Robert Reich reveals "Irresponsible and Obscene"

Robert B. Reich (Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley who formerly served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton.) uses Common Dreams to post "The $70 Billion Tax Cut: Irresponsible and Obscene" revealing his usual clear knowledge and writing on how Bu$hCo and the Rubber Stamp Congress works. Here are the gems

The tax cut would be politically irresponsible, but not obscene, if it were going to middle-income workers now facing sky-high fuel prices and soaring health-insurance costs, and variable-rate mortgage payments heading through the roof.

But this tax cut is not going to the middle class. Like the Bush Administration’s previous tax cuts, most of this one is going to people who are already very comfortable. Hence, it’s both irresponsible and obscene.

The non-partisan Urban Institute - Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center examined its provisions, including a two-year extension of capital gains and dividend tax cuts, and a one-year extension of relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax. It turns out a whopping 87 percent of the benefits of this tax cut will go to the 14 percent of American households earning above $100,000 a year. Twenty-two percent of the benefits will go to the richest two-tenths of one percent of American households earning more than a million dollars a year.

I miss this guy! It seems years ago that we had competent and smart folks in charge. Peace ... or War!

Surely Slippery Slope for Bu$hCo on NSA Data

Brian Ross and Richard Esposito of ABC's The Blotter reports "Federal Source to ABC News: We Know Who You're Calling" and I'm thinking this might be the tip of the iceberg. Here is the guts of the article,

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources. .... Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

Kim Zetter via Salon suggests "The NSA is on the line -- all of them : An intelligence expert predicts we'll soon learn that cellphone and Internet companies also cooperated with the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on us." 1976 issue indeed as far as "land lines" and "telegrams" so indeed we'd have to think there is much more to the story.

Ought to be an interesting period for historians of the future. I can only hope that true patriots and leadership will be the heroes and not the villians. Those in power will write the history. Peace ... or War!

Could Al Gore Help US Recover from Bu$hCo?

Tip of the Tam to Jesus General for reminding me about Draft Gore 2008. The American Prospect had a recent article that I think I'd posted on yet I'll drop another link just in case. Good language from The General (he's a zen master of satirical snark) and The Prospect as well. Also, be sure to look at AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH that Al Gore has helped bring to the big screen, at least in more progressive venues. Right now Gore/Feingold is my dream ticket! With Rove and the ReThuglicans heading hard right in an effort to rally the base and scare the hell out of middle America a backlash might allow Lefty Progressives their best chance in many years. And I truly believe that we've got to move our nation off this path. Peace ... or War!

WaPo Scolds Bu$hCo for Tax Policy Fantasy

Without even considering the radically unfair and perfectly insane tax legislation recently passed by the Rubber Stamp Congress, the WaPo wades into Bu$hCo "reality" with "Down Is Up : The White House taxes reality." Quouting Edward P. Lazear, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Katherine Baicker, a fellow council member, who wrote, in a May 8 Wall Street Journal op-ed column, the following:

"The president's tax cuts have made the tax code more progressive, which also narrows the difference in take-home earnings."

The WaPo is kind to simply label that as a "jaw dropper" yet they are known for the aversion to foul language, expecially from critics on the angry left. The do write,

Calculations by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center clearly show that the Bush tax cuts have expanded inequality, not narrowed it. People in the bottom fifth of the income spectrum have enjoyed a 0.4 percent increase in their after-tax income thanks to the tax cuts, but people in the top fifth have enjoyed a 3.8 percent increase. For the richest households, the gains have been still larger: The top 1 percent got a 5 percent raise courtesy of the tax cuts, and the top 0.1 percent got 5.9 percent. There's no ambiguity about it: The tax cuts widened the gap in take-home earnings.

The Lazear-Baicker article did acknowledge that high school dropouts have made no gains since 1980: Their wages fell by 3 percent. It might also have mentioned that this wasn't true only of high school dropouts: Wages for those in the bottom half of the income spectrum have fallen after adjustment for inflation. The failure of economic growth to generate gains for half of society is a serious worry. The administration needs to come at it with more serious analysis.

C Plus Augustus isn't interested in serious analysis. Nor is his cabal. They likely passed this most recent legislation out of fear that they'll lose the House and/or Senate this fall so it was "now or never". Wise policy be damned! Also, they hope Americans remain stupid and lazy enough to not be well informed about what these complicated policies involve. If they can convince the public of their old lie about being the party of low taxes that might get them a few votes. Of course there's always Diebold if they get in real jam. Peace ... or War!

Courage, strength, sanity, humor, ... Lefty Tools!

Professor Eric Alterman of Altercation fame, writing in The Nation here, serves up "Three Liberal Lives" examining the lives of recently passed legends of the left. "John Kenneth Galbraith died on April 29 at age 97, ... just days after those of two other giants of American liberalism: Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg at age 84 and the Rev. William Sloane Coffin at 81." I especially appreciated how he wound up this effort.

Where does the courage come from to insist that you are right when all others around you are not merely wrong but wrong in ways that are morally and intellectually indefensible? And how does one retain not only one's sanity but also good humor when doing so?

In his own way, each man spoke to this question, though the answers are necessarily unsatisfying. Asked by a church group why he found himself getting arrested so frequently, Coffin replied, "I can only reassure you that I don't like to go around picking fights. Some fights pick you."

To a question about his troublemaking, Hertzberg once explained, "A rabbi should be where the real issues of society are, not where safe platitudes are to be preached.... You save your soul by saving someone else's body."

And in a moving tribute to his friend and co-conspirator, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. recalled Galbraith observing, "The emancipation of belief is the most formidable of the tasks of reform, the one on which all else depends."

We'll done for these three men plus a tip of the tam for Doc Alterman. Peace ... or War!

NSA Data Mining - USA Today Bombshell Dropped

Leslie Cauley of USA Today dropped the bomb early this AM and I've been scrambling all day to get get caught up, with some time still needed. Here's one gem that I think really resonates,

The NSA told Qwest that other government agencies, including the FBI, CIA and DEA, also might have access to the database, the sources said. As a matter of practice, the NSA regularly shares its information — known as "product" in intelligence circles — with other intelligence groups.

In the meantime, head over to Glenn Greenwald where he writes,

The ability of the Government to use pen registers is governed by various liberalizing changes made to Section 402 of FISA, by Section 214 of the 2oo1 Patriot Act. There is no dispute that the Government is prohibited from using pen registers without FISA court approval -- both under the old FISA and the more liberalized FISA as amended by the Patriot Act. As Mary DeRosa, senior fellow in the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, explained as part of a 2001 debate over various provisions of the Patriot Act:

Section 214 [of the 2001 Patriot Act] makes similar changes to procedures for obtaining pen register or trap and trace orders under FISA. "Pen registers" and "trap and trace" devices record information about the recipient and source,respectively, of a communication. They do not intercept the contents of communications.

Previously, FISA section 402 required the government to certify to the FISC that there was reason to believe a line monitored by one of these devices would be used by an individual or a foreign power engaged in international terrorism or spying that violates U.S. criminal laws.

Everyone seems to agree that even with the changes effectuated to FISA by the Patriot Act, the Government is still required to obtain approval from the FISA court in order to use pen registers; the only change mades by the Patriot Act was to lower the showing the Government was required to make to the FISA court in order to obtain permission to use a pen register. This appears to be the view even of executive power fanatic, ex-prosecutor Andrew McCarthy:

Prior FISA law required government to certify that the monitored communications would likely be those either of an international terrorist or spy involved in a violation of U.S. criminal law, or of an agent of a foreign power involved in terrorism or espionage.

Consequently, Section 214’s modification of prior law is both modest and eminently reasonable. Agents are still required to obtain a court order before installing a pen register. In addition, they are still required to make a solemn representation to the court; now, however, that is limited to certifying that the information sought would be relevant to an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.

It is true that, strictly speaking, at least based on what we know, the Government has not used pen registers here. They didn't need to. Instead of collecting this information telephone-by-telephone, they just skipped the whole pen register annoyance and had the telecommunications companies give them all of that information for every phone. Still, it is hard to imagine (at least for people acting in good faith) how it could be illegal for the Government to use a pen register device without a court order for a single phone (it appears clear that that is illegal), but it is perfectly legal for the Government to obtain pen register information for everyone's phone in the country without bothering to obtain a court order of any kind.

