The Left is Bush's Greatest Enabler

This is currently up at Smirkingchimp.com:

Bill Gallagher: 'Bush's house of cards collapsing'

Every point he makes is correct.

For every point, it is conceivable that in normal times the President or his VP or a member of his staff would be strung up by the testicles or ovaries.

Why is that not happening?

There is so much happening - as Gallagher points out for this week especially - that no one who wants to "get to the bottom of it" or who wants to make Bush or his people answer for their screws-ups and illegalities (crimes to you and me) can get a purchase on it for long enough.

From 9/11 on, Bush has been responsible for the deaths of thousands Americans, through and including Iraq and Katrina. Yet, he skates on every issue.

Is it because he has spin doctors who massage the press and our perceptions? Partly.

The litany of screw ups us so egregious and populated with things that would have hamstrung Bill Clinton or Nixon or ANYBODY.

Does he get away with it because his daddy was Bush 41? Only partly.

The real reason IMHO is that the left/Democrats/Progressives are so enamoured of hearing their own selves screech.

I AM ONE OF THEM MYSELF.

Through the rage of another of us, I recently really, really, really realized that all this yammer is STUPID. It DOES NOTHING - except make us feel superior. Well, whoop-de-freaking-doo...

BushCo is getting away with murder (and torture and incompetents and criminal behavior) because we are continually losing focus.

When the Downing Street Memo came out, everyone was all over it - until Cindy Sheehan did her thing.

When Katrina hit, we were all over it - until Judy Miller got her out of jail free card from Patrick Fitzgerald.

When we were all over Scooter Libby (wishing it was Karl Rove), we got distracted again.

We were all over Bush about the NSA eavesdropping until Dick Cheney shot a 78-year-old Republican lawyer, which in most times would maybe be not so bad - but here we go again. Everyone has lost focus on the NSA case.

In 5 or 10 days, when another FUBAR comes along, we will lose our focus - again - and forget about the previous prosecutable criminalities of these gangsters.

When put all together - as if they ever WILL BE - BushCo members should be in jail for the next several generations.

But will that ever happen?

Gawd, is that debatable. But if we don't sledgehammer them in the next several months, our window of opportunity will be lost.

When the elections come in November, and the Diebolds and ES&Ses of the world steal our votes by turning them into GOP votes electronically, our world AS WE HAVE KNOWN IT will be gone. If we don't have a 25% lead in the polls when they steal the election, they will claim that the pollsters were simply leaning too far toward the Democratic candidates. We need THAT BIG of a polling lead to convince everyone that we have been "Ukrainized" if we lose again. IMHO, there is no polling lead too big to prevent them from TRYING to steal the election for the 4th time since 2000. They HAVE to do it again - because once they have lost and no longer can control the counting of the votes, their jig is up, and heads will roll - and they will do everything in their power to prevent that. THEY HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE NOW.

Our only hope - now and for long into the future - is in the courts. How successfully BushCo has seeded their kind in the courts is yet to be seen. The Abramoff, NSA and Plame cases are our only hope, but only if the prosecutors, judges and juries believe their patriotic duty to uphold the Constitution is greater than their allegiance to BushCo. Only if they can be put in the slammer and totally disgraced can their ways be discredited enough for most of us to wake up and get the hell out of this long national nightmare.

The Dems and Progressives (especially the bloggers), whether they know it or not - are part of the problem. "WHAT?!!!???" you may ask.

The blogs are so giddy EVERY TIME another BushCo screw up comes along. But by encouraging people to vent their spleens anwe very few days in cyberspace, the venting dissipates into useless drivel, and everyone goes unpunished. People sitting at their PCs in their dens or libraries or basements have little to no power to effect change at all.

And when they jump from one issue to another - without resolving the previous ones - they give BushCo a pass.

They (we) have all given the Village Idiot Naked Emperor scores of passes.

I say without any hesitation at this point in the game:

The left is possibly a bigger enabler for Bush than even the Red Staters.

How do we change from enablers to jailers?

We simply must have SOME people stay focused on each of the past issues, even while new ones show up.

The old saying goes, "When everybody is responsible for something, nobody is". In the same vein, when we ALL feel we have to jump on the newest FUBAR, no one is responsible for making BushCo accountable for past OR present issues.

