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    Tuesday, January 31, 2006

    Bush's Carter Moment

    Back in the olden times - many years ago, before cell phones and John Stewart - there was a time when Presidents had their State of the Union speeches delivered. By a the pony express or an errand boy in a Dickensien frock no doubt. Some antebellum Scooter Libby type rode the pony up Capitol Hill and dropped off the Chief Executive's thoughts on a piece of parchment and rode away. No thunderous and ridiculous applause for every redundant bromide and faux tough guy remark. No embarrassing "propping" up of citizens. No need to "render" the Secretary of Paper Clips off to an undisclosed location in case the building went up. Ah, the good old days.

    Watching this fellow Bush deliver his 3rd inaugural address tonight (it was called the State of the Union - whose union, I know not. Everytime the man speaks all I can think is "Whose country is he talking about"?) I wished mightily for the "olden times."

    Even the usual laundry list SOTU speech is preferable to what Bush barked through tonight. But Rove and Bush and the rest simply cannot stop campaigning. It is all they know how to do. Hurricane hits? Diddle ( or maybe doodle) until a good set of talking points is cooked up, get the speech setting ready, fly in and out periodically as if it is always primary season, make THE SPEECH - then move on. War going badly? Talking points, followed by flying around to friendly audiences, make same speech - then move on.

    W kicked off another campaign tonight. The "We've got to win in 06 - SO I WON'T BE IMPEACHED IN 07" campaign. It was an entirely mediocre performance from an entirely mediocre man. Bereft even of a good snarl. The GOP ace in the hole remains the cabal of political idiots on the other side of the isle. The Democratic "response" (HA!) managed to have even less content than Bush's speech, and was delivered from an Ethan Allen show room somewhere between Richmond and reality, by a man who apparently expresses himself entirely with his eyebrows. My hunch is that Tim Kaine is a good man. But...but... Barak Obama must have been to busy to write anything. Still, Barak Obama reading the Fresno phone book would have been more engaging.

    Here's what Bush said: Iraq is going well. This is, of course, insane. Iran's government is dangerous. This is, of course, true. He did tread lightly on Iran so oil futures would stay below 70 dollars on Wednesday. Thursday is another matter. He said something about baby boomers getting old - and will enpanel a commission to study this imminent reality. He proposed a sad little healthcare initiative - no doubt to book end last year's sad big Social Security initiative.

    And then,suddenly: a wee bit of reality crept in. George W. Bush stated that "America is addicted to oil." A statement so obvious and overdue it is akin to "It rains a lot in Seattle", or "The Superbowl gets high ratings." Why is this statement important? Because he said it. Out loud. Because it is the background hum of every single thing this man has done for the past 6 years. Which is to say - THE WAR. For once, he brought the truth into the foreground. I have no faith that it was anything but a talking point. But it is the one talking point we should all be talking about. The end of an era is happening as I write. Cheap oil is gone. Forever. Most of have no idea that this is true, or what it implies. We have lived so long and so well with cheap, easy oil that life without it has become unimaginable. Everything from staying warm in winter, to the well traveled salad you ate last night, to Walmart, to the suburbs as a viable idea, much less livable reality - are going to be thrown into question in the next decade. A growing number of people are grappling with the end of cheap oil. But not nearly enough. Technology may help lessen the turbulence - but it will not mitigate it. Learning to live with less energy now is the wisest option. America is about to powerdown. Whether or not we are ready. This is what Bush signaled tonight. Jimmy Carter warned us 35 years ago. But back then it was only America that was running low on oil. Now the world is.

    Sadly, the real state of the union is unconscious.

    Why I love Adam Felber

    Once again, I turn to Adam when in a time of crisis. He has his latest State of the Union Drinking game that I strongly recommend. If you don't drink you can replace the alcohol with cookies. Yum.

    Here's a snippet:

    - Every time the President makes mention of a spending package totaling $1 billion or more, everyone must raise their glass, exclaim "What deficit?" and take a good, hearty sip.

    - When talking about about Hurricane Katrina (or anything else, really...), the President may say "I take responsibility." At this point, raise your glass, exclaim "Finally!" and bring the glass to your lips. Do not drink unless the President says something - anything - that indicates that "taking responsibility" means anything other than saying "I take responsibility." As you wait, slowly lower the glass from your lips.

    - During the Domestic portion of the speech, keep your eyes peeled. At any time, anyone can choose to silently extend their hand forward, palm up, to receive a Corporate Handout. When you see someone do this, you must do so as well (thus becoming one of "The Rich"). The last person to extend their hand becomes "The Bottom 90%" and must drink, while everyone else yells things like "Who let him in?!" and "Get a job!" and "You'd be pulling your own weight if you didn't drink so much!"


