Rare glimpse of the truth

Every once in awhile, if one pays close attention, Republicans give us a glimpse of the truth in terms of their ultimate motivation. And it has nothing to do with core principles, or philosophical differences, or what they truly believe to be the best governance, or what they believe to be best for the American people.

It's about power, folks. Just power. Keeping it and wielding it on behalf of those they serve -- who are not the bulk of citizens of this country. From U.S. New and World Report:

Daschle and the Obamacrats certainly have the momentum: a near-landslide presidential election victory, at least 58 Democratic votes in the Senate, and a nasty recession that will make many Americans yearn for economic security. Already the health insurance companies seem set back on their heels. The industry's trade organization now says it would accept new rules requiring them to cover pre-existing conditions as long as there was a universal mandate for all Americans to have health insurance. On top of all that, Obama clearly wants to make healthcare reform a priority in his first term, as evidenced by the selection of a heavy hitter like Daschle. And even if he wasn't interested, Congress sure is, with Max Baucus and Ted Kennedy readying a plan in the Senate. A few observations:

1) Passage would be a political gamechanger. Recently, I stumbled across this analysis of how nationalized healthcare in Great Britain affected the political environment there. As Norman Markowitz in Political Affairs, a journal of "Marxist thought," puts it: "After the Labor Party established the National Health Service after World War II, supposedly conservative workers and low-income people under religious and other influences who tended to support the Conservatives were much more likely to vote for the Labor Party when health care, social welfare, education and pro-working class policies were enacted by labor-supported governments."

Passing Obamacare would be like performing exactly the opposite function of turning people into investors. Whereas the Investor Class is more conservative than the rest of America, creating the Obamacare Class would pull America to the left. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute, who first found that wonderful Markowitz quote, puts it succinctly in a recent blog post: "Blocking Obama's health plan is key to the GOP's survival."

Got that? No debate about the impact on the uninsured or the insured -- just a fight to protect the power base of the GOP.

It was ever thus.

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.

It starts

Let us not forget what our President-elect is up against. Via Steve Benen at Washington Monthly:

AN ADVANCE LOOK AT THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION.... It's only been a couple of days since Barack Obama was declared the president-elect, but it's hard not to notice that congressional Republicans are already striking a confrontational pose. Take these ridiculous comments from Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl (R).

Jon Kyl, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, warned president-elect Barack Obama that he would filibuster U.S. Supreme Court appointments if those nominees were too liberal.

Kyl, Arizona's junior senator, expects Obama to appoint judges in the mold of U.S Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Stephen Breyer. Those justices take a liberal view on cases related to social, law and order and business issues, Kyl said.

"He believes in justices that have empathy," said Kyl, speaking at a Federalist Society meeting in Phoenix. The attorneys group promotes conservative legal principles.

Kyl said if Obama goes with empathetic judges who do not base their decisions on the rule of law and legal precedents but instead the factors in each case, he would try to block those picks via filibuster.

Think about that. The second highest ranking Republican in the Senate, just a few days after the election, is already talking about blocking Supreme Court nominations that haven't been named, in response to Supreme Court vacancies that don't exist.

What the hell.

Everything that could go wrong

The new cover story on Time is a pretty comprehensive examination of how this coming election could wind up being a complete clusterf*ck.

I can only pin my hopes on the ability of our side to turn out such a landslide that even the most insane of Repukes won't dare to be so brazen as to steal yet another election.

But if it happens, it will be a clear lesson about accountability. We all should have been in the streets when the Supreme Court handed Bush the election the first time, and -- short of putting in a Democratic Secr of State in Ohio -- nothing was done to address the obvious manipulation and suppression that took place in '04 and stole the election again.

Dems keep trying to rise above my NOT making an issue out of what is ACTUALLY a threat to the democracy, and if it comes back to bite us this time there will be no one to blame but ourselves.

Worse than FISA

My computer is still not back, but I am braving the waters of suicidally-slow response to post a link to HuffPost that you will (hopefully) be hearing more about.

A bit of background:

In case you have not made your living negotiating the sausage-making process of government, you may not realize how important "rules-making" is. Many of the most horrific government policies have come not through the legislative process, but through "rules making" that would never survive legislative review

I live with this each day in my non-profit environment. If you get to write the definition of "homeless" for example, you can instantly erase huge portions of the homeless population! Did you know that most homeless kids are not homeless? As long as they have ten friends willing to let them spend the night three nights over the course of a month they're all good!

But I digress....

FISA was a battle lost. And the almost inevitable consequence of failing to check the erosion of rights is........

more erosion of rights.

And this time, all we get is a hearing, not a vote.

Feeding the Beast

Leaving his digs at TPM, Josh Marshall has a post today at The Washington Monthly that is worth reading.

