Final FUs

Having already shredded the Constitution, destroyed the U.S. reputation in the world, and decimated our economy, the Bush Administration continues its scorched earth strategy to cement its reputation: a little midnight rulemaking. Propublica has set up a page to track the damage.

100 Days and Counting

Begin the countdown. Only 100 days left!

Chickens Home Roosting

I have been unable to blog this week because I didn't even know what to say. Like many on the left, I have been outraged by this extortion of the US taxpayer by the fat, greedy pigs that created this mess, yet unsure if this so-called bailout wasn't, in fact, necessary.

Right or wrong, however, it's clear that the Bush Administration's chickens have come home to roost. The only rational explanation for what happened today is that the American people, and the majority of Congressional members, simply do not believe Bush when he declares a crisis.

This is the natural fallout from having shredded one's own credibility through eight years of lies.

Things You Need to Read

On this financial bailout proposal:

This from Krugman.

This from Chris Bowers.

I'm Back and Pissed

I have been on a self-imposed moratorium from the news for a week. Other than a quick glance at the NY Times front page at Starbucks one day, which sent me into immediate shrieks of rage, I refused to allow the outrage that masquerades as our government interfere with a planned vacation with the womenfriends of my life. My aforementioned reaction to what I did get a glimpse of only reinforced that decision.

So I leave gasping about the bailout of AIG, which came on the heels of the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which came of the heels of the bailout of Bear Stearns, and I come back to THIS?!



The legislation being moved forward by the Administration is breathtaking in the scope of power being shifted to the Secretary of the Treasury. The bill essentially undermines the entire "power of the purse" granted to the Legislative branch and cedes it to an Executive Appointee!

I will definitely have more the say about this when I've had a chance to catch up.

Hostage Taxpayers

I only occasionally post on economics, because I consider myself generally unqualified to have an intelligent opinion. And whenever I do, I always start with that disclaimer.

But the latest bailout of AIG, announced just tonight, has sent me over the edge. We are all standing around like deer with our eyes caught in the headlights while this Administration, on behalf of taxpayers for several generations, turns the economy of this country into some twisted kind of socialized capitalism: privatized gain and socialized risk.

Those 5%, who have gotten fat at the trough of the Bush Administration (the ones McCain will continue to favor,) are like terrorists standing in the middle of our public square wrapped in suicide vests. “Too big to fail” are the words on the suicide note. “You give me your money or I will kill you all.”

This really pisses me off.

Because of course we have to give in. And of course we can have no impact on these decisions because our Congressional leadership has abdicated all of that decision-making to the Treasury and Wall Street. And we are supposed to accept this because we aren’t qualified to have an opinion.

We are only qualified to pay the bill.

And maybe the “experts” are right. Maybe we are currently faced with no options, but I am sick of picking up the freaking bill while other people get rich. Where does it end?

This is going to cost us some of the best hopes for any upcoming administration. On top of the enormous financial pit dug by the current administration, and not even counting the “off books” cost of two wars, how in the world ANY next administration going to be able to afford to do anything?

And another thing……

Do you notice that another result of this debacle is that the companies that have survived are getting bigger?

So we can have even more companies that are too big to fail?

WTF?

What's at stake

It's easy to forget that it's just the soul of the country at stake here.

First in a WaPo series into the 4th branch of government under Cheney:

The command center of "the president's program," as Addington usually called it, was not in the White House. Its controlling documents, which gave strategic direction to the nation's largest spy agency, lived in a vault across an alley from the West Wing [7] -- in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, on the east side of the second floor, where the vice president headquartered his staff.

The vault was in EEOB 268, Addington's office. Cheney's lawyer held the documents, physical and electronic, because he was the one who wrote them. New forms of domestic espionage were created and developed over time in presidential authorizations that Addington typed on a Tempest-shielded computer across from his desk [8].