    Please enjoy the whole thing responsibly.

    Thomas Friedman on Friday

    Sorry for the late post but I was with my pal John loving Jay's movie at Sundance.

    This is what Mr. Friedman suggest the President say tonight.

    My fellow Americans, on May 25, 1961, President Kennedy gave an extraordinary State of the Union address in which he called on the nation to marshal all of its resources to put a man on the Moon. By setting that lofty goal, Kennedy was trying to summon all of our industrial and scientific talent, and a willingness to sacrifice financially, to catch up with the Soviet Union, which had overtaken America in the field of large rocket engines.

    "While we cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first," Kennedy said, "we can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make us last."

    I come to you this evening with a similar challenge. President Kennedy was worried about the threat that communism posed to our way of life. I am here to tell you that if we don't move away from our dependence on oil and shift to renewable fuels, it will change our way of life for the worse — and soon — much, much more than communism ever could have. Making this transition is the calling of our era.

    Why? First, we are in a war with a violent strain of Middle East Islam that is indirectly financed by our consumption of oil. Second, with millions of Indians and Chinese buying cars and homes as they join the great global middle class, we must quickly move away from burning fossil fuels or we're going to create enough global warming to melt the North Pole. Because of that, green cars, homes, offices, appliances, designs and renewable energies will be the biggest growth industry of the 21st century. If we don't dominate that industry, China, India, Japan or Europe surely will.

    But to lead, we must impose the highest energy-efficiency standards on our own automakers and other industries so we force them to be the most innovative. I want to inspire girls and boys across America to study math, science and engineering to help our nation achieve green energy independence. President Kennedy said, Let's put a man on the Moon. I say, Let's make oil obsolete.

    Finally, my call for spreading democracy will never be achieved if some of the worst regimes on the planet — Iran, Sudan, Venezuela — have so much oil money they can misbehave and ignore the world, and if the rest of us — Europe, America, China and India — are forever coddling them to get access to their crude.

    With all of this in mind, I am sending Congress the Bush Energy Freedom Act. It is based on ideas first offered by the energy expert Philip Verleger and it argues the following:
    Transportation accounts for most of our oil consumption. And many Americans have purchased big cars and S.U.V.'s, expecting gasoline to remain cheap. That is no longer the case. Therefore, I propose creating a government agency that will buy up any gas-guzzling car or truck in America at the original new or used price, and crush it. This national buy-back program will be financed by a $2-a-gallon gasoline tax that will be phased in by 10 cents a month beginning in 2008 — so people know what is coming and start buying fuel-efficient cars right now.

    By removing so many gas guzzlers, we will quickly reduce our oil consumption and create a huge demand for new energy-efficient cars from Detroit, which will rescue our auto industry. We have to do something drastic. The Harley-Davidson motorcycle company is worth more today than General Motors! But by sharply raising the gasoline tax, we'll also make sure that Detroit shifts its fleet to energy-saving plug-in hybrids and hydrogen- and ethanol-fueled vehicles, which will force Detroit to out-innovate Toyota. And by generating so much income from a gasoline tax, we will be able to give gas-tax rebates to lower-income folks and have plenty left over to pay for new investment in education and scientific research.

    Impossible? Read my lips: Nothing is impossible when Americans put their hearts and minds to it.

    One last thing: I have accepted the resignation of Vice President Dick Cheney, who felt he could not be a salesman for the Energy Freedom Act. I am nominating Jeffrey Immelt — the C.E.O. of General Electric, who has focused G.E.'s innovation around "eco-imagination" — as Mr. Cheney's replacement.

    Good night, and God bless America

    Alberto, you got some spaining to do

    Why tell the truth when it's so much easier to lie? Check this out.

    In a letter to the attorney general yesterday, Feingold demanded to know why Gonzales dismissed the senator's question about warrantless eavesdropping as a "hypothetical situation" during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January 2005. At the hearing, Feingold asked Gonzales where the president's authority ends and whether Gonzales believed the president could, for example, act in contravention of existing criminal laws and spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant.

    Gonzales said that it was impossible to answer such a hypothetical question but that it was "not the policy or the agenda of this president" to authorize actions that conflict with existing law. He added that he would hope to alert Congress if the president ever chose to authorize warrantless surveillance, according to a transcript of the hearing.

    Sunday, January 29, 2006

    Forgiving the Franklins - a film review

    First full disclosure: The director of this film, Jay Floyd, is a dear friend and it is populated with actors I shamelessly adore both professionally and personally. That said: Forgiving the Franklins, which premiered at Sundance last week, is a delight.
    A delight that brings up profound questions.

