... This has been about the most inauspicious beginning of any congress I've seen, a total embarrassment to the Senate Democrats, who've managed to make the House look like the more restrained, deliberative body ...
Eight years of bodies, dead, broken, mutilated, abused; eight years of ruined lives down countless drains; eight years of massive destruction to places from Baghdad to New Orleans where nothing of significance was ever rebuilt: all this was brought to us by a President, now leaving office without apology, who said the following in his first inaugural address: "I will live and lead by these principles: to advance my convictions with civility... to call for responsibility and try to live it as well."
He lived, however, by quite a different code. Destruction without responsibility, that's Bush's legacy, but who's counting now that the destruction mounts and the bodies begin to pile up here in the "homeland," in our own body count nation? The laid off, the pension-less, the homeless, the suicides -- imagine what that trillion dollars might have meant to them.
I know Caroline Kennedy. She’s smart, cultivated, serious and unpretentious. The Senate, shamefully sparse on profiles in courage during Dick Cheney’s reign of terror, would be lucky to get her.
So apparently Obama plans to appoint CNN’s Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon General. I don’t have a problem with Gupta’s qualifications. But I do remember his mugging of Michael Moore over Sicko. You don’t have to like Moore or his film; but Gupta specifically claimed that Moore “fudged his facts”, when the truth was that on every one of the allegedly fudged facts, Moore was actually right and CNN was wrong.
What bothered me about the incident was that it was what Digby would call Village behavior: Moore is an outsider, he’s uncouth, so he gets smeared as unreliable even though he actually got it right. It’s sort of a minor-league version of the way people who pointed out in real time that Bush was misleading us into war are to this day considered less “serious” than people who waited until it was fashionable to reach that conclusion. And appointing Gupta now, although it’s a small thing, is just another example of the lack of accountability that always seems to be the rule when you get things wrong in a socially acceptable way.
Why Feinstein broke with Obama on Panetta
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It seems to me that what is needed in a surgeon general is also someone who can make the case for, or at least someone who is supportive of, a reformed public health care system, given that this seems to be, as many of us hope it genuinely is, one of Obama's main policy priorities. But is Gupta an advocate of such reform? I have my doubts. As he exposed in his critique of Michael Moore's movie Sicko back in July 2007, he seems to be very much a part of, as well as a defender of, the status quo, namely, the corporatized health care system controlled by Big Pharma and the HMOs. As I put it then, he picked apart Moore's movie, avoided subjecting the existing system and/or Moore's critics to similar evaluation, and failed to address the most serious flaws of the American system, namely, the enormous costs even to those with insurance and the utter lack of insurance for millions." So is this really the man who should be the spokesman for public health in the United States?
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What this says is that there’s a reasonable economic case for including a significant amount of tax cuts in the package, mainly in year one.
But the numbers being reported — 40 percent of the whole, two-year plan — sound high. And all the news reports say that the high tax-cut share is intended to assuage Republicans; what this presumably means is that this was the message the off-the-record Obamanauts were told to convey.
And that’s bad news.
Look, Republicans are not going to come on board. Make 40% of the package tax cuts, they’ll demand 100%. Then they’ll start the thing about how you can’t cut taxes on people who don’t pay taxes (with only income taxes counting, of course) and demand that the plan focus on the affluent. Then they’ll demand cuts in corporate taxes. And Mitch McConnell is already saying that state and local governments should get loans, not aid — which would undermine that part of the plan, too.
OK, maybe this is just a head fake from the Obama people — they think they can win the PR battle by making bipartisan noises, then accusing the GOP of being obstructionist. But I’m really worried that they’re sending off signals of weakness right from the beginning, and that they’re just going to embolden the opposition. [my ems]
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Who the f*ck cares what DiFi and Rockefeller think at all about national intelligence? Both of these traitors have enabled every illegal thing that Bush has done these last eight years, ranging from the Geneva Convention war crimes and CIA interrogation and rendition policies, to the FISA gutting and domestic spying illegalities. Both have sat by, gotten briefings, and allowed it all to happen, and are just as guilty of treason as the administration is. And I'm now supposed to care that DiFi thinks that Panetta is a bad choice?
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It’s not uncommon for Presidents to embellish their accomplishments upon leaving office, but George W. Bush, who will exit the White House leaving the country in the worst shape since Herbert Hoover, has gone a step further, moving past exaggeration into outright lying.