But I take issue with this:

When Baghdad finally fell, reaction in the Arab world took many forms, each intense and ambiguous. But one unmistakable variety was a sort of chagrin over the fact that it had taken the tanks of a Western power to rid Iraq of what was an unmistakably hideous regime. Antiwar liberals, if they were frank with themselves, couldn't help but feel a parallel moral unease. As much as President Bush had acted as a bully on the international stage, as much as the lead-up to war had been destructive, clumsy, and dishonest, by early April the war he started had brought down a regime of death squads and secret police, foreign aggression, and internal oppression. Those are things liberals are supposed to oppose, and usually do. Yet those who opposed Bush's war--even with good reason--had to concede that their preferred course would have left the torture chambers running indefinitely.

There is nothing stated here to argue with, except the logical consequences of the position!

Shall we invade Darfur? Genocide is happening there every day while the entire world stands by silently.

How about Zimbabwe? Certainly Mugabe’s brutality towards his own people is no less heinous than Sadam’s was.

So why Iraq? If the United States is going to set itself up as the moral police in the world, why make Iraq our first example? The Republicans had hissy fits when Clinton finally – belatedly – decided to act in Yugoslavia…. So why the sudden urge to become the world’s primary defender of human rights?

Oh, that’s right, the oil.

Every time a liberal writer “admits” that if leftists had their way Saddam Hussein would still be in power they feed the distortion machine of the right – leaving us all in peril.

Either the US is taking on the role of the world’s policeman – fighting war after war in countries that most American citizens can’t find on the map – or we join the world of realpolitic and intervene only when we must.

None of the abuses of the Hussein regime in Iraq ever rose to the level we have all read about in our newspapers happening every day in Darfur. If the US was going to play policeman of the world’s morality – why not there?

Oh, that’s right, they had no oil.

Big Brother at the Border

The Washington Post exposes a little-known aspect of our new no-privacy country.

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

If this was going to be applied in China during the Olympics, I guess it would be getting more media attention.

Some Pigs are More Equal that Others

$25 Billion.



Suuuuckerrrrrrrrs!

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.

Suckers to the Rescue

As a writer, one of the things I like to explore is the way that the Republicans, marketing geniuses that they are, have so-often succeeded in framing and restricting the pubic discourse by controlling the language we use. It’s the relationship between language and social psychology that fascinates me.

The news of the last three days has been all about the crisis in the financial markets. Suddenly administration officials are having to work weekends trying to forestall a complete financial meltdown, triggered by the crisis in the mortgage market, as presumably evidenced by the fall in stock prices for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

I am not an economist. But first when U.S. taxpayers were put on the hook to bail out Bear Stearns, and now with the latest proposals to rescue Fannie and Freddie, we see the full corruption of our current system at play.

David Wessel of The Wall Street Journal adopted the language of the right when he said on NPR yesterday that Congress would “stay away from the extremes of privatization or nationalization”. [emphasis added]

That’s how the Republicans like it: they take all the profit during times of market exuberance and success, and then when the excesses of capitalism finally take the entire thing off the rail, the U.S. taxpayer is expected to step in to assume the loss because the entire greedy enterprise has woven itself so deeply into the fabric of our economy that it cannot be allowed to fail.

Or so we are told.

When taxpayers were forced to assume the risks involved with bailing out Bear Stearns, we allowed the worst kind of corporate speculative and fraudulent behavior to evade the natural market consequences of its own behavior. What message was sent? You can be as irresponsible as you like in the pursuit of profit but if you do it on a big enough scale you can put the taxpayer on the hook in your stead.

We are doing this again with Fannie and Freddie, and you and I should be letting out a howl. Why is it out of the question to fully privatize Fannie and Freddie? Because Republicans call that an extreme solution? Fannie and Freddie have spent enormous amounts of money lobbying Congress to avoid any kind of regulation that might have prevented this from happening. Why NOT let their stockholders suffer the consequences?

Because, we are told, Fannie and Freddie hold more than half of all U.S. mortgages.

Then let’s nationalize them. Just because conservatives have made the words “socialized” and “nationalized” into dirty obscenities? If the government if going to buy shares, let’s buy them all – and not at some inflated price that cushions the blow for shareholders, but at their true worth which, today, is very little. Sure it would cost a fortune, but at least when it was done the taxpayer might get to realize some of the profits that have historically gone to provide some of the most obscene executive compensation on Wall Street.

Which bring us to the word the word of the day:

Oligarchy

Or would you prefer Plutocracy?

At first it appeared that this was going to be pushed through so quickly that there was no way to stop it, but apparently I am not the only one howling. Consideration of the proposals has been delayed, which gives you the chance to contact your Congressional representatives and tell them “No.” Nationalize it if necessary, but quit using us to bail out corporations and save them from their own mismanagement.

Coming Back

I feel like I am "coming to" after a long away, stepping back into the blog with shy feet, not quite knowing what I want to do with it right now.

