and the winner is ...

it's only wednesday but i feel pretty safe in bestowing this week's "look who's oozed out from under its rock" award and "feces flinger of the week" trophy to disgraced former FEMA head michael "heckuvajob" brown for his transparently self-serving efforts to wipe the stink of katrina onto obama:

brown:	and i think the delay was this: it's pure politics. this president has never supported big oil. he's never supported offshore drilling. and now he has an excuse to shut it back down. you've already heard bill nelson, senator from florida, saying offshore drilling is DOA. they played politics with this crisis and left the coast guard out there doing what they're supposed to do.
cavuto:	so michael, you don't take him at face value when he says a temporary halt in offshore drilling is just that — a temporary halt.
brown:	no, no. look bill nelson — and you know, they don't say these things without it being coordinated — and so now you're looking at this oil slick approaching the louisiana shore, according to certain NOAA and other places, if the winds are right it'll go up the east coast. this is exactly what they want. because now he can pander to the environmentalists and say, 'i'm going to shut it down because it's too dangerous.' while mexico and china and everybody else drills in the gulf, we're going to get shut down.

brown:	hey, hey, chris, i think there's two things. i think, one, we're seeing the rahm emanuel rule number one, ah, taking effect. and that is, "let no crisis go unused". so, this is an opportunity for a president who wants to bankrupt the coal industry and basically get rid of the oil and gas industry to shut down offshore drilling in the gulf of mexico.
	[snip]
matthews:	why would somebody sabotage something that would cause this kind of damage to our planet, really?
brown:	oh well, because i think there are terrorists in the world who would like to do that sort of thing. terrorists don't give a rat's butt about the ecology or anything else. all they care about is hurting america.
	[snip]
matthews:	... but he just came out for offshore oil drilling.
brown:	oh, chris, ah, i'm glad you asked that. he came out and said, look, i'm going to approve oil and gas drilling. and all you guys went, look what a great guy he is, trying to reach out to everybody else. chris, all he did was he approved two existing leases on the northeast coast, and shut down all the other proposed leases on the west coast and the southeast coast. there was nothing new in what he did.
matthews:	but don't you know what you're saying to a third party, not somebody like myself or somebody like yourself, listening to you, thinks that you're sounding insane. you're saying that the president of the united states went into slow-mo here, somehow — or for somehow seemed to be working faster than he really was, but was really quite slow to get there, because he saw an opportunity to exploit a disaster so that he could reap discredit on to the coal industry. and by the way, a couple of weeks ago —
brown:	no, no, no, not just the coal ...
matthews:	— he came down for offshore drilling so that he could discredit it when this thing occurred. are you suggesting he somehow knew this would happen and that's why he came out for offshore drilling?
brown:	no, no ...
matthews:	it sounds like that's what you're saying —
brown:	no, no, chris, hang on ...
matthews:	— and it sounds crazy. crazy!
brown:	well, and the way you just put it, chris, the way you just put it, it sounds crazy to me, too.

joe ponders the palin pick

well, it's certainly been a tough week for gop-veepee-lottery-winner sarah palin. it's also been a tough week for her soul mate, former-pow-did-you-know-turned-maverick-presidential-also-ran john mcsame. (but we should all be happy that a guy his age can still find happiness so soon after the loss of another wife. what? you hadn't heard about cindy? tragedy. must've gotten buried in all the chatter about bristol, her baby and its father, all of whom i hear, are also having a tough week.)

it's also been tough on the republicans, what with their convention having not only a genuinely tough act to follow from across the aisle, but also with having to contend with the misdirected anger of the weather gods (thanks for nothing, stu!) and the restless ghosts of new orleans, who are surely making things tough for just about everybody on the gulf coast.

but just as surely as no one, absolutely no one, wants to end the war in iraq more than our erstwhile democrat joe lieberman (he just wants it to end in 2108, apparently), no one, absolutely no one, can be having a tougher week than the last honest man.

painfully, no doubt, after months of doing all the heavy lifting personally holding up mcsame's bearings in one hand, and with the other tirelessly slipping the knife, again and again, into his soon-to-be-former-caucus-mates, poor joe-just-can't-get-a-break-lieberman had to watch all his careful machinations upended and all his aspirations unceremoniously dumped into the comely lap of a bubble-headed upstart from that god-forsaken-frozen-backwater-three-electoral-votes-are-you-effin-kidding-me i-don't-wanna-be-a-state-of-alaska, of all places. and then, to top it all, having to dutifully take the stage in minnesota, not as a proud running mate on a winning ticket, but as an unappreciated z-list shill at the coming-out party for a modern-day wolf moose gal, in front of a scattershot crowd of dullards and ingrates. how truly bitter his words must have tasted.

but november is still a whole two months away, so joe will probably look forward to a little time away from the klieg lights. time enough for this sad little creature to crawl back to his den, lick his (self-inflicted) wounds (again!) and get back to work on that shrinking list of imaginary friends while thoughtfully fingering the well-worn blade on the only thing he can trust:

gollieberman: master has betwayed us! he wants the pweshuss all for himself! smeajoe: no, no, no! master likes us! master said so himself! gollieberman: master wants the palin! he wants to give it the pweshuss! our pweshuss! the palin must die! smeajoe: no, no! if we kill the palin, the master will hate us! the palin is pwetty — and we are not! and he won't give us the pweshuss! gollieberman: no ... we shan't kill the palin, but the palin is stupid! we are smart! we can twick it, make it twip and fall! make master look foolish! smeajoe: yesss ... yes! then master will hate the palin, and send it away! gollieberman: yesss ... then master will pay! like the democwatsss will pay! we will kill the master and take the pweshuss for us! then smeajoe will be the master!!

