorities.


TAGS: Iraq Occupation, Blood for Oil, Withdraw from Iraq Now!, LWHat they and we face, when the soldiers come home

The Common Good

The basic law of economics is quite simple: People respond to incentives. In fact, that basic law may explain human behavior much better than psychology and the behavior of humanity much better than sociology. It pervades us. We have quid pro quo. We go out of our way to get great deals at sales. We do uncomfortable things like working insanely long hours for a pittance of a pay raise. We may even do the dishes in order to raise our chances of our honey expending a bit of extra attention on us. No one, it seems, is immune. Even the ascetic giving up every material joy or possession is responding to an incentive deferred into the hereafter. We do things to get things.

This being a blog of politically minded readers, the discussion had to circle around to something political. Ted Stevens is loved in Alaska for his prodigious provision of pork (pardon the alitteration - can't resist!). Pork, in the political sense, illustrates what is known as externality. Like the SUV driver who destroys the environment in disproportionate measure to the price he pays for the privilege, a politician gets more from earmarks - pork - than the constituents pay for it. Example is Sen. Stevens's (R-indicted)"Bridge to Nowhere." No sane city planner would want to spend $300 million to connect 50 people adequately served by a ferry to a city with a modern, four-lane bridge. The benefit doesn't justify the cost. Now imagine if you can get the benefit without paying the entire cost - that calculus might just look a little different. This is the calculus of pork and of externality. The bridge still costs the same but the costs are no longer yours. I in Denver am paying a fraction of the cost of that bridge.

Now there are arguments that some pork is beneficial and I won't go there. If Sen. Allard (R-bushclone) gets extra money for the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, CO (unlikely - he would vote against funding it if he could), one could argue that the benefit accrues to the entire population. I won't say every earmark ever included in a bill under the cover of darkness and shielded from any debate was pork; however, I would certainly prefer the matter be opened to public scrutiny and Congressional debate.

A second political principle often ignored by the fiscally responsible (sic) right is that of the tragedy of the commons. Economics holds that people make rational decisions. Within limits, this is true, especially when we have use of a resource such as public land without having to pay the costs of its maintenance. We can trash the campground and, if we're not caught doing it, the State will have to pick up the tab (and hopefully the trash). Likewise, millions of people can make economically sound decisions such as funding businesses who never intend to make a profit, buying property on credit that is neither secured nor likely to be repaid, or buying barrels of oil (on credit) with the intention of selling them later. All of these are legal decisions and all of them can be profitable - accruing benefit to the shrewd (read lucky) trader.

The problem is that each of these decisions, taken as an unique case, make sense. In an economic sense, they are rational. On the whole they are destructive to the common good. The case for regulation is based on exactly the common good. No one in their right mind wants to strangle business or limit the entrepreneurial spirit. We live as we do today because of both. The problem begins when the entire cost of the activity do not accrue to the person receiving the benefit, as in the case of speculators or pharmaceutical companies. A pharma executive doesn't die or go bankrupt because of the cost of medication, a consumer does. A speculator suffers high oil prices but not in proportion to the profit gleaned from his or her speculative activities. And it is there that damage is done. It is there that Government regulation, the anathema of all good Republicans, has to step in and defend the common good.

TAGS: Common Good, Economics, Earmarks, Speculation

Open Thread

If I were to write a proper post right now it would be on the 'suicide' death of Bruce Ivins. The thing is I couldn't add much to what Glenn Greenwald has already said HERE, HERE and HERE. In the interest of efficiency therefore, I present the links. As Glenn points out Ivins' death has definitely raised more questions than it answered. This is far from being 'case closed,' as the FBI is apparently treating it.

UPDATE: More from Glennzilla on the Ivins case HERE. It turns out a lot of the 'evidence' that the FBI has been leaking to the press is bogus. Who would have imagined that? Maybe the agency should re-arrange their acronym to spell FIB.

TAGS: Bruce Ivins, Anthrax, The Great War On Terror
Glenn Greenwald

The Enemy Within

...Or, "He May Be a Corrupt Bastard,
But Gol-darn It, He's OUR Corrupt Bastard"

This story off the AP wire (via SALON.com) triggers a post that's been brewing in my head for a while:

Many Support Alaska Senator,
Despite Indictment

Whatever they might think about Sen. Ted Stevens' honesty or lack thereof, many folks in Alaska aren't ready to see their Uncle Ted go.