Independently, the type of information obtained here by the Government seems clearly to fall within FISA's definition of "electronic surveillance." Section 1801(f)(1) of FISA defines "electronic surveillance" to include "the acquisition by an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device of the contents of any wire or radio communication sent by or intended to be received by a particular, known United States person who is in the United States. . . " In turn, Section 1801(n) defines the term "contents" as follows:

"Contents," when used with respect to a communication, includes any information concerning the identity of the parties to such communication or the existence, substance, purport, or meaning of that communication

There is, at the very least, a strong argument to make that the type of information obtained by the administration here falls squarely within the scope of FISA and thus requires warrants before it can be obtained. This would violate FISA for the same reason the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program does -- namely, it constitutes electronic surveillance on Americans and therefore is criminal unless undertaken with judicial approval.

Finally, there are several other seemingly significant legal issues governing this program, all of which are possible grounds for concluding that the President -- yet again -- violated the law when ordering surveillance on Americans, including various provisions of FISA governing the production of business documents by these companies to the Government.

Ultimately, however, the always-overarching issue is that it doesn't really much matter how these fascinating and academic statutory debates are resolved because the administration has claimed repeatedly that it has the right to violate statutes like this if its doing so is in pursuit of the national defense. As Professor Kerr put it, with great understatement:

Of course, all of the statutory questions are subject to the possible argument that Article II trumps those statutes. As I have mentioned before, I don't see the support for the strong Article II argument in existing caselaw, but there is a good chance that the Administration's legal argument in support of the new law will rely on it.

The Leader ordered this collection of sweeping data on the communications activities of Americans because The Threat of Terrorism required it. Therefore, even if multiple statutes make doing that a criminal offense, The President has the power to do it anyway. That, of course, is the Administration's view of the world. And that is the epic constitutional crisis we have in our country.

Finally, I would be remiss if I failed to point out this passage written by Andrew McCarthy from the above-linked debate on The Patriot Act and FISA, something McCarthy wrote before he knew the President had ordered eavesdropping on Americans without court approval:

Why such extensive access with virtually no court supervision? Because the items at issue here are primarily activity records voluntarily left in the hands of third parties. As the Supreme Court has long held, such items simply do not involve legitimate expectations of privacy. See, e.g., Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 744 (1979).

This renders them categorically different from the private information at issue in the context of search warrants or eavesdropping, in which the court is properly imposed as a bulwark, requiring a demonstration of cause before government may pierce established constitutional safeguards. McCarthy wrote this before he knew that his Leader had ordered the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans without having courts "imposed as a bulwark." Before he knew the President had ordered this, McCarthy said he believed that it is necessary that the government not be permitted to eavesdrop on Americans without judicial approval because such oversight was necessary to protect "established constitutional safeguards." But once he found out that the President ordered eavesdropping without that judicial "bulwark," he changed his mind completely. What he previously said was necessary and proper -- judicial oversight for eavesdropping -- suddenly became totally superfluous and unnecessary, as he became one of the most vocal defenders of the administration's warrantless eavesdropping programs.

People who fundamentally change their views on issues this significant all in order to defend a Leader's conduct can be called many things. None of them is flattering.

UPDATE: Both Anonymous Liberal and Marty Lederman suggest that the telecommunications companies perhaps violated Section 222 of the Communications Act, which "requires telecommunications carriers to protect the confidentiality of customer proprietary information ("CPNI"), such as the telephone numbers called by customers and the length oftime of the calls. . . ." By e-mail, Georgia10 of Daily Kos argues that the companies seem clearly to have violated 18 U.S.C. section 2702, which also bans the disclosure of such information without a court order.

Oh my! Bu$hCo has apparently been caught in another lie and radical expansion of executive power. I again remind anyone that drops by that this administration has bent and twisted at a minimum and more likely broken the law. Either one requires oversight and 'splaining. Peace ... or War!

William Rivers Pitt Bitch Slaps Richard Cohen

TruthOut gives us William Rivers Pitt's "An Open Letter to Richard Cohen". The WaPo's Richard Cohen of course recently dropped "A Digital Lynch Mob" recently that scolded the anger of the left appearing in his email after dissing on Stephen Colbert"s DC Press Dinner performance. HEre's my favorite portion of Mr. Pitt's work:

Why the anger? It can be summed up in one run-on sentence: We have lost two towers in New York, a part of the Pentagon, an important American city called New Orleans, our economic solvency, our global reputation, our moral authority, our children's future, we have lost tens of thousands of American soldiers to death and grievous injury, we must endure the Abramoffs and the Cunninghams and the Libbys and the whores and the bribes and the utter corruption, we must contemplate the staggering depth of the hole we have been hurled down into, and we expect little to no help from the mainstream DC press, whose lazy go-along-to-get-along cocktail-circuit mentality allowed so much of this to happen because they failed comprehensively to do their job.

George W. Bush and his pals used September 11th against the American people, used perhaps the most horrific day in our collective history, deliberately and with intent, to foster a war of choice that has killed untold tens of thousands of human beings and basically bankrupted our country. They lied about the threat posed by Iraq. They destroyed the career of a CIA agent who was tasked to keep an eye on Iran's nuclear ambitions, and did so to exact petty political revenge against a critic. They tortured people, and spied on American civilians.

I'm angry indeed and will do all I can to create change in this world. Peace ... or War!

William Rivers Pitt Bitch Slaps Richard Cohen

TruthOut gives us William Rivers Pitt's "An Open Letter to Richard Cohen". The WaPo's Richard Cohen of course recently dropped "A Digital Lynch Mob" that scolded the anger of the left appearing in his inbox after he was dissing on Stephen Colbert's DC Press Dinner performance. Here's my favorite portion of Mr. Pitt's work:

Why the anger? It can be summed up in one run-on sentence: We have lost two towers in New York, a part of the Pentagon, an important American city called New Orleans, our economic solvency, our global reputation, our moral authority, our children's future, we have lost tens of thousands of American soldiers to death and grievous injury, we must endure the Abramoffs and the Cunninghams and the Libbys and the whores and the bribes and the utter corruption, we must contemplate the staggering depth of the hole we have been hurled down into, and we expect little to no help from the mainstream DC press, whose lazy go-along-to-get-along cocktail-circuit mentality allowed so much of this to happen because they failed comprehensively to do their job.

George W. Bush and his pals used September 11th against the American people, used perhaps the most horrific day in our collective history, deliberately and with intent, to foster a war of choice that has killed untold tens of thousands of human beings and basically bankrupted our country. They lied about the threat posed by Iraq. They destroyed the career of a CIA agent who was tasked to keep an eye on Iran's nuclear ambitions, and did so to exact petty political revenge against a critic. They tortured people, and spied on American civilians.

I'm angry indeed and will do all I can to create change in this world. Peace ... or War!

UPDATE : Jane Hamsher of FDL also joins the fray with "Meet the New Boss". Meritocracy is blog powered perhaps. Punditsx like Cohen and Joe "The Wanker" Klein and ... are perhaps on their way out. Hens or roosters ... just write with soul and accuracy and The Left will win out in the marketplace of ideas.

Jeb at least has higher poll numbers than Cruella and The Chimp!

The AP is reporting via MSNB that Dubyah thinks Brother Jeb would make "a great President". The image above shows "The Decider" meeting with "The Counter", former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. With her scandals and poll numbers so low perhaps only giving Bu$hCo the White House in 2000 could have made this scene happen. Dubyah was tense and hardly thrilled but he could hardly run. Jeb's walking out the door in January and his hand-picked candidate Allan Bense just announced that he would not run against her for the Senate seat she's seeking. 43 figures, such as he ever does, that perhaps folks will forget by 2006. More likely Rove assured "no harm". "Tricky Political Situation" per the NY Times. We've learned that The Architect, perhaps even if indicted, is going hard right seeking the "values voters" and rallying the "true believers" so Representative Harris seeking the Senate on "faith" might work. Just seeing these three together makes me cringe! Peace ... or War!

Democrats - A Need for Southern Class & Sass?

Community activist Benjamin Ross writes in Dissent "Democrats and Middle America: What's the Real Problem?" where he does a good analysis of Thomas Frank's arguments in "What's the Matter with Kansas?" and other suggestions for creating electoral success for Democrats and other progressives such as "national security" and ... These are the portions that I thought merited attention ...

Frank stands with the pragmatists. He thinks wages matter; he rejects the elite that promises salvation. His politics is about results, in economics and in culture alike. The return on a retirement fund matters more than the faith of its sponsor. Voters who seek cultural traditionalism have his respect; it is politicians who promise it and do not deliver whom he despises. ...