    The Franklins are seemingly the perfect Norman Rockwell American Family. Frank Franklin (Robertson Dean) toils at a conservative law firm as the breadwinner. Betty (Teresa Willis) is a homemaker who worries about the right ingredients for her church bake sale cake, Brian (Vince Pavia) is forever the good son, who strives to impress his high school football coach, and Caroline (Aviva) is the perfect cheerleading daughter who is, of course, overly concerned about her weight.

    I will not write a plot outline here. But I will say this: quite suddenly an event occurs that changes Peggy, Frank and Brian utterly. Though initially they seem only to have suspicions that something is quite different. Caroline, however, sees the change immediately - and is appalled and confused. Floyd posits a deceptively simple question in this film: What if the apple in the garden of Eden was "unbit" and the idea of Original Sin disappeared overnight for 3 members of an American family?

    What follows in the lives of the Franklins, and the southern town they live in, is hilarious, moving, confrontational, and the one thing too many big budget films run from: truly thought provoking. Often all at once.

    It is a kind of sport at Sundance to walk out of films. Especially ones with no stars or Hollywood powers involved. At the screening last Friday I saw no one leave. In fact, for the Q and A afterward the house remained packed. A professor from an Christian evangelical college, surrounded by 50 of his students was in tears as he addressed Mr. Floyd. I will say this much about the plot: evangelical Christians do not come off well in Forgiving the Franklins. Which is why they should see it - and probably won't.

    One scene that must be mentioned: When Betty and Frank rediscover - or rather discover - each other in the bedroom after years of sex by the numbers Forgiving the Franklins becomes glorious. American films will show us anything but this: a husband and wife making love. It is here we come to see the central message: the price exacted by societies' repressions is paid for by removing intimacy - with others and ourselves. No punches are pulled with nudity - but there is nothing pornographic. There is, however, something rarely rendered in a sex scene: maturity and joy. The unabashed joy of 2 adults enjoying the full power of their sexuality.

    Floyd's vision is hilarious and tender, forceful and compassionate. Forgiving the Franklins is love letter to anyone hungry to be more fully alive, and a frontal assault on those who would repress.

    You will laugh - until you cry.

    Monday, January 23, 2006

    Sundance, shame, fame, and blame

    Off the Utah for the week. Sundance, blah blah blah. My ridiculously talented friend Jay Floyd got his first film into the festival. Forgiving The Franklins may well be the best comedy on shame, the right wing fear and blame culture, and the beauty and scope of human sexuality - in years. Actually it may be the ONLY film that involves all these things.
    See it when you can.
    To the 50 or so of you who show up here every day: talk amongst yourselves. and tell your mama, i axed how she durin.
    back in a week to continue watching oil go nuts (new term for the new year: PEAK OIL DENIAL. I like it.) the Dems roll over and over - then roll over again, and the GOP get away with it all...
    Happy Spying!

    Sunday, January 22, 2006

    This Week

    On This Week Sam Donaldson said that by the end of the year $3.00 per gallon for gas will look wonderful and in a year and a half we should expect $100 per barrel oil.

    HELLO.

    This is the story. We are all in trouble and we need to wake up.

    Saturday, January 21, 2006

    Iraq, Iran, and why we really fight.

    In two little words I can tell you all you need to know, but don't if you watch and read American media.

    PEAK OIL.

    A small Canadian town requested a report what these two little words mean to them and, it turns out, all of us. If you don't know what "peak oil" is - you will. Soon. Find out what peak oil means now - before you are forced. We will all be forced to know what Peak oil is and means. Soon. Maybe in 3 years maybe in 3 weeks. Alarmist? Yes. No event in our lifetime needs a louder alarm.
    One town has told itself the truth. Read it.
    And if you can't or won't here are three quotes. Read them, at least.
    Then, as they say, do the math.

    “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”

    “Energy will be one of the defining issues of this century. One thing is clear: the era of easy oil is over."

    “We lean toward [the] view that our survival depends not only on engaging in long-term planning but also on the extent to which we are able to replace certain core values. One such core value is that moving people and goods farther and faster in ever-increasing amounts is inherently desirable."

    Friday, January 20, 2006

    The cacophony of poison dwarfs on the MSNBC plantation.

    The possibility of hearing any sort of alternative views - which is to say liberal views - on any of the cable news networks seems to have taken a further hit this week. Chris Matthews - who worked for President Carter and Tip O'Neill during the Jurassic period - proved himself to be the king of the poison dwarfs by comparing bin Laden to Michael Moore. Then implying that bin Laden was taking his talking points from John Kerry. His chattering vitriol is so anathema to any reasonable person that Americablog threw down the gauntlet - thank God.

