Time Bombs and Tortured Testicles In a variation on the if-torture-is-OK-then-what-about-child-torture argument, Andrew Sullivan follows the Rape And "Enhanced Interrogation" logic to it's logical conclusion: that rape, in order to get information that saves lives, is OK. That's the thing about Manichean Paranoia: once you do bad things to save good people, you're just another bad person.

I've heard this argument from Scott Horton and others ("Is it OK to crush the testicles of the child of the person who knows about the bomb," for example) and it's a good one. What I haven't heard is the obvious conclusion that Republicans have, at least in this argument, succumbed to one of the left's worst traits: relativistic ethics.

The purist right was always telling us, from high upon their law-and-order perches, that they were the holders of the absolutist flame. They were the protectors of the kind of ethics that make some things always right, and some always wrong. Before 9-11, you'd have been hard pressed to find any self-respecting sufferer of Bush Adoration Syndrome say that there is ever a case where raping someone is justified. They would have thought you were some commie-dirty-fucking-hippie-druggie-degenerate if you suggested that there might be a time when torturing a child is OK.

And yet, here we are, listening day in and out as one after another sufferer of Bush Apologist Syndrome suggests that, since we're the good guys, nothing we do is bad. I'm surprised I haven't heard more about how the mighty absolutists have slipped into the muck, munched some bad acid, and are wailing around slinging feces-laced chunks of "debate" out of their logical spiral into a Very Dark place indeed.

Since there seems to be a sizable chunk of America that thinks Keifer Southerland is keeping them safe, perhaps we'd all be better off relying on the system that many wise men devised for dealing with ethical quandaries: The Law. We call breaking a law one believes to be immoral civil disobedience. I hear from the Christian Torture lovers (q.v. this study: Churchgoers More Likely To See Torture As Justifiable) that they should stand up for this country and do what it takes to protect us.

Since privatization is the answer to everything, I suggest that one of you potential child rapists buy yourself a small army, a prison in a foreign country, an intelligence gathering operation, and go pick up a few targets, torture them (or torture their children--whatever it takes), and see what kind of intelligence you can get. Then, we'll prosecute, and you heroes can go to prison for a while, like all the other people who have practiced civil disobedience as a protest against laws they don't like. Be warned: most people are ethical absolutists when it comes to child rape.

If you happen to be Dick Cheney, and you've already completed the above assignment (although, maybe you didn't actually rape or torture any terrorist's children--they were just mangled and killed as collateral damage in that other ethical absolutist's high ground you took in Iraq), then you should expect to have to complete your civil disobedience assignment and spend a few years paying for your law-breaking. I'm sure Thoreau would approve.

Labels: enhance interrogations, ethical absolutism, ethical relatvisim, ethics, law, philosophy, torture

  ¶ 9:47 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Torture Memos are Evidence of Conspiracy to Commit Torture The conspiracy to commit torture, which took place at the highest levels of government in the Bush corporo-fascist regime administration, now has enough public evidence, thanks to the recently releases memos, to warrant prosecution.

But before we go down the criminal prosecution road, we should see the immediate impeachment of Judge Jay Bybee. For the legal angles of this travesty of American national security, American reputation, and American authority, I turn to Scott Horton of Harpers who writes today in The Torture Tango:

The memo-writer and the person soliciting the memo both understood perfectly that their role was to get interrogators out in the field to go ahead and use the techniques against which reservations were being expressed. They understood that, if the memos were issued, individuals would in fact be subjected to the torture techniques they were approving. They also fully understood that it was likely that individuals would be killed or would suffer lasting impairment as a result of their decision to give the greenlight. This satisfies the prerequisites for a criminal charge against the memo writer under section 2340A, conspiracy to torture. The preparation and issuance of these memoranda were criminal acts, and the relevant level of mens rea likely emerges from the dialogue surrounding their issuance.

What do you call it when you have evidence of a crime and you don't prosecute? Is that prosecutorial discretion? Or misconduct?

Labels: Bush Administration, Bybee, totrture, war crimes

  ¶ 12:55 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Cheney Covering up His War Crimes Using his burrowed shadow government of friends and proteges in the National Security Apparatus that he has controlled for so long now (since Plan B lied about Soviet capabilities), Dick Cheney is continuing to cover up his war crimes, using insiders to help him. That's treason.

Scott Horton's post today, In Brennan, Cheney has a Friend, drills into the lame arguments against making these documents public, arguments which include possible shame and embarrassment of the agents involved.

Let's review. You're an agent for your country. You have a prisoner. You've been told to torture him. You a) follow orders, or b) refuse to follow illegal orders. If you choose the illegal route, do you get to claim possible embarrassment and shame as reasons why the court should not see the evidence brought against you?

I'm pretty sure the national security state secrets arguments, first set forth by the US Government in US v Reynolds, just don't apply here. We're not talking about super-secret spy software that could actually be used to protect this country. We're talking about a thug administration, suffering from Manichean Paranoia Syndrome, torturing people, and thereby actually making this country less safe. Endangering the country with illegal acts. Sounds like treason to me.

Labels: Dick Cheney, Scott Horton, torture, treason

  ¶ 9:26 AM 0 comments links to this post

  What to do with that 401k... You are the steward of your 401k. After Enron, I warned everyone I knew that these people were playing fast and loose with the rules. Sure, Phil Gramm got a few things through in the late 90's but once the Bush free marketeers got into it, it was just nuts. I think Goldman Sachs was leveraged 33 to one for god's sake. Hank Paulson him self got the SEC to change the rules that he took advantage of, and then when he became treasury secretary, basically bailed himself out.