In reality, the New Deal Democratic Party was a hybrid. It bore the fruits of a European-style class party, but its branches were grafted onto the trunk of a nineteenth-century American party organized around sectional and ethnic allegiances. Together with union members and distressed farmers, it covered a spectrum that included southern whites, from tenant farmers to plantation owners, and Irish Catholic businessmen alongside their working-class coreligionists. ...

Democrats must take up the challenge posed by Thomas Frank and reclaim the populist heritage of the New Deal in a new environment. To do this requires a willingness to attack economic unfairness, for which the plutocratic Bush administration has created all too many targets. It also demands a greater sensitivity to the cultural preferences of Middle America, both in style—it is no accident that for forty years every Democratic president has had a southern accent—and in substance on issues such as gun control. This is, as Frank asserts, the way to rebuild a liberal majority—and more than that, it is the democratic way.

I'd add that by acting strong you'll pick up some "national security" votes. With Democrats at times being non-confrontational that gives the ReThuglicans some ease in painting us as weak. Feingold and Murtha help us avoid or shed that label yet much of the party hasn't bought that approach. Getting your Scots up when appropriate is a good start.

I'll also add that common sense often can be reconciled with intellectual elitism. Kerry could not easily provide a reasonable explanation to what certainly was logical and correct as could Clinton. Edwards had the touch. Feingold might as would Warner perhaps. Gore might now be able to convey his message more clearly as well. Those four are my 2008 candidates at the present time. Dean is tolerable in his leadership position yet some of the other leaders are hardly where I'd like them to be. Most are adequate yet at times they hardly provide a consistent and common sense message that will resonate with middle America.

I think we, meaning Progressives and not always Democrats, can be smart and strong and fair and caring and ... The Right has held the argument so long in part because they've taken control of their message plus the GOP has learned modern politics better than have we. Of course the dumbing down of the electorate hardly helps our cause yet I might be getting a touch elitist. Peace ... or War!

Bu$hCo Talking Points to Cabinet - Iraq once exported terrorists but now it is tomatoes!

Al Kamen of The WaPo gives us "The USDA on Iraq: Everything's Coming Up Rosy" where he reports some amazing efforts to spin Iraq and the GWOT. He writes, in part, the following:

Career appointees at the Department of Agriculture were stunned last week to receive e-mailed instructions that include Bush administration "talking points" -- saying things such as "President Bush has a clear strategy for victory in Iraq" -- in every speech they give for the department.

"The President has requested that all members of his cabinet and sub-cabinet incorporate message points on the Global War on Terror into speeches, including specific examples of what each agency is doing to aid the reconstruction of Iraq," the May 2 e-mail from USDA speechwriter Heather Vaughn began. ...

Another attachment "contains specific examples of GWOT messages within agriculture speeches. Please use these message points as often as possible and send Harry Phillips , USDA's director of speechwriting, a weekly email summarizing the event, date and location of each speech incorporating the attached language. Your responses will be included in a weekly account sent to the White House."

This scoreboard, of course, will ensure you give it your best shot.

I want my America back! Worst administration ever! Peace ... or War!

Bu$hCo & Rubber Stamp Congress - Frack You

Rebecca Clarren of Salon gives us "EPA to citizens: Frack you - In the Rockies, a gas-extraction process called "fracking" may be releasing a carcinogenic stew of chemicals. Dozens of people say it has made them seriously ill, but the EPA refuses to investigate -- a failure one of its own engineers calls "irrational and corrupt." The writing includes, in part, with my emphasis supplied, the following,

... Fracking or hydraulic fracturing is a half century-old process in which a gas company injects water, sand and the chemicals into the wells. Developed by Halliburton, the corporation formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, fracking loosens the rock and maximizes the flow of gas to the surface. ...

The most serious problems may stem from fracking. The chemicals pumped into the wells to aid the flow of gas to the surface include known carcinogens such as benzene, naphthalene, arsenic and lead. Several chemicals that may be injected can be lethal at levels as low as 0.1 part per million, according to the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory. Up to 40 percent of the fracturing fluids remain in the formation, according to studies conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency and the oil and gas industry; that means that fluids such as diesel and benzene may seep into the surrounding soil, groundwater, and water wells. The wastewater that the industry recaptures after the well hole is drilled often sits in open evaporation pits for upward of a year. ...

Congress' enactment of the energy-policy bill last summer gave [residents] even less protection. Following the EPA's recommendation, Congress amended the Safe Drinking Water Act so that gas companies can hydraulically fracture without any regulation or oversight by the EPA. That means that the toxic components of fracking fluids aren't reported to any regulatory authority or to the public. There is no monitoring of the process; the public's only assurance that companies aren't contaminating their water or air will come from industry.

Congress concluded from a 2004 EPA study that the industry exemption would pose no threat to underground sources of drinking water. Agency engineer Wilson described the report as "scientifically unsound," "contrary to the purposes of the law," and "unsupportable," in a letter written to a House member and the two senators from Colorado. The EPA determined fracking was safe after a survey of state oil and gas commissions, which all reported they had never found a definitive example of fracking's effect on human health -- even though none of the agencies had ever directly studied the connection.

"Absence of proof is not proof of absence -- that's not good science," says Geoffrey Thyne, a geology professor at the Colorado School of Mines, based in Golden. As Garfield County's geological expert, he speaks in steadied tones. "There's a real dearth of baseline information. I don't think any fracking expert would tell you that we are 100 percent sure where the fractures go. No one has studied how often there are lateral leaks into nearby aquifers. People out here kind of figure that the government is looking out for them, and if there was a real problem, some expert would come forward and say so. Unfortunately, because no one's studying this, it might be a while."

The outlook for any policy that would offer local citizens peace of mind is about as hopeful as a forecast of drought in the high country. While [local residents] plan to file lawsuits against the gas companies they blame for their illnesses, proving such cases is tremendously difficult without basic studies that prove a connection between gas emissions and disease, ...

(Quoting a local attorney) ... "Really, there's just not enough data, so it's been a real uphill battle to show a causal connection," he says. "If EPA had baseline data, that would make a huge difference. It's easier to recover damages for damaged property than to recover for sick people. It's a travesty."

Even so, he says, the courts are a citizen's best hope, since they're reasonably free of political influence. "The energy lobby is just so strong," he says. "They have so much money and they're horribly well organized."

Indeed. In the past three election cycles, gas companies gave federal Republican political candidates more than $60.3 million and federal Democratic candidates about $14.6 million. Approximately 50 of the Bush campaign's premier fundraisers are energy executives. Nearly 60 percent of the top contributors hold leases on Western public lands, according to a 2004 report by the Environmental Working Group. This political clout was obvious in last year's energy bill, says Astrella, as it didn't include any protections for landowners.

"To get a feel for the extent of the bowing and scraping the industry enjoys in the nation's Capitol, the oil and gas industry received massive public subsidies in the 2005 energy bill they didn't even ask for," says Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the only member of the conference committee who voted against the bill, in part because of the massive public subsidies for industry. "The president said last year that with the price of oil at $55 per barrel, the industry didn't need incentives to explore, but Congress shoveled new tax breaks and royalty relief to them anyway. "

Under this climate, staffers at the EPA report that they're unable to do their job of protecting human health and the environment. "People are being penalized just for asking questions," says an EPA staffer who spoke on a condition of anonymity. "I've heard a bunch of people say they're keeping their heads down and basically focusing on their kids or personal interests and trying to keep their jobs. There doesn't seem to be attention whatsoever to health and the environment. They're ignoring all of their own standards and regulations left and right. It's just about corporate power to get the gas out." ...

This article is simply one of several issues that ought to be covered in the MSM yet we simply aren't. I appreciated the idea that the courts might be the only place to get relief yet the right's shill machine will label that as "activist judges" and "greedy trial lawyers". Again, the reason I blog is to learn and share. A real mess of government, at the national and many states. Progressives must confront these injustices. Peace ... or War!

UPDATE ~ August 20, 2008 - We still have issues with fracking.

Two Days Off but back with "The Top Takes Off"

I've been MIA for a couple of days. Reading James Risen's State of War yet still not getting as far as I'd have thought. Great read so far, especially given Friday seeing Porter Goss being shown the door at CIA. Hectic day on Friday with a ball game that evening leaving me even more zonked than usual. Ten more days with the "scholars"! Yesterday I dug in the dirt so feeling better. Hang in there Marque as I've got material.