It is unlikely that the history of U.S. intelligence includes another operation conceived and supervised by the office of the vice president. White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. had "no idea," he said, that the presidential orders were held in a vice presidential safe. An authoritative source said the staff secretariat, which kept a comprehensive inventory of presidential papers, classified and unclassified, possessed no record of these. [emphasis added]

Get it? The Office of the President had NO RECORD of a Presidential Order authorizing the most sweeping expansion of domestic surveillance authority in history.

This is the danger of electing Presidents who are essentially tools of the neocons and wingnuts who wield them. Dick Cheney was, for all intents and purposes, the 43rd President of the United States.

Even the Supreme Court didn't choose him.

[UPDATE]

McJoan at DKos reviews a new book by James Pfiffiner with more on the subject of this dramatic expansion of Executive authority, and why it so threatens our Constitution:

--He created military commissions entirely within the executive branch and in doing so ignored U.S. laws that provided authority and procedures for establishing military commissions;

--He used the term "enemy combatant" to exempt the government from granting persons so labeled legal and constitutional rights;

--He denied the writ of habeas corpus to U.S. citizens as well as other detainees suspected of terrorism;

--He suspended the Geneva Conventions, which, because they were agreed to in a treaty, are the "supreme Law of the Land," according to Article VI of the Constitution;

--He authorized the interrogation of detainees using techniques that most of the world considers torture, and which violate the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law;

--He ordered the National Security Agency to monitor the communications of Americans without a warrant as required by FISA; and

--He asserted the sweeping right to ignore more than 1,000 provisions of public law because he deemed them to be in conflict with his authority as president.

Despicable

I have no words left that can adequately describe the depravity of the Bush administration. Everytime I think I can no longer be shocked, I am.

This is a must read from Kevin Drum, digging deeper into Seymour Hirsch's reporting on how intent Cheney is on starting a war with Iran. So intent that there was at least some consideration given to having U.S. soldiers kill other U.S. soldiers (themselves masquerading as Iranian gunboats) in order to gain U.S. public support for a strike. And the fact that they didn't go through with it is beside the point. That their minds could even conceive of it and discuss it as a plausible option tells us everything we need to know about how important it is that these people be held to some kind of accountability. They simply must not be allowed to populate the government ever again.

This Is Rich

It seems that some of our fearless leaders are outraged – outraged I tell you! – about the fact that China plans to do during the Olympics what they have enabled the Bush administration to do EVERY DAY, namely monitor the electronic and telecommunications of people attending the Beijing Olympics.

Earlier this year, the U.S. State Department issued a fact sheet warning travelers attending the Olympic games that "they have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public or private locations" in China.

I must assume that the equivalent departments in other countries have already warned their citizens that they should make the same assumption when they are in the United States.

Great and Infamous Quotes

Have you noticed the latest feature? Look for it to your right.

Each week, this blog will feature at least one quote that is memorable. Sometimes I have to go looking for something appropriate. Sometimes one just drops into my lap.

Today was just such a day, and this one was so good I just added it to the original quote I had selected.

It comes from David Suskind's latest book, which appears to be full of "jaw dropping" information about Bush's reaction to the fateful warning that predicted the 911 tragedy -- right before he went fishing.

Department of INJustice

The big new today was the release of a report from the Department of Justice that – shock and surprise – concluded that several Bush appointees at the Department broke the law by favoring political considerations over qualifications in their hiring decisions.

At first blush, one’s reaction is “Duh… like we haven’t known this for awhile?" And that’s pretty much the way the MSM is covering it. But then Kevin Drum digs out this nugget about one of the first of Monica Goodling’s vetoes:

He was an experienced terrorism prosecutor and had successfully prosecuted a high-profile terrorism case for which he received the Attorney General's Award
for Exceptional Service....Battle stated that Voris told him that the candidate was head and shoulders above the other candidates who had applied for the counterterrorism detail.

