An old guy's view on the State of the Union.

At no time, certainly at no time in my life, since the very depths of the Nixon crisis with the Saturday night massacre has my country seemed so fragile and such easy prey for crooks and despots. The strongest factor that arrested the decay of civil authority and its proper role in a constitutional government on October 20 in 1973 was the integrity and allegiance to country of those fired and resigned appointees. This time around, the Republican Imperial Wannabe has had 6 years to apply what he learned from Nixon and has purged from government most who place the interests of nation and constitution above those of the Republican party in its desperate grab for all power civil and military. Six attorneys, at lower levels in government than those sacked by Nixon are the rag tag remnant of conscience that remained in office and stood in the way of the genteel but sweeping totalitarianism of Bush and his backers.

The state of the union is threatened by those who have blinded themselves or forgotten that:

• The party is NOT the government,
• The government is not the nation.
• This is NOT Stalinist Russia...the irony here is excruciating that cold warriors in search of an enemy have done more to become what they fought than they can ever see.

At no time in this country's history as I know it, have I had more justification for saying "I will defend this country but I may have to do so by removing its government". I am resolutely for the constitution, I may spend my last dollar and my last breath in support and praise for the people who have worked for generations to build the place I live and I am absolutely convinced that a genuine democracy of informed citizens has no peer or superior among the forms of government. We should try that in America.

Perhaps I dream. Perhaps there was never a time when it was a benign mistake to blur the distinctions between the government and the people of this nation. We are now dragged to a low point of adultered administration where further confusion of those two is as harmful as any sedition.

I have been and will be busy this week preparing for peace vigils so posting will be light and may continue in the rather screechy political vein it has taken on of late. Our efforts to end the wasting of lives and money seem dulled by an unresponsive government. I remind you who the architects of that national numbness are. One head that should roll is bald, fat and jowly...and not among the fired attorneys.

No RSVP required...

...for your virtual attendance at any of our anti-war vigils. If you want to sign up to be an in-the-flesh part of the vigils MoveOn is facilitating, just register with MoveOn. Email will then point you to sign-up pages as times and places are set. Almost any peace activist organization you may already belong to will be at these vigils as well if MoveOn is not to your taste. Virtual attendence is accomplished by having your sentiments at the rally even though your physical person cannot attend.

In my best "Tom Sawyer describing the excitement and challenge of white washing fences" salesmanship, I am soliciting a little help. It fell to me to make the placards we will hold up at the rallying places. We have chosen a few busy urban and suburban interesections and will be carrying shortest meaningful messages we can paint on foamcore posterboard. So...here is your chance to get in to the action: Wit is appreciated but terse and unambiguous and potently motivating slogans win the prize. Leave your suggestions in the comments and I will get back to you after the rallies to say which flags flew. Or, you could tune in to the Boston area evening news on March 19th and see if your words made it to the small screen.

Thanks for the thinks,
Greensmile

DoJ Operated as Political Enforcement Unit: its worse than you imagined

You just can't get by on headlines alone. When Paul Keil at TPM wrote a call for investigation in to the un-fired prosecuting attorneys at DOJ I did not understand. It seemed a bit vindictive when we already have Gonzales on the ropes with the Congress. But a myDD diary pointed to the gruesome clue that had Kiel upset and...

OMG.

The indictments and convictions that were making all the news in the run-up to Nov. elections were almost entirely [Jefferson was the exception] against republicans. It seems unsurprising in hindsight: the administration knew full well at the outset that it had a boatload of scumbags among its own ranks and gave DoJ marching orders to drum up counter examples among the Dems or at least distractions. I had no clue. Where was there a word in the news about this ratio of investigations?

Even more damning, and in a way that amuses the heck out of me: given the yield of indictable cases from this investigatory blitz, the paucity of prosecutable findings against Democratic office holders means one of two things: Democrats really don't suffer from the "culture of corruption" or the DoJ, like just about any other administrative branch the bush league tamper with, was as incompetent as the Three Stooges in 3-piece suits.

Its beyond disgrace, its more than alarming, its barely believable. In any other administration, I would seriously question the source of such news! This needs to be blogged and otherwise shouted far more widely. Blinking at the TPM headline about Paul Kiel raising questions won't serve. Dig for the facts or read those who have because the facts about the ratio of investigations make this story explode. From epluribusmedia:

Data* indicate that the offices of the U.S. Attorneys across the nation investigate seven (7) times as many Democratic officials as they investigate Republican officials, a number that exceeds even the racial profiling of African Americans in traffic stops.

Our paper explores the role of the fourth estate and others in detecting such profiling and concludes that what is really needed is transparency, the highlights of which are noted below.

The current Bush Republican Administration appears to be the first to have engaged in political profiling. ...

---

Like I said...you can't get by on headlines: I now notice that me and my alarm are late to the party. While Keil was on the case days earlier, this scandle is exactly what Andrew Sullivan and, (far too visible for me to excuse not knowing), Paul Krugman were talking about. And, as I find my self saying more often lately, how bad does the administration have to be to have those two writers in agreement?