I'll start with The WaPo's "occasional series on inequality" where today they gives us, "The Top Takes Off - That rhetoric about giveaways for multimillionaires? It's accurate.". Some of the language is as follows:

THE QUEST for ways to reduce inequality begins with taxation. Unlike spending programs, redistribution through taxation is administratively simple; besides, putting money directly into people's pockets allows them to spend it on whatever they need most. But the tax tool has been wielded badly. Rather than using it to offset rising inequality, politicians have contrived to do the opposite. ...

.... the combined effect of the Bush tax cuts. It leaves no doubt that the tax system has become less progressive, even as the need for progressivity has grown. Over the past quarter of a century, the tide of the American economy has failed to lift the bottom half of society, damaging the faith on which capitalism depends. ...

The chart makes a second point. The loss of tax progressivity has not occurred in the middle of society; it's not as though someone a quarter of the way down the income scale is doing better at the expense of someone three-quarters of the way down. Rather, it's the top tenth who have benefited, and the top within the top has done fabulously well. ...

... the risks of raising taxes have to be weighed against the risks of not raising them. Inequality is not only bad in itself; it also will intensify pressure for bad policies that threaten growth more acutely than higher taxes would.

Bu$hCo and The Rubber Stamp Congress has taken care of their masters. They've done this by building off the Southern Strategy of divide and confound. Fake (but not really fight) the false "culture war" and dismiss intellectualism to keep the Red States voting against their economic interests. I've made a promise to confront and talk and write and blog and be somewhat of an activist. Peace ...or War!

Why Do I blog? Because of Ray McGovern!

Crooks and Liars gives us footage and a transcript of Rummy fending off 27 year CIA veteran Ray McGovern today in The ATL. Rummy was called out for lying and then he lied some more. Were these guys not ever told "If you'll just tell the truth then you don't have to remember the lies."

Although I'd run across Ray McGovern before, without remembering his name initially, a quick Google led me to some gems. Mr. McGovern via Sheer's TruthOut gave us "CIA vs. Cheney" in November of 2005 predicting a death cage match between the agency and Dead Eye Dick. Common Dreams has McGovern reminding us in 2005 that President Bu$h "fixed the facts". AlterNet gives us a long list of his work.

I'd have forgotten or missed this man's work absent today's effort to be informed and then convey my own understanding to the few rare souls that might drop by my blogs. I'm a better man for the effort so that is enough. Peace ... or War!

Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" arrives May 24

"An Inconvenient Truth" has been recognized at Sundance and beyond. I used the iFilm site to watch the trailer. I've signed the pledge to see the film. Please consider doing the same. Only a fool would ignore Al Gore on global warming. Regretably we've got a fair dose of those voting and being elected. Peace ... or War!

Profits, Jobs, and To Hell with the F'ing Owl

David Horton on HuffPo helps me think at least every so often. A little strong maybe and oversimplified perhaps yet a nice ride on Environmentalism. There's truth in the angle. Sustainable at a minimum yet if we err I say save the f'ing owls. Peace ... or War!

The Apollo Alliance for Good Jobs and Clean Energy is a 501(c)(3) effort of the Institute for America's Future and the Center on Wisconsin Strategy. They have a ten point plan that merits consideration. This approach "will create manufacturing jobs and new technologies, a stronger economy and a healthier, safer environment". Further language offers, "It means abandoning old approaches that traded-off the health of the economy for the health of the environment and sacrificed good jobs and technology innovation." Issue points are:

1. Promote Advanced Technology & Hybrid Cars
2. Invest In More Efficient Factories
3. Encourage High Performance Building
4. Increase Use of Energy Efficient Appliances
5. Modernize Electrical Infrastructure
6. Expand Renewable Energy Development
7. Improve Transportation Options
8. Reinvest In Smart Urban Growth
9. Plan For A Hydrogen Future
10. Preserve Regulatory Protections

Worth a visit and consideration. Real solutions that our "leaders" could truly build off for progressive solutions. Peace ... or War!

Seasoned Teenage Angst and Authenticity?

Digby gives us "We Weren't Born Yesterday" that weaves stories such as the so called liberal media to even the Clinton's Press Secretary Mike McCurry turned lobbyist for big communication. It's a good ride that I'll ponder on for a few days. Peace ... or War!

World/U.S. Geography for American Dummies?

Do we still wonder how Dubyah managed to get elected? This is perhaps a start in explaining that idiots tend to elect idiots. The AP via MSNBC reports "Young Americans shaky on geographic smarts : Study finds that many fare poorly at finding Louisiana and Iraq on a map" looking at the lack of understanding displayed by our 18-24 year olds. National Geographic has the entire results in case you are interested. Scary stuff! Peace ... or War!

"Comfort the Afflicted and Afflict the Comfortable"

John Nichols of The Nation gives us "Galbraith for President" that supplements an earlier post I dropped on JKG. Interesting aside on Presidential possibilities not obtained due to the Constitutional birth/citizen requirement yet the real meat of the matter, with my emphasis supplied, comes with,

When he was one of President Kennedy's most trusted aides – and, ultimately, the ambassador to India – Galbraith was dispatched to Vietnam to survey the country to which Kennedy was being advised by others to dispatch military forces. Galbraith, who tried harder than just about anyone else to avert the turn toward quagmire, sent back a memo in which he reflected on the difficulty of distinguishing "friendly jungle" from "Vietcong jungle" and asked, "[Who] is the man in your administration who decides what countries are strategic? I would like to...ask him what is so important about this real estate in the Space Age."

As Galbraith biographer Richard Parker noted in his essential review of his subject's attempt to prevent Cold War hawks from convincing Kennedy and then Lyndon Johnson from expanding U.S. military involvement in southeast Asia, it was in the fall of 1961 that, "Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith, then Ambassador to India, got wind of their plan--and rushed to block their efforts. He was not an expert on Vietnam, but India chaired the International Control Commission, which had been set up following French withdrawal from Indochina to oversee a shaky peace accord meant to stabilize the region, and so from State Department cables he knew about the Taylor mission--and thus had a clear sense of what was at stake. For Galbraith, a trusted adviser with unique back-channel access to the President, a potential US war in Vietnam represented more than a disastrous misadventure in foreign policy--it risked derailing the New Frontier's domestic plans for Keynesian-led full employment, and for massive new spending on education, the environment and what would become the War on Poverty. Worse, he feared, it might ultimately tear not only the Democratic Party but the nation apart--and usher in a new conservative era in American politics."

(Parker's recent biography, John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics [Farrar, Straus & Giroux], is necessary reading, as are Galbraith's own books, particularly 1958's The Affluent Society, with its Keyneseian indictment of "private wealth and public squalor" in American life, and 1992's brilliant The Culture of Contentment, which offers what is still the best explanation of the contemporary crisis in its observation that, "The long years of high budget deficits when they were not needed made it seemingly impossible to initiate stimulating public expenditures when they were now needed. The celebrated tax reductions for the upper-income brackets and the accompanying economics in welfare distribution had substituted the discretionary spending of the rich for the wholely reliable spending of the poor.")

I've at least partially accepted that LBJ's "War on Poverty" was really a "false war" (with a German word that I can't recall or locate used by the scholar I read many moons ago) in that the spending was rather miniscule and certainly not given the time needed for real change. Even though Nixon had some smart guys at his side his basic approach was conservatism. Carter's brief time post Watergate barely counts plus his administration was hardly grand. Since LBJ we've had Republican and Republican Lite with Clinton veering rather right after 1994. Congress has blocked any Progressive approaches since certainly 1994. I'm an unreconstructed Keynesian for the most part and JKG was a hero of mine. Have yet to read enough of his work and life.

I do hope his ideas will get coverage despite the media whoring after TomKat and Brangelina and the "Missing White Woman/Child" of the week/day or the Duke Lacrosse Rape case or ... JKG believed in whit rather than war yet I don't think he suffered fools. I think he'd be fine with me to close with my standard ending. So here's "Peace ... or War!"

Boston Globe - Bu$hCo Routinely Ignores the Law!

Charlie Savage of The Boston Globe reports "Bush challenges hundreds of laws - President cites powers of his office". In part, he writes,

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. ...

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.

Former administration officials contend that just because Bush reserves the right to disobey a law does not mean he is not enforcing it: In many cases, he is simply asserting his belief that a certain requirement encroaches on presidential power.