Indictment or not, they are grateful for the bounty of federal dollars he has delivered in the nearly 40 years he has represented them in Washington. And they worry about how Alaska would fare on Capitol Hill without him.

"As I told the senator, he can do more in six years that any of his opponents can do in 20," said Joe Williams, mayor of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough and one of many Alaska residents who have rallied to the Republican senator's defense after his indictment this week.

Stevens, 84, pleaded not guilty Thursday to federal charges of concealing more than a quarter-million dollars in home renovations, furnishings and other gifts from an oilfield services company.
[...]
Homebuilder Chuck Spinelli picked up some Stevens yard signs Thursday and planned to display them at his home, his office and on his trucks.

"People of Alaska have hired him to bring money back to this state," Spinelli said. "He has done that over and over and over again. Whatever these charges are, he deserves the respect and our admiration. We should wait to see what actually happens before there's a call to do anything."

Alaska has been a big beneficiary of the federal government's largess, largely because of Stevens' leadership role on the Senate Appropriations Committee and his skill at inserting earmarks into budget bills.

While everyone else in Greater Left Blogsylvania takes the opportunity to gloat over Sen. Steven's long overdue comeuppance, I'm going to take the road less traveled to examine this total disconnect that's obvious in the Alaskan electorate, and by extension the rest of the country's voters.

I'm willing to bet that if you polled Alaskans or any other Americans about the practice of attaching earmarks, aka pork barrel riders, onto otherwise legitimate legislation you would get a pretty strong reaction against. There are a number of reasons you should object to the practice, regardless of your ideological or party affiliations. First, pork barrel projects increase the federal budget and drive up taxes without producing any overall benefit to the country. Second they are an invitation to corruption, as steering government contracts to campaign contributors and political supporters is a quick and dirty way to provide otherwise illegal kickbacks - at the taxpayers' expense. Third they put the integrity of the original bill in question. Is the Senator or Representative voting for or against on its merits, or because of the existence or lack of an earmark for their constituents? Finally they pit state against state, district against district - and thus get in the way of a concerted effort to solve the problems of the nation as a whole.

The weird and even dangerous thing is, no matter how voters may deplore earmarks in the abstract, or on the federal level, they frickin' love them back home. Oh, yeah give me more. F-EE-EE-D ME! As this story about Ted Stevens illustrates,
"..they are grateful for the bounty of federal dollars he has delivered
...he can do more in six years that any of his opponents can do in 20
...hired him to bring money back to this state
...his skill at inserting earmarks into budget bills."
Even Alaskans' beliefs about "Ted Stevens' honesty or lack thereof" is tainted by this parochialism - this local self-interest. They don't care that he's dishonest so long as that dishonesty is working to give them an unfair advantage over their fellow Americans. Not that anybody should think that the voters of any other state would act differently. It's every man, district and state for themselves in a dog-eat-dog environment, and the devil take the hindmost. Hence my subtitle, 'He may be a corrupt bastard...'

It's no wonder that the Gazette Online, of Cedar Rapids Iowa reported the following:

Stevens, 84, also asked that the trial be moved from Washington to Alaska, where he has been a political figure since before statehood. He was named "Alaskan of the Century" in 1999 after unabashedly sending billions of dollars in federal money to the frontier state. The judge said he was not likely to send the case to Alaska.

Alaska ♥s this son-of-a-bitch.

---

Let's widen the scope of this premise of parochial disconnect, the idea that local (and frankly selfish IMnsHO) political forces outweigh and subvert the greater good. We are confronted with the bizarre fact that the public overwhelmingly disapproves of the performance of both houses of Congress as bodies, but just as overwhelmingly approves of their own Representatives and Senators. Congress has actually managed to score an approval rating below that of the toxic unpopularity of the President, but the upcoming election is expected to just barely buck the trend we see here:

Graphs from Center for Responsive Politics

Why Are Sitting Members of Congress Almost Always Reelected?(Citizens for United States Direct Initiatives)

In November of 1998, 401 of the 435 sitting members of the U.S. House of Representatives sought reelection. Of those 401, all but six were reelected. In other words, incumbents seeking reelection to the House had a better than 98% success rate. U.S. Senators seeking reelection were only slightly less fortunate--slightly less than 90% of the Senate incumbents who sought reelection in 1996 held on to their seats.

