US politics – Page 41

Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow Triangulation

Published on October 2, 2007

Cartoon courtesy of Zot Media

Here’s more evidence, if much more were needed, that the Democrats, and most specifically the Clintons, are not the good guys. The cavalry is not coming – or at least not in the shape of Hillary and Bill.

Torture like Jack Bauer’s would be OK, Bill Clinton says
BY MICHAEL McAULIFF
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Monday, October 1st 2007, 4:00 AM
WASHINGTON – What the nation needs is some good Jack Bauer agents, says Bill Clinton.

Bill and Hillary Clinton apparently no longer think torture has a place in U.S. policy, but Bubba sure hopes a “24”-style cowboy steps up if someone ever nabs a terrorist who knows a bomb is about to blow.

Triangulating, much?

Should Hillary Clinton win the Democratic nomination and the next presidential election (if it’s not suspended due to a ‘national emergency’ in the meantime and if it’s not fixed if it does happen) her Presidency’ll just be more of the same: like Gordon Brown has post-Tony Blair (who?), Clinton’ll quite happily accept the unitary executive theory and to assume the powers of the previous autocrat in office once elected.

Just as SuperGordo has she’ll dress those autocratic powers in touchyfeely, management inspirospeak: but underneath the shiny smile and friendly suits will be the same old corporate tool, willing to shade any moral issue to advance their career and their sponsors’ interests.

“If you’re the Jack Bauer person, you’ll do whatever you do and you should be prepared to take the consequences,” Bill Clinton said yesterday.

In Fox’s hit show “24,” actor Kiefer Sutherland’s character Jack Bauer is regularly confronted with the ticking-time bomb scenario – and makes his own rules about how to save the country.

Pointing to the show, Clinton argued on NBC’s “Meet the Press” it was better that way because any law that approved torture could be abused.

“If you have any kind of a formal exception, people just drive a truck through it, and they’ll say, ‘Well, I thought it was covered by the exception,'” Clinton said.

“When Bauer goes out there on his own and is prepared to live with the consequences, it always seems to work better,” he said.

Torture is a substantive issue and the US news media doesn’t do subtantive, it does Jack Bauer. And hey, what does torture matter when Bill had his lollipop licked in the sacred Oval Office and Hillary cackles?

But even allowing for rightwing media spin, this isn’t the kind of moral sophistry the world needs in its leaders just now. Torture is brutal, inhuman and illegal; it’s not a finessable issue.

To see the frontrunning Democratic candidate’s partner, a former lawyer and president himself who’s well aware of torture’s illegality (which makes his words all the more reprehensible) using torture as a triangulation point and vote-grabber, is the clearest illustration there is that the leadership of the Democratic party, as it stands, is as morally corrupt – if not ethically worse because of their mealy-mouthed hypocrisy – as the Republican government they seek to replace.

Mr. Clinton was anonymously quoted earlier this week by Tim Russert during the Democratic debate on MSNBC. In that instance, Mr. Russert read a quote that suggested it was appropriate to use torture on a captured terrorist if it was known he or she had knowledge of an impending terrorist attack. Mrs. Clinton ended up opposing that view, before Mr. Russert told her it was her husband who had said it.

Mr. Obama’s campaign was clearly pleased at having unearthed this example of Mr. Clinton in 1992 arguing against Mr. Clinton in 2007. Within moments of him delivering the remark here, the Obama campaign sent out a press release, complete with a link to the video of Mr. Clinton speaking on, you guessed it, You Tube.

Leaving morals aside (something Democrats seem to be able to do with ease), in purely campaigning terms it is very clever indeed of Barack Obama to use torture as a wedge against Clinton media double-teaming. That’s the downside of the Clintons ‘twofer’ strategy: they’re saying “Look at us, we have history, we have experience, you’ll get 2 for 1” – but it’s also their weakest point: their history is their political underbelly. Norman Hsu could yet be Hillary’s undoing – Clinton/Hsu corruption is an issue being loaded into the Republican projection cannon as I type.

If the Clintons are subjected to barrage of rightwing corruption allegations they have only themselves to blame: again and again the Clintons have shown that they are willing to do anything, say anything, just as long as it picks up a few more votes. Granted they are not quite as corrupt as most Republicans but that will hardly matter – the Republican-embedded media knows damned well the best defence is a good offence. For once the target deserves it.

Old Cock-Headed Man-Whores Don’t Fade Away, They Just Get More Hypocritical

Published on October 1, 2007

Guess who said this (move away from the google – see if you can guess) about the poster for San Francisco’s Folsom Street Fair?

[…]

Herein lies the problem with those who represent themselves as the mainstream of gay “culture”. These radicals believe that their worldview, shared by only a tiny sliver of the population enjoys widespread support in American society. According to Copper, the “extreme members of the global community” are the 80% of Americans who identify themselves as Christians.