One of the surprising claims that stood out among the combined 90 pages of so-called accomplishments was the White House’s glowing assessment of Bush’s record on veterans’ issues. Bush claims he “provided unprecedented resources for veterans” over the past eight years and provided “the highest level of support for veterans in American history.”
The White House made these claims in the face of what former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld might have called a “known known” – that the treatment of veterans returning from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan has been a national disgrace, highlighted most dramatically by the neglect and substandard care given wounded troops at Walter Reed and other military hospitals.
For his part, Bush stacked the VA with political cronies, such as former Republican National Committee chairman Jim Nicholson, who as VA Secretary defended a budget measure that sought major cuts in staffing for healthcare and at the Board of Veterans Appeals; slashed funding for nursing home care; and blocked four legislative measures aimed at streamlining the backlog of veterans benefits claims.
Bush's appointees also obstructed scientific research into the causes of Gulf War illnesses dating back 18 years to Operation Desert Storm and opposed medical research on treatment for 210,000 of those veterans.
As for funding, Bush proposed a 0.5 percent budget increase for the VA for fiscal year 2006, which amounted to a “cruel mockery” of Bush’s promises to do everything to support veterans and soldiers, Rep. Lane Evans, D-Illinois, said at the time.
Even after Nicholson’s resignation, the Department of Veterans Affairs continued to be buffeted by scandals, including a cover-up in an epidemic of veterans’ suicides and attempted suicides.
“Bush is the worst failure for our veterans since Hoover,” Sullivan said, expressing shock that the President “would shamefully continue his legacy of lies to the American people as he and his political cronies are forced to leave office on Jan. 20.”
"What kind of President pats himself on the back with 200,000 veterans sleeping homeless on the street every night?” Glantz said in an interview. “What kind of administration puts out self-congratulatory press releases while over 6,000 veterans commit suicide every year?
Yet, Bush’s White House is now hoping that its last-minute propaganda barrage will, if nothing else, cloud some of the memories about its failures and misjudgments. Bush’s critics, however, are not willing to so easily forget.
Yet another portable toilet on San Francisco's Russian Hill was set ablaze early today.
In justifying her vote to confirm Porter Goss as CIA director in 2004, Feinstein said, “I believe the President should have the prerogative to appoint who he wants to be the DCI, or for any other senior position, subject only to the requirement that the person be qualified for the job.” [...] (my em)
Epic-moral-fail. (Reference is to Kappas, but it fits. - G)
Leon Panetta may not have been working on intelligence case reports, but on this issue he's sterling. And if there is to be a CIA head, then let it be one that will let the professionals do their job, while putting a line in the sand they will NOT cross. Feinstein had no problem voting for pro-torture Attorney General Mike Mukaskey and pro-torture CIA head Porter Goss and both have by and large bought Bush's bullshit for 8 years running, but heaven forbid someone who will not run the CIA like a "24" episode be appointed.
When Al Franken decided to run for the Senate in Minnesota, it was as one type of crusade, to redeem the seat of Paul Wellstone, ripped away by Wellstone's death in a plane crash and then by Republican subterranean ratfuckers, who manipulated Wellstone's memorial into some kind of anti-American face fart. Franken, who has talked repeatedly about this as another kind of scar, went into the election to take down Norm Coleman, the slick as shit huckster who was elected over Walter Mondale, the Wellstone surrogate in 2002. There was redemption to be had, and someone with celebrity and name recognition and deep pockets was the person to do it.
What the election turned into was another kind of redemption for Democrats. 'Cause, see, when Franken didn't concede the tight race back in November, he finally stood up and said let's see what happens when you actually fight for all the votes cast. When he decided not to be a mensch, like Gore and Kerry did with their tails between their legs, he demonstrated that Democrats can get into the kind of bare knuckle fight that Republicans have challenged them to time and again. And win.
... how sad is it that I'm happy the new CIA Director is against torture? This shouldn't even be a debate, let alone a cause for joy.
Asshole from El Paso
Awol von Bunnypants
aWol von Lazyass
Awol von Retard
Awol von Stupid
Awol McAsshat
Awol McBubbleboy
Awol McFakecowboy
Awol McPenisenvy
Awol Wonderboob
Awol Wonderchimp
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Dianne Feinstein is having a little public fit because she wasn't consulted about Panetta and had instructed the president-elect that he had to choose an "intelligence professional." Well, excuse me. When did Difi get a veto on cabinet appointments?
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Peru to Sue Yale Over Artifacts
Demands its skull and bones back.
Yugo Ends Production
Leaves GM, Ford, Chrysler as only remaining makers of clunkers.