Sounds like a great guy. But there was a problem:

The candidate's wife was a prominent local Democrat elected official and vice-chairman of a local Democratic Party. She also ran several Democratic congressional campaigns....Battle, Kelly, and EOUSA Deputy Director Nowacki all told us that Goodling refused to allow the candidate to be detailed to EOUSA solely on the basis of his wife's political party affiliation.

This from an Administration that is/was willing to abrogate the constitution because it was SO IMPORTANT to pursue the war on terror….. unless, of course, it meant hiring someone whose wife was an active Democrat.

Hear No Evil

It seems to me that two essential elements constitute a great democracy: The primacy of the rule of law and “free and fair” elections as an expression of the will of the people. Here in the United States, we are fond of saying that we are “the greatest democracy in the world” – in spite of the fact that there is growing evidence that our country is beginning to routinely fail to achieve either of these standards.

Is it the fault of the media? Or is it the fault of the American people that we simply refuse to acknowledge and react to this?

I am coming to believe that the fault is ours, and that the media are just like the rest of us in that way: We simply do not want the facts to contradict the lovely story we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Exhibit 1

I am in awe of the ability of Republicans to continue to harp upon “the rule of law” while consistently – through four of the last five Republican administrations – pardoning the highest-level lawbreakers. Nixon pardoned Jimmy Hoffa, for god’s sake, who then went on to work on his re-election. (Sadly, Nixon’s own criminality now pails compared to that of Bush the Boy.) And although Nixon suffered impeachment hearings and a forced resignation for his crimes, he was saved from the rule of law by Ford’s pardon, which Ford – with a straight face – justified by claiming that Nixon would not be able to receive a fair trial in this country! Conventional wisdom says that the country has decided it was the right thing to do.

Bush the First pardoned all the Iran-Contra criminals from the Reagan administration, which – get this – also served to ensure that his own involvement in their actions was never explored, and we have already watched while the Boy Bush pardoned Scooter Libby for revealing classified information for political purposes.

Now get ready for some more wholesale pardoning as Bush prepares a getaway car for the many lawbreakers in his administration…It will be the most blatant expression for the rule of law in the nation’s history. And where is the media? Egging it on.

And thus we have arrived at a place where it is considered conventional wisdom that the American people are better off NOT knowing the full criminal corruption of their leaders.

Exhibit 2

The entire nation watched as the Supreme Court handed the Presidency to Bush – and did nothing. Instead the media and political class joined together to tell Gore to quit whining and move on.

So when the Republican Secretary of State manipulated voting in Ohio to produce a second victory for the Cowboy in Chief, we didn’t even blink.

Now fresh evidence has emerged – from a Republican – that the Republicans have been manipulating elections as far back as 2002. Have you heard a single story about this in the MSM?


Is this a conspiracy? I don’t think so. It is simply the collective behavior of people who willfully turn away from the truth because the truth is too painful. I have worked in social services for almost 25 years, and have seen the wreckage of dysfunctional families. The US electorate is one big dysfunctional family, and “see no evil; hear no evil; speak no evil” (unless against Democrats) is our mantra.

One last insult before they leave

The Bush Administration has drafted new rules that would force Planned Parenthood and other health care providers to hire people who disagree with their most basic mission. From Nancy Pelosi’s blog:

While current law allows health care providers and professionals to refuse to provide abortions based on their religious beliefs, this provision would threaten the funding of organizations and health facilities if they do not hire people who would refuse to provide birth control and defines abortion so broadly that it would include many types of birth control, including oral contraception.

So as they prepare to bring their “scorched earth” strategy vis-à-vis the federal government to a close, the Bushies want to ensure that family planning organizations are forced to hire some percentage of the loonies who picket them. Great idea.

I think I’ll put on my witchiest outfit and see if they will hire me at the local Catholic Archdiocese.

Watched

Are you on the list?