What is it about sitting members of Congress that makes them so hard to beat? Are incumbents just better candidates (on average) or is the deck somehow stacked against challengers?

For years, political scientists have researched and written about the "incumbent advantage" in congressional elections. In an attempt to explain the overwhelming success of members of Congress seeking reelection, researchers have identified several factors which make sitting members of Congress hard to beat. These factors include:

• The "Perks" of Office
  Each member of Congress has a office budget allotment which provides enough money to hire a sizable staff both in Washington, D.C. and back home in their states or districts...
• Time
  Sitting members of Congress are on the job full-time--that is what they are paid to do. In fact, many of the things a candidate would do to win an election, such as meeting and talking with voters, attending special events, appearing on television or radio talk shows, etc., are part of the job description of a member of Congress...
• Visibility
  Sitting members of Congress are almost universally recognized in their districts. Having waged at least one previous campaign, and a successful one at that, and then serving in Congress for two years (House members) or six years (Senators) makes a sitting member of Congress something of a household name among his or her constituents...
• Campaign Organization
  As noted, every sitting member of Congress has run at least one successful election campaign for the seat he or she holds. This means, among other things, that a sitting House member or Senator has invaluable experience with creating and managing a campaign organization. It also means that incumbents generally have an effective volunteer organization in place and ready go when it is time to campaign.
• Money
  By far the most widely recognized and probably the most significant advantage enjoyed by sitting members of Congress is the large amounts of campaign contributions they are able to raise, especially in comparison to those who run against them...

As you can see from the graph, TPTB are overwhelmingly NOT supporting the 'unproven' (read: have not yet demonstrated their corruptibility) challengers. In the Senate the incumbents have a massive advantage of more than 2:1, in the House it's nearly 4:1!! It's a battle between The Incredible Hulk and Casper Milquetoast. But a factor that isn't discussed above is that many voters sense what's going on, and it's turning them off from participation.

Why the Re-election of Incumbents Year After Year Is a Threat to Democracy
-By Thomas Patterson

Mr. Patterson is the Bradlee Professor of Government & the Press at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. The article is derived from his recently published book, The Vanishing Voter (Knopf, 2002).

Synopsis: Professor Patterson laments the decline of voter participation (threat to democracy!) brought about by this enormous incumbent advantage. The simple fact is, too many voters have twigged to the fact that their opinions are not being heard, their input isn't likely to affect any outcomes.

Highlights:

Only about three dozen of the 435 House seats were actually in play in 2002. In nearly twice that many districts, there was literally no competition: the weaker major party did not bother even to nominate a candidate. And in several hundred other districts, the competition was so one-sided that the result was known even before the campaign began. As was the case in 2000, the victors in House races won by an average margin of more than two to one.
[...]
U.S. House races are less competitive-and by a wide margin-than those of any other freely elected national legislative body in the world. The "sweeping" Republican victory in 2002 included a pickup of only a half-dozen House seats. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a gain of 30-50 House seats was the norm. The Democrats gained 75 seats in the 1890 election and lost 116 seats in 1894.
[...]
When members of Congress in the 1960s voted to greatly enlarge their personal staffs, they argued that the additional personnel were needed in order to offset the executive branch's domination of policy information. However, an estimated 50 percent and more of congressional staff resources are devoted to public relations, constituency service, and other activities that serve primarily to keep House members in office.
[...]
Not since John Connally in 1980 has the candidate who has raised the most money before the first contests in Iowa and New Hampshire lost a nominating race.
[...]
Competition is the lifeblood of democratic elections and, when it dries up, participation suffers. There are many reasons why electoral participation has declined, but one of them surely is that citizens in too many places now have no real chance to influence the outcome.