You don't have to be a genius to know if you pile up a bunch of money and don't pay anyone to guard it, it will disappear. The Bushies did this with cold hard cash they sent to Baghdad on pallets! Billions if cash right from the US Treasury. Then, they did it 1000 times bigger with credit default swaps and unregulated insurance instruments. The average 401k guy gets told to buy and hold, the long run is good, stay in stocks if you're young, yada yada yada... Meanwhile, they're pocketing your money, buying jets and private islands in countries with no extradition, no income tax, and no minimum wage.

Just imagine what would have happened if we fed this GOP genetic mutation our social security funds.

So, is the 401k a bad thing? Should you be buying in right now? Well, you can get some good stuff cheap right now. But the next time you smell a bubble, put it in a money market fund. I wish people had the option of just going into an index fund with no fees. In the long run, that's better than all that damn day trading anyway. But who knows... It could be Mad Max world soon, in which case you'll want to invest in sharp boomerangs and gasoline.

Labels: 401k, economic policy, GOP, investing, Republicans, social collapse, Treasury, US Economy

  ¶ 3:03 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Conservative Catharsis: Blame Deregulation and Privatization George W Bush broke the world. It was pretty fucked up to begin with, after years of laissez-faire economics practiced by all American presidents since FDR, but much more so since Reagan. The conservative philosophy was corrupted by deregulators who's belief in the free market completely left out the fact that most people are greedy bastards who will steal everything that's not tied down.

Now this upper class of well-to-do Reaganites, many of them in the Democratic party, have drained the wealth of this country into their walled communities and private security forces, while they whine about their portfolios being worthless. What did they think when they were doing everything Phil Graham suggested? Did they think we could just trust the robber baron class not to be robber barons?

The profit motive works just fine in a regulated market, where everyone has their cards above the table, and we all play by the same rules, which we can all understand. Old timey conservatives were for stringent regulations, especially capital requirements on banks and the like. To be a fiscal conservative meant, literally, to not take crazy risks. A little risk for a decent return, but nothing crazy.

Well, you guys had your chance and you blew it. But what's funny about it is that Karl Marx basically predicted it. It's not hedge fund science, you know. If you have a bunch of money in one place, and you loosen the rules that protect it, someone will steal it. Human nature--GREED--is not good in a market because the greedy will take down the rest of us in that inter-dependent system.

So, now we're going to try something else. It's kind of like what FDR tried, at least in the sense of the largess, the investment in infrastructure and people, and the like. But it's also like FDR in the sense that he realized that everyone deserves some basic floor to stand on: a starting place so that we are all, indeed, created equal when we become a member of The Class of US Taxpayers. Now some of us might get more out of that system than we paid in, but the ones at the top will still get something out of it. They'll have clean dishes to eat cooked food on in restaurants. They'll have firemen and cops and teachers and those people will have the basic dignity of health coverage, affordable housing and utilities, and the like. If the private enterprise system refuses to charge enough for the products and services so that those people can be paid enough to buy their own coverage, then it is we the people, the government, who must force them to, through taxation.

And if you don't believe that, then your option is to have a whole class of people who are broke, unhealthy, and damn angry about it. In this country, those people vote for someone who will make the playing field fair again. In the current view of the dominant conservative voices, those people can just crawl off and die somewhere. Or wind up in prison where we subsidize their everything.

There will be people at the top who pay for it. That is populism. That is the price you pay for living in a country where we pay people who stock shelves at Wal Mart so little that they qualify for government subsidized health care. I'm sure most free market conservatives would prefer to have Wal Mart take care of their employees. But then how could they be the low price leader?

It's still a free country, and there's going to be a free market for practically anything (including things that are illegal). There will be a free market for health care and those of you who can afford it are more than welcome to sink your dollars into a system that profits from your sickness on one end (the HMOs) and profits from your minimal care on the other (the insurance companies who don't want to pay, they just want to collect). I ask you, which force will drive doctor salaries lower? A government that tries to enforce fairness, no matter how cumbersome a bureaucracy that develops in order to implement that fairness (and, again, medicare does it with amazingly low administrative costs compared to private companies), or a private insurance company that is trying desperately to keep outlays down because raising premiums is just making them lose customers?

I'm all for personal responsibility. I grow a lot of my own food. I own my own small business and work for a lot less than minimum wage. I would require more stringent food requirements on Food Stamp recipients, like me, to eat healthy foods and support local, small, and organic farmers. But when it comes to something as complex as health care, I just don't trust the greedy bastards to run it anywhere but into the ground.

I lived in LA for 20 years. I remember the Enron fiasco during the electricity crisis. We had been sold a bill of goods about privatizing and deregulating the electricity markets that turned out to be worse than a load of horse shit (which is at least good fertilizer). It is a perfect example of how unfettered markets only serve as suet to a bunch of hungry birds like Ken Lay who fly away with the whole chunk if they can.

At that point, I started looking into co-ops, public ownership of utilities, community supported agriculture, and credit unions. I like employee owned companies and try to support them when I can. Guess what all those examples are? Communist! They take the assets, the factories, the power lines, the loan portfolios, and they collectively own them among all the members. Where I live now, we have an electric co-op (a remnant of FDR's Rural Electrification Association). It's great. All the people who get the cheap power own the assets of the power company collectively. There is no profit, but the guys who cut the tree branches out of the way get paid well, get health insurance and other benefits. So does the nice lady who answers the phone. Because we, the owners, have decided that's a good thing to do. There's no profit for any corporation, but there is enough to make sure everyone gets paid what they're worth. If those employees had a government health plan they could choose, and pay for with a tax on their paychecks, then as a co-owner of the co-op, I would be more than happy to give them a raise with the money the co-op saved by not having to pay for their health care.