In some ways, this million-person watch list is the perfect symbol for an
administration whose strategy in fighting terrorism has always revolved around making everyone a suspect -- from data mining to ID cards to see-through body scanners. It is an approach based around trying to pick a one-in-a-billion terrorist out of the population, rather than doing the only thing that has ever really worked to stop attacks: following up competently on known terrorists and known leads and working outward from there to go directly to the terrorists.

All torture all the time

Jane Mayer’s new book, The Dark Side, is being previewed by the NY Times, and the most disturbing revelation is that the International Red Cross warned the C.I.A. over a year ago that the techniques being used were “categorically” torture, and that they could leave authorizing officials of the U.S. Government subject to prosecution in the International Courts.

A friend tipped me off to this clip from Countdown (with Rachel Maddow, not Olbermann, which is an improvement IMHO).

Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley, whose money quote is at the end of a long clip:

“I never thought in my lifetime that we would say that, that we’ve become like Serbia, where an international tribunal has to come in to force us to apply the rule of law.

And I never thought I would see a Congress, a Democratic-led Congress, refuse to take actions, even with the pre-eminent institution of the Red Cross saying, this clearly is torture, and torture is a war crime, they are still refusing to take meaningful action.

So we’ve come to this ignoble moment, where we could be forced into a tribunal, and forced to face the rule of law that we have refused to apply to ourselves.”

The entire clip is below, but before you go, the next time you talk to someone who defends the use of torture with a “whatever it takes” defense, you can share with them a little known fact about this disaster in Iraq: It was justified with the use of false information provided under torture. Via Frank Rich today in the NYTimes, also a commentary on this book:

The biggest torture-fueled wild-goose chase, of course, is the war in Iraq. Exhibit A, revisited in “The Dark Side,” is Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an accused Qaeda commander whose torture was outsourced by the C.I.A. to Egypt. His fabricated tales of Saddam’s biological and chemical W.M.D. — and of nonexistent links between Iraq and Al Qaeda — were cited by President Bush in his fateful Oct. 7, 2002, Cincinnati speech ginning up the war and by Mr. Powell in his subsequent United Nations presentation on Iraqi weaponry. Two F.B.I. officials told Ms. Mayer that Mr. al-Libi later explained his lies by saying: “They were killing me. I had to tell them something.”

That “something” was crucial in sending us into the quagmire that, five years later, has empowered Iran and compromised our ability to counter the very terrorists that torture was supposed to thwart.

And am I the only one who missed this last month?

The clip:

Rove as Populist

Most of the time, I want to just smack Maureen Dowd, but since she aims her venom at Rover today, I'm okay with it.

A Right to Crow

McClatchy has finally been tipped over the edge by the rest of the MSM's self-justifying response to McClellan's assessment, and engages in a little self-promotion. As one of the few media outlets to consistently continue to perform their journalistic function throughout this administration, they have the right.

The American Conscience

... is not dead. Via McClatchy:

Twenty former U.S. attorneys, both Republicans and Democrats, urged a federal judge Thursday to intervene in a constitutional battle over whether two White House officials should be forced to testify before Congress about the firings of nine U.S. attorneys.

The politicization of the Justice Department was just among the most important of many administrative departments used and abused by this administration, which viewed everything through a political lense.

But even many of those who owed their jobs to this administration saw the implications. From the brief:

"This congressional inquiry involves the possible subversion of principles at the core of Constitutional government," they wrote. "It is a matter of the utmost importance for Congress to conduct a complete investigation to determine whether White House officials have injected, or attempted to inject, partisan considerations into a process that must be rigorously insulated from such considerations."

Score one for the Constitution.

Shakespearean Drama

So what to make of Scott McClellan’s new tell-all? At some base level he’s just another Republican hack trying to wash the blood off his hands after the fact. Why is he being given so much credence? He never was the sharpest knife in the drawer, and became almost a caricature of himself with his obstinate idiocy by the end of his tenure. TPM is collecting suggestions for your own favorite display of good ol’ Texas stupidity ala Scottie boy if you want to participate.