    Other than Countdown the entire line up on MSNBC is a cacophony of poison dwarfs. Some ex GOP congressman has a show in which he talks "common sense". Which is code for angry daddy schtick. Tucker Carlson has a program which is unbearably smug and tilts to the Right, when it is not tilting toward nonsense. And, the queen of the idiots - Rita Cosby (an unexplained phenomenon, like Big Foot) needs a 12 step program - her obsession with a kidnapping in Aruba and a groom missing from a cruise liner is so uncontrollable. Hmm? Called what? Frothing Dribble Anonymous.

    I ADMIT I AM POWERLESS OVER REPORTING ON PRETTY YOUNG WHITE PEOPLE WHO MEET UNTIMELY ENDS...

    Not that CNN is any better. Dobbs's version of "common sense" often has some basis in reality. But one best not mention anything about America actually needing brown people to pick the lettuce - he short circuits. The Situation Room was taken whole from the second act of the film Network. Anderson is fine - to look at anyway - just don't expect to find out much about the world. And Paula Zahn lead tonight with a story about an argument over a horse. Nuff Said.

    I do not think a liberal point of view should be prevalent - but it should be at least present.

    Here is what was not covered just today - one day - 1. The Democrats held hearings in which a bevy of well respected folks stated without reservation that Bush and the NSA broke the law. 2. The Dow fell 213 points. 3. Oil went and stayed above 68 dollars a barrel. 4. Iran started dumping Euros. Oh, and did you know they intend to STOP trading oil in dollars sometime in March. Prolly not. Potential catastrophe for the dollar not being as important as what Hillary called what.

    The Democrats as real opposition are a non starter. The sooner we give up on them the better. 6 years is long enough to wait for a coherent message. And now the media - at least the TV part - is just another part of the Rove plantation. Somebody needs to do something.

    Wednesday, January 18, 2006

    King Kong film review

    My friend Cynthia is traveling in India and went to see King Kong while there. She sent her thoughts to another friend, Jay Floyd, who forwarded it to me. It is probably my favorite film "review" ever. Pretty much says it all. I print it here:

    "Watching King Kong last night with all the Indians and one frenchie in a theater was such a strange experience. Basically, this group of Americans insist on going where they don't belong, kill all the native darkies with big huge weapons, there is one black and one Chinese amidst "the good guys" who both die rather quickly, leaving the whities to prevail. They kill as many ugly creeping creatures as they can, again with big weapons, then take the very thing that never belonged to them in the first place, the crowning jewel of the unknown land. They whisk him back to America in order to profit from his supposed beastiness. Then when he resists, they blow him away as fleets of planes rise from up and around the Empire State Building. Then Jack Black proclaims as the last sentence in the movie, "it was beauty that killed the beast." No it wasn't you jack ass, you killed him, fucker."

    Tuesday, January 17, 2006

    Thank God for Al Gore.

    A Democrat speaks truth - Bush broke the law. Bush hates the American system of government.

    Monday, January 16, 2006

    Without Reason.

    Little by little. Excuse by excuse. A news flash that should shock no one:
    They are spying on millions of us. Without reason or warrants. Millions. And they will continue to do it and continue to lie about doing it.
    Freedom is not free.

    Sunday, January 15, 2006

    On War, Bumperstickers, and Denial.

    Recently I received an email from a random visitor to this blog. It was unpleasant, as email from right wingers often is. This blog's opposition to Bush's policy in Iraq made the emailer mad as hell. Denial runs deep on the Right. But it also runs deep on the Left.
    Like it or not the only reasonable conclusion one can come to about the Iraq invasion is this: IT IS ABOUT CONTROL OF OIL. The Left resists this with the same ferocity as the Right.
    Nevertheless: There is a lot of it in the region and not nearly enough over here. At least not enough for the way we live now. This is also true about the coming conflict with Iran. And not for nothing I must admit: if this is the reason we have set up camp in Iraq at great cost - and it is the reason - I loath the war, but understand it. The war was the worst of the options, and it has failed, with blowback that is only now starting - but it MAKES SENSE. Unless and until liberals clearly understand that these wars are resource wars we will continue to scream, holler, blog, and eyeroll at the Right - and we will continue having leaders that cannot present and make the hard choices to and for the American people. The fact is this: we need and use much more oil than we have.

    The real and brutal choice in the post peak oil world:

    A. Go and get the oil we need - China being our main competitor for it.

    Or B. Change utterly and completely the way we live. The President simply made the first choice. Eventually any President would have made the same choice. The current system demands it.

    WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER bumperstickers are everywhere on cars in Los Angeles. If we want to live like we do now forever - war is very much the answer. NO BLOOD FOR OIL bumperstickers on SUVs in Los Angeles is a blatant form of denial.

    What we need on the Left is leadership that can explain the real situation we find ourselves in. America is dependent on the kindness of strangers. When we cannot depend on the kindness of the house of Saud, or Iraq, or nutjob Mullahs WAR IS THE HORRIBLE AND LOGICAL ANSWER.

    Unless we change.

    Saturday, January 14, 2006

    The Democrats are pathetic. Part 643

    I want to commend and give a big "Hear, Hear!" to John Avarosis and his very popular Americablog for calling the Democratic "leadership" on the carpet and telling it like it is. The Alito "hearings" are just the latest in a long string a pathetic performances from the alleged opposition party. Has any democracy ever been subjected to an "opposition" that is so weak, stupid, and banal? The fact is that all politics is NOT local (forgive me, Tip) but frankly ALL POLITICS IS HARDBALL. The failure of the Iraqi "policy", the windmill tilting at Social Security, the debacle of Katrina, the national shame of torture, and the soon to be national scar of the NSA spying case, the contemptible treatment of Valerie Plame, the open wound called a deficit... The list of GOP negligence and arrogance and down right dangerous incompetence is endless and relentless.
    And from the party that should know better: CSPAN press conferences watched by no one, cowardly gamesmanship from Senator Clinton, Gaseous seepage from Biden, parliamentary tricks from Reid - with no follow through. And a DLC that should be put in a stockade and pelted with tomatoes - rotten ones. The GOP is sucking the air out of this once great Republic and the party that could stop it is worried about saving their asses and their parking spots.
    The road back will be hard, should there be a Democrat with the testicles to try, and the media is now in the hip pocket of the GOP/"Look! Aruba matters!" spin machine but the first step in simple: DEMAND AIR TIME. Two journalists debating 2 conservatives is how the game is played now - and how the outcome is always assured to go the Right's way. AIR TIME for REAL alternative views on every forum, on every show, on every night. This is the start. There is another vision for this country: fiscal sanity, energy independence, fair taxation, affordable healthcare for everyone, a foreign policy that is not myopic and stupid. America is HUNGRY for these things. But you would never know it watching CNN or MSNBC. There are articulate, polished spokesmen and spokeswomen to stand up and talk the loons and liars down. Katrina vanden Heuvel, John Conyers, Ms. Huffington, John Avarosis, Gov. Warner, the list is endless. And yet - on TV, where the conversation is shaped, we are served up John Frum, and the Buchanan siblings as if THEY represent the majority.
    It is simple: pick up the phone and demand that the other side be heard. It's called P.R. It matters. Ask Karl Rove.
    Smugness, fear, and press releases are a sorry and dangerous political plan.

    Friday, January 13, 2006

    All the News That's Fit To Print

    I read a great article by Molly Ivans about stories that are not being covered and one of them is Iran trading oil in Euros instead of dollars.

    She led me to this article. Be afraid, be very afraid.

    One of the major unstated reasons the United States invaded Iraq was to stop Saddam Hussein from trading oil for euros, which he had begun in 2000. Hussein actually made more money selling oil for euros, as the euro appreciated 17 percent against the dollar between 2000 and 2003. Other countries in the region, particulary Iran and Syria, began public musing about switching from dollars to euros around the same time.

    All three countries were subject to a barrage of threats from the United States government, but only Iraq went through with the switch, and it was summarily invaded. One of the US government's first acts in Iraq was to switch oil sales back to dollars.

    Now, Iran plans not just to sell oil for euros, but to create an exchange market for parties to trade oil for euros. The oil bourse will provide a euro-based price standard, the way West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) and North Sea Brent crude do today. To the extent that the balance of reserve holdings starts to shift from dollars to euros, that's very bad news for America's system of dollar hegemony.


    This is news. This is a harbinger of a recession in the best case scenario. This is what we should be talking about.

    More scum on the Right

    Anyone left who does not believe that the Right is amoral and full of scum look no further.

    Thursday, January 12, 2006

    The New World: Gore, Barr, and Bush

    Former vice-president Al Gore will give a speech in Washington stating the truth in no uncertain terms: George W. Bush broke the law by ordering wiretapping of Americans without a warrant. He will be introduced by former rep. Bob Barr - that would be Mister Clinton impeachment himself. We have a genuine constitutional crisis on our hands. The Left and the true Right agree.

    On a personal note - I would like to thank another Bush for making this college football season the most enjoyable season ever. Fight on, Reggie! And good luck in the NFL.

    Tuesday, January 10, 2006

    Bush: the most irresponsible president ever.

