Top-of-the-Heap Crooks
Ft. Boise weblog, October, 2005 31OCT :
Scott McClellan said he personally spoke to Karl Rove, Elliot Abrams and Lewis Libby, and 'those individuals assured me they were not involved in this.' Rove and Libby lied to McClellan, or else McClellan lied in front of the press corps.
Before one or more of 'em fessed up to their boss and the standard was lowered from 'involved in any way' to 'convicted of a crime,' they must have lied to the PresSpitzer May Face Democratic Challengerident as well, or else Bush lied to the American people. (And we know that could never happen.) Marshall Grossman sums it up: 'Nobody lies to my President and gets away with it.'
'Please don’t debate the role of special counsel and the arcanery of law...'
James K. Galbraith sees the same simple calculation: '(For Bush) to keep (Rove) is to admit complicity in the public lie, at the least. Isn't that clear enough, even for the Washington press corps? Scott McClellan is in a similar position as Bush. Either Rove lied to McClellan, or McClellan lied to the press. Simple as that; which is it, Scottie?'
Sc'Alito next up Permalink= http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-k-galbraith/a-few-very-simple-thought_b_9821.html
last 3 of ~6 paragraphs:
4. If you were Dick Cheney, how would you feel about this? You don't know, you can't know, how Libby's feeling right now; that information is locked up in Libby's head. But you do know that he doesn't know, for sure, whether he can expect help from you. And you can't tell him, can you? At this point, Libby is beyond your control. If you have something to hide that he knows, you have to take it on faith that he won't divulge it. That being so, exactly how do you plan to handle your testimony at Libby's trial? This is, well, the prisoner's dilemma. It's set it up so that if Libby delivers Cheney, he will be better off than if he doesn't. And Cheney knows this now.
5. Karl Rove may or may not get swept up later. Does it matter? Rove's political position is untenable now. Either he lied to the president, telling him falsely that he was not involved. Or else, the president turned around and lied to the American public, claiming not to know the leaker when he did. Either way, as of now Bush can only protect his own credibility, such as it is, by firing Rove. To keep him is to admit complicity in the public lie, at the least. Isn't that clear enough, even for the Washington press corps?
6. Scott McClellan is in a similar position as Bush. Either Rove lied to McClellan, or McClellan lied to the press. Simple as that; which is it, Scottie?
After the rabid Right put the kibosh on Ms. Miers, Bush's second guess turns out to be... an experienced judge. And a guy. And white. (Hey, white guys are just best-suited to run things, what can we say?) And in the mold of the so-far-right-he's-almost-off-the-edge Antonin Scalia. The most important thing of course is to change the subject from everything that went down last week. And feed the Beast on the Right, apparently. Forget about the idea that Bush would be a uniter and not a divider, or aim for the center in an increasingly polarized political climate."
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[dont miss: http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/ global choices... not domestic LIES and SPAM ]
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Oil companies' record profits
Supporters of Bush's war on Iraq belittled the idea that we would undertake such action for oil, or for profit. It certainly has not been a profitable undertaking overall, with way more money spent than we'll ever get back in the value of oil. Not to mention the lives sacrificed. The lack of profitability does not mean there were no profits, however. Here come ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum reporting record earnings. Chevron missed the bus because of hurricane Katrina, but they matched last year's results anyway. The oilco CEOs may have to answer to Congress: Bill Frist says "If there are those who abuse the free enterprise system to advantage themselves and their businesses at the expense of all Americans, they ought to be exposed, and they ought to be ashamed." Yes, that's the same Bill Frist who's under investigation for that fortunately-timed "divestiture" out of his "blind" trust a little while ago.
What time do you have?
My WinXP system thinks daylight savings time ended this morning, as it should have. But didn't the idiot Congress decided to extend it for... energy savings or something? Oh, that's scheduled for 2007, not this year. The Navy knows what time it is, for sure. Mountain Standard Time here!
Just laugh at it.
My favorite reaction to the Republican "charge" that this is just the criminalization of politics was in David Brancaccio's NOW interview with Christine Todd Whitman. She gave a spontaneous and cheerful laugh at the quote from DeLay in the dock.
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The Latest in Second-Term Scandals
David Rosenbaum states the obvious: "This Congress is unlikely to investigate this president." While second-term scandals are now de rigeur, that puts the Cheney-Libby-Official A affair in a harsher light: big man booted with a home-town crowd in power.