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I can't express how many emails I've received in the last week from people identifying themselves as "liberals" (and, overwhelmingly, American Jews); telling me that they agree with my views in almost all areas other than Israel; and then self-righteously insisting that I imagine what it's like to live in Southern Israel with incoming rocket fire from Hamas, as though that will change my views on the Israel/Gaza war. Obviously, it's not difficult to imagine the understandable rage that Israelis feel when learning of another attack on Israeli civilians, in exactly the way that American rage over the 9/11 attacks was understandable. But just as that American anger didn't justify anything and everything that followed, the fact that there are indefensible attacks on Israeli civilians doesn't render the (far more lethal) attacks on Gaza either wise or just -- as numerous Jewish residents of Sderot themselves are courageously arguing in opposing the Israeli attack.
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More to the point: for those who insist that others put themselves in the position of a resident of Sderot -- as though that will, by itself, prove the justifiability of the Israeli attack -- the idea literally never occurs to them that they ought to imagine what it's like to live under foreign occupation for 4 decades (and, despite the 2005 "withdrawal from Gaza," Israel continues to occupy and expand its settlements on Palestinian land and to control and severely restrict many key aspects of Gazan life). No thought is given to what it is like, what emotions it generates, what horrible acts start to appear justifiable, when you have a hostile foreign army control your borders and airspace and internal affairs for 40 years, one which builds walls around you, imposes the most intensely humiliating conditions on your daily life, blockades your land so that you're barred from exiting and prevented from accessing basic nutrition and medical needs for your children to the point where a substantial portion of the underage population suffers from stunted growth.
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If you see Palestinians as something less than civilized human beings: as "barbarians" -- just as if you see Americans as infidels warring with God or Jews as sub-human rats -- then it naturally follows that civilian deaths are irrelevant, perhaps even something to cheer. For people who think that way, arguments about "proportionality" won't even begin to resonate -- such concepts can't even be understood -- because the core premise, that excessive civilian deaths are horrible and should be avoided at all costs, isn't accepted. Why should a superior, civilized, peaceful society allow the welfare of violent, hateful barbarians to interfere with its objectives? How can the deaths or suffering of thousands of barbarians ever be weighed against the death of even a single civilized person?
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So many of these conflicts -- one might say almost all of them -- end up shaped by the same virtually universal deficiency: excessive tribalistic identification (i.e.: the group with which I was trained to identify is right and good and just and my group's enemy is bad and wrong and violent), which causes people to view the world only from the perspective of their side, to believe that X is good when they do it and evil when it's done to them. X can be torture, or the killing of civilians in order to "send a message" (i.e., Terrorism), or invading and occupying other people's land, or using massive lethal force against defenseless populations, or seeing one's own side as composed of real humans and the other side as sub-human, evil barbarians. As George Orwell wrote in Notes on Nationalism -- with perfect prescience to today's endless conflicts ... [ems in original]
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As a lifelong supporter of Israel, I long admired the state for its tenacity, its refusal to contemplate surrender or nonexistence, its bravery in the face of daunting odds. But there is a huge difference between fighting the remnants of the great Turkish empire and an assault upon a defenseless civilian population when you have the best army and armaments that the contents of the American Treasury can buy.
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The joke was on us. Iraq burned, New Orleans flooded, and Bush remained oblivious to each and every pratfall on his watch. Americans essentially stopped listening to him after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, but he still doesn’t grasp the finality of their defection. Lately he’s promised not to steal the spotlight from Barack Obama once he’s in retirement — as if he could do so by any act short of running naked through downtown Dallas. The latest CNN poll finds that only one-third of his fellow citizens want him to play a post-presidency role in public life.
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This document is the literary correlative to "Mission Accomplished." Bush kept America safe (provided his presidency began Sept. 12, 2001). He gave America record economic growth (provided his presidency ended December 2007). He vanquished all the leading Qaeda terrorists (if you don’t count the leaders bin Laden and al-Zawahri). He gave Afghanistan a thriving "market economy" (if you count its skyrocketing opium trade) and a "democratically elected president" (presiding over one of the world’s most corrupt governments). He supported elections in Pakistan (after propping up Pervez Musharraf past the point of no return). He "led the world in providing food aid and natural disaster relief" (if you leave out Brownie and Katrina).
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BCB Band sings a song called Tennessee Whiskey by George Jones which is a song about the love of a woman freeing him from the clutches of alcohol addiction.
AND THE HORSE
THEY RODE IN ON!