The MSM are having a field day, of course, and I should just delight in seeing the beasts turned against this administration and let it go.

But the psychologist in me just can’t turn away from this little Shakespearean drama unfolding before us.

Scottie. The slow one. Not exactly deficient, if you know what ah mean, just a little slow. Bushie adopts him, takes him under his wing, gives him a place. He’s the stupid son. The one who gets the job he can’t do because Daddy makes sure there’s a place for him. Bushie has a lot of sympathy for stupid sons, since his entire career owes its debt to the tradition.

But the stupid son actually takes himself seriously. What a concept! He actually feels hurt when he finds out that he has been used as nothing more than a marketing hack, a mouthpiece to go on camera and recite the script for the commercial. Because he is a stupid boy, he doesn’t really “get” that this was his entire purpose from the beginning. He feels tricked, so now he is lashing out. What a stupid, stupid, boy.

And Daddy feels hurt, because he can’t believe that the stupid boy would betray him after everything he did for him. Doesn’t the stupid boy understand that he would never have risen so far without Daddy behind him? So Bushie will turn his head away and wipe a tear while his enforcers proceed to tear the man apart. It breaks Daddy’s heart to have to do it, you understand, but the boy has left him no choice.

How utterly Shakespearean.

To follow: The most disturbing revelation from Scottie’s tantrum, and why it matters to the upcoming November campaign.

Please Care about FISA

With his brilliant sarcasm, Hunter at DKos explains better than I ever can why you should care about FISA. This is worth excerpting in full.

The You've Got Nothing To Hide Act of 2008
by Hunter

Thu May 08, 2008 at 07:00:25
PM PDT

To: U.S. Representative Steny H. Hoyer U.S.
Senator John D. Rockefeller

Honorable Gentlemen --
I see from the news that the telecom industry efforts to receive blanket immunity for violation of this nation's domestic surveillance laws are still quite active. Their campaign to place pressure on the Congress via the placement of industry funded, faux-grassroots ads, their willingness to draft proposals for how, exactly, their own immunity should be phrased, the continuing refusal to actually describe what it is they are asking immunity for -- all impressive efforts. And they have what can only be described as a true champion in the Bush Administration, which has acted nobly to protect the interests of these fine companies. So it seems only natural that right-thinking legislators such as yourselves would want to go along, so as to not rock the boat.

It seems, then, we are at a bit of an impasse. You want to provide the industry immunity for still-unknown years of illegal surveillance, immunity the industry is adamantly demanding. But at the moment, you cannot rouse sufficient support for the act because it would make you all look like cheap, easily bought corporatophiles in the pocket of some of the highest paid lobbyists in the land -- mere legislative hacks who can be bought off with trinkets, or threatened with bullying advertisements, or who believe laws are negotiable things, depending on how much money you have or how powerful your friends are. This isbecause he public, against all expectations, is actually paying attention.

Fear not: I have a bargain to strike. I would like to announce that we, the slovenly and ignorant public, would be willing to drop our unreasonable outrage over corporations in this nation being given blanket retroactive immunity for violating both federal law and our own personal privacy... for a price of our own. A quid pro quo, if you will -- and certainly, I expect you are well familiar with such arrangements. We simply want a little payback, in order to make sure that you in Congress are asked to live according to the same rules as the rest of us.

Here is my proposal. We, the public, should be allowed to spy on you, and all those you come in contact with, with similar promisees of amnesty. For each member of Congress, I propose we set up a collective internet site. This site will allow interested members of the public to, in realtime, monitor your every activity to assure ourselves that none of you are committing illegal or terrorist-enabling acts at any given moment of the day. The primary feature will be the ability to listen in to any conversation you may be having, whether it be on your work phone, your home phone, your cell phone, text messages, email -- whatever. These conversations will be streamed to the internet, so that they may be monitored by responsible members of the public. The contact information of whoever it is you are talking to at that moment at time will also be displayed and tracked -- whether it be your wife or husband, child, doctor, secret mistress, whoever -- so that we can monitor them as well. You know, just to be safe.