Too young, I have lost my father, my friend, my moral compass. And the saying of goodbye has forced a different perspective on priorities.

Hoping to get back into a groove as things settle down. Until then you will have to content yourself with this. One for the activists and another for the ponderers:

Government for sale?

This, for memorial day, comes in two parts:

Part 1



Part 2:

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,

FISA -- It's Not Over Yet

FDL and Glenzilla are on it. The Blue Dogs are at it again, trying to work out something for those telecom dollars that have poured out.

And I don’t even care that my current readership don’t seem to want to get active. This assault on our constitution is one of the big reasons I began blogging.

Our Shame

Our government, in our name.

Another Report on this Debacle

Our own Defense Department’s think tank releases a report. McClatchy picks it up. This is the opening line:

"Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a
major war and a major debacle," says the report's opening line.

They go on.

The report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins,
a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews with
other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in
prewar preparations.

[Snip]

The report said that the United States has suffered serious political costs,
with its standing in the world seriously diminished. Moreover, operations in
Iraq have diverted "manpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers"
from "all other efforts in the war on terror" and severely strained the U.S.
armed forces.

"Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there
(in Iraq) were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become,
at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to
expand its influence throughout the Middle East," the report
continued.

The addition of 30,000 U.S. troops to Iraq last year to
halt the country's descent into all-out civil war has improved security, but not
enough to ensure that the country emerges as a stable democracy at peace with
its neighbors, the report said.

"Despite impressive progress in
security, the outcome of the war is in doubt," said the report. "Strong
majorities of both Iraqis and Americans favor some sort of U.S. withdrawal.
Intelligence analysts, however, remind us that the only thing worse than an Iraq
with an American army may be an Iraq after a rapid withdrawal of that
army."

"For many analysts (including this one), Iraq remains a
'must win,' but for many others, despite obvious progress under General David
Petraeus and the surge, it now looks like a 'can't win.'"

Anything you’ve read so far that you didn’t know?

I wish reports like these mattered. If someone is a “defeatist” in the face of a conflict we “can’t win”, doesn’t that make her/him a pragmatist?

You can download the entire report here.

Our National Shame

While the rest of the left netroots devolves into armed camps, we take refuge in those level-headed bloggers who have kept their eyes on the real issues, the true moral outrages, of this administration. Is it betraying my chauvinism to point out that these are the leading women bloggers?

Digby is behind FDL is trying to organize a national campaign that requires local activism. I’ve written about the subject before here, but since neither of our current candidates has shown any enthusiasm for the subject, it falls to us to push the conversation about these the war crimes.

Classic Digby:

There was a time when many members of the press and many citizens of this
country would rend their garments about what they would "tell the children"
about sex in the White House. Oddly, they seem to be unconcerned about what to
tell the children about torture being devised and approved in the same place.
That tells you something about the provincial Village that runs our politics.

ITMFA

Did this really sink in?

I ask myself, as much as anyone else. It’s almost too stunning to react to, and – at the same time – I can’t say I’m surprised.

So we have a bunch of blustering cowards playing Josef Mengale in the office of the Presidency of the United States. Not grimly turning their heads away from something they thought distasteful but necessary, but actually sitting around and debating and deciding which acts of torture, and in which potential sequences, they would like to inflict by proxy on the people they rounded up and declared “enemies.”

And far be it from me to defend John Ashcroft, but just as in the now-famous hospital bed scene, it seems that only he had enough shreds of decency left to be ashamed:

Then –Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed
with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics, and had repeatedly
advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House
advisors should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources
said.

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one
meeting: “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will
not judge this kindly.”

You got that right.


ABC news followed up with the Idiot in Chief to get his reaction, which was: “What’s the big deal?”

Well, let’s see. Setting aside the obvious moral vacancy evidenced by such behavior, I’m thinking that this could rise to the level of a conspiracy to subvert both U.S. and international law!

As I have said repeatedly, I understand the pragmatics of the decision not to move to impeach this President and Vice-President, but I think it sets a precedent that may ultimately cause long-term harm to our system. This is the latest in a long list of behaviors on the part of this administration that as its direct aim the goal of making established law and the structures of our government subordinate to the will of the Executive Branch. If these are not impeachable offenses, what are?

And it really slays me that the underpinning reluctance to impeachment arises out of the ridiculous misuse of it by the Republicans against Clinton. So if I get right, by pursuing the false criminality of a Democratic President, they made it impossible to pursue the REAL criminality of a Republican? What freaking genius. What freaking fools are we.

The ACLU is calling for a Special Prosecutor. Thank God for the ACLU.

ALSO NOTE:

Digby has compiled a truly wonderful contact list I've added to the Action roll. It includes a lot of print media contacts from all around the country that others don't have.