Bush's approval poll numbers are setting new lows (42 to 55%) and Libby "is the first high-ranking White House official in many decades to be indicted while still in office." Normal procedure for top White House staff members is to resign "long before" you're indicted, as Adams, Agnew, Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Poindexter all did.
Frank Rich provides a "representative sampling" of as-yet unanswered questions, including: "Why have the official reports on detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo spared all but a single officer in the chain of command? Why does Halliburton continue to receive lucrative government contracts even after it's been the focus of multiple federal inquiries into accusations of bid-rigging, overcharging and fraud?"
"It won't be easy to get honest answers because this administration, like Nixon's, practices obsessive secrecy even as it erects an alternative reality built on spin and outright lies."
"They will offer more lectures, and legalisms, and carefully worded denials. We offer another way, a better way, and a stiff dose of truth."–Dick Cheney, August 2000
"(T)his administration has upped the ante by playing dirty tricks with war. Back on July 6, 2003, when the American casualty toll in Iraq stood at 169 and Mr. Wilson had just published his fateful Op-Ed, Robert Novak, yet to write his column outing Mr. Wilson's wife, declared that 'weapons of mass destruction or uranium from Niger' were 'little elitist issues that don't bother most of the people.' That's what Nixon administration defenders first said about the 'third-rate burglary' at Watergate, too."
Nicholas Kristof is more direct, if less realistic about what should happen next, now that it's Time for the Vice President to Explain Himself: "If Mr. Cheney can't address the questions about his conduct, if he can't be forthcoming about the activities in his office that gave rise to the investigation, then he should resign. And if he won't resign, Mr. Bush should demand his resignation."
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29OCT 2005
Gave Bob Kustra's interview with Karen Armstrong (aired Oct. 21) another listen, with better attention the second time. All too easy to let multitasking distract one.... It's a fine way to spend half an hour, more than once.
"Religion is not about thinking things or believing things, but about doing things that change you at a profound level, and compassion—the ability to feel with the other—is crucial to that religous quest."
"(The Greek Orthodox) were always rather suspicious of the West which they said was developing a too rationalistic idea of God. They evolved a principle in the 14th century, largely in reaction to the Western "cut-and-dried" theology, of saying that every statement about God should have two characteristics: one, it must be paradoxical; that is, it must be a clash of opposites to remind you that when you're talking about God you're beyond neat definitions. Second, it must lead you to silence; a silent apprehension and awe, not more theological chit-chat."
"God transcend(s) all human categories... Maimondes, Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, Ibn-Sina... all insisted that it was more accurate to say that God did not 'exist,' because our word 'existence' is far too limited to be applied to God. God is a different reality altogether. The best theology should take us beyond concepts, into a state of silent awe."
"The trouble is that most people hear about God for the first time at the same time as they're learning about Santa Claus. Their ideas about God should change, just as their ideas about Santa Claus have changed. You have to work at a notion of the Divine. in the same way that you have to work aesthetically to appreciate great painting and music and literature."
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Among all his other accomplishments, Patrick Fitzgerald showed himself a master of timing. Friday morning gave time for the daytime and evening news to blast the headline, and then a whole weekend for the pundits to flog the analysis.
John Tierney says the big losers are journalists: [because THEY ARE BIG LOSERS, this Decade =ed. note] "We've spent our careers assuring sources that we'll protect them, but now they can see how our testimony led to one source's indictment." Let this be a warning for those "whistle-blowers" who "leak" information to the press in order to manipulate "journalists" in regard to "facts." And then try to dodge responsibility by testifying that it was the reporters who told them the classified information.
Dear John: Libby's lies are what compelled testimony from the journalists, and what put him in jeopardy.
Tierney liked the carefuly proscribed bounds of Fitzgerald's indictment: "The leak was imagined to be a deliberate crime..." and because Fitz limited the charge to a slam-dunk case there was no crime? "...but from the start there was always a much simpler explanation: that it was an accident by administration officials replying in kind to leaks from a critic."
An accident. Yeah, that's it.
Scooter just "couldn't remember" that it was his boss, Vice President of the United States (and three other colleagues) who told him who Joe Wilson's wife was and who she worked for instead of all those reporters he was blabbing to. Thank goodness he took good notes so we could sort it out later.
Maureen Dowd's glass, on the other hand, is half-empty: "There is something grotesque about Scooter's hiding behind the press with his little conspiracy, given that he's part of an administration that despises the press and tried to make its work almost impossible."