(apologies to the late Cleavon Little, and Mel Brooks)
[...] Back in 2002, the better class of commentator sniffed at the naiveté of "No Blood for Oil" - the chant of anti-war demonstrations around the country. But blood for oil may not be the worst of it. The worst, in the war's subdued and sorry denouement, may prove to be blood for no oil.
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The New Deal Roosevelt offered was a deal between the government and the people, and the deal was this, that the People of the United States and the Government of the United States were one in the same. The New Deal was an old deal, the old deal, the one that had been broken by the Republicans. The government did not exist to keep the People in line, certainly not to keep them out of their own capitol city. The government was there so that the people could help each other and take care of their country together, their country. Under the New Deal, the government would treat its People as people and not as invaders to be chased away at the point of a sword.
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If Reid doesn't stop allowing political expediency to be the ultimate arbiter of his actions, the only clear winner is going to be George Bush and his legacy of contempt for the rule of law.
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It would certainly be interesting to watch the same Senate who gave convicted felon Ted Stevens a standing ovation (Reid calling him "distinguished colleague") exclude Burris.
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Harry Reid has sworn to use his mastery of Senate procedure to block the Burris appointment and protect the integrity of that very exclusive club, which nonetheless warmly embraces Joe Lieberman.
If only he had been so Johnny-on-the-spot when Bush was appointing Supreme Court Justices, ramming through telecom immunity, FISA and the Military Commissions Act, and otherwise trashing the country.
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The fact is that the Senate Dems have been reacting like shrieking, maiden aunts in a roomful of bats, lurching from one outraged reaction to the next without any kind of due consideration as to the legality or the political ramifications. One wonders where this level of energy and scorn was when the Republicans were making fools of them over and over again.
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You have to go deep. You have to scrape and dig and plow, hunt and dive and sigh and even then it might take so long and cost so much invaluable energy and ultimately prove to be so damn near impossible, you will wonder if it's even worth it and why the hell I am even trying because, well, sweet Jesus knows he doesn't deserve it in the first place.
But if you're so inclined, if the temperature of your temperament is just so, if that fourth glass of $10 recession-defying wine is making you feel unusually generous, maybe, just maybe you can muster a bit of sympathy for George W. Bush.
Possible? Insane? Blasphemous? Damn straight.
But with Bush -- the worst-regarded, least popular, most ethically offensive president most of us will ever know -- things are just little bit different. His is that most peculiar and disquieting of exit portraits, a slumpy little guy initially thought to be a middling and relatively harmless puppet, suddenly thrust into history's limelight by the most dire of events, who then squandered every drop of global goodwill and violated most every international law and whored away the very soul of the nation with far more dazzling, efficient success than anyone could have ever imagined.
The upshot is as painful as it is undeniable: Dubya is, whether we like it or not, one of the most extraordinary and influential presidents of all time. Imagine.
Bush as the family man. Bush as the master of friendly interpersonal relations. Bush as the dorky wise-crackin' fishing buddy. Bush as the war-weary, wizened, slightly deluded visionary whose vision just so happened to be horribly wrong in every possible way, but who nevertheless truly believed he was doing right by his confused and angry God, and probably still does, and doesn't that make him some sort of sad and tragic figure in our sad and tragic history?
Well, no, it doesn't. Pathetic? Yes. Pitiable? Maybe. But tragic? That implies honor gone wrong, integrity soured by unforeseen traumas, noble intent and spiritual purity ruined by dark forces beyond his control. Not a chance. Bush might not be the cleverest dolt in the playground, but he is far from ignorant of the dishonest, crony-laden, criminal slant of nearly every decision his administration has ever made.
To my mind, even the softest portrait of W merely raises the larger question, perhaps not to be fully answered for many years: How could such a mediocre and unimaginative human cause so much damage? How could this frat house daddy's-boy dullard so perfectly undermine America's fundamental identity and disfigure every major department of government and bring the nation to its knees? Indeed, unpacking that one may take awhile.
There is, after all, no escaping history. There is no escaping the hard reality of our gutted and mangled nation, how the past eight years are simply some of the most dismal and corrupt in our nation's history, a modern take on the Dark Ages. And there is also no escaping the sense that we barely got out of it alive.
But you know what? Maybe there will eventually be a tiny bit of room for empathy for George W. Bush, for feeling a tiny bit sorry for the guy for being so inept and so deeply loathed and for never really understanding the scope of the damage he was doing, or who was really pulling the strings.