    Proving again that common sense, common decency and shame have no place in the Bush White House W today warned against criticizing his war. Calling those who do irresponsible. Yet another breathtaking remark from what must be the single most irresponsilbe administration in our history.
    80% percent of our war dead could have lived.
    Bush spies on American Quakers.
    Jack, oh Jack, we hardly knew ya.
    and my all time favorite:
    Bush White House uses male hooker in press room.
    I guess, to crib Nixon, it is responsible if the President does it.

    Bush and Dick find true love.


    whoever made this - I love you deeply.....

    Monday, January 09, 2006

    Bob Herbert Today

    The Nixon Syndrome
    By BOB HERBERT

    Whether he knew it or not, President Bush was faced with a crucial philosophical choice in the frightening and chaotic aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

    He could have followed the wise counsel of Edward R. Murrow, who memorably told us, "We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home." But he didn't. He chose instead to follow the disturbing course mapped out by Barry Goldwater, who insisted, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice ... moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

    That choice changed the character of America for the worse, leading (like a character's tragic flaw in an ancient drama) to the mindless invasion and occupation of Iraq; the imprisonment without trial of thousands of so-called terror suspects, who were denied the right to protest their innocence or confront their accusers; the now-infamous torture memo from the Justice Department; the abuses at Abu Ghraib; the reprehensible practice of rendition, in which individuals are kidnapped by U.S. officials and handed over to regimes known to specialize in torture; the creation of super-secret C.I.A. prisons - the dungeons of the 21st century; and, as recently revealed, the president's decision to authorize illegal eavesdropping - spying - on American citizens.

    The president has been cavalier about the profound issues embedded in his radical makeover of America. Perhaps he doesn't understand them. As the controversy grew over the warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. citizens by the National Security Agency, Mr. Bush, apparently annoyed, said at a press conference, "The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy."
    Well, Mr. President, one of the great things about democracy American style is that important national issues are always subject to a robust national discussion. And few things are more important than making sure that a president with a demonstrated tendency to abuse the powers of his office is not allowed to lay the foundation for the systematic surveillance of the American people.

    For a president - any president - to O.K. eavesdropping on U.S. citizens on American soil without a warrant is an abomination. First, it's illegal - and for very good reasons. Spying on the populace is a giant step toward totalitarianism. In the worst-case scenario, it's the nightmare of Soviet-style surveillance.

    Related to that is the all-important matter of the separation of powers, which is the absolutely crucial cornerstone of our form of government - our bulwark against tyranny. An elaborate system of checks and balances (you need a warrant from a court to wiretap, for example) prevents the concentration of too much power in any one branch, or any one person. Get rid of the checks and balances and you've gotten rid of the United States as we've known it.
    If President Bush wants to spy on Americans, let him follow the law and get a warrant. He's the president, not the king. The president cannot simply do as he pleases. Richard Nixon unleashed the dogs of domestic surveillance in the 1970's, and that played a major role in the constitutional crisis that traumatized the nation and led to the collapse of his presidency.

    Nixon was out of control, so Congress and the courts stepped in. Threatened with impeachment, he resigned his office and left town. Checks and balances.

    President Bush argues that the enemies of the United States are so evil and so devious that he is justified in throwing off the legal constraints that might have bound previous presidents - including such important constraints as the ban on warrantless eavesdropping contained in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

    If a president thinks a law should be changed, he can go to the American people via Congress and seek such a change. This president gave the back of his hand to FISA, deciding in secret to ignore it.

    In doing that, Mr. Bush essentially declared that the checks and balances do not apply to him, that he is above the law, that he knows better than the likes of Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton et al.

    In doing that, he aligned himself instead with Richard Nixon, who had his own notion of the separation of powers. That notion was best expressed in Nixon's chilling comment:
    "When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."

    Sunday, January 08, 2006

    Frank Rich Today

    The Wiretappers That Couldn't Shoot Straight
    By FRANK RICH

    ALMOST two weeks before The New York Times published its scoop about our government's extralegal wiretapping, the cable network Showtime blew the whole top-secret shebang. In its mini-series "Sleeper Cell," about Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in Los Angeles, the cell's ringleader berates an underling for chatting about an impending operation during a phone conversation with an uncle in Egypt. "We can only pray that the N.S.A. is not listening," the leader yells at the miscreant, who is then stoned for his blabbing.