But with the disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, in which he ignored a law requiring warrants to tap the phones of Americans, many legal specialists say Bush is hardly reluctant to bypass laws he believes he has the constitutional authority to override.

Far more than any predecessor, Bush has been aggressive about declaring his right to ignore vast swaths of laws -- many of which he says infringe on power he believes the Constitution assigns to him alone as the head of the executive branch or the commander in chief of the military.

Many legal scholars say they believe that Bush's theory about his own powers goes too far and that he is seizing for himself some of the law-making role of Congress and the Constitution-interpreting role of the courts.

This ties in rather well with a prior post on a letter I've sent to Senators Shelby and Sessions. These two "leaders" are certainly part of the Rubber Stamp Congress approach. They these "leaders" would be so law and order about extramarital fellatio and a personal lie seems rather ironic. I'd much rather have a President that was weak around the skirts than one weak around the law. Peace ... or War!

May 1, 2003 - Bu$h says "Mission Accomplished"

"Heck of a job Bu$hie!" Think Progress has a nice chart and image. Media Matters reminds us of Tweety and G. Gordon Liddy's "manhood" moments plus they give us some "Crazy as a Run Over Dog" Ann Coulter foaming at the mouth. ReddHedd/Christy Hardin Smith via FireDogLake reminds us of Commander Codpiece and ... Worst Administration Ever! But don't they do "backdrops" well. Peace ... or War!

A Well Done Life of Service Professor Galbraith!

John Kenneth Galbraith died yesterday. He served FDR, JFK, and even Slick Willy to a point. But his true service was to his world. A social economist more than a theory guy. A Keynesian that was truly one of the smartest and most influential economists that walked among we mere mortals. One thing I've kept thinking about today is how this current administration distains thinkers and science and ... I cannot imagine any world class mind working under the Bu$hCo cabal? JKG was foundationally against everything this disaster of an administration and Congress has wrought. I anticipate his ideas will be revisited over these next few days and beyond as a contrast to the wealth hoarding ideas of Bu$hCo. Here's the Times Online UK and the WaPo and BBC and ... No "War" but only "Peace" Professor.

Correspondence to Senators Shelby and Sessions

The following is the basics of correspondence I've emailed to Senators Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions regarding the Bu$hCo cabal's illegal NSA warrantless wiretapping. I am going to ask The Randolph Leader to consider publishing.

Dear Senators Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions,

I’ve previously contacted your offices asking you to support, or at least consider without immediately dismissing as partisan politics, Wisconsin Senator Feingold’s censure resolution. This resolution seeks to merely scold President Bu$h for his acting in contravention of the Constitution and applicable law in regards to the NSA warrantless wiretapping of American citizens.

Kansas Senator Pat Roberts has promised much but delivered little in oversight. The vast majority of the GOP has resisted efforts to simply get to the bottom of what this administration has been up to. President Reagan spoke of “trust but verify” yet the Republican Party has simply operated under “trust” despite the Bu$h White House repeatedly demonstrating incompetence and unreliability. I suggest blatant lies have been a staple of the Bu$h Presidency but at a minimum we’ll never know until answers are sought and obtained.

While regrettably I expect you will both continue to place party politics over what is clearly a radical departure from our laws and traditions, Senator Sessions you have especially disappointed me by repeatedly covering for this disaster of a Presidency.

Today I ask that you support the Specter amendment to stop funding of the NSA spying program until the White House provides Congress with complete information about this program. President Bu$h and his Executive Branch have refused to answer even basic questions about the NSA program, including how many American citizens have had their telephone calls or e-mails monitored.

Senator Specter's amendment to cut off funding is needed if we are going to get the facts. This latest amendment to cut funding is apart from Specter's bill, S.2453, which I strongly oppose because it would effectively authorize the NSA spying program.

Congress should not permit a program that violates the Fourth Amendment, FISA procedures, etc. Oppose any attempts to make the illegal NSA spying legal. President Bu$h must quit stonewalling and simply promise to and then follow our laws.

You have a responsibility to the Constitution and the American people to insist on a thorough investigation into the warrantless spying program. Congress has the right and obligation to provide oversight to the Executive Branch. You should protect our fundamental freedoms from unilateral actions by the White House in violation of our rights. President Bu$h has been enabled rather than confronted for his distain for our laws and traditions.

Please oppose both S. 2453 and S. 2455. These bills would reward the president's illegal activity and disrespect toward Congress and the Constitution. Passage of either would effectively end efforts to uncover basic facts about the NSA spying program. I also wonder if you’d be so willing to have this legislation as law of the land if a so called “liberal Democrat” occupied the White House.

Sincerely, xxxx xxxx

I wonder if I'll get a form reply? Congressman Mike Rogers seems to send those out at times. Maybe Stormie will handle my reply from Senator Sessions office? Senator Sessions at least appreciates attractive staffers! Peace ... or War!

Court Jester Reveals Emperor Has No Clothes!

Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report skewered the Bu$h Administration and the establishment media at the White House Correspondents Dinner last night. Atrios has some highlights. McJoan at Koz has a nice take on how the media is ignoring plus she supplies links to the complete transcript. Peter Daou via HuffPo also tackles how the media can ignore or not. Large file but Crooks and Liars has the second portion of the Colbert effort. Eric Boehlert's Lapdogs seems like an appropriate read given how the Bu$hCo White House and the Mainstream Media have both let America and the world down. It is a tragedy that"humor" seems the only way that real news is done these days. Peace ... or War!

Strippers, Limos, Dirty Tricks, ... GOP Values

Kos summarizes the looming stripergate mess, with some folks looking even at CIA Director/Loyalty Enforcer Porter Goss. And just to the west, Mississippi's Haley Barbour is linked to a company that engaged in various phone stunts in 2002. This one may go straight to Ken Mehlman who is now over the RNC. Peace ... or War!
UPDATE - TPM Muckraker's Justin Rood has even more on the Wilkes/Wade Hooker Ring. The Dukestir was apparently into this really deep. Dusty Foggo's days as #3 to the CIA's Porter Goss might be numbered. Interesting to see how high school relationships forged with the kewl kids lasted so long. Of course we've got a "towel snapping" President leading this ReThuglican cabal.

VA's George Allen - Redneck with French Momma?

TNR's Ryan Lizza is about to reduce to print "George Allen's Race Problem" which could be significant as he might very well be the Southern alternative to John McCain. Allegedly dumber than Dubyah, no small feat indeed, this fellow was raised in Southern California where he was an unreconstructed Rebel with a Confederate Battle Flag bolted to the front of his Mustang. He dips Copenhagen and is "authentic". Good read and a nice take on Senator/Governor Allen. He's got an sharp upgrade wife and family to boot. Peace ... or War!

Middle Class but Lacking Health Insurance

The WaPo's Theresa Agovino reports "Percentage of Uninsured Americans Rising" where she writes,

The percentage of working-age Americans with moderate to middle incomes who lacked health insurance for at least part of the year rose to 41 percent in 2005, a dramatic increase from the 28 percent in 2001 without coverage, a study released on Wednesday found.

This is a damn disgrace! Putting off preventive care and early solutions makes no economic sense and yet many Americans have little if any choice. We must consider universal health coverage ASAP. Peace ... or War!

ACLU - Ordering a Pizza under Big Brother?

The ACLU, of which I'm a card carrying member, gives us something to think about on government intrusion into our lives. Very cute and thought provoking. Please share the site. Peace ... or War!

Is Bu$hCo Creating A Radical Republic?

Lawrence Powell, former Chief of Staff for Colin Powell in his tenure at the State Department, argues in the Baltimore Sun that Bu$h and his radical Jacobites are indeed creating a radical departure from our past traditions. He writes, in part, the following:

In January 2001, with the inauguration of George W. Bush as president, America set on a path to cease being good; America became a revolutionary nation, a radical republic. If our country continues on this path, it will cease to be great - as happened to all great powers before it, without exception.

From the Kyoto accords to the International Criminal Court, from torture and cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners to rendition of innocent civilians, from illegal domestic surveillance to lies about leaking, from energy ineptitude to denial of global warming, from cherry-picking intelligence to appointing a martinet and a tyrant to run the Defense Department, the Bush administration, in the name of fighting terrorism, has put America on the radical path to ruin.

Unprecedented interpretations of the Constitution that holds the president as commander in chief to be all-powerful and without checks and balances marks the hubris and unparalleled radicalism of this administration.