You can trust us, as members of the public, to be discreet. We will only listen and watch, and will not abuse the information. After all, what could any of you possibly have to hide? Only someone intent on criminal acts objects to being monitored proactively. On the contrary, you should be grateful to us: by listening to your every phone call and reading your every communication, we can only help you to prove that you have nothing to hide. I am unfamiliar with the vagaries of American law these days, but my understanding is that this ongoing surveillance will make you even more innocent than you were before. Perhaps you will even be twice as innocent as before, or four times as innocent -- what patriot could resist?

This, though, is still not quite the proper balance between your privacy and our needs as citizens. We need more of a total information awareness into your doings -- you know, just to be sure you are not terrorists, or at the very least secretly drug dealers or ethnic or something. You will therefore have all your personal bills posted to the same website: credit card bills, mortgage statements, monthly electricity usage, bank statements, etc. You need not worry, of course, about doing this yourself: there are companies already tracking all of this information, and government projects dedicated to sweeping it up to look for suspicious patterns.

Again, there is nothing you could possibly have to hide... unless, perhaps, you have taken any trips abroad lately? That could cause some problems. Or if you have eaten at the same restaurants as other people being investigated... or have an unusual pattern of travel within the country... or have moved, recently. Oh -- or have bought more than one bottle of cough syrup in the last few months, or have acquaintances withsuspicious-sounding names, or own your own business. Aside from that, you should be in the clear.

I admit, this at first sounds intrusive. Consider this, though: what if one of your fellow Congressmen turned out to be -- and I pause, here, for dramatic effect -- a terrorist sympathizer? Sure, you consider the possibility unlikely, but if there was even the slightest, slightest chance that someone surrounding you was a secret Jihadist, would you not be willing to give up any amount of privacy, in order to prove your own innocence and help the authorities (in this case, we watchful members of the public) narrow down the list of subjects by conducting surveillance upon each of you, one by one, to ensure you are not planning something criminal?

There is, of course, one small detail that ruins all of this. Surveillance of American citizens without due process or cause is, sadly, illegal. In order for us to do it, then, you will have to grant us, your own constituents, the same immunities that you have been struggling so valiantly to provide to the telecommunications industry. I am sorry to report we have no lobbyists. We have few people willing to type up the laws for you, in order to deliver them onto your desks. We do, however, have the advantage of being voters -- one of the few remaining perks of being a citizen of this nation that is not yet shared by corporations -- and so one can certainly presume that we would look favorably upon any grant of immunity for our own illegal acts, come your next election. And I cannot help but point out that while the Bush administration and telecommunications companies conspired to do something illegal, then demand immunity after the fact, we mere citizens are following a much more responsible path of asking you up front to let us do the deed. Surely, that shows far more respect for the laws of this great nation than either Bush or his compatriots have deigned, does it not?

So, what say you? Can we citizens be granted these extra-legal powers that the telecommunications companies have been demanding, lest they have to face civil suits for violating the laws of the nation? Can we be granted the same illegal powers of espionage that the Bush administration has squeezed from you with barely a squeak, on your parts? Can we violate your privacy with abandon, ignore the laws and the courts, listen in on your most personal phone calls, thumb through your monthly purchases, follow your movements, spy on those that contact you, and if ever caught doing anything that does violate existing law, simply receive immunity from all unfortunate laws that might apply?

You are looking for a deal to be struck in order to condone the violation our privacy and make the illegal legal.

Fine; these are our terms. Unless you are terrorists, I think you will find our requests not only fair, but truly patriotic.

There is another matter that needs addressing, which is that it may be necessary at some point to torture one or two of you, just to make very, very certain that you do not know something about terrorists that you perhaps might be hiding. No need to worry about that now; we can address that in separate legislation.

Your humble citizen,