    If fictional terrorists concocted by Hollywood can figure out that the National Security Agency is listening to their every call, guess what? Real-life terrorists know this, too. So when a hyperventilating President Bush rants that the exposure of his warrant-free wiretapping in a newspaper is shameful and puts "our citizens at risk" by revealing our espionage playbook, you have to wonder what he is really trying to hide. Our enemies, as America has learned the hard way, are not morons. Even if Al Qaeda hasn't seen "Sleeper Cell" because it refuses to spring for pay cable, it has surely assumed from the get-go that the White House would ignore legal restraints on eavesdropping, just as it has on detainee jurisprudence and torture.

    That the White House's over-the-top outrage about the Times scoop is a smokescreen contrived to cover up something else is only confirmed by Dick Cheney's disingenuousness. In last week's oration at a right-wing think tank, he defended warrant-free wiretapping by saying it could have prevented the 9/11 attacks. Really? Not with this administration in charge. On 9/10 the N.S.A. (lawfully) intercepted messages in Arabic saying, "The match is about to begin," and, "Tomorrow is zero hour." You know the rest. Like all the chatter our government picked up during the president's excellent brush-clearing Crawford vacation of 2001, it was relegated to mañana; the N.S.A. didn't rouse itself to translate those warnings until 9/12.

    Given that the reporters on the Times story, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, wrote that nearly a dozen current and former officials had served as their sources, there may be more leaks to come, and not just to The Times. Sooner or later we'll find out what the White House is really so defensive about.

    Perhaps it's the obvious: the errant spying ensnared Americans talking to Americans, not just Americans talking to jihadists in Afghanistan. In a raw interview transcript posted on MSNBC's Web site last week - and quickly seized on by John Aravosis of AmericaBlog - the NBC News foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell asked Mr. Risen if he knew whether the CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour might have been wiretapped. (Mr. Risen said, "I hadn't heard that.") Surely a pro like Ms. Mitchell wasn't speculating idly. NBC News, which did not broadcast this exchange and later edited it out of the Web transcript, said Friday it was still pursuing the story.

    If the Bush administration did indeed eavesdrop on American journalists and political opponents (Ms. Amanpour's husband, Jamie Rubin, was a foreign policy adviser to the Kerry campaign), it's déjà Watergate all over again. But even now we can see that there's another, simpler - and distinctly Bushian - motive at play here, hiding in plain sight.

    That motive is not, as many liberals would have it, a simple ideological crusade to gut the Bill of Rights. Real conservatives, after all, are opposed to Big Brother; even the staunch Bush ally Grover Norquist has criticized the N.S.A.'s overreaching. The highest priority for the Karl Rove-driven presidency is instead to preserve its own power at all costs. With this gang, political victory and the propaganda needed to secure it always trump principles, even conservative principles, let alone the truth. Whenever the White House most vociferously attacks the press, you can be sure its No. 1 motive is to deflect attention from embarrassing revelations about its incompetence and failures.

    That's why Paul Wolfowitz, in a 2004 remark for which he later apologized, dismissed reporting on the raging insurgency in Iraq as "rumors" he attributed to a Baghdad press corps too "afraid to travel." That's also why the White House tried in May to blame lethal anti-American riots in Afghanistan and Pakistan on a single erroneous Newsweek item about Koran desecration - as if 200-odd words in an American magazine could take the fall for the indelible photos from Abu Ghraib.

    Such is the blame-shifting game Mr. Cheney was up to last week. By dragging 9/11 into his defense of possibly unconstitutional bugging, he was hoping to rewrite history to absolve the White House of its bungling. And no wonder. He knows all too well that the timing of Mr. Bush's signing of the secret executive order to initiate the desperate tactic of warrant-free N.S.A. eavesdropping - early 2002, according to Mr. Risen's new book, "State of War" - is nothing if not a giant arrow pointing to one of the administration's most catastrophic failures. It was only weeks earlier, in December 2001, that we had our best crack at nailing Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora and blew it.

    What went down that fateful December is recalled in particularly gripping fashion in a just published book, "Jawbreaker," which, like Mr. Risen's book, is rising on the best-seller list at an inopportune moment for this White House. "Jawbreaker" is the self-told story of a veteran clandestine officer, Gary Berntsen, who was the pivotal C.I.A. field commander in the hunt for bin Laden. Mr. Berntsen is a fervent Bush loyalist, but his honest account doesn't do the president any favors. "We needed U.S. soldiers on the ground!" he writes, to "block a possible Al Qaeda escape into Afghanistan!" But his request to Centcom for 800 Army Rangers to do the job went unheeded.

    We don't know whether the Bush order relaxing legal controls on the N.S.A. was in part a Hail Mary pass to help compensate for that disaster. Either way, all the subsequent wiretaps in the world have not brought bin Laden back dead or alive. Though the White House says that its warrantless surveillance has saved lives by stopping other terrorists since then, Mr. Bush has exaggerated victories against Al Qaeda as often as he has the battle-readiness of Iraqi troops. After he claimed in an October speech that America and its allies had foiled 10 Qaeda plots since 9/11, USA Today reported that "at least" 6 of the 10 had been preliminary ideas for attacks rather than actual planned attacks.

