Dispassionate Liberal

4/6/08

4/4/08

Wingnut Masochistic Derangement.

Are we really worried about Sen. John Sidney "Ace" McSame? I know we're supposed to be resolute and all, and this is no time to get complacent, but if I were a Republican I don't even think I'd mention it too loud in polite company -- or bother to vote let alone give money or knock on doors for the party this year.

The economy is so far in the tank, with failed GOP policies almost exclusively to blame, that might be enough even if all else were equal. But they have a candidate who admits to knowing nothing about the economy and has more doctors than teeth while most people can't afford to take their kids for a checkup or keep their vaccinations up to date.

McCain can't tell who's who in Iraq (but since they change uniforms so much, that is kinda hard) let alone what we should do there. He rests his entire hopes for the White House on his military background but is AWOL on the GI Bill, preferring to keep our troops as perpetual occupiers than bring their home and heal their wounds. Death Before Discharge!

There naturally remains a certain deluded element within the GOP, insisting that their prospects are just dandy, Minority Leader Boehner leading that hopeless charge, spinning madly that the Republicans "are going to gain seats this year." (Glad to see you still have your sense of humor Johnny.)

But one thing they are not doing is rallying around John McCain.

Ron Paul and his Blimpies are still raising a ruckus.

Former Clinton Impeachment House Manager Bob Barr is running for the Libertarian Party nomination along with that weird old man from Alaska, Mike Gravel.

Mike Huckabee http://beta.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifsupporters are taking out full page ads bashing Mitt Romney long after both were beat by McSame.

And to top all of this feeling of "we're all in this together" vibe NOT coming from Wingnuttystan, the country's leading evangelical heavyweight, James Dobson does his best to further divide the GOP by blaming McCain for "fracturing" the party.

This is the most entertaining election season I've ever known, especially since the good guys (and gals) are doing so extremely well.

[I almost forgot to note what made me think of how utterly ridiculous McCain really is. Today of all days, "Ace" goes out of his way to remind us that his record of displaying the proper judgment to be the leader of this great nation includes the fact that he voted against creating a national holiday commemorating the great works and life of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., repeatedly. What an idiot. 40 years later, McCain is finally ready to lead on day one. Pfpht.]

[+/-]

The Amazing George Bush

The PrezNitWit certainly has lived up to his promise to be a Uniter, not a Divider.

81% in Poll Say Nation Is Headed on the Wrong Track

Astounding.

There is now nearly a national consensus that the country faces significant problems.

Ya think?

I only have one question for the fine journalists at the New York Times. Exactly what would it take for you to consider a generally held belief to be more than "nearly" a national consensus?

There's an annoying feature at the online version of the NY Times. (Presumably they do this on purpose so it's probably not a bug.) Double-click on any word there and you get a helpful(?) popup with a definition of the word clicked, or it points you elsewhere in the Times' archives to help you understand something you really just wanted to highlight and copy.

So the Times itself informs me (and the writers of the article you would think) that "consensus" is a "general agreement or accord." In an era where Sir George Wrong-A-Lot insisted that winning 50.7% of the popular vote was reason enough to declare a "mandate" to wreck this nation, I figure 65% to 75% constitutes a consensus. 81% is as close as you get to a unanimous declaration.

Here's a clue. When only 4% of those polled say say the country is better off than five years ago, it's an actual consensus that we're in the toilet. It's "nearly" universal.

God they can be annoying in their insistence on presenting the illusion of journalistic objectivity over just plain common sense and judgment. That kind of reporting is simply bending over backwards to present "both" sides as if the elephant in the room can be balanced by a snowflake.

Honestly, you could get more than 4% of Americans to agree that Hitler wasn't so bad (judging by Jonah Goldberg's book sales anyway). I wouldn't be surprised to find more than 4% of the people nodding in appreciation if Ann Coulter proposed that the whole slavery-is-bad thing was blown out of proportion -- just cry-baby liberal whining.

Hell, 4% probably didn't understand the question.

The left may have been far out in front on the idea of Bush being pretty damn bad for America and what he and his henchmen were up to was simply wrong, wrong, wrong; but we're all liberal fascists now.

Oh, just in case you think this is just a fluke, a blip, that things will even out soon, or that people just don't understand and are victims of a conspiracy warping their perceptions, the Washington Post is reporting that the "U.S. economy shed 80,000 jobs in March," bringing the first quarter numbers close to a quarter million jobs eliminated so far this year.

I think we chip away at that stubborn 4%, don't you?

[+/-]

Whores

Today I learned several things about whores. For instance, Allison Kilkenny thinks John McCain is a Big F*cking Whore.