Moreover, fiscal profligacy of an order never seen before has brought America trade deficits that boggle the mind and a federal deficit that, when stripped of the gimmickry used to make it appear more tolerable, will leave every child and grandchild in this nation a debt that will weigh upon their generations like a ball and chain around every neck. Imagine owing $150,000 from the cradle. That is radical irresponsibility.

I in no way excuse Secretary Powell for his actions in creating the mess in Iraq. Perhaps he was being a loyal soldier? Congress must step forward to stop this disaster of an administration. In the fall of 2006, electing Democrats in competitive races will be a good start. Peace ... or War!

Bu$hCo - Taxpayer Funded Abuses in Iraq

Digby probably handles this as well as can be done. He gives us links to a nice series in The Chicago Tribune plus some of Digby's past thoughts on related issues. Brian Bennett of Time also gives us "Stolen Away" dealing expressly with the sex trafficking side of the issue. Super busy and behind but I'll try to return for this and others. Also, CNN has Bu$h down to 32%. Peace ... or War!

NAFTA Failures Increase Illegal Immigration

Octavio Ruiz, globalization coordinator for the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition-the Resource Center of the Americas, posted at Common Dreams a work entitled "Immigrant Surge is Tied to the Failure of NAFTA : The trade agreement left rural and urban Mexicans worse off than they'd been." that makes tons of sense. Is it the total reason for increasing illegal immigration? Certainly not, with me arguing plentyis due to the desire of American businesses and individuals wanting to get super low cost labor in a hyper-competitive environment. If Bu$hCo will not enforce then what do we expect? What NAFTA (and now CAFTA?) does for rural areas and low skills workers across the border in the U.S. is also less than what was promised. Mr. Ruiz argues for a better approach. Peace ... or War!

WV Dem steps aside from House Ethics post in response to allegations made by partisan group

The lovely and talented Georgia10 at Kos blogs "Mollohan Temporarily Steps Down" tackling the ethics allegations facing Rep. Allan Mollohan. This West Virginia Congressman is the ranking Democrat on the House Ethics Committee but he has temporarily stepped aside until the charges leveled at him can be resolved. The contrast between the ReThuglicans is significant as is the apparent partisanship of the National Legal & Policy Center. Right wing machine at work here as a 501(c)(3) that is clearly partisan. Beats me if Mollohan has been up to monkey business. If he has, then boot him for certain. Yet removing him immediately demonstrates some wise and right thinking. And given the corruption of the K Street GOP and the Bu$hCo cabal I'd not want to start down this road if I were Karl Rove. Peace ... or War!

"Why don't we just bomb them?" or "Nuke 'em!"

A scary amount of my students over these last few years have felt the best way to solve our geo-political concerns would be to just kill and destroy. The overwhelming majority of this type of kid has been a very weak student and often a behavior concern to boot. This media files (I used the WMV versions) "Let's Bomb Iran" is very cute and yet I fear it might be that life imitates art. At the bottom of the page you can find "Freedom Hate" that has some tough images as well. It does show the many innocents that have been harmed by Bu$hCo's misguided war. Peace ... or War!

Bu$hCo - We've Got to Laugh to Keep from Crying!

At worst about thirty something months are left of the worst administration ever. I'd never suggest the damage is done with this cabal. Truly Dubyah reminds me of of one of the hands we briefly had working around the farm when I was growing up. Right before my old daddy checked out, he recalled him with, "That son of a bitch could break an anvil!". I can remember my old man cussing Nixon and Reagan and figure if cancer had not killed him then Bu$h would. Check out Will Ferrell doing Bush giving a global warming talk out at the ranch. Tip of the tam to Linda! If he wasn't such a disaster, we'd miss old shrub simply for comedic value. Also, in this case I figure art imitates life. Peace ... or War!

Bu$h - I Am The Decider ... Koo-Koo-Kachoo

This is an instant classic. Enjoy. Peace ... or War!

The "Common Good" Can Roll Away The Stoned!

The post below might make the "stoned" make sense. Michael Tomasky in The American Prospect gives us "Party in Search of a Notion" where he ends with,

We are not in a Depression-like crisis, perhaps; but thanks to the efforts of the Bush administration we are on the precipice of several crises, and it’s not just liberals who recognize this. Many of our fellow citizens, bitterly disappointed by a leadership in which they had placed an extraordinary amount of trust back in September 2001, recognize it, too.

The Democrats must grasp this, kick some old habits, and realize that we are on the verge of a turning point. The Democratic left wants it to be 1968 in perpetuity; the Democratic center wishes for 1992 to repeat itself over and over again. History, however, doesn’t oblige such wishes -- it rewards those who recognize new moments as they arise. It might just be that the Bush years, these years of civic destruction and counterfeit morality, have provided the Democrats the opening to argue on behalf of civic reconstruction and genuine public morality. If they do it the right way, they can build a politics that will do a lot more than squeak by in this fall’s (or any) elections based on the usual unsatisfying admixture of compromises. It can smash today’s paradigm to pieces. The country needs nothing less. The task before today’s Democratic Party isn’t just to eke out electoral victories; it’s to govern, and to change our course in profound ways.

Leadership of the Deocratic Party will no doubt have to be prodded along by the Progressive community. If they will not lead, however, we'll just make them get the hell out of the way. Peace ... or War!

The Bu$hCo Administration Gets Totally Stoned!

While I've always thought they were smoking something, that is not what I reference. Rolling Stone give historian Sean Wilentz ink for "The Worst President in History? One of America's leading historians assesses George W. Bush". The work seems very well reasoned and written from an inital glance. In part Dr. Wiletz writes,

Bush came to office in 2001 pledging to govern as a "compassionate conservative," more moderate on domestic policy than the dominant right wing of his party. The pledge proved hollow, as Bush tacked immediately to the hard right. Previous presidents and their parties have suffered when their actions have belied their campaign promises. ... The heart of Bush's domestic policy has turned out to be nothing more than a series of massively regressive tax cuts -- a return, with a vengeance, to the discredited Reagan-era supply-side faith that Bush's father once ridiculed as "voodoo economics." ...

The one noncorporate constituency to which Bush has consistently deferred is the Christian right, both in his selections for the federal bench and in his implications that he bases his policies on premillennialist, prophetic Christian doctrine. ... But no president before Bush has allowed the press to disclose, through a close friend, his startling belief that he was ordained by God to lead the country. The White House's sectarian positions -- over stem-cell research, the teaching of pseudoscientific "intelligent design," global population control, the Terri Schiavo spectacle and more -- have led some to conclude that Bush has promoted the transformation of the GOP into what former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips calls "the first religious party in U.S. history." ... Far from being the conservative he said he was, Bush has blazed a radical new path as the first American president in history who is outwardly hostile to science -- dedicated, as a distinguished, bipartisan panel of educators and scientists (including forty-nine Nobel laureates) has declared, to "the distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends." ...

By contrast, the most scandal-ridden administration in the modern era, apart from Nixon's, was Ronald Reagan's, now widely remembered through a haze of nostalgia as a paragon of virtue. A total of twenty-nine Reagan officials ... The full report, of course, has yet to come on the Bush administration. Because Bush, unlike Reagan or Clinton, enjoys a fiercely partisan and loyal majority in Congress, his administration has been spared scrutiny. ...

History may ultimately hold Bush in the greatest contempt for expanding the powers of the presidency beyond the limits laid down by the U.S. Constitution. There has always been a tension over the constitutional roles of the three branches of the federal government. The Framers intended as much, as part of the system of checks and balances they expected would minimize tyranny. ... By contrast, the Bush administration -- in seeking to restore what Cheney, a Nixon administration veteran, has called "the legitimate authority of the presidency" -- threatens to overturn the Framers' healthy tension in favor of presidential absolutism. Armed with legal findings by his attorney general (and personal lawyer) Alberto Gonzales, the Bush White House has declared that the president's powers as commander in chief in wartime are limitless. No previous wartime president has come close to making so grandiose a claim. More specifically, this administration has asserted that the president is perfectly free to violate federal laws on such matters as domestic surveillance and the torture of detainees. When Congress has passed legislation to limit those assertions, Bush has resorted to issuing constitutionally dubious "signing statements," which declare, by fiat, how he will interpret and execute the law in question, even when that interpretation flagrantly violates the will of Congress. ...