I'm pretty sure GM would like that too.

Why should health care be any different than the co-op itself? Why can we not use the medicare paycheck tax to pay into a fund that is then used to pay our dues for a medical co-op that fairly and equitably distributes care on a triage basis, and puts a premium on prevention, even to the point of rewarding people who do the right thing for their health (thereby being less of a burden to the rest of the co-op)?

Now a lot of people will say it's a red commie flag there, but if you really think about it, and look back over American history at the collective good that has developed as a ethic in this country, it's conservative. It says YOU have a stake, YOU have a responsibility, and if you do well, you will be rewarded. The fact that we are all owners makes it the ownership society for real. And the fact that it is controlled by a bureaucracy that is built to make it as fair as possible takes it out of the realm of Stalin or other totalitarian philosophies, and puts it squarely in the hands of voters who get tho choose the head of the federal government every four years.

I worked my ass off for big entertainment companies for 20 years. They made plenty of money off my labor: more than I did, in fact. And when that work caused the degenerative disease I have in my big load bearing joints, those company's insurance companies denied that they had caused it, and tossed me out like any old broken cog. In your world, it's toughsky shitsky for Scotty because they have to profit. In my world, the money I put into the co-op would come back to me from the co-op when I needed it. Some guy who profited more from my work might have to pay a little more tax now to fund it, but I'll never get back all the profit I helped him make. That's fine. But when he tries to say he has no responsibility for my care, now that I'm broken down and can't do the physical labor that I spent 20 years turning into a career, I say he's full of it.

But when he says, well, I don't really want to pay into a system where a bunch of jet-setting insurance company executives and HMO executives milk every last dime out of everything in order to feed their Myopic vision of next quarter's stock price, then he has a point. I don't want him to pay them either. I want him to pay my doctor, with as little administrative or other overhead as possible. In fact, less overhead means more for my doctor.

So that's my long and winding explanation of why I want medical care to be non-profit and universal. And I'd like to thank the Ron Paul Republican who's been rattling a few cages around here for setting me off on what was a comment, but turned into a diary. So much for banging out a quick answer and getting back to work!

And thanks to Hunter today for firing up my populist, anti-Randian roots. Sometimes I forget why I hang out here, and then Hunter posts something that makes me feel like writing again.

Labels: capitalism, common good, communism, conservatism, cooperatives, health care, non-profit, political science, profit, socialism

  ¶ 12:50 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Conservative Catharsis: Don't Blame Obama There are no principles left on the right, only tactics and bluster, as if John Bolton himself has taken over the GOP diplomacy wing. At this point, looking back on all the facts I collected at this site, which proves conclusively that the entire Bush administration committed treason, repeatedly: I don't really care what they say. When you say as much shit as the right wing has said in the last few decades, it renders your speech meaningless. We are for x except when we're not. We're against y except when we're not. Now we're going to do that which we told you not to. Then we're going to tell you not to again.

I often tell myself I could be a better conservative than them. It wouldn't be hard. I have libertarian bones, like most Americans. We want the government to protect us and leave us alone, that delicate balancing act that, in a world of nanotechnology, is going to get harder and harder to perform. But it's really not that tricky. Conservatives should be reality based, do what would actually make us safer (which is more like Ron Paul's position than John Bolton's).

They should not be afraid of logic which leads to a conclusion similar to Dennis Kucinich. The liberal left and the reasonable right have much more in common than most of them would care to admit. If the Nationalist Times could get over its racism, they'd have some decent solutions about some things, like keeping government out of medical decisions, a position long held by the libertarian liberals on issues like abortion, medical marijuana, and euthanasia.

But first, the conservatives of the US need a catharsis: George W Bush ruined this country. Rush Limbaugh may be hoping Obama fails at big-government rescue, but it's really too late. George W. Bush (aided amply by Dick Cheney and Rush) drove this country right off a cliff, and Obama is trying to stitch together a big enough parachute to save the whole car. It's probably too late to save the car. But it is not too late to save those occupants who are willing to start stitching their own little parachutes, and we can wind up falling a little slower with a contraption that's going to look a little like the seagulls James lassoed to carry his giant peach.

We'll probably still have a hard landing, but maybe we can slow it all down enough to not break our legs when we hit. All the "conservatives" -- and I would argue that there really aren't many any more -- who can't realize that they were wrong about Bush, wrong about Iraq, wrong about Cheney, wrong about trickle down economics, and wrong about practically every social issue from Terry Schiavo to Sodomy, are going to have to crash. Continuing on at this point as if George Bush wasn't the worst president ever, as if Dick Cheney doesn't belong in prison, as if Donald Rumsfeld doesn't deserve to be "sleep deprived" for days, is the intellectual equivalent of a quivering bowl of decomposed fruit with ditto head flies swarming around it.

If I were a conservative right now (and in many ways I am), I would be encouraging bigger investment in infrastructure that will make our communities more resilient. I would be encouraging micro-loans to the poor to help them start small local businesses. I would demand that food stamp programs only get increases if the recipients can use that money at farmer's markets and on community supported agriculture programs. I would strongly encourage small, local power producers, and companies that create on site energy creation, especially in rural areas.