I suppose you could continue to refer to this state of affairs as a democracy, but I'm afraid you would be fooling yourself. And that doesn't even take into account the primary process, where money seems to determine that candidates from both parties tend to be of the same stripe and serve the same agenda. Every time I look at these sad truths I find it very hard to see even a glimmer of a solution, an effective response. But despair is not an option, so they say. What always comes to mind is this quote from JFK:

"A Government that makes peaceful revolution impossible,
makes armed revolution inevitable."
-- John F. Kennedy --

Not that I'm advocating armed revolution or anything. Just saying, they seem to have made the peaceful revolution of the ballot box a thing of the past.

Elections, Parochialism, Incumbency, Corruption

The Sergeant Schultz Defense

This post started out as a comment in response to this item at TPM Muckraker:

Gonzales Was Oblivious To Politicization At DOJ: IG

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales knew essentially nothing about the partisan culture and violations of federal law that were routine at the agency under his watch.

That's what we heard today from Glenn Fine, the Department of Justice Inspector General.

Fine told lawmakers on Capitol Hill today that his investigators interviewed Gonzales for their report, which found numerous senior officials were illegally using partisan considerations when hiring some prosecutors and judges.

Accompanying video

One might observe that Gonzales is like that Hogan's Heroes character, Sergeant Schultz, "I see nothing. Nu-u-u-thing!"

But that would be unfairly letting Gone-z0 off the hook. The fact of the matter is he expanded Goodlings hire/fire powers dramatically through an 'unpublished' (read 'secret') memo. From Wikipedia:

Goodling's authority over hiring expanded significantly in March 2006, when Gonzales signed an unpublished order delegating to Goodling and Kyle Sampson, his then chief of staff, the power to appoint or dismiss all department political appointees besides United States attorneys (who are appointed by the President). The delegation included authority over interim United States attorneys (who are appointed by the Attorney General) and heads of the divisions that handle civil rights, public corruption, environmental crimes and other matters.

Also, from the same Wiki article:
" Goodling worked alongside Tim Griffin as an opposition researcher for the Republican National Committee during the 2000 presidential campaign. " - that's as partisan a position possible even for somebody who's job is completely in the party, not the government.

Finally, Goodling's title at the time was White House Liaison. Even putting aside the issue of partisanship, Gonzales should have had an affirmative duty to maintain the independence of the Department of Justice. There was an impropriety in just giving that much power to someone with close ties to the administration. No way can you say that Gonzales, with his own ties to George W. Bush, didn't know exactly what he was doing.

And lest we forget, when Alberto Gonzales testified about the US Attorneys' Purge last April, he claimed to have amnesia no less than 74 times. And that was on just one day of testimony. Let's have Alternet refresh our memories:

When asked about the decision to fire eight federal prosecutors, Gonzales insisted he wasn't involved, then after e-mails about meetings he attended were released, okay, maybe he was involved. But just a little. Microscopically. An eensy teensy teeny wee bit of a tad. He did admit to making the decision to fire the US Attorneys but couldn't remember when he made the decision. Seems to be a perennial theme with this administration. "Had absolutely nothing to do with it. Oh, you have evidence? Nope. Sorry. Can't remember. Its all a blur."

At the hearing, Senators accused Bush's torture champion of being dishonest, deceitful, incompetent, evasive, inept, underhanded, misleading, smelling like rancid olive loaf and looking like he's wearing his father's burial suit. Not to mention scaring small children with a high squeaky voice that over broadcast airwaves has been known to activate smoke alarms, lawn sprinklers and TIVO recordings of Gladiator movies. And those were the Republicans.

The Sgt. Schultz defense just doesn't cut it here. That one of the most loyal of Bush loyalists gave unprecedented power to another Bush loyalist - who wasn't even qualified for the position she occupied - and didn't know exactly what was going to happen, simply strains all credibility. One really has to question how capable an Inspector General Glenn Fine is. He's sure doing a heckuva job.

TAGS: Alberto Gonzales, Monica Goodling, Loyal Bushies, Department of Injustice

It's the Stupid Economy

Y'all know I don't do 'blink and link' blogging as a rule, but this post from ascap_scab at Reconstitution 2.0 deserves a look-in by all unrulies. Scabbers has done a fair bit of work on this, and documents the imminent collapse of the economy better than I've seen elsewhere. In fact Jolly Roger and his crew at Reconstitution do a fair bit of econ blogging, so I consider it a go-to site in that area.