moose gal may have to watch her back ...

prayers answered

one-time pastor and one-time tv meteorologist stuart shepard, director of digital media at focus on the family action, a lobbying arm for hardcore conservative evangelicals, asks his viewers to focus on rain:

hi, i'm stuart shepard. this is "stoplight". would it? would it be? would it be wrong ... to ask people to pray? would it be wrong if we asked people to pray ... for rain? okay, not just rain. abundant rain, torrential rain, urban-and-small-stream-flood-advisory rain. would it be wrong if we prayed for rain on, say, a particular day or night, at, say, a particular location? oh, say, the evening of august 28th, right here at mile-high stadium in denver? during the primetime tv hour, when a certain presumptive nominee is set to give a certain acceptance speech at a certain democratic national convention? i'm talking-umbrellas-ain't-gonna-help-you-rain. not flood-people-out-of-their-houses rain, just good ol' swamp-the-intersections rain. we're not asking for hail the size of canned hams or lightning bolts to set the bunting on fire. just rain, beautiful rain, network-cameras-can't-see-the-podium rain. attendees-can't-walk-back-to-the-indoor-arena-without-wishing-for-hip-waders rain. i know, you might ask why would i pray for that? well, i'm still pro-life, and i'm still in favor of marriage being only between one man and one woman. and i'd like the next president who will select justices for the u.s. supreme court to agree. so i'm praying for unexpected, unanticipated, unforecasted rain that starts two minutes before the speech is set to begin. would it be wrong to pray for rain? i don't have any special insight or special connections. i'm just an ordinary guy who's looking for people, lots of people who feel like i do, to pray for rain. now i know there'll probably be people who'll pray for 72 degrees and clear skies, but this isn't a contest. but if god decides — and it's always up to god to decide — if god decides that rain of biblical proportions would be a good and proper meteorological condition for that evening, we'll see it and we'll say that it is good. and if he decides that it's not really necessary, i'm okay with that. i'll still trust in his wisdom and i'll rest peacefully knowing that lots of us offered up a humble prayer request. would it be so wrong if we asked people to pray ... for rain?

so how'd all that wishin' and hopin' and prayin' work out for stu?

obama accepts nomination, rocks invesco the night turned out as only [obama's] advisers could have dreamed. a huge crowd — roughly 80,000 in all — at times frenzied, at times rapt. perfect weather. fluttering american flags for the television cameras.

well, tough beans for the evangelicals, but stu's says he's okay with that. meanwhile, somebody, somewhere, is getting their prayers answered:

gop considers delaying convention republican officials said yesterday that they are considering delaying the start of the gop convention in minneapolis-st. paul because of tropical storm gustav, which is on track to hit the gulf coast, and possibly new orleans, as a full-force hurricane early next week. the threat is serious enough that white house officials are also debating whether president bush should cancel his scheduled convention appearance on monday, the first day of the convention, according to administration officials and others familiar with the discussion. ... staging a convention during a major natural disaster would be a public relations challenge, for either political party. but gop officials say the burden could be especially heavy for their party, whose reputation was tarred by the bush administration's bungling of katrina and its aftermath in 2005. ... "the american people want to know the people they elected are paying attention, care about them and are making decisions they need to make," [former fema chief michael] brown said. "the smart thing is not to poke their chests out and say what a great job they're doing or going to do, but just to do what needs to be done."

would it be so wrong to pray for rain? let's ask the republicans.

update:

rain is not all some are praying for ...

no halli-prisons, either

i'm starting to think that the white house, now that it's entering lame duck mode, is leaking executive orders for no other reason than to savor the sheer sadistic joy of scaring the bejeezus out of left blogistan every few days. and left blogistan never fails to deliver on the shrieks.

my previous post covered the latest presidential "finding" on iran and gave my reasons, once again, why we aren't going to be nuking iran tomorrow. it's probably no coincidence that washington and teheran thawed a 27-year diplomatic freeze in the same week this "finding" was leaked. "don't worry," seems to be the message to their fellow neocon war-mongers, "we're just putting on a show for the cameras ... we're still planning to screw these guys" — wink, wink.

now "national security presidential directive 51/homeland security presidential directive 20" has hit the internets and once again the old ladies are fanning their breasts because bush is apparently stealthily grabbing dictatorial emergency powers for himself. considering that the directives are posted on the white house web site, it's not much of a stealth move.

in fact, enough of a to-do was raised that the ordinarily agnostic investigative blogger josh marshall decided to invite a small panel of experts in law, government and civil rights to vet the directives. how scary were bush's orders? not so much:

the consensus amongst experts seems to be that the directive, aimed at establishing "continuity of government" after a major disaster, is not new nor does the policy seem to expand executive power. in fact, mike german, the policy counsel to the aclu’s washington office told me that an executive continuity plan actually might “not be that bad of an idea.” executive power expert, nyu law professor david golove, also sent me an email saying the directive didn’t appear to be a power grab. ... german called the release a positive sign, but said he urges the release of all previous directives so we can get a real sense of what has changed. the concept of continuity of government applies to all branches of government. christopher kelleye, a presidency expert and political science professor at miami university ohio told me in an email that he didn’t see any new powers listed in the directive, but wondered why congress hasn’t done the same thing.

granted, marshall's panel is an informal poll, but the great majority of his commenters were hardly reassured:

"the directive that was signed may 14/15 is the most troubling ... it is his way of having total power in the event of a natural or man made disaster ..." "i scare myself just thinking that an administration could/would perpetrate a catastrophy on it's [sic] own people just to retain political power ..." "even if this power is nothing new, what is new is a president so untrustworthy that i'll not be surprised if a false flag attack occurs next year in october, bush declares martial law, and he suspends the national election. i expect this supreme court would support him and gonzales (should he survive his term in the doj) would bring all the police power of the federal government to maintain bush." "of course, a blatant "coup" by bush, turning the federal government into the bushchaneyrove junta has been slowly in the making for some time, or haven't you noticed? the directive 51 is just the vaseline to make slide in more easily when they decide to not just ignore, but do away with the congress ..." "can homeland security remove you from your home, or place you in one of the haliburton camps? direct which corporations or other businesses get priority on the highways? on rail transit? will the internet be coopted, in the naqme [sic] of national security to keep us from commmunicating?" "remember that halliburton contract a yr ago to build new u.s. detention camps" "he is probably preparing to take over the country after the next presidential elections. he will have one of his goons call in an attack on us and then say 'look we just got attacked and i think i am the best person to take over, new president elect and the constitution be damned.'" "george has nothing to look forward too once he leaves office, he's served his purpose and will be of no concern. but, if he can make sure that the us military is effectively stuck in iraq, and not able to offer any resistance, his private army made up of mercs from blackwater and dyncorp to name just two can establish martial law and he can keep remain the president for as long as he pleases."

hmmm ... now let's all take a deep breath.

look people, a lot of you guys — too many — sound like the same chicken littles who were endlessly predicting false flag attacks and martial law all of last year in the run-up to the midterms, and all of 2004 in the run-up to the presidential elections ...

while it makes exciting and breathless blog chatter, i still don't see it, folks. it's not like bushco™ hasn't already had ample opportunities to set these paranoid fantasies into motion.

because i don't recall congress being abolished nor any martial law decrees being issued nor any halliburton death camps being filled after 9-11.

nor any after katrina.

nor before the 2002 midterms. nor the 2004 elections. nor the 2006 midterms.

so tell me, just what are our neocon overlords waiting for?

one year later

almost one year ago, clinton administration jetsam dick morris washed up on fox news and made this bold prediction about hurricane katrina's impact on bush's popularity:

y'know, george bush basically believes the federal government should do two things: fight wars and help people recover from disasters and now he's got both on his plate. i think that his ratings are gonna soar! not necessarily in the next three days, but over the next year he's gonna look so good doing all this stuff.

morris' hosts — even bush apologist-in-chief sean hannity — were understandably skeptical:

morris: ... the people who said this storm is gonna hurt bush's presidency are just wrong. he can get all the money he wants out of congress 'cause of this disaster, the people will be solidly behind him, the media will cover it like crazy, and he's gonna look like santa claus. colmes: so if you're advising democrats now, how would you advise them to react? morris: to shut up and stop harping — colmes: ha! "shut up" ... ! morris: — and screaming and hollering and pointing fingers, and start amassing national credits by showing the same liberal democratic compassion bush did. colmes: so they should just agree with him and say he's doing a great job. morris: yeah, they — just like right after 9/11, they hurt themselves by any kind of carping. ah, bush — this speech was fantastic! [ snip ] morris: ... you have a president that doesn't think government should do a lot. but he believes they should fight wars and that was the first term, and they believe they should recover from disasters and that's the second term. man, is this guy fortunate! hannity: [chuckling] fortunate to have a disaster? morris: fortunate to be able to be president at a time when he can respond without violating his principles.

with bush's approval at 41% (according to a fox news poll released on the day of the broadcast), dick probably thought his analysis was not completely ludicrous, since bush seemed to have nowhere to go but up:

today, 41 percent of voters approve and 51 percent disapprove of president bush’s performance, which is the lowest job rating he has received in a fox news poll. the president’s approval rating is down 4 percentage points from two weeks ago (45 percent, august 30-31), around the time the magnitude of katrina’s damage was becoming clear. before the hurricane, 47 percent approved and 44 percent disapproved (july 26-27).

well, after a year of bush's "liberal democratic compassion", dick may have been at least half-right — bush had nowhere to go. nowhere but down, that is, and he's dragging his republican-led congress down with him:

the new poll finds the [sic] 36 percent of americans approve of president bush’s job performance and 56 percent disapprove. these results are in line with the ratings the president has received for the last couple of months. moreover, for the past three surveys the gap between approval among republicans (76 percent) and democrats (10 percent) has been 66 percentage points. the assessment of the job congress is doing continues to be abysmal, as more than twice as many americans say they disapprove (58 percent) as approve (24 percent).

to be fair, dick's fawning pronouncements would not necessarily have been so pathetically absurd had he been prognosticating about any other president than the dismal one we are presently stuck with. to vindicate dick's wet dreams of republican munificence, all nero bush needed to do was to roll up his sleeves and simply deliver on dick's assurances of timely and tangible material support to katrina's victims.¹ compassion — if bush actually has any to give — without assistance is nothing more than contempt.

it was sickening enough that dick neglected to acknowledge the federal government's own culpability in the disaster that so fortuitously befell louisiana. but did dick truly believe that this potemkin administration ever intended to provide new orleans with more than a white wash and red tape? did he truly believe that the destruction of a major american city ever meant more to bush than just an opportunity for another series of woefully ineffectual photo-ops in bush's non-stop dog-and-pony tribute to himself?