If I were a conservative right now, I would strongly encourage people to grow their own food in organic victory gardens or urban rooftop gardens, or community gardens on empty lots, like they're doing in Detroit now. The roots of the conservative philosophy lie in independence. This disaster brought on by the insolent teenager of a president and his Dr. Strangelove sidekick offers a chance for conservatives to get back to their roots and encourage the people of this country to become independent, to help each other, and to reward behavior that makes things better, while punishing those who make it worse.

Today's LA Times has a great story about the Mad Maxing that's going on right now, in this case at abandoned construction projects around southern California.

At its Oakland site, structures dating to World War II were to have been demolished by now to make way for 1,000 homes and a shopping center.

But workers walked off the job when their payments stopped, leaving behind piles of debris. A nine-story hospital the developers planned to raze was invaded by squatters.

In the Sacramento River Delta area of Contra Costa County at SunCal's planned Delta Coves housing development, blowing sand is filling in a new lagoon, and crucial water pumping systems are unmonitored.

Eight years of robber barons in charge has left us in a world we are much more equipped to deal with than many think. One of the facts (I know, conservatives, it's hard to get used to the idea that there are facts to be found outside of Fox News) that LA Times story touches on is that the thieves who show up in these abandoned construction projects are there to take copper wire and other commodities that are valuable. These people have been watching the robber barons do this to the whole country for the last 8 years. They are watching now as they all get away with it. And while there may not be a Wall Street worth plundering ever again, there will be things that aren't tied down. And unless those things are protected by armed guards, they will be stolen. In the Mad Max world Bush has left us with, people are left on their own to survive with whatever they can find.

We have the know-how and where-with-all to create resilient communities that produce their own power, grow their own food, and live sustainably without oil or coal. We just have to get used to the idea that we've been robbed. We have to start over, from scratch, with very little to help us besides government and abandoned industries to supply scraps. To what extent a federal government will be able to help a system that needs a lot of independent nodes, we will see. One reason I've chosen to not become a conservative is that I believe the government can help.

But it's going to need some basic conservative help, or it can easily get out of control. Hopefully, there are some conservatives willing to step up to a podium, admit that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Limbaugh conservatism is over. Bombastic, disagreeable, authoritarian, top-down, imperialistic, interventionist assholes are going to have to step aside and shut the hell up for a while. They had 8 years to do what they assured us was the absolute right thing to do, and it turned out they were lying, torturing thieves who literally stole billions of dollars (in deregulated Ponzi schemes, or by taking pallets of cash directly out of the US Mint and flying it to Baghdad where it disappeared). Any talk of government spending being out of control is just more of the same shit that trickled down their legs since Reagan. This government is going to spend on infrastructure and people, and the most the conservatives can hope to do is direct some of it in ways that they prefer.

The conservative in me would like to see the investments lead to more independence and less centralization. Is there any principal more important to conservative philosophy? At this point, it seems more likely that President Obama will preserve that principle more than the GOP will.

Labels: Bush Administration Treason, Bush treason, conservatives, decentrailization, Dick Cheney, GOP, independence, localization, Republicans, resilient communities, social collapse

  ¶ 8:40 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Epitaph for the Bush Years As usual, Scott Horton sends the nail deep into the wood with one blow.

If it does not do justice, what is the government but a great criminal enterprise? For what are gangs of criminals but petty little governments?--Augustine

Labels: Augustine, Bush, epitaph, Scott Horton

  ¶ 3:58 PM 0 comments links to this post

  The Only Thing That Could Be Worse would be not prosecuting the murdering mother fuckers who did all this.

Eight Years In Eight Minutes



Here's the transcript, courtesy of this comment by TrueBlueMajority at the KOS.

George Walker Bush.
43rd president of the United States.
first ever with a criminal record.
our third story tonight,
his presidency: eight years in eight minutes.

early in 2001 the U.S. fingered Al Qaeda
for the bombing of the USS Cole
Bush counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke
had a plan to take down Al Qaeda.
instead by February the NSC
had already discussed invading Iraq,
and had a plan for post-Saddam Iraq.

by March 5 Bush had a map ready for Iraqi oil exploration
and a list of companies.
Al Qaeda?
Rice told Clarke not to give Bush a lot of long memos.
not a big reader.

August 6, 2001
a CIA analyst briefs Bush on vacation:
"Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S."
Bush takes no action tells the briefer—quote
all right, you've covered your ass now.

next month Clarke requests
using new predator drones to kill Bin Laden
the Pentagon and CIA
say no.

September 11th
Bush remains seated for several minutes
to avoid scaring school children
by getting up and leaving.
he then flies around the country
and promises quote a full scale investigation to find
those folks who did it

Rumsfeld says Afghanistan does not have enough targets
we've got to do Iraq.
when the CIA traps Bin Laden at Tora Bora
it asks for 800 rangers to cut off his escape
Bush outsources the job to Pakistanis
sympathetic to the Taliban
Bin Laden
gets away

in February General Tommy Franks tells a visiting Senator
Bush is moving equipment out of Afghanistan
so he can invade Iraq.
one of the men who prepped Rice for her testimony
that Bush did not ignore pre 9-11 warnings
later explains quote we cherry picked things
to make it look like the president
had been actually concerned about Al Qaeda
they didn't give a bleep about Al Qaeda