When the dust finally settles on the Bush administration the smarter historians will look back at debacles such as the Iraq war, the gutting of the Constitution, the purging of the Department of Justice and such not just as crimes unto themselves. They will hopefully twig to the fact that all of the above were really committed to enable a much larger and more heinous crime - the transfer of America's wealth from the middle class into the hands of a tiny group who were obscenely wealthy to begin with. And while the chances of anyone ever being held accountable for all of these other crimes is slim to none, the chance that this wealth will ever be refunded to the thousands who have lost their homes, their jobs and their dignity is exactly zero.

Any bank robber would guess that the job gets easier if you have a guard on the inside in your pocket, even easier if you've also co-opted the cop that's most likely to respond to the alarm. the Bush crime syndicate has co-opted the entire federal government for Pete's sake! And they're wasting no time scooping up everything they can while they can. It's no co-incidence that all these bank failures are happening in the last months of Dumbya's term.

If the average American had any idea how directly Bush policies were aimed at sucking the last dollar out of his or her wallet, there would be massive riots on the streets of every city, town and village in the country. Get over to JR's place for a good read. Prepare yourself to be enraged.

TAGS: The Economy, Bu$hCo™, Housing Crisis, Bank Failures

Goodling Crossed the Line

From the New York Times:

Senior aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales broke the law by using politics to guide their hiring decisions for a wide range of important department positions, slowing the hiring process at critical times and damaging the department’s credibility and independence, an internal report concluded Monday.

The report, prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general and its internal ethics office, singles out for particular criticism Monica Goodling, a young lawyer from the Republican National Committee who rose quickly through the ranks of the department to become a top aide to Mr. Gonzales.

Ms. Goodling, who testified before Congress in May 2007 at the height of the scandal over the firings of nine United States attorneys, introduced politics into the hiring process in a systematic way that constituted illegal misconduct, the report found.

(Underlining is mine.) So, the question is, if Ms. Goodling broke the law, if her behaviour constituted illegal misconduct, WHY HAS SHE NOT BEEN CHARGED?

OK, that question was merely rhetorical. We all know that the reason Goodling has not been charged is the same reason for which she was hired. The Department of Justice, who would be responsible for laying those charges is full of partisan hacks hired through an illegal process of politicization - a massive program of obstruction of justice. The Republican-fascist bastards, who committed perjury when they took their oaths of office, are interpreting the law of IOKIYAR as being paramount and superceding all the real laws.

Goodling was hired by the Queen Bee of Partisan Corruption, Mary Beth Buchanan, after proving her partisan fanaticism working as an opposition researcher under Tim Griffin. Opposition research is of course a purely political function, and as partisan as you can get. Buchanan had to have been fully aware that Goodling was the most loyal of Loyal Bushies possible.

Rather than provide supervision of her activities, Alberto Gonzales expanded her authority (and that of Deputy AG Kyle Samson) by way of an 'unpublished' memo in March 2006, to include "the power to appoint or dismiss all department political appointees besides United States attorneys (who are appointed by the President). The delegation included authority over interim United States attorneys (who are appointed by the Attorney General) and heads of the divisions that handle civil rights, public corruption, environmental crimes and other matters." (see Wikipedia for Goodling's career details.) And what a coincidence! "Reportedly, Goodling "took a leading role" in Bud Cummins's dismissal." Cummings was replaced in that position by her old opposition research boss, Tim Griffin.

When interviewed by the inspector general, Mr. Gonzales said he was not aware that Ms. Goodling and other aides were using political criteria in their decisions for career positions. Mr. Gonzales resigned last summer in the face of mounting accusations from congressional Democrats that politics had corrupted the department.

His successor, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, said in a statement Monday after the report’s release that he was disturbed by their findings that improper political considerations were used in hiring decisions relating to some career employees.

So I guess we're expected to believe that two (three really, because John Ashcroft was not much better) successive Attorneys General could have this kind of illegal activity going on right under their noses and not even know about it. How convenient!