Fox out

Its about time a "news" organization with nothing but disdain for facts finally came face to face with one fact: lying and distorting coverage to promote crude simplifications and conservative dogmas WILL cost you your reputation even if it does gain you a particular market segment. As one of the netroots folks who wrote senator Ried, the national and Nevada state Democratic leaders to quit kidding themselves about the utility of broadcasting a Democratic candidate's debate on Fox, I am delighted to note that sometime before 6pm today, the Nevada Democratic party wised up.

MoveOn provided its members a link to the NV Democratic party inbox, I used it:

The eyes of the nation are upon you, Democratic party leaders. In myDD, I read that you "don't know who" make the choice to fox up your debate. Yeah, Right.

My eyes are never upon Fox news and you ought to know that by now. Drop them for the lies they have told [or do you too think Mark Foley was a democrat?] drop them for the lies they will tell. They need Democrats for credibility and market share a heck of a lot more than you need them for exposure to Bill O'Reilly's audience. Wise up. Don't Fox up.

myDD provided contact for Sen Reid and the Democratic hopefuls who would have debated on Fox. I used that contact:

I admire Sen. Reid's responses to Bush war mongering, especially in the heat of the recent congressional elections. I grew up in Reno and have been watching Ried since he lost to Laxalt in '74 by 600 votes. That left an impression on me that grass roots and voter turnout have always been the heart of politics. But Fox considers politics a spectator sport manipulated for its effects on ratings, exactly the opposite of grassroots. Fox needs legitimacy way more than Dem candidates need exposure to Bill O'Reilly's audience. I am puzzled and troubled that he would consent to using Fox for anything. That network has stretched scant facts and sources to tar the Senator. That network broadcast images of Mark Foley labeled as a Democrat. Why is the Senator giving any aid at all to a network that is hardly more than a big cog in the right wing media machine?

Edwards set what finally was the trend by refusing to lend legitimacy to Murdoch's contingent of the right wing noise machine: he refused to debate if Fox was the broadcaster and Fox was staging the debate and providing the panel who would ask questions of the candidates. It is very much to Edwards credit...either he is one candidate who really has the courage of his convictions or is actually very shrewd and sees how much the Fox News network needs the stamp of legitimacy for its brand of propaganda to staunch its declining ratings. Fox, in my opinion had much more to gain than did any Democratic candidate. By 10:00 PM the Edwards campaign had emailed its netroots supporters to describe the first shots of a Fox backlash

You may have heard by now that John Edwards was the first candidate to officially say no to the Fox News debate in Nevada—and because of the hard work of so many grassroots and netroots Democrats, news is breaking tonight that Fox is out.

Fox has already started striking back at John for saying no. (There's a surprise—Fox attacking a Democrat.) Last night, Roger Ailes—the life-long Republican operative who is now Chairman of Fox News Channel—said that any candidate "who believes he can blacklist any news organization is making a terrible mistake" and "runs a real risk of losing the voters."

Really. What can Fox do? Make up more miscaptioned videos? Have O'Reilly say something outrageous, distorted or slanderous about a Democratic candidate? They do all that already and have got their just dessert. They are out of ammo. If I could tell my cable company to unbundle Fox from its basic package, I'd never see a minute of their tripe again.

The original justification held out by Tom Collins of the Nevada Dem party was the intent to "reach a wider audience" and he cited backing by labor unions who approved of Fox. By now it should be clear that there are some unions with rank and file who listen to Limbaugh and vote Republican...why didn't Collins know the likely hood of gaining many votes for Democrats among the Fox audience was vanishingly small? Fortunately, Fox itself, in the person of its new President Roger Ailes, entirely in character for the network provided some fresh offenses against Obama that gave Collins a way to scuttle his former position without losing face.

There is justice. Let Fox go for a year without repeating Republican lies, just report the stuff that actually gets said by news makers, then offer to broadcast a political event where media neutrality is an absolute requirement. Go ahead Fox, your move. Keep lying or start being what you claim you are, a news network. As of midnight, Google news can't find this story but by tomorrow, the papers will finally mention the netroots in some way or other.

Detecting principle

You may detect a faint whiff of sulfur. I have only gone over to the dark side briefly to read what they are thinking over on the right. This also accounts for admitting to the existence of Dick Morris as I did in the post before this one.

Since I have cast myself as a moralist more or less, I have made the detection of principles my business when I read: are any consistent rules about right and wrong showing or to be inferred?

Your principles and any claim to have principles may be a crock if you can't see the same problems as others who, though with different principles, do operate from a principled rather than a dumbly partisan view of the world.

These days, the professional conservative Andrew Sullivan writes, with increasing frequency, the same damning posts about how the administration is promoting rot in areas of rule-of-law, civil liberties, etc as many of us progressives have been writing all along. Don't be alarmed, cats have not started sleeping with dogs and Sullivan still says good things about the war in Iraq, George Will and GOP presidential hopefuls...I'm just saying he's not blind [and I am loving the well deserved trashings with which he repays the coultergeist.]