---

¹ and of course, while he's at it, bush would also need to pacify iraq and lower oil prices and catch osama bin laden and jump-start the economy and ...

november won't wait

in bush country, when it rains, it pours and pours and pours and pours and pours ...

if the republicans think that they can simply batten down the hatches and ride out the cruel storm season that's settled permanently on bush's second term, they're slowly but surely finding out how utterly futile that strategy is. it's a strategy predicated on the hope that the storm doesn't get worse and ends quickly.

cia director porter goss' abrupt resignation was only the latest of a repetitive series of heavily publicized blows to bush's keeling ship of state. before this last thunderbolt, republicans were just getting themselves comfortable with the grim thought of only losing control of the house, like a bunch of convicts settling into electric chairs:

bill kristol: as of right now, republicans will lose the house. (march 5)

mclaughlin group: tony blankley: i think most republican operatives believe, if the election were held today, that they'd lose the house and it would be close in the senate. pat buchanan: the democrats would take the house and they'd have a good chance of taking the senate. eleanor clift: i think a democratic takeover of the house, yes. (april 7)

pundit david brooks even goes so far as to suggest not only that losing would be a good tonic for republicans, but that democrats would actually behave themselves!

there's really a torpor in the administration. they're not doing anything right now. i think it's now likely to move the house — that they will lose the house. and i think house republicans, privately, most of them admit that. for like a year they were saying, "well, we've got it so sewed up with redistricting. we'll lose, but we won't lose the whole house." i'd say about two weeks ago the conventional wisdom shifted and people said, "we're in such trouble. we are going to lose the house." personally, i think it would be good for the republican party because it would make them a little more responsive. it would be good for the democratic party; they'd be a little more responsible. but i think now it's likely they will lose the house. if the democrats can't win now, when are they ever going to win? (april 2)

by now it must be painfully obvious to republicans that their lowered expectations are never going to be low enough. they've wanted to believe that public support would eventually bounce back, from iraq, katrina, the cheney shooting, dubai, gas prices — but they've been proven wrong every time. that's because the lord nelson they put at the helm of their navy turned out to be an ahab who's firmly lashed himself to the wheel and threatens to drag them all the way down to the bottom with him. they made their deal with the devil; they traded their principles for power; now they'll be left with neither.

very soon, if it is not already too late, republicans, as a group, are going to have to throw up their hands and say "enough! we can't take this shit any more! this is killing us!" they are going to have to make a stand. they can no longer afford their meager expectations or their dwindling hopes.

they are going to have to take some kind of proactive and substantive role — one far more meaningful to the electorate than a photo op or a $100 gas bribe — if they hope to stanch this massive hemorrhaging of their electoral prospects. only by enacting real legislation and real reforms that tangibly benefit the electorate will republicans be able to stave off their banishment to the political backwaters. legislation calling for a withdrawal from iraq; for campaign and lobbying reform; for reducing the deficit; for reducing gas prices; for creating jobs and raising the minimum wage; for expanding healthcare.

such an effort necessarily involves taking on their dear leader, head-on, mano-a-mano, just for their own survival. for five years republicans have obsequiously accommodated his every whim, but bush's leprous administration has mutated into a ten-ton albatross, a nosferatu sucking the life-force from the party and dragging it into hell. writing on bush's efforts in iraq and iran, columnist thomas friedman likens the white house to a bunch of drunken drivers:

as someone who believed — and still believes — in the importance of getting iraq right, the level of incompetence that the bush team has displayed in iraq, and its refusal to acknowledge any mistakes or remove those who made them, make it impossible to support this administration in any offensive military action against iran. i look at the bush national security officials much the way i look at drunken drivers. i just want to take away their foreign policy driver's licenses for the next three years. sorry, boys and girls, you have to stay home now — or take a taxi. dial 1-800-nato-charge-a-ride. you will not be driving alone. not with my car. (april 19)

yes, it is well past time to revoke junior's license. so how do republicans strip him of that privilege? the answer lies in challenging bush on his abuse of signing statements.

the boston globe reported how bush has used the signing statements in hundreds of instances to exempt himself from being bound from any law passed by congress:

bush is also the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, an act that gives public notice that he is rejecting a law and can be overridden by congress. instead, bush has used signing statements to declare that he can bypass numerous provisions in new laws. (may 3)

in their challenge to bush, republicans must flatly refuse to recognize any signing statement he attempts to append to any bill. henchforth they must allow bush only to sign or veto a bill, in accordance with orthodox senate tradition. democrats will have no problem joining republicans in such a challenge, especially in defense of strong legislation. already forces are gathering for just such a showdown:

boston globe: the chairman of the senate judiciary committee, accusing the white House of a ''very blatant encroachment" on congressional authority, said yesterday he will hold an oversight hearing into president bush's assertion that he has the power to bypass more than 750 laws enacted over the past five years. ''there is some need for some oversight by congress to assert its authority here," arlen specter, republican of pennsylvania, said in an interview. ''what's the point of having a statute if ... the president can cherry-pick what he likes and what he doesn't like?" (may 3)

but will republicans recognize the true magnitude of the opportunity materializing before them?

bush will no doubt put up a fight to preserve his enlarged domain. if republicans have any hope of restraining ahab, and honestly wish to rehabilitate themselves in eyes of their constituents, they will make their stand here, take their case loudly before the public and force bush to respect all aspects of the laws they pass in their entirety. would bush veto a bill calling for a withdrawal from iraq? or one for reducing the deficit? especially if such bills were backed by a veto-proof majority from both parties? if congress chooses to ignore him in exactly the manner he's ignored them, who will give a fuck?

it's time for congress to show bush what it's like to be powerless. i can find no other means of redemption for republicans other than an act of defiance and integrity. it very well may be too late for them in the eyes of the electorate. it may not win them back any voters that already have been lost. at this stage of the game, it may be simply a matter of keeping the voters they still have, but what other options lay open to them?