July and Britain's intel chief says Bush is
fixing intelligence and facts around the policy to take out Saddam
January 03
Bush and Blair agree to invade in March
Mr. Bush still telling us he has not decided
telling Blair they should paint an airplane in UN colors
fly it over Iraq and provoke a response
a pretext for invasion

the man who said it would take several hundred thousand troops
fired
the man who said it would cost more than a hundred billion
fired
the man who revealed Bush's yellowcake lie
smeared
his wife's covert status
exposed
the White House liars who did it
and covered it up
not fired
one convicted
Bush commutes his sentence

then in Iraq, stuff happens:
Iraq's army, disbanded
the government de-Baathified
200,000 weapons, billions of dollars just
lost
foreign mercenaries immunized from justice
political hacks run the Green Zone
religious cleansing forcing one out of six Iraqis from their homes
Abu Ghraib
the insurgency
Al Qaeda in Iraq

other stuff does not happen:
WMD
post-war planning
body armor
vehicular armor

the payoff?
oil
and billions for Halliburton, Blackwater and other companies
while Mr. Bush denies VA healthcare to 450,000 veterans
tries to raise their healthcare fees
blocks the new G.I. Bill
and increases his own power with the USA PATRIOT Act
with the Military Commissions Act
public orders exempting himself from a thousand laws
and secretly from the Presidential Records Act
The Geneva Conventions
FISA
sparking a mass rebellion at the Justice Department

secret star chambers for terrorism suspects,
overturned by Hamdan v Rumsfeld.
denying habeas corpus,
overturned by Boumediene v Bush.
200 renditionings
sleep deprivation
abuse

Rumsfeld warned in 2002 that he was torturing
that it would jeopardize convictions
out of 550 at Gitmo
hundreds ultimately go free with no charges
dozens are tortured
eight fatally
three are convicted

on U.S. soil twelve hundred immigrants rounded up
without due process
without bail
without court dates
without a single charge of terrorism

it wasn't just Mr. Bush no longer subject to the rule of law
he slashed regulations on everyone from banks to mining companies
appointed 98 lobbyists to oversee their own industries
weakening emission standards for mercury
and 650 different toxic chemicals
regulators shared drugs
and their beds
with industry reps
the Crandall Canyon mine owner told inspectors to back up
because his buddy, Republican Mitch McConnell
was sleeping with their boss
McConnell's wife is Bush Labor Secretary Elaine Chao
her agency overruled engineer concerns about Crandall Canyon
and was found negligent
after nine miners died in the collapse there

Mr. Bush's hands off
as Enron blacks out California
doubling electric bills
after months of rejecting price caps Mr. Bush bows to pressure

the blackouts end

Mr. Bush further deregulates commodity futures
midwifing the birth of unregulated oil markets
which just like Enron jack up prices to an all time high
until Congress and both presidential candidates call for regulations

and the prices fall

deregulating financial services and lax enforcement of remaining rules
created a housing bubble
creating the mortgage crisis
creating then a credit crisis
devastating industries that rely on credit
from student loans to car dealers

firms that had survived the Great Depression could not survive Bush
those that did got
seven hundred billion dollars
no strings, no transparency
no idea whether it worked

unlike the auto bailout
which cut workers' salaries.
a GOP memo called it
a chance to punish unions

but Bush failed even when his party and his patrons
did not stand to profit
investigators blamed management cost cutting communication
for missed warnings about Columbia
Bush administration convicts include
sex offenders at Homeland Security
convicted liars
every kind of thief in the calendar
and if you count things that were not prosecuted
the vice president of the United States actually
shot a man in the face

the man apologized.

Mr. Bush faked the truth
with paid propaganda in Iraq
on his education policy

tried to silence the truth about global warming
rocket fuel in our water
industry influence on energy policy

politicized the truth of science at NASA, the EPA,
the National Cancer Institute, Fish and Wildlife
and the FDA

his lies
exposed by whistleblowers from the cabinet down
"complete BS" the treasury secretary said
of Mr. Bush on his tax cuts.

Rice's mushroom cloud
Powell's mobile labs
Iraq and 9-11
Jack Abramoff
Jessica Lynch

Pat Tillman
Pat Tillman again
Pat Tillman, again.

the air at Ground Zero
most responders still suffering respiratory problems.

global warming
carbon emissions
a Clear Skies initiative lowering air quality standards
the Healthy Forests initiative increasing logging
faith based initiatives
the cost of medicare reform
fired US attorneys
politically synchronized terror alerts

the surge causing insurgents to switch sides
that abortion causes breast cancer
that his first recession began under Clinton
that he did not wiretap without warrants
that we do not torture.

that American citizen John Walker Lindh's rights
were not violated
that he refused the right to counsel

heckuva job Brownie
some survivors still in trailers
New Orleans still at just two-thirds its usual population

the lie that no one could have predicted the economic crisis
except
the economists who did
no one could have predicted 9-11 except
one ass-covering CIA analyst
or thirty
no one could have predicted the levee breach
except literally
Mr. Bill
in a PSA that aired on TV a year before Katrina

Bush actually admitted that he lied about not firing Rumsfeld
because he did not want to tell the truth.
look it up.

all of it
all of it and more leaving us with
ten trillion in debt
to pay for 31% more in discretionary spending
the Iraq War
a 1.3 trillion dollar tax cut

median income down two thousand dollars
three-quarters of all income gains under Bush
going to the richest one percent
unemployment up from 4.2 to 7.2 percent

the Dow, down from ten thousand five hundred eighty seven
to eighty two hundred seventy seven
six million now more in poverty
seven million more now without health care

buying toxic goods from China
deadly cribs
outsourcing security to Dubai
still unsecure in our ports
and at our nuclear plants
more dependent on foreign oil
out of the international criminal court
off the anti ballistic missle treaty
military readiness and standards down

with two unfinished wars
a nuclear North Korea
disengaged from the Palestinian problem
destabilizing eastern european diplomacy with
anti missile plans
and unable to keep Russia out of Georgia