So these are the days when those with a few scruples are to be distinguished from those with a stake in the current climate of corruption. I say current. We vanquished hopelessness last November but have yet to accomplish much else in turning the tide of anti-democratic meddling and abuse of privilege that creep toward fascism. Andrew is not flunking here, not at all.

We look moment by moment for new revelations of tampering with justice by the administration but I have to stop and think what these events say about the character of the sacked attorneys. I take back every nasty generality I may ever have uttered against lawyers as a profession. The Attorneys fired by Gonzales for for not executing political dirty tricks were all appointees of that administration: All lawyers by training who recognized a greater allegiance to law and the rule of law than they do to the raw cult power and pyramid of fealty that bushco thinks should be the real force in government. In a way, I have actually made this apology to lawyers once before, but here we have a proving incident to cite. If that does not redeem lawyers in the eyes of any of you who still crack lawyer jokes then consider how close you are to the right winger's position on such matters: long before the coultergiest barfed up her latest slurs against Edwards, there was a right wing campaign against him as a VP candidate wherein the wingers expected us to find Edwards a questionable person because he was (oh horrors!) a "trial lawyer". Not that Gonzales didn't got to law school too but you really have to wonder what marks he got in Ethics.

These few attorneys who bucked the coercing to execute a directive that was wrong in their eyes paid a high price but earned my respect. There are people in the administration who operate on principle....and they are systematically being weeded out.

When they came for the net rooters, nobody was home....

While Dick Morris undoubtedly knows a lot about the machinery of politics and the inescapable effects of the electoral calendar, he seems unable to distinguish between a web page and web roots. He must write and proof his own columns because he is appearing in a perfectly web savvy publication, under the same masthead as articles by Josh Marshall.

So how will we choose who are the frontrunners before anyone has voted? How will candidates impact the polls in order to swell their coffers? The early primary date means that the virtual primaries that will designate the frontrunners will be held on cable television, the Internet, and talk radio. The Republican Virtual Primary will be held on Fox News, the Limbaugh, Hannity, and other conservative talk radio shows, and the right-wing websites. The Democratic Virtual Primary will be held on National Public Radio, PBS, a handful of liberal talk shows, the network news programs, and websites like MoveOn.org where liberals congregate.

[my emphasis]
Should I be miffed that a prominent conservative political columnist cannot accurately characterize one of the new voices in American politics or happy that, not having our address down, misunderstandings he fires at us will land unexploded in a vacant lot? Neither yet both: Better I should be apprehensive that the misunderstandings will be cordially received as accurate with the NewsMax audience...who I am glad to see stay as ignorant as their gurus. If he had mentioned DailyKos, I'd have nothing to write.

Challenging information never changes the conservative mind.

Bush has you surrounded, come out with your priorities up

Air, you won't miss it until its gone. Natural resource issues seem a remote concern to many urban and suburban Americans. But consider how at first the war seemed distant and bearable to its supporters. With each coffin and each day's deterioration in Iraq, the war comes home to main street America...and the closer it gets, the fewer its supporters. Those with misplaced revenge fantasies or a preexisting hard-on to exercise American military might are all the support the war has left. Well, that and the sorry class of people who can simply never own up to a mistake. There are many fronts on which the republican administration, listening only to its friends in industry, have degraded what was not theirs to spoil. A bit of overshadowed news today serves to remind that there are many counts to bring against the administration, many wrongs to prioritize and deal with.

While you were all distracted with botched wars, cover-ups of fudged intelligence ops and "massacres" of prosecutors who were either getting too close to a republican or failed to respond to hints they should drum up cases against Democrats, (certainly enough to keep your attention), the bush league have been giving away national heirloom resources that should have been community property of US citizens for generations to come. And they had to muzzle quite a few scientist to do it.
In today's NYTimes, there is a report of Bush appointees silencing scientists who were trying to protect your forests and wildlife even though that is exactly what the scientist's were hired to do. The article reminds of us of similar clumsy censoring of climate science at NASA last year. The bush league has mounted a steady assault on resources, environment and the people who study them. NRDC cataloged the repealed protections, exploitative grants to industry and suppression of science in 2003 and 2004: it takes 100 pages just to list the damages done. Perhaps biologists should be next to go on the endangered species list since they seem, by trade, to be stationed between environmental hen house and the republican foxes. It was this way back in the reign of Bush the 1st [I am amazed such controversial old e-mails still exist on the web]. For a contrast, consider that in the middle of the Clinton administration, US Forest Service employees were [a] recounting the coercion of their former Bush I bosses and [b] writing their own whistle blower guidelines.

The words "scientific integrity" would essentially be a redundant pairing were it not for the Bush administration and all the similar oppressors of factual inquiry back to those who silenced Galileo.