washington post: "this administration may be over," lance tarrance, a chief architect of the republicans' 1960s and '70s southern strategy, told a gathering of journalists and political wonks last week. "by and large, if you want to be tough about it, the relevancy of this administration on policy may be over." (may 7)

but the fate of the republicans is insignificant compared to the fate of the country. as long as bush is allowed to hang onto his license and remain petulantly unchallenged, as long as he threatens nuclear armageddon, pisses away the treasury and reduces every agency to a fema, the entire crew, republican, democrat and independent, remain on course to go down in flames with him. dear leader is tearing the country down around his thick granite skull. with a guaranteed new fiasco every week for the next six months, november can't wait.

in truth, i don't expect the republicans to take the high road. that would require a unity they no longer exercise. had they been on the high road, had they placed country before party, they would not now be writing their own obituary. i expect them to fracture and take their chances locally running on their individual merits. they will take what looks like the easy way out. so divided they will fall, hunkered in their cabins, hoping to wait out the storm. but the electorate won't wait with them.

so if november comes to find the republicans reduced to irrelevancy, they will have only their own cowardice to blame. they will not be missed.

al gore: we simply cannot afford to wait 1,000 days to put the brakes on the bush agenda ... the level of cynicism and crass political calculation ... is truly breathtaking. (may 7)

our worst fears

elizabeth dole is afraid. very afraid. the country is headed toward disaster.

as in a terrorist attack? another katrina-sized storm? an incurable pandemic? financial collapse?

not exactly — but the enemies are at the gates.

as in osama? zarqawi? iran? north korea?

not exactly —

associated press: washington — the head of the senate republican committee paints a dire picture of democratic congressional control, warning that the opposition party would "put the war on terrorism on the back-burner" and maybe even impeach president bush. in a fundraising appeal this week, sen. elizabeth dole, r-n.c., asks for immediate financial help "to prevent the most left-wing democrat party in history from seizing control of the united states senate" in the november elections. ... in the fundraising letter, dole rails against liberal democrats in the senate and warns that if they prevail, "our worst fears" will be realized. she argues that empowered democrats would "increase your taxes, call for endless investigations, congressional censure and maybe even impeachment of president bush, put the war on terrorism on the back-burner" and "take over the white house in 2008!" she assured the recipients of the fundraising letter that she was working around the clock "to help our country avoid this disaster."

all hyperbole aside, while the country might not be on the edge of extinction, senate republicans most certainly are, and who would know better than their own nervous staffers, whose continued well-being depends wholly on their bosses' uninterrupted incumbency, as related by one purported congressional insider:

as many of you know, when congress is in session, most of my working days are spent on the hill. i have contacts on both sides of the hill and both sides of the aisle on both sides, people i have known for years and chat with. the republicans on both sides of capitol hill are running scared right now. very scared. the staffers i know on more than one committee have been told that if the republicans lose the majority in november, they will lose their jobs, so now is the time to start making connections with representatives and senators in safe seats, republican organizations, friendly lobbyists and the like and putting together resumes. there is a mood of despondency in republican circles, and the conventional wisdom in some of those circles is that loss of at least one house is inevitable. the conventional wisdom is also that loss of one chamber will be disastrous because the resulting investigations will bring the whole house of cards crashing down around the party's ankles.

if i were looking at not just unemployment, but probes and trials and sentences, i'd be scared too. come november, a lot of republicans may be grabbing their ankles.

endgame

the bush presidency, to borrow a phrase from its dour deputy, is in its last throes.

32 years ago it was a "second-rate burglary" that brought down the highest office in the land. today it appears, at first glance, far less — mere snippets of "almost gossip", delivered, we are told, in an "offhand, casual manner" — that now threaten again to collapse an office already on its knees beneath a debilitating barrage of ceaseless scandal.

bush's folly can be traced from his team's opening moves, when the texas governor, taking advantage of the climate lingering after clinton's impeachment, made a campaign mantra out of a sacred and solemn promise to usher in an age of honor:

august 11, 2000: i will swear to uphold the laws of the land. but i will also swear to uphold the honor and the integrity of the office to which i have been elected, so help me god. august 13, 2000: americans want to be assured that the next administration will bring honor and dignity to the white house. september 15, 2000: americans are tired of investigations and scandal, and the best way to get rid of them is to elect a new president who will bring a new administration, who will restore honor and dignity to the white house. october 17, 2000: should i be fortunate enough to become your president, when i put my hand on the bible, i will swear to not only uphold the laws of the land, but i will also swear to uphold the honor and the dignity of the office to which i have been elected, so help me god. november 3, 2000: i want to conclude by telling you i understand the awesome responsibilities of this job. i understand the serious undertaking. i understand that when i put my hand on the bible, i will swear to not only uphold the laws of this land, but to answer the calls of the mothers and dads who i see all the time around america, who come to my rallies and hold a picture of their child and look me in the eye and say, "governor, i'm here to say, never let us down again," to hear those calls. i will also swear to uphold the honor and the integrity of the office to which i have been elected, so help me god.

it was a promise he would not forget to reiterate as he swore in his staff:

january 22, 2001: we must remember the high standards that come with high office. this begins with careful adherence to the rules. i expect every member of this administration to stay well within the boundaries that define legal and ethical conduct. this means avoiding even the appearance of problems. this means checking and, if need be, double-checking that the rules have been obeyed. this means never compromising those rules. no one in the white house should be afraid to confront the people they work for, for ethical concerns, and no one should hesitate to confront me as well. we are all accountable to one another. and above all, we are all accountable to the law and to the american people.

but my, what a difference 1900 days make!