So what can we expect to see happen? Will Mukasey press charges against Goodling, along with Esther McDonald and Michael Elston, who were named in an earlier IG report as having also crossed the line? Not bloody likely. Will those hired illegally be let go and replaced by personnel who can redress the imbalance and blatant cronyism that these loyal Bushies have suffused into the DoJ? I doubt it. Will Congress exercise its authority and mount a full investigation into the department to at least expose the full extent of the corruption? Yeah, right - when Hell freezes over.

These hirees will simply continue on in their positions like the Bush SCOTUS appointments, like hundreds of circuit judges and thousands of little cogs in the wheel, corrupting everything they touch until the country is well and truly the police state that they were all hired to enable. I can almost smell the jackboot polish now.

TAGS: Monica Goodling, Department of Injustice, Corruption, USAttorneys Scandal

Sunday Open Thread

Don'tcha Wish?

Sauce for the Goose

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.
The eyes of all people are upon us.
-- John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts, 1630 --

A TERRIFIC POST from Bill W. (who is also a contributor at Crooks and Liars, who've also posted it) really lays on the line just how much harm the criminal Bush administration has done to international law, peace, and just incidentally, America's reputation. And it comes with a great video clip! (uploaded to YouTube by Bill W. - man, this guy does it all and gives you your correct change to boot.)

Sudan Cites US Example Why It Won't Comply With UN, ICC

One sad truth that Bill doesn't go into (and I'm racking my brains here to find a base he hasn't covered) - from the point of view of someone who isn't an American (I'm proudly Canadian, eh?) - is that this is just another example of the idea of American Exceptionalism that has been accepted and even nurtured under the good old Stars and Stripes for far too long.

Ah yes, American Exceptionalism - the bastard child of Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine. The not-quite-so-evil twin of Might Makes Right. Nurtured and fed on a falsehood that is older than the country itself - the idea that the US is so morally superior to everyone else that it can be described as The City on the Hill, The Beacon of Democracy, the Font of Everything That is Good in The World.

And the reason that the world doesn't have to be concerned about the actions of America or its leaders? - because they're just so darned peachy-keen, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed gee whiz golly gosh dripping with good intentions. And if those good intentions turn out to make some US businesses a tidy profit? Well all the better! We'll throw in a slice of hot apple pie, and teach your folks how to play baseball.

And if those good intentions lead to us backing a coup against your democratically elected leader and installing a business-friendly tinpot dictator who starts murdering the opposition? Well shucks, dang, and whoa there Bessie. That never happens! Except for a few times in Guatemala, Iran, Chile, Nicaragua, Panama, and enough places that it's hard to remember them all. But you can rest assured it will never happen again anyway. Trust us.

And not to seem too critical of our well-armed neighbour to the south, I'd like to add that this principle of Exceptionalism is running afoul of another principle that originated in the US, in fact the very principle that the ICC is based on. Yes, that's right, it's called the Nuremberg principle. The idea is that entire countries are not responsible for wars, their LEADERS are. Especially when the leaders in question have been caught in so many lies that no-one can even keep track anymore. And let's not forget that indispensable adjunct to the Nuremberg principle, that the leaders must be held accountable for their actions. Please let's not forget that.

If Bush and his gang of criminals are not held accountable, and significantly if that accounting is not spearheaded by America herself, any credibility you have internationally will be lost forever. Because in Bush's eye's it's not the country as a whole that benefits from this status of City on A Hill, it's himself personally. And that's just not right. As important as it is for the world that Bush be brought to justice it is equally important to America that they take an active role. Else you'll be painted with the brush of complicity in his crimes.

The eyes of all people are upon you.

---

To wind it up, I've got some more video for you that's to the point:

All Presidential Accountability Goes Out The Window!

Oh, and there's one other thing. Did I mention that this is all going on against the backdrop of a British Parliament report that US assurances that it does not torture can no longer be taken at face value? Well, I meant to. It seems relevant.

TAGS: War Crimes, ICC, International Criminal Court, American Exceptionalism

A Confluence of Gormlessness

My most recent post just happens to contain the following sentence: "Let us all hope that they pay dearly for this latest confluence of utter gormlessness in the service of unremitting evil." Some time after I wrote the post it occurred to me that confluence and gormlessness were pretty rarely-used words. Anyway I wondered if I could find the post by Googling "confluence of utter gormlessness," and yes, there it was right at the top of a very short list (most of the other Google hits were from either a) - databases from online dictionaries or b) - something called All Junky Pages Intentionally Illogical and Inconsistent - I wonder what that's all about.)