There are plenty enough of us to parcel each one to, say, 30 bloggers to obliterate Bush on ONE issue, and 30 on each of the other issues.

Somehow we have to delegate to those groups of 30 (or whatever) their "assignments", or ask for volunteers. And they need the support of the rest of the Progressive people, who need to visit their blogs (and point them in fruitful directions, possibly) without distracting each group from its single issue.

By having everyone hammering their little tiny bit about every little or large FUBAR or criminality, we accomplish nothing. Yes, we have a right to get upset, but we also have to wake up the the reality, which is that we are completely ineffective.
Oh, Kos and Atrios and Adrianna will argue that point, but WHAT HAS BEEN DONE? BUSH IS STILL THERE. OUR RIGHTS ARE STILL BEING DEPLETED. OUR COUTRY IS STILL BEING HIJACKED.

Mountains may be moved by the thimbleful, but when there is a fleet of dump trucks on the far side of the mountainside building it up even more, our thimbles are fighting a losing cause. We need to focus and organize and put great amounts of pressure, FOCUSED PRESSURE, not the wisps we are currently doing.

The right has their think tanks, and that is the source of their ability to apply high pressure at a moment's notice.

We on the left have NOTHING comparable.

Our frittering ways have to end - or we are ended.

Our frittering ways have enabled the Right and their Bert and Ernie Muppet Emperor for too long. And we are just spinning our wheels and letting America blow away before our very eyes.

. . . . TD

So Stupid It Shows

Again, Not Too Bright
The Bush team should have know Hamas would win -
Now it should quit the name-calling
by Eric Margolis
Toronto Sun
Feb 5, 2006

After Hamas' stunning victory last week in Palestinian elections, a flustered U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, tried to explain the Bush administration's latest Mideast fiasco.

"I've asked why nobody saw it coming," she offered plaintively.

Dear Miss Condi, many of us saw Hamas' victory coming. You didn't because you failed to face facts.

Your boss, George W. Bush, made similar lame excuses trying to explain his embarrassing failure to find WMD in Iraq by claiming all western intelligence services believed Iraq had them -- which was untrue.

For a nation that spends $40 billion annually on intelligence to be so wrong about so much is utterly inexcusable. Condi, go stand in the corner with Colin Powell.

Hamas won because of Washington's total failure to push Israel into any meaningful concessions under its dead-ended "Road Map to Peace," fatally undermining Bush's favourite, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party.

Palestinians were fed up with corrupt Fatah leadership which appeared too cozy with the U.S. and Israel. The more Washington bribed or arm-twisted Fatah leaders to comply with its wishes, the more Palestinians backed hardline Hamas. The feuding ninnies and crooks running Fatah stood in sharp contrast to Hamas' disciplined, efficient, uncorrupt cadres.

When it became clear Israel's leadership would continue PM Ariel Sharon's plans to colonize the West Bank and confine Arabs in three isolated tribal reservations, Palestinians voted for Hamas.

Why didn't Rice see this obvious fact? Because, like the rest of the administration and U.S. media, her view of the Mideast is warped by ignorance, inexperience, and intense pressure from neoconservatives and religious groups pressing for a crusade against the Muslim world.

Misinformed

America's shocked reaction to Hamas' win shows how misinformed and misled it is about the Mideast....

See the link for the full article.

This was so incredibly obvious and sane, I had to write a response - hoping also that I could effectively point out to the Canadians that we USians are not all "fuddled".

I would actually be VERY interested to hear Mr. Margolis' take on 9/11 itself, after reading his take on the Palestinians and the Israelis, and how the US fits into that equation.


My letter to the Editor re Margolis' article :

Thank you, Mr. Margolis, for a sane perspective on the Hamas election victory in Palestine. I first would wish you to know that millions of us south of the US-Canadian border are not "fuddled", though I do not say that with rancor. Though seemingly without power after our neocon coup, we are regrouping and have some real, solid hopes for our future. It is an uphill fight, but then so was the effort of the late 18th century, when we were attempting to free ourselves from the other King George III.