That wasn't really news, but she helpfully provided a dictionary definition that went beyond prostitution or promiscuity, but also included male prostitutes and just about anyone who generally engages in "venal or unscrupulous" behavior.

McCain's a big time war hero, so he tells us, and should be able to take that kind of insult in stride since he's well known to dish it out with a vengeance. Generally I've found that ladies take it much more personally when they are called whores than men do, for pretty obvious reasons. So when Randi Rhodes called Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi Big F*cking Whores, you just knew there was going to be some fallout.

Yep, she's suspended. Indefinitely from what I can tell. (That means fired Gerry, so as Bill says, "just chill.") I'd expect this kind of disciplinary action against an on-air personality who puts her network and it's affiliates at risk of getting a fine from the FCC for vulgarity.

What's that? She wasn't on the air but at public appearance in San Francisco? Is that right? In fact, it was something she said two weeks ago? Odd. I'm still learning I guess.

Purely from a free speech viewpoint, regardless of how obnoxious Randi can be, this reeks if you can get canned for something you said off the air even if it was at an Air America sponsored public event.

Dem on Dem violence, even rhetorical, sucks. But politics is hard-ball. You just know she'd be congratulated on calling the President of the United States any assortment of names even if he is our legally empowered overlord, miserable fucking dick-face that he is.

Frankly, Air America's Chairman's lame statement is just too vague and pantie-waist to pass the smell test.

"Air America encourages strong opinions about public affairs but does not condone such abusive, ad hominem language by our Hosts,"

Spare me, Okay? You damn well do too. It just so happens that these F*cking Whores were Chairman Kireker's F*cking Whores.

Randi could have (and surely has) said similar things about any number of Wingnut Fascists currently running our government. Her targets had "D's" after their names and the boss got pissed off. The guy's got no balls, especially if he was too much of a weenie to give Rhodes fair warning to knock off bashing Democrats, since she's been on Clinton's case for months.

I'm by no means a big fan of Randi Rhodes. I love Stephanie Miller, rarely miss Big Eddie Schultz since I'm in the car when he's on, picking up kids from assorted schools. Randi's pretty angry, that's her schtick, and always on the cutting edge of "taking it to the man," even if it's a woman. Sometimes she's awesome, hilarious even. Sometimes she goes too far, or at least further than any of the other folks at Air America.

I know this: Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh could have said the exact same things about the exact same women and never been touched. Bill O'Reilly could have said it on the air and the network would have bought him a new falafel.

Randi's only real screw up here was thinking that doing what they always paid her to do would be something they would continue to pay her to do. I know what I just wrote made no sense at all, but neither does firing the most notoriously caustic host on your network make any sense when what she said wasn't even broadcast and completely within her character.

Name the politician out there that hasn't engaged in "venal or unscrupulous" behavior. They're all Big F*cking Whores. From where I sit, Rhodes was fired not only for pissing off the boss and voicing her opinion (for which she is contracted to do), but also for telling the truth.

Now before you start telling me about polite society, the First Amendment, party loyalty, or how you hate/love/don't-care-for Randi/Hillary/Nancy or Obama (or why John McCain really doesn't take it up the ass for lobbyist money), save for a few ridiculous Clinton bloggers where was the outrage when Tina Fey told her SNL audience that Hillary was a bitch? Randi got fired for the same reason she was hired -- she's Randi Rhodes, a Huge Bitch if ever there was one.

Legally, I think Air America ought to offer to buy out Randi's contract and throw in some extra severance pay. They don't want this to go to court, and they don't want to lose, which I think is a distinct possibility. They don't want a judge and jury to listen to a montage of all the nasty stuff that has come out of their network over the years, especially if they get into the Janeane Garofalo archives. Whew.

It's not like she said anything about Hillary or Nancy's hair, like it was too stringy or ... nappy.

Yeah, AA could win the eventual lawsuit. A lot depends on the ethics/morals clauses in the contract which usually would justify the Network's actions. They really don't want to though, do they? This really needs to go away, so just send Randi away with a check in her pocket and call it a learning experience. I am.

4/3/08

[+/-]

So, Where Do You Want to Put It?

[+/-]

White House Memos Within Memos

Kevin noted that Blogtopia, at least the fun-loving DFH side, was all abuzz with the release of the 2003 Torture Memo. Don't look now, but there's another memo.

Like an errant thread, once pulled the entire shabby garment unravels exposing the ugly truth underneath. Yoo's 2003 memo justifying torture referenced an earlier Yoo missive from 2001 that ties into the warrantless wiretapping scandal. That memo is still classified to protect the completely guilty.