2000 miles of Appalachian streams
destroyed by rubble from mountaintop mining
at his last G-8 summit,
he actually bid farewell to other world leaders
saying quote—goodbye from the world's greatest polluter

consistently undermining historic American reverence
for the institutions that empower us
education, now "academic elites"
and the law, "activist judges"
capping jury awards

and Bin Laden?
living today unmolested in a Pakistani safe haven
created by a truce endorsed and defended by George W. Bush

and among all the gifts he gave to Bin Laden
the most awful, the most damaging not just to America
but to the American ideal
was to further Bin Laden's goal
by making us act out of fear rather than fortitude

leaving us with precious little to cling to tonight
save the one thing that might yet suffice:

hope.

Labels: American History, Bush Administration Treason, Bush treason, George W Bush, Keith Olbermann

  ¶ 7:49 AM 0 comments links to this post

  We Were Warned When President Eisenhower told us, in his 1961 farewell address, to beware of the Military Industrial complex, America ignored him, and built the most powerful group of private corporations ever to supply a military.

But way before Ike did his best to tell us what was going to happen if we weren't careful, another president gave a farewell address that warned us about George Bush:

Political parties serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

That's from George Washington's farewell address (h/t Scott Horton). Did you have to be a George Washington to figure this out: "...unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people..." I was physically attacked, made fun of, blacklisted by Republican co-workers who spread the word not to hire me, called a traitor and a commie, all because I tried to warn people, before he was even appointed by the Supreme Court, that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were unprincipled men who would subvert the power of the people.

Washington even tried to warn us that these men would start dangerous wars of choice with their out-of-control military. He prayed that we would...

...avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.

If my union is the main prop of my liberty, then shouldn't I protect my union from another Bush/Cheney "administration" in order to preserve my liberty? Shouldn't we, as patriotic Americans aware of our history and the admonishments of past presidents, work to avoid the necessity of an overgrown military establishment which is inauspicious to liberty? Do we not have a duty to past Americans who have fought and died for our rights to fight for the liberty of our descendants?

What would be the best way to stop future presidents from usurping the power of the people? Should we move on and not bog ourselves down in the bickering that would accompany trials of war criminals from the highest echelons of government? Will we signal to future presidents that they will be considered above the law as long as their partisans promise to bicker and complain that the prosecution is not deserved because it is being controlled by someone from a different faction?

If fear of political harm prevents the prosecution of criminals, then wouldn't criminals simply threaten political division and wrangling in order to avoid prosecution? Has political calculation won over an executive's duty to uphold the law and the constitution?

Listen carefully to the oath of office on Tuesday. The promise that President Elect Obama makes will be:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

This oath does not mention protecting Americans from terrorists no matter what the cost to liberty. It doesn't say anything about letting people avoid prosecution because it would be divisive or distracting. It doesn't even say anything about getting God's help. It says to protect and defend the Constitution, to the best of your ability. I know that the best of Obama'a ability is pretty damn good. I heard what his Attorney General Designate said about torture. I heard Obama say no one is above the law. He is capable of heeding the warnings of Eisenhower, Washington, and many other presidents.

As for how we managed to get to this place, it seems we just don't listen, do we? America has a long, rich history that we will be doomed to repeat if we don't study it, and prosecute those responsible for usurping the power of the people and ignoring the rule of law.

Labels: Bush, Dwight Eisenhower, George Washtington, military industrial complex, presidential farewell addresses

  ¶ 10:59 AM 1 comments links to this post

  A Brief History of a Joke Sometime's it's fun to follow the conversation that leads to a funny joke. But the joke has to stand alone:

My moat is frozen. Hopefully the assholes can't ice-skate.
--Me

  ¶ 7:08 PM 0 comments links to this post

  From Bush's Last Press Conference (as pResident)

And so, I view those who get angry and yell and say bad things and, you know, all that kind of stuff, it's just a very few people in the country. I don't know why they get angry. I don't know why they get hostile.—GW Bush

I can only answer with another quote, from his Vice pResident:

Go fuck yourself.—Dick Cheney

Labels: Bush, Cheney, Dick Cheney, George W Bush

  ¶ 10:29 AM 1 comments links to this post

  Not an Utter Failure for Rich Cronies From the January Harper's Index: A retrospective of the Bush era:

Portion of all U.S. income gains during the Bush Administration that have gone to the top 1 percent of earners: 3/4

Increase since 2000 in the number of Americans living at less than half the federal poverty level: 3,500,000

Percentage change since 2001 in the average amount U.S. workers spend on out-of-pocket medical expenses: +172

Estimated percentage by which Social Security benefits would have declined if Bush’s privatization plan had passed: –15 ...

Portion of the $3.3 billion in federal Hurricane Katrina relief spent by Mississippi that has benefited poor residents: 1/4

Labels: Bush, Bush Administration Treason, George W Bush

  ¶ 5:25 AM 0 comments links to this post

  No Elaborating on Utter Failure

No! You can go back to your, what do you call it, your Google, and you figure out all that.

-- Former President George H.W. Bush, when asked to elaborate on some of his son's failures as president.