Christians cannot view the Folsom Street Fair poster and not be offended and sickened by its blatant mockery of Jesus Christ. The advertisement did not come from a heart that loves God, but one that hates the truth about sin and salvation that Jesus Christ represents. Barber correctly pointed out, “‘Gay’ activists disingenuously call Christians ‘haters’ and ‘homophobes’ for honoring the Bible, but then lash out in this hateful manner toward the very people they accuse.” My own experience with these people led me to conclude that while Christians profess to “love the sinner and hate the sin” the extremists of the Angry Gay Left “love the sin and hate the sinner.” Responsible gay leaders should speak out against the poster, but they will not, fearing the vicious attacks from the hatemongers of their own community.

[…]

Perhaps religious leaders and social conservatives should be grateful to the creators of the poster for showing America what the gay agenda really means for society.

More…

Have you guessed who it is yet?

Yes, it’s Jeff Gannnon aka Guckert, aka The Cock-Headed Man-Whore, lately of Right-bankrolled ‘news’ website Talon News and he of the late night entries through the back door of the White House (and who knows how many other back doors in the White House), the records of which the Secret Service have unnaccountably lost.

This Jeff Gannon. (Warning, full frontal willy nudity, my old blog wasn’t as sedate as this one.)

Things To Read And Look At

Published on September 25, 2007

Oh my lord. Pink guns for girls. What’s next, the Barbie AK47?

“Females want to shoot guns, but they want them to look pretty, too,” he said. “Guys could give a rat’s butt what their gun looks like.”

Experimental baking:

Sweet Corn, Maple, and Bacon Cupcakes and Doughnuts and Coffee cupcakes.

Alternet: The Federal War on Medical Marijuana Becomes a War on Children

Automatic weapons. Check. Helicopters. Check. Dogs. Check. Bulletproof vests. Check.

You may not buy the government’s characterization of its campaign against medical marijuana patients as a “war on drugs,” but increasingly violent, militaristic tactics in recent months offer a troubling glimpse into the federal law enforcement community’s mentality: To them, this is war.

Not that they’re obsessed or anything. A World of Warcraft wedding cake:

Science Daily: Racism’s Cognitive Toll: Subtle Discrimination Is More Taxing On The Brain

John Dean: The Impact of Authoritarian Conservatism On American Government: Part Three in a Three-Part Series

Under Speaker Gingrich as well as Speaker Hastert, who followed him, extreme centralization of the legislative processes of the House occurred. Regularly, GOP leaders wrote the laws themselves – often relying on lobbyists to do the grunt work of drafting – rather than abiding by the regular procedures of the committees, which hold hearings and have professional staff to draft legislation. When not actually writing the laws, the House leaders often drastically changed proposed legislation themselves, typically late in the evening when no one was around to contest their actions.

Justice for war crimes is possible.

Is it a cake or a baked potato?

Well, don’t send bacteria them into space then:

Microbes that cause salmonella came back from spaceflight even more virulent and dangerous in an experiment aboard the US space shuttle Atlantis, according to a study published on Monday.

Awww, poor little loves. Who’d want to shoot kittens from a cannon? Me! Kitten Cannon flash game:

Ein Volk, Ein Polizei, Ein National Applications Office.

Published on September 21, 2007

“The National Applications Office”.

Sounds an innocuous enough name, doesn’t it? But, according to Lindsay Bayerstein’s latest article at In These Times, like Dickens’ Circumlocution Office it’s merely a euphemism intended to hide any amount of skulduggery and underhandedness.

The NAO is a Bushco creation intended to promote, market and sell valuable information obtained by military spy satellites about us to private companies and civil law enforcement – and no-one in the Bush administration can say, or is willing to say, exactly what or who gives them the legal right to do so.

The National Applications Office, which is schedule to go live on October 1, is an office within the Department of Homeland Security.

The NAO will serve as a clearinghouse for spy satellite data for civil applications (science and the environment), homeland security, and law enforcement (national, state, and local).

The NAO is a massive expansion of the dissemination of intelligence to an entirely new group of clients. The program raises serious constitutional and civil liberties issues. Also, the DHS has said little about whether making this data available to thousands of people across the country might compromise sources and methods.

[…]

When DHS officials were called to testify before the House Committee on Homeland Security in early September, they admitted that many of their standard operating procedures hadn’t even been written down yet! The top DHS lawyer declined to testify at all.

Lindsay’s put her finger right on what’s so disturbing about this latest develeopment,

The Skynet aspect of all this is disturbing enough, as is the subterfuge and the end-run around accountability – but that’s SOP for this bunch. What’s important is the the continued blurring of the dividing line between business, private security, civil law enforcement and the military. Soon there will be no dividing line at all, there’ll just one big amorphous ‘security force’ ith sweeping and draconian powers.

These days if you were to line up an officer of each you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference: all have become little more than standard-issue paramilitaries and the government is pushing this militisation yet further. Even the Right is concerned.

I suppose this answers my question about what the Forest Service might need 700 tasers for. One security force, indivisible, with spy data for all…Bush may be stupid but he’s learned a lot from Argentina.