The October 2001 memo was written at the request of the White House by John Yoo, then the deputy assistant attorney general, and addressed to Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel at the time. The administration had asked the department for an opinion on the legality of potential responses to terrorist activity.

The 37-page memo is classified and has not been released. Its existence was disclosed Tuesday in a footnote of a separate secret memo, dated March 14, 2003, released by the Pentagon in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.

"Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations," the footnote states, referring to a document titled "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States."

For those of you who missed the crash course on the limits of Posse Comitatus during the scramble to find an excuse why the federal government was letting people die in New Orleans after Katrina, all you have to understand it the very title of the document, "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States," is reason enough to know our government was ruled by laws only in theory after 9/11. They've been winging it ever since.

These people didn't just tear up our beloved Constitution. The went behind closed doors and formed a new government completely unrecognizable from the one you and I used to live in. Marty Lederman puts the original memo in startling perspective.

There is nothing like it in our long legal history, as far as I know. After all, how often is it that a Department of Justice memo is issued that matter-of-factly argues that the Commander in Chief can authorize pouring corrosive acid on a detainee -- can authorize cutting out a tongue and poking out an eye -- nothwithstanding a statute that would prohibit that very conduct?

The terrorists hate us for our freedom? We have no worries. Freedoms no longer exist. We are defined by our form of government instituted to protect those freedoms. That government no longer exists. We have a dictator who still refers to himself as "President" but is self-empowered to disregard the other two branches of government that were originally intended to act as a check on executive power. The terrorists won long ago. Our legal institutions are an illusion and our financial destruction is well on it's way as well as these criminals carry off the spoils in time for their graceless exit next January.

John Cole has an especially noteworthy take on the integrity of George Bush and his criminal syndicate when confronted by a reminder that Bill Clinton got a blow job and Sandy Berger snuck some papers out of the archieves.

George Bush has been, without question, the most ethically handicapped President in my lifetime, and perhaps ever. From the top to the bottom of his administration, we have witnessed rampant and widespread criminality, cronyism, and incompetence of an unparalleled nature, and again, this has been from the top to the bottom of his administration. George Bush is responsible for the smoldering wreckage that is the current DOJ. George Bush is responsible for the disaster in Iraq. George Bush is responsible for the fact that the federal government has served as an affirmative action program for unqualified hacks from Regents University. George Bush is responsible for illegal surveillance of American citizens. And on and on and on.

On the day that the Yoo memo is finally coming to light, detailing how George Bush’s handpicked crew of war criminals orchestrated a regime of torture, and on the day that we learn the Inspector General is investigating whether qualified DOJ lawyers were fired because of their sexual orientation, it is particularly offensive to be told that George Bush, the man responsible for all of this and who knows what else, is a man of higher integrity than Clinton.

I think we've finally stumbled upon the Rosetta Stone that will tie in all The Hague will need to prosecute the gangsters running this nation. Indeed, this will be Exhibit "A"
in the Grand Unified Theory of Neoconservative Treason and War Crimes, from Telecom immunity, extraordinary rendition, black sites, torture, illegal surveillance, and who knows what else. What will stick in my craw for eternity is knowing Greenwald is right when he says:

The political reality is that high government officials in the U.S. are never going to be held accountable for war crimes. In practice, "international law" exists as a justifying instrument for powerful countries to impose their will on those which are less powerful, and war crimes tribunals are almost always a form of victor's justice. So neither John Yoo, David Addington nor Alberto Gonzales, and certainly not their bosses at whose behest they were working, are going to be sitting in a dock charged with war crimes any time soon -- regardless of whether they ought to be.

The fact that they are getting away with it, that (as Scott Horton says in Harper's) Yoo and his conspirators crafted a "roadmap to committing crimes" in their role as "consiglieri" that effectively immunized both themselves and their superiors and also many of those doing their bidding, makes me sick to think I studied the same laws, the same cases, the same history and the same theory of government as John Yoo, and cannot fathom the level of sociopathic disconnect it takes to go from there to where he ended up. Even some of the nuttiest right wingers can't stomach this Orwellian nightmare.

This man is teaching law?!? He should be disbarred at a minimum. Indeed, he should not be allowed in polite society. If you don't think you'd want to hang with OJ, just think of the horrors this guy unleashed.

Memo to Professor Yoo. Ask George if he bunk in with Neil Bush in that Paraguay hide-out he's building. A country with no extradition could come in handy. What? Not even Paraguay will hide your decrepit ass and withdrew it's non-extradition law? You don't say. Maybe there's still hope for this world.

I just hope I live long enough to see Osama hang and the men who used fear of that animal for their own political gains taken away in chains.