even without such stultifying failures as the iraq occupation, the stillborn response to hurricane katrina and the dubious dubai port deal, the grinding investigation into the july 2003 outing of cia agent valerie plame seemed destined to erode the one asset that pundits continue to insist the president still commands:

blitzer: here's what you write in the book. you write: "candidates have to look closely at george w. bush and realize that they cannot win by running away from the leader of their party. rather, they have to identify the single greatest strength the president embodies and put it front and center in their campaigns." "that greatest strength," you write, "is, in fact, trustworthiness." now, we looked at our most recent cnn/"usa today"/gallup poll. in february 2004, two years ago, 55 percent thought bush was honest and trustworthy. that has gone down now, in february 2006, to 47 percent, not even a majority. hewitt: yes. but that's still much better than most of his other numbers on performance. it's his strongest calling card. — the situation room, cnn, march 31, 2006

just as nixon had at the beginning of watergate, bush, speaking through press secretary scott mcclellan, denied all involvement and knowledge in the scandal. he even declared the leak a firing offense ...

september 29, 2003: the president has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. he's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. if anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.

... and speaking on his own, hinted suspiciously, that despite his sincerest efforts, the leaker might never be found:

september 30, 2003: there’s just too many leaks, and if there is a leak out of my administration, i want to know who it is. october 7, 2003: i want to know the truth. … i have no idea whether we’ll find out who the leaker is, partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers. october 28, 2003: i’d like to know if somebody in my white house did leak sensitive information.

the press, however, failed the president, despite his sincerest hints. unwilling to suffer jail for contempt, time magazine reporter matthew cooper revealed that both karl rove and scooter libby were his sources on the plame story, forcing bush the next day to refine his position:

july 18, 2005: it's best people wait until the investigation is complete before you jump to conclusions. i don't know all the facts. i want to know all the facts. i would like this to end as quickly as possible. if someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration.

but cooper's revelation had dealt bush's credibility a solid blow; an abc news poll found that only 25% believed that the white house was fully cooperating with fitzgerald's investigation and that 75% thought that rove should be fired if he leaked classified information.

by the time fitzgerald finally handed down his indictment of scooter libby on charges of obstruction and perjury, scott mcclellan informed the press that the white house had decided that the best defense was now no defense at all:

october 28, 2005 : because of the ongoing investigation and legal proceedings, at the direction of the white house counsel's office, all white house officials, including myself, are not going to be able to respond to questions or discuss the factual circumstances of the matter, except as requested by the special counsel, or in consultation with the white house counsel's office.

bush himself issued only his regrets at libby's resignation. a week later came the announcement of an eight-part refresher course on ethics for the staff, no doubt to the collective rolling of eyes from coast to coast.

but as embarrassing as the scandal grew, as tight as the noose became, the president himself remained unimplicated in the leak.

this, of course, would soon change.

explosively.

ironically, it would be libby himself (considered by many the "firewall" between the prosecutor and his employers) who secured the knot, as revealed in fitzgerald's bombshell april filing in response to libby's request for documents for his own defense:

april 6, 2006: mr. libby is said to have testified that "at first" he rebuffed mr. cheney's suggestion to release the information because the estimate was classified. however, according to the vice presidential aide, mr. cheney subsequently said he got permission for the release directly from mr. bush. "defendant testified that the vice president later advised him that the president had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the [national intelligence estimate]," the prosecution filing said.

after several days of silence, bush would admit, in a cheneyesque display of sophistry, that while he had indeed authorized the leak, not only was the intel no longer classified, but his authorization meant that the leak wasn't really a leak at all:

april 10, 2006: i decided to declassify the nie for a reason. i wanted people to see what some of those statements were based on, so i wanted people to see the truth.

such noble sentiment. nonetheless, bush's noose is threatening to become a gibbet, as the fitzgerald filing also bluntly revealed a basis for conspiracy charges all around:

april 7, 2006: [libby] wants the materials because he thinks they will show that his misstatements were innocent and did not stem from an orchestrated administration campaign to discredit wilson, according to his court filings. fitzgerald's brief uses unusually strong language to rebut this claim. in light of the grand jury testimony, the prosecutor said, "it is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of white house efforts to 'punish' wilson."

it appears that the game the white house has been playing over the last five years is drawing to a desperate close. it was a game in which honor and dignity were nothing more than chips and tokens; morals and ethics just a strategem. it is an old gambit, to be sure, and if there remains anyone left at all surprised by the endgame, it is probably only bush and his once-swaggering team. but now the entire board itself is in near total ruin, with his pawns being stripped, one by one, while the king himself stands naked:

pew research center: until now, the most frequently offered word to describe the president was "honest," but this comes up far less often today than in the past. other positive traits such as "integrity" are also cited less, and virtually no respondent used superlatives such as "excellent" or "great", terms that came up fairly often in previous surveys. the single word most frequently associated with george w. bush today is "incompetent," and close behind are two other increasingly mentioned descriptors: "idiot" and "liar." all three are mentioned far more often today than a year ago. newsweek's johnathan alter: there are not a lot of people who expect him to move very much in the polls. and once you're tagged as an incompetent, that's pretty hard to recover from. gop pollster tony fabrizio : these numbers are scary. we’ve lost every advantage we’ve ever had.

checkmate.

cry uncle

so much for the radical conservative plan for a permanent republican majority. it doesn't appear to have had any more staying power than the "thousand-year" reich.

i guess a taste of absolute power — or as much as could be had within our system — over both the government and the media will do that to a movement as morally bankrupt as this one proved to be.

if i could isolate the hamartia, the single critical flaw responsible for the downfall of the conservative agenda i would point to its rampant cronyism. cronyism is of course nothing unique to this administration, nor is it inherently evil; it is quite natural for people to want to extend their largess to those whom they like, a characteristic that makes cronyism impossible to eradicate.