As 2009 arrives like a grizzly bear at a campsite, knocking down everything in its path and then eating the campers, I find myself strangely at peace. It's a peace that comes from knowing that millions of people have subsisted for years, and quite happily, while living in small grass huts and eating only berries and twigs.
And if they can do it. . . .
Gallows humor dominates conversations with my 50ish and 60ish friends. Thoughts of retirement at 60 or 65 have been scuttled, replaced by prayers that we won't be laid off and can work until we're 80. Once-grandiose talk of "travel" now means taking buses when we're forced to sell our cars.
A generation that once romanticized communal life will now find out what it's like to live 14 to a house. It was much more appealing when everyone was 22 instead of 62.
Oh, for the privacy of the cardboard box in the bushes near a freeway overpass! A place to call my own.
As the new Democratic majority prepares to take power, Republicans have become, as Phil Gramm might put it, a party of whiners.
The fault, however, lies not in Republicans’ stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.
Contempt for expertise, in turn, rested on contempt for government in general. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” declared Ronald Reagan. “Government is the problem.” So why worry about governing well?
Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: “You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to Those People.
So the reign of George W. Bush, the first true Southern Republican president since Reconstruction, was the culmination of a long process. And despite the claims of some on the right that Mr. Bush betrayed conservatism, the truth is that he faithfully carried out both his party’s divisive tactics — long before Sarah Palin, Mr. Bush declared that he visited his ranch to “stay in touch with real Americans” — and its governing philosophy.
That’s why the soon-to-be-gone administration’s failure is bigger than Mr. Bush himself: it represents the end of the line for a political strategy that dominated the scene for more than a generation.
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But, like most of the alleged principles to which our political elite professes allegiance, America and its leaders are entitled to a different set of standards and better treatment. Thus, Charles Taylor belongs at the Hague, being prosecuted as a war criminal. His son belongs in an American criminal court being prosecuted by the Bush DOJ for torture. And George Bush and Dick Cheney belong on their "ranches," enjoying full-scale immunity for the crimes they committed and a rich and comfortable retirement, treated as the esteemed and well-intentioned (even if sometimes misguided) dignitaries that they are. Virtually the only people in the world who fail to recognize this self-evident, ludicrous and disgusting hypocrisy are America's political and media elites and those who are misled by them. [em in orig]
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During a CNN New Year's Eve broadcast from Times Square, comedian Kathy Griffin became annoyed at a heckler and began responding as the segment cut away to a commercial. She spoke a little too quickly, however, and her remarks went out live over the air.
"Shut up!" Griffin yelled. "You know what? Screw you! I'm working! Why don't you get a job, buddy? You know what? I don't go to your job and knock the dicks out of your mouth!"
Memo to: Bank PR Directors
From: Global PR Central
Re: Weekly Talking Points
As you know, under the bailout law we don't have to disclose how we use the money. Why? Because millions in campaign contributions and non-stop lobbying ensured toothless legislation that gives us money for nothing, even though most Americans were strongly (and rightly) opposed. Thanks, democracy!
But simply pointing out Congress' failure will only further enrage the public. So we must soften the blow, or people might take to the streets. Here are a few examples of good (and bad) responses to any future AP inquiries:
GOOD: "Working closely with Congress, Treasury, and the Fed, we will help unfreeze credit markets and ensure that American business has the resources it needs."
BAD: "Our massive bonuses from the last few years — based on illusory, phony profits from fictional mortgage-backed securities — are ours to keep. Isn't that awesome? Don't you wish you worked for a huge bank and not the Associated Press? Send me your résumé and I'll see what I can do."
GOOD: "We urge Congress to immediately appropriate the remaining $350 billion. Any delay could endanger financial institutions that are critical to our economy."
BAD: "It's vital that all $700 billion disappear down our carefully constructed rabbit hole before Barack Obama takes office — even if his Treasury Secretary-designate helped design the bailout plan. We have yachts to buy, after all."
GOOD: "The American people can rest assured that during this crisis we will continue to act in the public interest."
BAD: "The American people can rest assured that we are permanently beyond their reach, and that we will spend the holiday season laughing and high-fiving about what we call, 'The Most Foolish Giveaway of Public Funds to Private Industry in the History of the Known Universe.'"
Remember, we don't want anyone taking to the streets to demand accountability from the financial services industry. Fortunately, there's a clause in every credit card agreement that says, "If you ever take to the streets to demand accountability, your interest rate will increase to 385 percent." So we're probably covered. But let's not take any chances until we've pocketed the rest of the dough.