Just as the Palestinians are attempting to throw off the oppression of Israel, who (despite their massive arms advantage over the Palestinians) could not exist without their sugar daddy across the ocean, we are attempting to throw off our one-party domination. Some day - maybe in my lifetime - the U.S. will stop assisting in the murders of Palestinian civilians, and then the Israelis will have to learn to get along with their Muslim and Arab neighbors.

It will not happen with the kinds of governmments and strategies we have had here since before I was born in 1949. Only realization of the kinds of things that you point out in your article can ever, ever bring peace to the Middle East. Please keep on being rational and sane. We millions down here will attempt to build from this end. Perhaps in time there will actually be a sane and peaceful world. Peace is not possible without sanity, I don't think. That is the reason the U.S. has been at war almost my whole life. Be glad you do not live in such a place, and do send positive thoughts our way.

Living in "God's gift to the world" carries a heavy burden; the current manifestation of it is the defective in our White House at the moment. We ask the world's forgiveness for putting it through this. We have been getting a real feeling for what it was like living with Hitler in 19030s Germany: The insane rantings of a depraved leader are both frightening and embarrassing. It would be nice to live in just a regular country for a while.

. . . . TD

Libby - The Pieces Start to Fall in Place

Newsweek
Michael Isikoff
Feb. 13, 2006 issue

The CIA Leak: Plame Was Still Covert

Newly released court papers could put holes in the defense of Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, in the Valerie Plame leak case. Lawyers for Libby, and White House allies, have repeatedly questioned whether Plame, the wife of White House critic Joe Wilson, really had covert status when she was outed to the media in July 2003. But special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald found that Plame had indeed done "covert work overseas" on counterproliferation matters in the past five years, and the CIA "was making specific efforts to conceal" her identity, according to newly released portions of a judge's opinion.

This solidifies one of the requirements of

United States Code, TITLE 50 - WAR AND NATIONAL DEFENSE
+ CHAPTER 15 - NATIONAL SECURITY
# SUBCHAPTER IV - PROTECTION OF CERTAIN NATIONAL SECURITY INFORMATION

Section 421. Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources

.....
(b) Disclosure of information by persons who learn identity of covert agents as result of having access to classified information
Whoever, as a result of having authorized access to classified information, learns the identify of a covert agent and intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

If you go to the link, you will see that there is no provision for anyone, including the President or Vice President, to authorize an exception to this section, such as can be done with classified information of most kinds. Documents, for example, can be re-classified at some point in time as "Non-classified". A covert agent's status cannot be re-classified. It can only become available when the five years have expired.

For those who don't know - and it is actually hard to find nowadays online - Libby was President Bush's Special Assistant on National Security issues. As such, he had a higher standard of behavior on classified information. Being one of the top very few officers in the Administration on National Security, he was MOST required to know the rules about what can and what cannot be released to outsiders.

The Chief Executive/Commander-In-Chief Must Follow the Laws That Congress Passes - And No More

From OpEd News, there is this:

The President Has No Inherent Power Which Permits Him To Violate FISA Or Any Other Law Duly Enacted By Congress

If Bush Wants To Conduct This Surveillance, Congress Must Change The Law. See LITTLE v. BARREME, 6 U.S. 170 (1804)

by Rev. Bill McGinnis

Yesterday, Sen. Pat Roberts wrote that President Bush's warrantless surveillance program is "legal, necessary and reasonable," and that, "Congress, by statute, cannot extinguish a core constitutional authority of the president."

Source: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/3635190.html

Unfortunately for the Country, Sen. Roberts got it wrong. The program may possibly be necessary: that is debatable. But it certainly is not legal. Nor can it be justified by any supposed "core constitutional authority of the president."

The Supreme Court ruled directly on a very similar case in the early days of our Country, when the Founders' intentions were fresh and clear in people's minds. The question involved the President going against a direct Law of Congress, regarding a military action in a time of semi-declared war. And the Supreme Court ruled that the President's actions were illegal, because they violated a Law passed by Congress.