cronyism is typically harmless when its beneficiaries are rewarded with positions that exist in title only, even if those positions do contribute to administrative bloat. but tangible harm looms when qualified people are prevented from assuming or are forced out of positions where their expertise is mandated. people like former treasury secretary paul o'neill, who disagreed with bush on his tax cuts. people like former counter-terrorism advisor richard clarke, who disagreed with bush on the threat of al quaeda. people like retired generals anthony zinni and eric shinseki, who disagreed with bush on invading iraq.

cronyism breeds incompetence when it elevates unqualified and untalented people into positions of importance and influence. people like former nasa press director george deutsch, who attempted to turn the science agency into a propaganda organ. people like former fema director michael brown, whose incompetence in the face of hurricane katrina delivered fatal consequences. people like president george walker bush, who of course needs no further introduction.

the bush administration is a potemkin government: by virtue of their elevation of politics over policy and appearance over substance, they eventually and inevitably reveal themselves to be completely inept in every instance where actual governance is required. disaster follows them like a love-sick dog.

it is actually quite amazing the speed with which the hard-line conservatives have burned through their so-called "capital". after forty years in the wilderness, they blew their gains in just ten years. so it looks like it's back to the desert for this sorry crew. the lesson has become painfully obvious to all, even to the members of a party so practiced in the art of denial:

time.com: former speaker of the house newt gingrich, who masterminded the 1994 elections that brought republicans to power on promises of revolutionizing the way washington is run, told time that his party has so bungled the job of governing that the best campaign slogan for democrats today could be boiled down to just two words: "had enough?"

shaft's final solution

kamau rashidi kambon wants to kill white people.

not just some white people. not just any white people. kambon wants to "exterminate white people off the face of the planet."

who is kamau rashidi kambon? according to wikipedia, kambon is a multi-degreed educator, author and spokesman on issues of concern to african americans.

on october 14, 2005, at the "hurricane katrina & issues facing african americans" symposium hosted at washington, d.c.'s howard university and broadcast live on c-span, kambon made the following remarks, transcribed in their entirety:

i want to say a couple of things, and i really don't want you all to miss me before we get ready to go. my wife was here and she was the president of the association of black psychologists a couple of years ago and she was responsible for taking about five hundred people including about three hundred black psychologists to ghana, west africa for their national conference. the reason i point that out is because i want to say a couple of things and i'm gonna go out of bounds with what i have to say, relative to what we've been talking about. first of all, i grew up in brooklyn, and i saw, looking back on my life, i saw about thirty of my friends die. y'know, getting shot, overdosing on drugs, any number of things that took them off the planet, y'know, beautiful brothers. so as i started to become more conscious, i looked around, i started asking this very important question, i think the most important question that i asked myself and that you can ask yourself is "why?" and i wanted to find out what was going on. so i began to change. i began to examine everything, i don't like to use the word "critically", but i started to really check things out. so i went through a very very serious change. i mean serious change. and what my wife and i did, we decided that we were going to drop out from this system. we delivered two of three of our children at home using midwives. she didn't take any medication, we didn't go to a doctor. she talked me into doing that, but it was a beautiful experience for me to be there to help deliver our children. they were born, by the way, two years apart on the same day, and our oldest daughter helped us deliver our children. we also changed our diets. we saw the hospital system was killing our people, so we changed our diets. we have been vegan for about thirty years. that means no meat ... [applause] no meat at all in any form, no dairy products, no sugar, no white flour, the same thing that dr. whittaker talked about. because we understood that we were in a war. i want to emphasize that to you. we are in a war. we left new york and went to north carolina and we, and really, it's on her again, we decided that we were not going to go in debt because the new form of slavery was economic slavery. and we got some land, we were very fortunate, and we built our own house. we built a log house. took us sixteen months, we worked night and day, every day, for the sixteen months, and she was out there with a chain saw, in the cold, in the rain, and we worked and we built the house so we would not have to give white people any money. i taught on the college level for a number of years at a so-called "black college", and i'm down against "black colleges", i'm'a tell you straight up, 'cause of some of the madness that's going on in these schools. but what i want to say is that there are two things going on on the planet now. one is that when white people came to us and said we're going to free you, we're going to emancipate you from the plantation, what they did was extended the boundaries of the plantation and made it a international plantation. made us think that we were free. in addition to that they made every white person on earth a plantation master or owner. so there are two things in operation. we are in an international prison. not just in america but everywhere we go our people are dying. so the things that are in operation on this planet is that white people want to kill us. i want you to understand that. they want to kill you. and it has nothing to do with what kind of degree you have, what kind of car you have, what kind of title you have, what fraternity you belong to, what religion you belong to, they want to kill you because that is part of their plan. there are any number of reasons why they want to do that but i'm not gonna waste my time trying to figure out why they want to kill us. but i know that's what they want to do. and they want to do it in many different ways — psychological, economic, cultural, spiritual, social, biological, chemical, electromagnetic — they want to kill you. but they also want to make money in the process of your death. now i saw a brother when i was coming in and he was smoking a cigarette. so now he going to kill himself but they're going to make money off of his death process. the other thing is that they want us to — if they don't kill us, like they tried to kill the brother by beating him up in new orleans, they don't kill us that way, or shooting like they killed the brother in cincinatti, or like they killed malice green in detroit, or like they killed gammage up in pittsburgh, if they don't come out, right, and kill us straight, they want to get us to kill ourselves. now these are the only two operations on the planet. the other thing is that there's only one nigger on the planet — i never use that word. this is the first time i've used, i don't even think that word — but there's only one nigger on the planet. and the nigger that's on the planet is the one that is destroying the water, the one that's polluting the air, the one that is exploiting people and resources, and the only nigger on the planet is the white man and the white woman. and that our people are not niggers, we are imitation niggers. now what we have to do is we have to devise a system or a plan for ourselves, and i said earlier that each one of you is a system. and everything that you do, every thought that you think, either you are supporting white world terror domination, by your actions, what you buy, what you wear, where you go, what you eat, how you use your time, you are either supporting the white people in their process of death, or you're for african liberation, it's one or the other. and if we don't use our time wisely, then we are engaging in a form of subtle suicide, because as i said earlier their system is still going on. they still have these images on t.v. that are going on, they're still warehousing our children in the special ed, giving them ritalin, there're no jobs, we filling the hospitals, so their system is not stopping. and then finally, i want to say that we need one idea. and we're not thinking about a solution to the problem. we're dealing with all these other things but these are diversions from the solution to the problem. and we have to start to think about a solution to the problem so that these young brothers and sisters who are here now, who are fifteen, sixteen and seventeen, are not here twenty-five years later talking about these same problems. now how do i know that the white people know that we are going to come up with a solution to the problem? i know it because they have retina scans, they have what they call "racial profiling", dna banks, and they are monitoring our people, to try to prevent the one person from coming up with the one idea. and the one idea is how we are going to exterminate white people, because that in my estimation is the only conclusion that i have come to. we have to exterminate white people off of the face of the planet to solve this problem. [sparse applause] now i don't care whether you clap or not, but i'm saying to you that we need to solve this problem because they are going to kill us. and i will leave on that. so we have to just set up our own system and stop playing and get very serious and not be diverted from coming up with a solution to the problem, and the problem on the planet is white people. [sparse applause]