Labels: failure, George HW Bush, George W Bush

  ¶ 2:18 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Justice After Bush, Prosecuting an outlaw administration Scott Horton wrote in the December, 2008 issue of Harper's Magazine:

No prior administration has been so systematically or so brazenly lawless. Yet it is no simple matter to prosecute a former president or his senior officers. There is no precedent for such a prosecution, and even if there was, the very breadth and audacity of the administration’s activities would make the process so complex as to defy systems of justice far less fragmented than our own. But that only means choices must be made. Indeed, in weighing the enormity of the administration’s transgressions against the realistic prospect of justice, it is possible to determine not only the crime that calls most clearly for prosecution but also the crime that is most likely to be successfully prosecuted. In both cases, that crime is torture.

Anyone who thinks I'm some nutcase for wanting to prosecute the entire Bush "administration" for war crimes should read what Scott Horton has to say. I dare any wing nut Republican to argue any of it.

Who is Scott Horton?

A New York attorney known for his work in emerging markets and international law, especially human rights law and the law of armed conflict, Horton lectures at Columbia Law School. A life-long human rights advocate, Scott served as counsel to Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner, among other activists in the former Soviet Union. He is a co-founder of the American University in Central Asia, and has been involved in some of the most significant foreign investment projects in the Central Eurasian region. Scott recently led a number of studies of abuse issues associated with the conduct of the war on terror for the New York City Bar Association, where he has chaired several committees, including, most recently, the Committee on International Law. He is also a member of the board of the National Institute of Military Justice, the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, the EurasiaGroup and the American Branch of the International Law Association.

Step on up, wing nuts.

Labels: Bush, Bush Administration Treason, Harper's Magazine, Scott Horton, torture, war crimes

  ¶ 12:10 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Bush Should Have Signed This Guy with the Rangers

"This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."--Muntather Zaidi

Labels: arab insults, Bush, Iraq, shoe thrower

  ¶ 3:52 PM 0 comments links to this post

  My Vote for Illinois Senator Carol Mosely Braun helps solve some of the seniority problem...

Labels: Illinois Senator

  ¶ 5:40 PM 0 comments links to this post

  The Penultimate Bush Quotes Update I haven't updated my Bush quotes page in a while, and man did I miss some doozies, like this one:

"And I, unfortunately, have been to too many disasters as president."—discussing flooding in the Midwest, Washington, D.C., June 17, 2008

Recently, the publishers of The War in Quotes sent me a copy of their book. It is horrifying! I wish I had read it before Halloween! It got me to thinking about how a lot of these quotes (not just Bush's) are actually windows that tell you exactly what these criminals are thinking! They're little Freudian slips of truthiness that tell you exactly what they're thinking.

Honestly, I'm so sick of the man that I might have just gone on without every touching that quote page again. But I've started to feel a tug toward forgiving this cruel, evil, spoiled little frat boy, and I just can't stand the thought of people saying "Oh, he meant well."

No he didn't. He meant to make a lot of money for himself and his friends in the military industrial complex. He meant to cripple the federal budget for years to come, and there's probably a whole bunch of shit he did, that he meant to do, that we will only learn about in the years to come.

And if he, and his cronies, aren't prosecuted, then it's proof that there is no justice, and this country is broken.

And we all know who broke it.

Labels: Bush, Bush Administration Treason, Bush lies, Bush quotes, Bush treason, George W Bush

  ¶ 10:25 AM 1 comments links to this post

  Rahmbo

Labels: Andy Samberg, Rahm Emanuel, Satire, Snark, SNL, White House Chief of Staff

  ¶ 1:04 PM 0 comments links to this post

  This is what happens when a Junta steals everything From Bloomberg:

Employers cut 240,000 jobs last month, for a total so far this year of 1.2 million jobs lost, while the total number of unemployed Americans jumped to 10.1 million, the highest level in a quarter century, according to last week's jobs report from the Labor Department.

The Bush Junta has spent 8 years robbing the US Treasury. From no-bid contracts, to pallets of cash "lost" in Iraq, to Wall Street getting "bailed out" (bailed out from what? robbing us blind?), the Bush cronies have stolen everything that's not nailed down. In fact, I think I can hear the pry bars and claw hammers working their way through the White House now.

Now the increased tax of paying off all this debt will fall on our grandchildren. And I still have people telling me I should be nice? A good friend of mine forwarded a typical right wing email full of crap about Pelosi, and I went off on the guy (who's email I got out of the forwarded mail)...

Well, my good friend was a little perturbed at me for attacking a long-time friend of his. Oh well. I refuse to apologize for treating this wing nuts like the idiots they are. They should be shamed and marginalized. Here's my reply to my friend, who suggested I play nice if I want to get people like that guy thinking....

I did send him a link. It carefully explained how there was no evidence that Pelosi owns stock in Star Kist.

However, the bigger point was that to dare to compare that one little thing, even if it was true, which it's not, to the long litany of disaster created by this president and his cronies, is the most specious of all their bad arguments. It's like a little kid going, yeah, I ruined your sandcastle and the entire beach with this oil spill, but you ruined my Popsicle with this tiny spec of sand.

I lost sleep over this last night, because I sure don't want to make you mad at me. And losing sleep is not something I need right now, as I have to take a shit load of drugs to make it through the pain and get any sleep at all.

But I will tell you that this isn't about left vs. right. This is about the fact that people like this guy supported this right wing junta that has ruined this country, that is busy robbing us and our grandchildren of trillions right now, and yet he, and people like him, continue this bullshit that is just sand in the eyes to stop us from seeing what is really going on.

This is about reality.