4. Consolidate power

Once a national security state has created a culture of fear and suppressed dissent, it may safely consolidate power, with minimal questioning by the media or challenges from dissident voices. In Argentina, power was consolidated in the military, which was given full control in the fight against “subversion.” There was no separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches – the military ran all three. There were no local or provincial elections either, and all local leaders were appointed by the dictatorship.

A key strategy of the Argentine dictatorship was to strip the judiciary of its powers. The National Commission for the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP), a commission created by the first democratically elected government after the dictatorship, specifically cited the elimination of the writ of habeas corpus as a constitutional guarantee as part of the apparatus that allowed forced disappearances to continue.

Similarly, the Bush administration is trying to consolidate power in the Executive Branch. At the President’s request, Congress agreed to handover its war-making powers to the president first in Fall 2001 with the Authorization for Use of Military Force and next in Fall 2002 with the Iraq War Resolution. (8) The Department of Homeland Security was created to manage a variety of previously independent government agencies including: the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Secret Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Coast Guard.

Remember that executive order Bush signed back in May? The one that enables him to take entire autocratic control of the US shoudl he declare it necessary in a ‘national emergency’, which he too gets to declare?

Not much point in being able to do that, if there’s a multiplicity of jurisdictions getting in the way of having your orders carried out. Better to bring it all under one big, convenient, dictatorial umbrella.

Who’s To Blame For George Bush?

Published on September 20, 2007

George Bush, that’s who.

Sidney Blumenthal in Salon, although he’s actually discussing General Petraeus’ performance before Congress in the light of Richard Draper’s aurhorised Bush biography, incidentally puts the blame where it really lies – on George Bush Sr.’and his pretensions to aristocracy..

[…]

The elder Bush assumed that the Bush family trust and its trustees — James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and Prince Bandar — would take the erstwhile wastrel and guide him on the path of wisdom. In this conception, the country was not entrusted to the younger Bush’s care so much as Bush was entrusted to the care of the trustees. He was the beneficiary of the trust. But to the surprise of those trustees, he slipped the bonds of the trust and cut off the family trustees. They knew he was ill-prepared and ignorant, but they never expected him to be assertive. They wrongly assumed that Cheney would act for them as a trustee.

Cheney had worked with and for them for decades and seemed to agree with them, if not on every detail then on the more important matter of attitude, particularly the question of who should govern. The elder Bush had helped arrange for Cheney to become the CEO of Halliburton, making him a very rich man at last. But Bush, Baker, Scowcroft et al. didn’t realize that Cheney’s apparent concurrence was to advance himself and his views, which were not theirs. When absolute power was conferred on him, the habits of deference lapsed, no longer necessary. (“Thank you for the privilege of serving today.”) Cheney was always more Rumsfeld oriented than Bush oriented. The elder Bush knew that Rumsfeld despised him and that Cheney was close to Rumsfeld, just as he knew his son’s grievous limitations. But the obvious didn’t occur to him — that Cheney would seize control of the lax son for his own purposes. The elder Bush committed a monumental error, empowering a regent to the prince who would betray the father. The myopia of the old WASP aristocracy allowed him to see Cheney as a member of his club. Cheney, for his part, was extremely convincing in playing possum. The elder Bush has many reasons for self-reproach, but perhaps none greater than being outsmarted by a courtier he thought was his trustee.

[…]

Read the whole thing

Yes, George Bush Sr, former president, was tossing around the future of not just millions of US citizens but the whole bloody world as though it were a family bauble to be disposed of on a whim. That’s just how entitled George Bush Sr. feels to power. Morals mean nothing, law means nothing, treason means nothing.

That’s because to the super-rich, the rest of us barely exist. What exists to them is money and power, not people and their annoying laws and rights. We’re just another annoying thing, we have no rights, unless they grant them to us from their beneficence. We are, at best, a necessary inconvenience. When we’re an unnecessary inconvenience… well, we’re screwed.

George Sr. and wife Barbara, their egos inflated to superimportance by years of Republican sycophancy to money, planned on Bushco being in power forever. They thought their patented child-rearing techiques had produced the ideal useful tool they could use.

But instead they’ve made a psychopathic monster that neither they nor anyone else can control. Now millions are dead, maimed or homeless and they are to blame.

I hope Bush Sr., who professes to Christianity, can’t sleep nights for guilt at what he’s done and I hope it’s sharper than a serpent’s tooth; I hope it’s a slow insinuating poison in his soul (should such a thing exist and should he have one).

It continues to amaze me that so very little public anger is turned his way: even notorious narcotic-loving nymphet Lindsey Lohan’s weirdo Dad probably gets more critical column inches than does the former president.

No doubt there are those who’d say, “They’re old now, what does it matter? They’ll be dead soon enough”, but just because Bush Sr. and his loathsome wife are old and infirm shouldn’t mean they’re absolved of any crimes against humanity.

Take Romania’s Ceaucescus and Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, for example; age didn’t spare them. Nor should it have, and neither should it spare George or Barbara Bush.