In those instances when Bush's violations of federal law have come to light, as over domestic surveillance, the White House has devised a novel solution: Stonewall any investigation into the violations and bid a compliant Congress simply to rewrite the laws. Bush's alarmingly aberrant take on the Constitution is ironic. One need go back in the record less than a decade to find prominent Republicans railing against far more minor presidential legal infractions as precursors to all-out totalitarianism. ...

Bush seems to think that, since 9/11, he has been placed, by the grace of God, in the same kind of situation Lincoln faced. But Lincoln, under pressure of daily combat on American soil against fellow Americans, did not operate in secret, as Bush has. He did not claim, as Bush has, that his emergency actions were wholly regular and constitutional as well as necessary; Lincoln sought and received Congressional authorization for his suspension of habeas corpus in 1863. Nor did Lincoln act under the amorphous cover of a "war on terror" -- a war against a tactic, not a specific nation or political entity, which could last as long as any president deems the tactic a threat to national security. ...

The president came to office calling himself "a uniter, not a divider" and promising to soften the acrimonious tone in Washington. He has had two enormous opportunities to fulfill those pledges: first, in the noisy aftermath of his controversial election in 2000, and, even more, after the attacks of September 11th, when the nation pulled behind him as it has supported no other president in living memory. Yet under both sets of historically unprecedented circumstances, Bush has chosen to act in ways that have left the country less united and more divided, less conciliatory and more acrimonious -- much like James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson and Herbert Hoover before him. And, like those three predecessors, Bush has done so in the service of a rigid ideology that permits no deviation and refuses to adjust to changing realities. Buchanan failed the test of Southern secession, Johnson failed in the face of Reconstruction, and Hoover failed in the face of the Great Depression. Bush has failed to confront his own failures in both domestic and international affairs, above all in his ill-conceived responses to radical Islamic terrorism. Having confused steely resolve with what Ralph Waldo Emerson called "a foolish consistency . . . adored by little statesmen," Bush has become entangled in tragedies of his own making, compounding those visited upon the country by outside forces.

Basted, baked, and stoned! Worst Administration ever! I want my country back! Peace ... or War!

Update - Mark Morford of The San Francisco Chronicle gives us "Chips down, Bush prepares a Hail Mary bet". Shrub gambling with our planet is a bad bet anyday. This is some sweet writing, even if it is so frightening.

Carl Bernstein - Why Old School is the New Cool

Looks like "Woodstein" is dead. Bob Woodward has been a Bu$hCo apologist and perhaps worse for some time, more interested it seemed in selling and shilling than his past might have suggested. A terrible ending for this once icon of journalism. Yet, the later half of this duo has again demonstrated his talent for analysis and reporting and writing and ...

I just saw Carl Bernstei on Keith Olbermann's Countdown with MSNC now reporting "Carl Bernstein calls for probe of Bush - Journalist urges Watergate-style investigation in Senate". This substantial Vanity Fair Roundtable article explains his reasoning (You true believers still remember anything about the Enlightenment?) and drawing comparisons to the Nixon White House. Hardly the new "we report and you decide" style where those shilling aren't challenged. Of course Bernstein, unlike Old Buddy Bob, doesn't get access to Bu$hCo.

Old school reporting might vanquish the talking points and spin. I'm sure Rover is loosening the attack dogs as we speak. This ought to be good. Peace ... or War!

Rudy, Rick, Ralph and the Right - Family Values!

Rudy, “So you think you’re better than me?” New York’s Rudolph Giuliani will headline a fundraiser for ex-Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed in the near future. Georgia GOP Governor Sonny Perdue, who just signed the nation's toughest lgislation limiting illegal immigrants access to certain social services, might ask you about how to deal with Mexicans given your expertise. $4.3 million worth of expertise. Rudy is reportedly leaning toward entering the Presidential race. Just this past Sunday, Rudy was rejected by America’s Favorite Fundamentalist Jerry Falwell with the Reverend sanctimoniously saying "irreconcilable differences on life and family” made it impossible to support him in 2008.

This was after Rudy had just helped Pennsylvania incumbent Senator Rick Santorum with an appearance. Senator Rick is well known as “one of the finest minds of the thirteenth century” plus he is a charitable man toward his family and friends, and his friends attempt to be charitable toward Rick.. And folks are loving their Rick with $9 million raised just in the first quarter. A 2 to 1 advantage over Casey in funding but he’s trailing by double digits. The Big Mules might have to turn loose some serious change. Or call Diebold? When Tony Soprano mentions you, as “Senator Sanatorium”, I guess you can understand why Rudy might think he needs to be involved. Looking at Ralph’s gambling with graft and Rudy’s family values, I see a perfect representation of the GOP. Talk one thing and do another. And the Democrat kewl kids lets KKKarl paint the left as the ‘flip-floppers”!

It is unknown whether Rudy’s boy Bernie Kerik is attending. Giuliana might have a former mistress and now wife with him to demonstrate his family values. Rudy is trying to demonstrate to the Righteous his bona fides, sort of like old Straight Talk McCain. Cozy up to Bu$hCo Senator while you are at it Sailor. As an aside, does anybody remember the S&L scandals and Senator McCain? When these corrupt and hypocritical goobers enter the race, as the polls and pundits seem to suggest will happen, Rudy is perhaps hoping the true believers will remember and the balance of the balanced will forget. Fuhgetaboudit Mister Mayor! Peace … or War!

Progressivism in Dixie - Papers and Party Scolded!

Yesterday at Captain Bama I blogged on the North Alabama teacher that showed a video comparing President Bu$h to an "asshole" to his 8th grade science class. Long post but I tried to raise issues and solutions as I examined the incident and motivations.

Today I looked worked toward education and poverty/class from three editorials from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and one especially dreadful piece in The Birmingham News. Captain Bama has the post under Educating the Haves & Have Nots Plus the Tools.

I then went after reporting in The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer on Alabama's uncompetitive U.S. Congressional races when the GOP shills and other "sources" did not really get it all right. While it might not have been the Alabama Democrat Chairperson's fault it seemed to me this would have been a good opportunity to lay into the ReThuglicans. I worked off the Jarding and Saunder's book of course in labeling the post How to Run These Foxes Out of Our Henhouse!

Lot's of angst today. Frustrations that things might very well continue in this direction makes me a touch sad. Peace ... or War!

Gray Lady Bitch Slaps WaPo Editorial Board

The New York Times explains why The Washington Post got it so wrong in their recent "A Good Leak" editorial. WaPo Ombudsman Little Debbie tried to explain this disaster of an editorial with "Two Views of the Libby Leak Case" by writing that it left readers confused and then somewhat showing her own confusions and/or contortions. "A Bad Leak" explains

President Bush says he declassified portions of the prewar intelligence assessment on Iraq because he "wanted people to see the truth" about Iraq's weapons programs and to understand why he kept accusing Saddam Hussein of stockpiling weapons that turned out not to exist. This would be a noble sentiment if it actually bore any relationship to Mr. Bush's actions in this case, or his overall record.

Mr. Bush did not declassify the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq — in any accepted sense of that word — when he authorized I. Lewis Libby Jr., through Vice President Dick Cheney, to talk about it with reporters. He permitted a leak of cherry-picked portions of the report. The declassification came later.

And this president has never shown the slightest interest in disclosure, except when it suits his political purposes. He has run one of the most secretive administrations in American history, consistently withholding information and vital documents not just from the public, but also from Congress.

Simple enough and far more responsible than how the Post "opined". The Gray Lady is hardly doing everything it can to restore their reputation but this is how they can begin.

Nobody expects perfection from the press yet democracy requires some measure of basic reporting of complex issues. Marty Kaplan at HuffPo, in examining the dreadful reporting on the My Left Wing blog by the WaPo, writes

It's a reminder that the press loves to cover politics the way it covers religion: it's all dogma, darlings. We report; you decide. And if not as religion, then as psychodrama: since, insanely, it's taboo to assess the validity of the claims being made, the media tell us everything about the motives behind the claims, and nothing about their merits.

We need some examination of the merits. This is especially so for busy and less sophisticated citizens that might not be able to dive into a subject. The Right has been working the refs for thirty years now and this what we've reaped. Add in corporate media's profit concerns and this is what we've got. Peace ... or War!

A Little Debbie Snack Cake with Finkel Sprinkles?

WaPo Ombudsman Deborah Howell tries to explain the editorial from last Sunday's issue and David Finkel looks at the angry lefty blogosphere. Nothing to add beyond what serious bloggers have to offer. I first tackled the WaPo "Editorial" with this post.