In the case "Little v. Barreme," in 1804 The Supreme Court ruled that a part of President John Adams' instructions to seize ships was in conflict with an act of Congress and therefore illegal. Congress had passed a law instructing the President to seize certain ships going to France. President Adams changed that to include certain ships that were either going to or coming from France. A ship was seized coming from France. So the seizure followed the Presidential instructions, but violated the Law passed by Congress, which only involved ships going to France. On appeal, the case came before the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice Marshall wrote, "On an appeal to the circuit court this sentence was reversed, because the Flying Fish was on a voyage from, not to, a French port, and was therefore, had she even been an American vessel, not liable to capture on the high seas."

One scholar described the case like this: "But Chief Justice Marshall wrote that even in his capacity as commander in chief, the president could not authorize a military officer to perform illegal acts. Only Congress can make laws, Marshall argued, and regardless of the fact that the president may have ordered his subordinate officer to perform an illegal act, that act was still illegal, and the officer performing that act was responsible for his behavior. Not even a military officer, Marshall wrote, could use the 'instruction of the executive' as an excuse for performing an illegal act."

Source: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=59816596

You can read this decision at
LITTLE v. BARREME, 6 U.S. 170 (1804): http://laws.findlaw.com/us/6/170.html

Now, compare what the Constitution says about war, the Congress and the President:

ARTICLE 1, SECTION 8

The Congress shall have Power:

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress....

ARTICLE II, SECTION 2

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States....

"and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water" in its clear language means that the Congess tells ALL the military what rules to follow IN ALL OF THEIR ACTIONS, as concern captures - which would include POWS, and - pertinent in today's world - so-called "enemy combatants." This would also cover treatment of any captures beyond the battlefield.

It is of prime interest at this very time that the clear language here would certainly include THE PRESIDENT IN HIS ROLE AS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, since he, in that role, is a member of both the Army and Navy.

"To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces" - This clause is the most important clause in regards to Bush's claims of a unitary and unfettered Presidency during war. CONGRESS and only CONGRESS has the power to make rules for governing the land and naval forces, AND THIS INCLUDES THE PRESIDENT WHEN HE ASSUMES THE ROLE OF COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. Bush and his administration do NOT have the authority under the Consitution to make carte-blanche decisions. He has NO POWER to make rules - only to execute the ones Congress has made.

"To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States" in its clear language gives to the Congress ALONE the governing of the "Militia", i.e., the state military units and their personnel, meaning the National Guard and the Reserves. In this invasion of Iraq, with all the Guard units on duty, this means that Congress determines what Bush can do with them and what he cannot.

. . . . TD

What form will America take, after its destruction by the Right?

I am pushing 57, and I expect to see the end of the hegemony of the Right IN MY LIFETIME - but not soon. With the abdication by the Left and the coming dissolution of the Right, it remains to be seen what might replace them. It may be that America is simply too decadent and self-satisfied and will go the way of all superpowers: into being a non-entity on the world stage. I hope not. Have you ever wondered what it was like for a Roman citizen to observe the slow, insistent fall of Rome? I have. I now wonder if we are repeating that pattern. Again, I hope not. But there are many factors that aren't encouraging...

There IS such a thing as a "social contract" that each person makes - MUST make - if the world is to be civilized. A person straddles two realities: his/her individuality, and society's reality. Both make demands, and those demands must be honored and met, to some level, to make for a reasonably sane society.

The Right is filled with people who spit on any social contract, and the core of the Right is rife with opportunists who take advantage of that to kill civilization for their own aggrandizement, under many a false banner. For this to happen, and happen so often, the whole premise has to be rotten. I believe it IS.

I myself am an anarchist as much as anything else. I eschew heirarchies and institutions as being destructive of the individual. That does not make me one of them (the Right), though: Their's is a scam. Mine is taking responsibility for my own self-governing (I've been doing it since I was about 12), with sizable consideration for other individuals and small collections of people. Beyond 50 or so people, my hackles begin to rise...

I think that in the long term, the only sane society is one in which every individual must literally sign a contract with society, which entitles him/her to certain rights and responsibilities (which ones is up for debate). The giving of rights is the society's contribution to the contract; the taking of responsibilities, BY CONTRACT, is the individual's "earnest money". That makes it an agreement between the individual and the society as two equal parties to the contract and which binds the two. By making it a signing, it obtains the qualities of a ritual, and this is one area that I think a ritual is a good thing. I believe that part of that contract should include spelling out the consequences for breaches of the contract. In the case of the individual, that would be the loss of some of the rights previously granted. Again, particulars would be up for debate.