    The louder the reports of failures on this president's watch, the louder he tries to drown them out by boasting that he has done everything "within the law" to keep America safe and by implying that his critics are unpatriotic, if not outright treasonous. Mr. Bush certainly has good reason to pump up the volume now. In early December the former 9/11 commissioners gave the federal government a report card riddled with D's and F's on terrorism preparedness.
    The front line of defense against terrorism is supposed to be the three-year-old, $40-billion-a-year Homeland Security Department, but news of its ineptitude, cronyism and no-bid contracts has only grown since Katrina. The Washington Post reported that one Transportation Security Administration contract worth up to $463 million had gone to a brand-new company that (coincidentally, we're told) contributed $122,000 to a powerful Republican congressman, Harold Rogers of Kentucky. An independent audit by the department's own inspector general, largely unnoticed during Christmas week, found everything from FEMA to border control in some form of disarray.

    Yet even as this damning report was released, the president forced cronies into top jobs in immigration enforcement and state and local preparedness with recess appointments that bypassed Congressional approval. Last week the department had the brilliance to leave Las Vegas off its 2006 list of 35 "high threat" urban areas - no doubt because Mohammed Atta was so well behaved there when plotting the 9/11 attacks.

    THE warrantless eavesdropping is more of the same incompetence. Like our physical abuse of detainees and our denial of their access to due process, this flouting of the law may yet do as much damage to fighting the war on terrorism as it does to civil liberties. As the First Amendment lawyer Martin Garbus wrote in The Huffington Post, every defense lawyer representing a terrorism suspect charged in the four years since Mr. Bush's N.S.A. decree can challenge the legality of the prosecution's evidence. "The entire criminal process will be brought to a standstill," Mr. Garbus explains, as the government refuses to give the courts information on national security grounds, inviting the dismissal of entire cases, and judges "up and down the appellate ladder" issue conflicting rulings.

    Far from "bringing justice to our enemies," as Mr. Bush is fond of saying, he may once again be helping them escape the way he did at Tora Bora. The president who once promised to bring a "culture of responsibility" to Washington can and will blame The Times and the rest of the press for his failures. But maybe, if only for variety's sake, the moment has come to find a new scapegoat. I nominate Showtime.

    Saturday, January 07, 2006

    Hear, hear!

    UK. General says Blair should be impeached....one down.

    Put Me In Coach



    The Fat One mourns the trade of Johnny Damon.

    Thursday, January 05, 2006

    The year of Peak Oil and other stuff

    Okay okay STOP ASKING! I'll do it!. I predict for 2006 the following - no wait - here and here are two "predictions" blogs that pretty much cover it for me, too. Still, I'll concur, add, and emphasize a few things of my own. 2006:
    1. Gas will hit 4 dollars a gallon in July.
    2. Michael Jackson will go and meet the Barry Gordy in the sky.
    3. Tom Delay will lose reelection to the House.
    4. Jon Stewart will get rave reviews after hosting the Oscars, he will be asked to takeover Nightline, run for congress, become Prime Minister of New Zealand, and become athletic director at William and Mary.
    5. The U.S. will bomb Iran.
    6. Scott McClellan will explode. Spontaneous Human Combustion becomes common place in Republican circles right after the all star break in July. Peggy Noonan, John Gibson, and Sean Hannity will all explode on TV. Noonan's last words on Larry King will be "I'm melting...buy my book...no Larry! No! Ann Coulter still lives..." Somehow she will manage to be condescending and syrupy until the very last. Rita Cosby will have breaking developments on this story every night for 6 months, until she explodes while interviewing a person who once worked as a security guard at a mall in Akron - which she will equate to being a police officer in Aruba. Her last words: "Aruba...hmmm....Waffles....hmmm...."
    7. The phrases "Peak oil" and "Iraqi civil war" will become commonplace in the media.
    8. Arnold will win reelection in CA. with a majority of Democratic votes. GOP voters will stay home.
    9. On the field, on the jumbo tron, half time marriage proposals will be banned after a woman at the Gator Bowl responds to her suitor with "what are you, fucking nuts? Your breath curls hair."
    10. A Roe Vs. Wade challenge will be heard by the Supreme court in late 2006, Roe will be overturned in 2007. This will return the Democrats to power in congress in 2008.
    11. Illegal immigrants will be used to scare the GOP base into voting en mass and they will retain control of both houses in 2006.

     

     
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