As for Ms. Howell we can begin with Jane Hamsher at FDL with this being perhaps the meat of the matter,

The attempt by the Administration to smear Joe Wilson was a pure Rovian effort to distract from the fact that he was right. Any attempt to pass off those smears three years later is an utterly dishonest and reprehensible journalism practice. It’s isn’t journalism at all, it’s thuggery. People often ask why I don’t get into debunking the claim of "Wilson’s wife sent him to Africa." Know why? Because suddenly I’m arguing about Pat Roberts and what a hopeless hack and Bush Administration tool he is and I’m off the main point, the only point — Joe Wilson was right. There is no getting around it and any other discussion trivializes and distracts from the greater truth about the thousands of people who lay dead because a nation was lied into war. There were no attempts to buy Uranium from Niger, and everything else — to paraphrase a great man — is just an attempt to throw sand in the Umpire’s eyes.

Marty Kaplan at HuffPo also weighs in by writing,

It's a reminder that the press loves to cover politics the way it covers religion: it's all dogma, darlings. We report; you decide. And if not as religion, then as psychodrama: since, insanely, it's taboo to assess the validity of the claims being made, the media tell us everything about the motives behind the claims, and nothing about their merits.

R. J. Escow at HuffPo then compares how the WaPo does not engage any of Ms. O'Connor's arguments yet merely patronizes her and then proceeds to paint her and a few of her readers as loonies yet Fred Hiatt hires a right wing racist plagiarizer named Ben Domenech to blog for the WaPo!

As for the Finkel article, Glenn Greenwald in part rightly states, "The tactics in the article are as intellectually lazy and empty as they are transparently deceitful and trite." Glenn also correctly points out extreme right wingers like "Crazy as a Run Over Dog" Ann Coulter, Mad Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, ... that are regularly accepted by the mainstream media. The one and only blogger that Mr. Finkel interviewed or apparently had even visited namely Mary Scott O'Connor has posted on the process and person involved in the reporting.

What Liberal Media? Peace ... or War!

Hugo Black Slurred by Alabama "Activist" Judge!

Team Tartan's "Crazy as a Run Over Dog" Club adds a new member in Tacky Whacky Tom Parker. "Judge" Parker hits mighty close to The Highlands with his disrespect for Justice Hugo Black. This solid jurist and statesman was of course brought up in Clay County, Alabama. Within a half hour's drive, this is where my mother's family had roots. Who is the "activist" judge now? Peace ... or War!

Friday Funnies ... Laughs With A Lefty Slant!

I've been reading Working For Change for some time. Good progressive effort. Check out Mark Fiore and Jen Sorenson and Tom Tomorrow. HuffPo's Contagious Festival can have some good stuff. Current (Al Gore's media project) gives us Bu$hCo and K-Fed (Mr. Britney Spears) plus there are other ones on Current that are terribly funny. I still enjoy ink efforts such as Daryl Cagle's Syndicate. Peace ... or War!

Bu$hCo Allowed IBM to Run Treasury Department!

David Sirota comments on how the Department of the Treasury was basically co-opted by IBM and other Big Mules to defeat changes to pension laws that would protect American workers from "cash balance" pension conversions. The Wall Street Journal article is "subscription only" yet the WaPo reporting on the effort appears on Bernie Sander's (the Vermont Congressman seeking the protections for working Americans) website. Peace ... or War!

Scalia "Jumps the Couch" on Cheney Conflict

The WaPo reports Scalia Defends Involvement in Cheney Case. The piece states,

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Wednesday called his 2004 decision not to recuse himself from a case involving Vice President Cheney, who is a friend of his, the "proudest thing" he has done on the court.

Again, if it looks like a duck ... I figured you might be "proudest" of this and certainly this. Your dissent here was likely a proud moment for you. And of course the proudest thing you've done in church would be this. You and Uncle Clarence and Stripsearch Sammy and ... make us all proud Judge. Peace ... or War!

Moonie Times and Sushi Empire

The Chicago Tribune's Monica Eng, Delroy Alexander and David Jackson informs us that Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church is very involved in the sushi industry. The good Reverend Moon of course owns The Washington Times. Close to Bu$hCo, the Reverend is certainly part of the Mighty Wurlitzer. I guess Spencer "Sushi" Bachus can get his fish from the Moonies. Peace ... or War!

WaPo reports on National Archives' Vision Problems

An African proverb is said to be, "Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter." We learn today via the WaPo's Christopher Lee that "Archives Kept a Secrecy Secret : Agencies Removed Declassified Papers From Public Access". The reporting reads,

The National Archives helped keep secret a multi-year effort by the Air Force, the CIA and other federal agencies to withdraw thousands of historical documents from public access on Archives shelves, even though the records had been declassified. ...

The program dates to the Clinton administration, when the CIA and other agencies began recalling documents they believed were improperly released under a 1995 executive order requiring declassification of many historical records 25 years old and older. The pace of the removal picked up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Although the Archives will not name the agencies involved, historians with the National Security Archive have said the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Department and the Justice Department also have participated.

The National Archives site contains their "Vision Statement" which reads in part,

The National Archives is a public trust on which our democracy depends. We enable people to inspect for themselves the record of what government has done. We enable officials and agencies to review their actions and help citizens hold them accountable.

We ensure continuing access to essential evidence that documents:

• the rights of American citizens
• the actions of federal officials
• the national experience

They also have a reference, with my emphasis supplied, later to

"Communication: propose ideas, dialogue with others, develop trust, and act openly, honestly, and with integrity"

Reckon they lost track of their "Vision"? Orwellian isn't it? Peace ... or War!

Suggestions of Yet Another Bu$hCo Lie!

The WaPo's Joby Warrick is reporting "Lacking Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War : Administration Pushed Notion of Banned Iraqi Weapons Despite Evidence to Contrary" The piece contains,

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.

Indeed we have no certain confirmation that Bu$hCo knew 100% that they were fibbing yet the reporting states,

The technical team's findings had no apparent impact on the intelligence agencies' public statements on the trailers. A day after the team's report was transmitted to Washington -- May 28, 2003 -- the CIA publicly released its first formal assessment of the trailers, reflecting the views of its Washington analysts. That white paper, which also bore the DIA seal, contended that U.S. officials were "confident" that the trailers were used for "mobile biological weapons production."

Throughout the summer and fall of 2003, the trailers became simply "mobile biological laboratories" in speeches and press statements by administration officials. In late June, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declared that the "confidence level is increasing" that the trailers were intended for biowarfare. In September, Vice President Cheney pronounced the trailers to be "mobile biological facilities," and said they could have been used to produce anthrax or smallpox.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.

After team members returned to Washington, they began work on a final report. At several points, members were questioned about revising their conclusions, according to sources knowledgeable about the conversations. The questioners generally wanted to know the same thing: Could the report's conclusions be softened, to leave open a possibility that the trailers might have been intended for weapons?

Here's a good graphic to show the timeline and facts. It sure appears that somebody at The White House/Pentagon was at best avoiding knowing. More than likely we have yet another instance of the Bu$hCo cabal trying to at least avoid the truth until after the elections of 2004. Having the full report marked "Top Secret" and shelved suggests yet more garbage relating to their already weak defense of PlameGate! They argue they can leak portions of information that support their spurious claims yet they'll bury anything that makes them look bad. Plus they'll still use the bogus information as they continue to scare the hell out of America."

Freedom Medals for everyone! Worst administration ever! Peace ... or War!

Bu$hCo Approval/Disapproval & Censure Numbers

The WaPo's Richard Morin and Claudia Dean are reporting Poll Finds Bush Job Rating at New Low : An Election-Year Blow to the GOP. The latest WaPo/ABD News polls are showing a 38% approval rating compared to a 60% disapproval. They also report,

Bush's job approval rating has remained below 50 percent for nearly a year. Perhaps more ominous for the president, 47 percent in the latest poll say they "strongly" disapprove of Bush's handling of the presidency -- more than double the 20 percent who strongly approve. It marked the second straight month that the proportion of Americans intensely critical of the president was larger than his overall job approval rating. In comparison, the percentage who strongly disapproved of President Bill Clinton on that measure never exceeded 33 percent in Post-ABC News polls. ...
... more than four in 10 Americans -- 45 percent -- favor censuring or formally reprimanding Bush for authorizing wiretaps of telephone calls and e-mails of terrorism suspects without court permission. Two-thirds of Democrats and half of all independents, but only one in six Republicans, support censuring Bush, the poll found. ...