"out of bounds" did he say? let's try "out to lunch".

i could enumerate the many ways in which kambon's remarks are absurd, but i would be belaboring the obvious, and that sort of accounting is not the reason why i chose to post this article and not why i find his remarks so fascinating.

i've often heard that racism is rooted in ignorance, but clearly there are many racists like kambon who are intelligent and well-educated. in fact, kambon himself invites us along on his intellectual journey, which he describes as the result of a search for answers to deeply compelling questions about black mortality in america. what most people, and most evidently kambon, do not recognize is how the vehicle we choose for the journey drives us towards the conclusions we reach at the end.

kambon's choice of vehicle was probably the most fateful choice in his search: he decided to withdraw from society.

and what my wife and i did, we decided that we were going to drop out from this system.

like ted kaczynski, the so-called "unabomber", kambon decided to go meditate in a cabin.

one profound effect of this type of isolation is a loss of perspective. on a very basic level everyone believes that they are right in what they think. we have to, because otherwise we could not justify the things that we do. but social contact provides other voices as yardsticks against which we may measure our beliefs.

another profound effect of isolation is the emergence of misanthropic tendencies. most people have some level of antisocial impulses and our belief in our own correctness keeps us in conflict with everyone who does not think as we do. they must be wrong. they are either stupid or blind or brainwashed or misguided. they have to be — for how can i be right if they are not wrong?

when a person becomes isolated, whether by choice or circumstance, the misanthopic voices, no longer required to rebut the opinions of others, begin to sound more and more convincing, and are free to roam, grow louder and dominate, especially if the person listening is not particularly stable or equanimous or mature. it is also worth noting that whatever siren song these misanthopic voices might be singing, it might not always be pleasant, but it is usually personally gratifying for the listener.

but isolation in itself probably did not drive kambon to his final solution, or at least drive him to take his solution on tour. since there are no prior records of his making public charges like these, presumably he had been quietly nursing his ideas in his log cabin for a number of years, until some catalyzing event finally compelled him to openly proselytize genocide.

which brings us to hurricane katrina.

the catastrophic failure of government at every level that doomed a historic hub of african american culture must have come as the ultimate vindication of the most horrific schemes whispered to kambon in his nightmares. of course white people are trying to kill black people. all black people. white people obviously no longer felt the need for either subtlety or patience. if there remained any chance of saving his people, kambon could no longer afford to remain silent. one cannot miss the hints of messianism in his voice:

and then finally, i want to say that we need one idea. ... they are monitoring our people, to try to prevent the one person from coming up with the one idea.

kambon is not alone in his feelings. indeed, the aftermath of katrina made it impossible for anyone, white or black or lime-green, not to question the commitment of the bush administration to the well-being — even survival — of minority citizenry. no one can forget grammy-winning rapper kanye west's spontaneous on-air indictment during the september 2nd nationally broadcast nbc "concert for hurricane relief" telethon:

i hate the way they portray us in the media. if you see a black family, it says they're looting. see a white family, it says they're looking for food. and you know that it's been five days, because most of the people are black. and even for me to complain about it, i would be a hypocrite because i’ve tried to turn away from the tv, because it's too hard to watch. we already realize a lot of people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way, and they have given them permission to go down and shoot us. ... george bush doesn’t care about black people.

after the 9/11 attacks, bush enjoyed a robust 51% approval rating among blacks, but it had dropped to 19% by the time katrina hit. after the disaster an nbc/wall street journal poll pegged his approval rating at an unheard-of 2%, "one of the biggest free-falls in the history of presidential polling". given its statistical margin of error of ±3.4%, it might as well have been zero.

in his 2000 run for the white house george bush made a famous pledge: "i'm a uniter, not a divider." six years later, race relations have never been more strained, and now we can add one more genocidal voice to the mix. never more hollow does that pledge ring.