. . . . TD

The Zenith of Bush and the Neocons . . .

This past Tuesday, when Samuel Alito was sworn in as a Supreme Court Justice, ended what has been a 34 year climb to dominance by the Ultra-Right branch of the Republican Party. It was fueled by the John Birch-er mentality that lost horribly in the 1964 Presidential election along with their candidate Barry Goldwater of Arizona. It began with the infamous Memorandum by Lewis Powell (summary and link), a future Supreme Court Justice himself, they pushed forward to take over the country by targeting certain areas of American life.

Now, they have gotten everything that they wanted to win - the White House, the Congress, the Supreme Court, concentrated ownership of the news media, half the states in permanent 75 IQ status ("better Red than dead", as Barry's kind used to say). They have it all. They are at their zenith... But...


...They simply and utterly don't know what they are doing, or why. They have followed Powell's outline to a "T", but that was not enough. They focused so much on GETTING it all that they have screwed it up by not PREPARING for having it all. Powell told them to have their thinking done for them by those in think tanks, and to follow in lock-step what the wise ones tell them. That was the genesis of the GOP talking points. But in the process of parroting their ubers, they never learned how to think - only to rebut phrase "X" with phrase "Y", to counter accusation "A" with deflection "B".

But that is not much of a basis with which to govern any country, mush less the only world superpower. Dodging like Scott McClellan is NOT an art form - it is a national disgrace. Dim Bulb pausing to listen for Rove's voice in his earpiece or his bone phone do not engender faith in our Fuhrer.

Like spoiled rich kids who inherit great wealth, they don't know what level of intelligence it takes to acquire it all or to maintain it and expand it. They think having it passed on to them by the men who did the grunt work back in the 1970s and 1980s entitles them to have it - and that, having it, it will simply stay that way forever. They only know how to fritter things away. They know nothing of caretaking a nation, a people or a heritage.

These present-day idiots do not have the capacity to govern. Period.

They are now (two days ago) at their zenith, and even as they have achieved it, it is collapsing all around them.

The Samuel Alito swearing in will prove to be the high point of it all. From here on out, it is all downhill. The long climb to the top of the roller-coaster hill is finally over.

Now, comes the shrieking fall.

They are SO on a precipice, and they are starting to hyper-ventilate about what is going on all around them. And what is going on is chaos.

Again, like spoiled rich kids, they really DON'T think that it is possible for them to get caught. The laws don't really apply to them, do they? And, if caught, they think, "Well, that's all right, Dad will fix it." And if Dad can't fix it, they will do what?

They will squeal like pigs...

They will rat on others to save their own skin. Spoiled brats were ever thus. Anything to escape the consequences of their actions. Ask Patrick Fitzgerald - he has met a few squealers. Ask the Abramoff prosecutors (at least the ones who are left). We have not yet heard of the last of the squealers, either. Just wait and see...

And: We do not yet know how high up this will go before it is all played out.

It is a damned shame that it will have taken simple illegalities/crimes/felonies to send them all to their demise. Their misfeasances and malfeasances have all been swept under the carpet by the news media that Powell told them they needed to control, so their real crimes against the American way of governance will largely go unpunished. The government that all the world emulated and admired is now the laughing stock and pariah of the world. Now we can only export "democracy" at the point of a gun.

Powell only wanted the trend of his time to lean more toward businesses and less toward social issues. He did not envision the dismantling of the government to the point where it could be flushed down the drain. If ever a man should have been warned about what he might wish for (because you just may get it), it was he.

Nah, now that Alito is in place, they think they've got it all sewed up, but in reality this is where they find out that the bigger they are the harder they fall.

While we vehemently, apoplectically disagree with everything they stand for, some of us actually will feel at least a little sadness that they had to learn their lessons the hard way. But they deserve what they will have gotten.

We are also mad as hell that they had to fuck up a great, great nation on their way to Cell Block D. What of us who didn't have a hand in trashing our world? What is to become of us? When Hurricanes Dubya and JackA_off and Karl and Scooter are past, will FEMA step in and kiss it and make it all better?

If you are doubting it, you've got company...