If I had stopped there it would have been enough to demonstrate the depths to which I will go just to provide myself the briefest minor amusement, which would hardly have been worthy of a post on the lowliest of cat-blogging and baby-pictures narcissistic mommy blog. (no offense to any of our readers who happen to be narcissistic mommy bloggers)

No, what made this random googling bloggable was when I widened my search to just 'confluence gormlessness' - at which point I stumbled upon a great post about six months old from Pandagon that contains the words confluence and gormlessness (although both are in the comments) - the post harkens back to a post from D-Day - the D-Day post recalls the impeachment of Bill Clinton:

Jesse L. Jackson in 1998:

Let us not be confused. Today Republicans are impeaching Social Security, they are impeaching affirmative action, they are impeaching women’s right to choose, Medicare, Medicaid, Supreme Court justices who believe in equal protection under the law for all Americans.

D-Day, Dec 21, 2007:

Being the anniversary week, C-SPAN decided to air large portions of the House debate [on the Clinton impeachment].

I couldn't stop watching.

You actually can read the transcripts here, but believe me when I tell you that the phony sanctimony from the Republicans is striking. I've never heard so many renderings of history, deep intoning about the Constitution and reverance for the rule of law come out in such a stream of pabulum in my life. Set against the background of the current Administration, which has lied us into war, spied on American citizens, tortured and indefinitely detained suspects without trial in secret sites all over the world, subverted the will of the people through deliberate deception, and brought this country to its knees, all in full view of many of these same lawmakers, the experience of watching them speak is almost otherworldly.

What the Republicans were actually doing is throwing a hissy fit.

Amanda Marcotte, Dec 22, 2007:

...it began to really dawn on me that Republicans and their allies in the media are fundamentally opposed to the idea of democracy. It wasn’t just that the Republicans and the media were trying to oust a duly elected leader on trumped-up charges with the hope that the sexy parts would distract people from the fact that they were attempting a coup, though god knows that alone would be enough. It was also that the more the media and the Republicans persecuted Clinton, the more popular he got, and then the more frantic the persecution got. It really showed how conservatives and the mainstream media hate the workaday voter, and hate the very fact that we have any say at all. The more people liked Clinton, the more his enemies hated him, because he became this proxy for their very hatred of The People.

I suppose if the nation was better educated, we’d have seen it coming. Republicans and their Democratic allies have never met a pro-capitalist military coup they didn’t love, and while the attempted coup on President Clinton was not a military coup, it was still in the same spirit as the coups conducted worldwide.

It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day screwing that's being handed out to the American people by the government and forget the long term year-to-year and decade-to decade screwing that's pretty much always been going on. So I welcome the result of my idle googling for the opportunity it presented to me to rescue a couple of excellent blog posts from the memory hole.

And in case you didn't get the message, this post makes a lot more sense if you read the posts at Pandagon and D-Day that I linked to. And what really comes out of it is how much the rules change when the Republicans control Congress instead of the Democrats, or when a Democratic president occupies the White House instead of a Republican. I understand that the system provides a very weak 'choice' between the lesser of two evils. Still, I continue to believe that even though the lesser of two evils is still evil, it is also still lesser. These two posts and the subject matter they explore are ample evidence of that.

UPDATE: Here's a video that illustrates my last point. Who would argue that Congressman Wasserman Schultz (D - Florida) is just as bad as a Republican? And get a load of the former Bush aide, Brad Blakeman. Speaking to my main point, how many Republicans were arguing just the opposite on Executive privilege during the Monica Lewinski affair? And what a fucking jakehole Blakeman is, constantly talking over Rep. Wasserman and the guy from HuffPo - a constant tactic Repukes use, and that the Lamestream media continues to allow them to get away with.

Congresswoman Wasserman on Karl Rove's Refusal To Appear

'nother update: This video with Congresswoman Linda Sanchez (D - CA) is even better. Great analysis from Jonathan Turley.

Sanchez: Rove Should be in jail

TAGS: Memory Hole, The Wider Picture, Republican Toerags, Historical Perspective