This crap goes back further than Gingrich. I don't really care about getting him thinking. His response to me was so condescending that I just wanted to piss him off. I hope I did. And I hope it sticks with him. Frankly, I've learned that pissing wing nuts off actually is what makes them think. Trying to play nice with them is just a waste of time. Their whole philosophy is confrontation and agitation. They really hate me because I'm very good at their silly game.

Honestly. Here we are on the brink of a depression and environmental ruin brought on by the Philosophy of people like that, and you're saying we should be nice to them and try to get them to think? I don't think it's possible to get them to think. They need to be shamed. They need to be shown, over and over again, the connection between their Laissez-Faire, Trickle-Down, economics and the current condition of this country, from the environment to the economy.

Besides, they are a small minority now. As long as we keep them marginalized and ridiculed, they will not be able to affect things any more. Their days are over, and they will have to re-invent themselves into something more reality based to come back. Honestly. We're talking about a whole political wing of this country that doesn't believe in evolution or global warming.

It's like with religion. If they would only admit that they don't know... If they would just admit to the reality that ideology spits out standard answers and prescriptions for action that are not based on facts. The right wing philosophy, like practically any religion, is simply not pragmatic. It used to be, but then it was taken over by the ideologues, mostly from Nixon and Reagan (like Cheney and the Neo-cons, and Bush, the Theo-con).

Now, if this guy wants to admit that this disaster is the direct result of a Wild West Deregulatory environment that festered in the Enron Accounting and Halliburton No-Bid contract petri dish in some right wing laboratory, then maybe we could all come to some Obamaesque understanding and cooperation. But do you think this person is reality based? When he just forwards whatever right wing talking points come through his machine?

Labels: bailout, Bush treason, Bush Voters, Wall Street

  ¶ 8:03 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Epic Fail Odd that the conservatives I occasionally hear from have gotten so quiet. Plotting the fascist overthrow of the newly elected government, or are you putting "country first" these days?

Well, at the risk of saying "I told you so" yet again about the Bush "administration" I'd like to point out that the looting of the US Treasury, of our children's and grandchildren's tax dollars, is going on at break neck pace in Washington. And all you Bush voters should be even more ashamed. This isn't capitalism. Hell, it's not even conservative. The fascist corporate right wing of America has taken control of your money, and I hear nary a peep out of you. Not one single, hey, that hard left liberal lunatic Supak was actually right about these Bushies! They're robbing us blind!

Ah, well, all the better to drown Obama's government in a bath tub. Where is Grover Norquist on this bailout issue? Where are the true conservatives who should be first in line demanding that there be transparency in the bail out?

Could it be that it was never conservatism that interested you? Could it be that you only care about pouring the next generation's tax dollars into paying off the credit card bills accrued during these heady days of Christo-Military-Corporo-fascism? As long as you get your private Blackwater armies and Halliburton support services paid for in perpetuity with stolen pallets of cash, right? As long as you hand out more free money to the CEOs who robbed their companies and their investors blind, right? As long as that fucking socialist Obama doesn't get to spend it on health care for a bunch of lazy welfare queens, right?

As I write this, the financial world is abuzz with this news:

The financial world was fixated on Capitol Hill as Congress battled over the Bush administration's request for a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. In the midst of this late-September drama, the Treasury Department issued a five-sentence notice that attracted almost no public attention.

But corporate tax lawyers quickly realized the enormous implications of the document: Administration officials had just given American banks a windfall of as much as $140 billion.

..."Did the Treasury Department have the authority to do this? I think almost every tax expert would agree that the answer is no," said George K. Yin, the former chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the nonpartisan congressional authority on taxes. "They basically repealed a 22-year-old law that Congress passed as a backdoor way of providing aid to banks."

And which banks specifically benefited from this centralized, fascist takeover of our financial system? None of your damn business, that's who.

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.

I find it astounding that many of the conservatives who have insulted my over the last 8 years are sitting on their hands right now, lest they type something a little, shall we say unflattering, about their hero president?

Well, maybe this will help:

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Let’s say you were the chief risk officer of the former Bear Stearns Cos. in the two years preceding the bank’s collapse in March.

And let’s say, just for argument’s sake, that the postmortems revealed Bear to have had too much risk and too little management of it. The only way JPMorgan Chase & Co. would agree to acquire Bear was with a $29 billion sweetener from the Federal Reserve for some of the less-palatable assets.

Following the acquisition of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan, you would expect said chief risk officer to:

a) Retire quietly to his country home;

b) Open a "consulting" business, allowing him to deduct the costs of a home office at the country home;

c) Land a plum job offer from another Wall Street bank;

d) Land a job as a bank supervisor at the Federal Reserve.

If you picked a, b or c, you would be incorrect. The correct answer is d.

Michael Alix, chief risk officer at Bear Stearns from 2006 until its demise in March, was named senior vice president in the Bank Supervision Group of the New York Fed on Oct. 31.

It’s not unusual for Wall Street to reward its own, offering rogue traders -- the ones who escape criminal prosecution -- new jobs at different firms. But the Fed? At a time when its balance sheet is exploding with increasingly risky assets?

I'm not the least bit surprised by a lack of accountability in the Bush Jr. "administration." I am surprised that more conservatives aren't waving some torches and pitchforks right now, as this lack of transparency, lack of accountability, and apparent lack of competency (unless they are competent crooks) reveals the depths to which Bush and Cheney will sink in order to reward his cronies who have epically failed us all.

Labels: bailout, Bush, conservatives, Dick Cheney, failure, George W Bush, Paulson, Treasury

  ¶ 10:35 AM 0 comments links to this post