The more interesting question is whether Scooter will take it like a man, plead out on one or a couple of the charges for a nominal fine and maybe some easy jail time, or whether he'll come to Jesus and decide honesty really is the best policy after all. Wouldn't that be a kick? I'm not going to hold my breath. The book deal could be interesting, though.
He says he expects to be "completely and totally exonerated," but it's hard to imagine Fitzgerald missing his mark so utterly as that. "I was just following orders" wouldn't seem to be a ticket out. "The end justified the means"? "I was so busy, I just couldn't recollect the sequence of events." Sorry Scooter, I can't see it.
If he's still the Veep's man and following orders, he has to plead it out. No way Dick Cheney wants to be answering a subpoena for a star turn on Law & Order. And if he's not willing to take one for Darth Vader... well, that's when it could get interesting. But he's not going to skate by on the "those weren't lies, they were just inconsistencies" defense.
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Even Nixon's Laywer is Troubled
The ACLU ad is to the point: why did we bother debating the Patriot Act if President Bush could make up his own rules about spying on US citizens? They've also written a letter to the Attorney General, "Requesting the Appointment of Outside Special Counsel for the Investigation and Prosecution of Violations, or Conspiracy to Violate, Criminal Laws Against Warrantless Wiretapping of American Persons."
Somehow I have my doubts that Alberto is going to jump right on it (and indeed, 2½ weeks have passed without action on his part). We don't need to belabor the point that Gonzales is not sufficiently independent of the President to act in the public interest: "Regrettably, your own statements indicate that you, yourself, are implicated in violating these federal laws, regardless of any defense you may assert."
Their letter cites chapter and verse of U.S. Code that has apparently been violated, noting that the FISA law provided for emergencies, and wartime, and oh by the way Congress declined to declare war when they had the opportunity.
"(E)ven if the resolution (on the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force in Afghanistan) were misconstrued as a declaration of war, however, it did not provide any authority to violate federal law on wiretapping."
The carefully non-partisan Congressional Research Service has also considered the question of whether Bush acted within the law. They couldn't reach a conclusion, "in part because it said so many details remained classified." They did say that the legal rationale "does not seem to be as well grounded" as the administration's lawyers have argued.
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Real-estate disintermediation
From Madison, Wisconsin, where "bucking the system is a civic pastime," fsbomadison.com. For Sale by Owner is not for everyone (as they note on the home page), but 6% of increasingly large sums of money is a big and attractive chunk of change. They launched way back in February of 1998, and today's NY Times story has their hit counter spinning.
To real estate agents, "for sale by owner" conjures up some cranky tightwad trying to sell an overpriced, ramshackle house. Agents utter FSBO as if there was something foul stuck to the bottom of their shoe. "It's a commission-avoidance scheme," said Sheridan Glen, manager of the downtown Madison office for Wisconsin's biggest real estate broker, the First Weber Group.
Gee, you think?
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Who's in charge here?
Olivia Judson is happy to have evolved, "proud to be part of the riot of nature, to know that the same forces that produced me also produced bees, giant ferns and microbes that live at the bottom of the sea."
The "impartial - and comprehensible - forces of evolution" are preferable to the "caprices of a deity."
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Lights On 34% Of New Orleans,
One In Three Grocery Stores Reopened, 10% Of Previous Hospital Beds...
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Sickest And Poorest Elderly Turned Away Under New Medicare...
States Declaring Health Emergencies...
Bush In 2003: “The Greatest Advance In Health Care Coverage
For America's Seniors Since The Founding Of Medicare”...
It's pretty sad when the magazine responsible for much of the best creative non-fiction ever published decides to go the way of a right-wing tabloid rag.
The New Republic's Legal Affairs Editor labeled the nominee's views on guns "far more troubling" than his views on abortion rights.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060113/ap_on_el_gu/new_york_governor ... sorry
Spitzer May Face Democratic ChallengerMINEOLA, N.Y. - New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who made some powerful enemies with his crackdown on Wall Street abuses and is now running for governor, could face a strong challenge from a fellow Democrat bankrolled by one of Spitzer's fiercest corporate foes. Spitzer has at least $12 million in his ever-growing war chest, national stature from his attacks on corporate wrongdoing and a commanding lead in the polls. But that may not stop Tom Suozzi, a brash Long Island politician, from getting into the race.
Suozzi, the Nassau County executive, has the hugely influential backing of Home Depot founder Ken Langone, a Long Island billionaire who has tangled with Spitzer on Wall Street and has vowed to raise "as much money as I can" to help knock off the two-term attorney general.
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posted by USSSlavebation @ 1/14/2006 09:15:00 pm
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