why romney ran

atrios @ eschaton asks:

who the hell would want that job

not going to waste too much of my beautiful mind on it, but I do wonder why romney wanted to be preznit. i wonder the same about anyone, of course, but the reasons do differ.

let me count the ways:

1. to prove Himself better than His Father, who, though being the better man, failed to become President

2. to see His Name writ upon the Pages of History, as a member of the Most Exclusive Club in the World

3. to walk in the Company of World Leaders, and not as a donor or favor-seeker or hanger-on

4. to bask in the Glow of His lessers, and have Senators, CEOs and Rock Stars seek His Attention and Kiss His Ring

5. to receive Presidential Awards, Prizes and Medals

6. to hear everyone speak His Name every day for eight continuous years

7. to place a Capstone on His Worldly Achievements

8. to culminate a life-long Quest for Validation

the sad trombone

via tumbler, scenes from the night republicans discovered that reality really does have a liberal bias:

four more years ...

not a fluke

presidentin' made easy: palin 2012

so easy, in fact, a moose gal could do it:

her candidacy would require almost none of the usual time sinks that force politicians to jump in early: power-broker schmoozing, schedule-intensive fundraising, competitive recruitment of experienced strategists, careful policy development.

we should probably expect her to run again in 2014.

(hat tip to mistermix.)

no, it'll be a white dinosaur

uh-oh, here comes the creation museum of presidential archives:

as president george w bush eyes his legacy, his presidential library at southern methodist university in dallas, texas, threatens to be a white elephant. bush has bought a $3m (£2.05m) house in a republican enclave 10 minutes away from his proposed library and hopes to play an active role in the policy institute that will be established there. with his approval ratings at a record low of 20%, according to a cbs poll, he is keenly interested in shaping the verdict of history. "i'd like to be ... known as somebody who liberated 50m people and helped achieve peace," bush said in a recent interview. laura bush said last week that she saw the policy institute as a "great vehicle" for continuing her support for women's rights in afghanistan and the middle east. work on the $300m library will begin in january, overseen by the architect robert stern, dean of the yale school of architecture. the identity of donors has been kept secret from bush, who established a "don't ask, don't tell" policy about their names after the sunday times revealed in july that a top republican donor was touting access to senior administration officials in return for donations of up to $250,000. so far, fundraising has been "very modest", according to dan bartlett, a former senior white house aide and spokesman for the library. ... "all of them are white elephants to some degree. they are truly bizarre," said benjamin hufbauer, art history professor at the university of louisville in kentucky. "more than half of them are grave sites, like lenin's tomb, although they don't display the body." despite their propagandist function, the libraries provide valuable access to archives that show the president "warts and all", according to hufbauer. but after 9/11 bush signed an executive order granting presidents the right to withhold documents held in the libraries from the public. historians hope barack obama will overturn this. conservatives are already engaging in a fierce battle over bush's legacy. john o'sullivan, a former adviser to baroness thatcher who is based at the hudson institute in washington dc, writes in the new issue of national review, a conservative publication, that bush turned out to be "neither a conservative nor a right-wing radical". ... bruce bartlett, a former republican treasury official who was ostracised for writing a critique of bush in his book impostor in 2006, said: "bush is going to go down as one of the worst presidents in history. a lot of conservatives kept their mouths shut at the time because they didn't want to be crucified like me. "i thought bush would have to go a long way to beat richard nixon and herbert hoover but, at the last minute, he pushed the ball across the line and brought on the new great depression." presidential libraries are built with private money, but the national archive pays for the staff who maintain the papers. "personally, i think it's inappropriate for the taxpayer to run these temples of worship," said bartlett. ...

deep thought

if gore had won, we'd all be discussing the lieberman transition picks.

the color of change

a modest proposal

for a modest president of a modest nation, offered to firedoglake's jane hamsher by constitutional lawyer bruce fein:

jane:	... so, ah, george bush pardons everybody on the way out the door, there's a new president: what would you like to see happen in a new administration, in order to be able to look back, and i'm assuming that you're not one of the people who says "let bygones be bygones, let's all look forward" ... ?
bruce:	the first thing the president ought to do is announce that we don't have any war against international terrorism, that these are criminals, and we will treat them as criminals, we'll capture them as criminals, and try them, prosecute them, and punish them as criminals. second thing he should do is say "i don't have any power to detain americans as enemy combatants, ah, we either charge you with [a] crime or let you alone." third thing he'd say "i do not have any power to violate federal laws in gathering foreign intelligence. i can't commit torture, i can't violate fisa, i can't open your mail, except in accordance with what congress has prescribed." fourth thing he should say is "i'm not gonna invoke execute privilege and use secrecy to prevent you from knowing what i'm doing. absent weapons systems, my government will be transparent, and i'll make certain all my officials come and testify before congress. there may be need for executive sessions, if there's sensitive information, but i will not claim executive privilege and hide from congress anything." another thing that he should say is "i do not have authority to engage in extraordinary rendition. i can't go abroad and simply kidnap people, stick them in an interrogation chamber, torture them, dump them out without any political or legal recourses. and i won't do that. that is a formula for returning the world to a hobbesian state of nature, and authorizing other foreign governments to kidnap americans who might be sympathetic to some indigenous force, chechens in russia for instance, or tibetans in china. and the fifth thing he should say is "i'm shutting down the military commissions in guantanamo. all those people charged will be moved to civilian, ah, sector for trial consistent with due process, and all the guantanamo bay detainees will have a right to habeas corpus and i'm not detaining even non-citizens as enemy combatants. if i think i have evidence they've committed a crime, i prosecute them, otherwise, y'know, they can go back." and perhaps the most important thing — i don't have enough time to fully amplify on this idea — is to say "the united states of america chief, really cardinal mission, is to protect america and make it a more perfect union. we don't need and it doesn't make us safer to have a military footprint all over the globe. and i will work to eliminate all of our foreign troops abroad. defense will mean we'll have a defense against anyone who wants to attack us. if anyone attacks us, we'll incinerate them, but other than that, we, um, wish other people in the world happiness and freedom but we're not gonna sacrifice our men and women to protect the lives of people who have no loyalty, no taxes that pay to the united states, they're not u.s. citizens or who aren't involved in any way. we don't go abroad in search of dragons, as john quincy adams said in 1826, to project our power abroad. it's that, that craving for international stature and prestige that's caused disaster to the constitution of the united states," and i'd want to see a president of the united states say "that era is over." "now i'm a president of modesty. i don't want to leave my footprints in the sands of time based upon fighting wars and attempting to transform the world in our own image. we've got enough problems making ourselves a more perfect union, and i'm not gonna do something that i don't know how to do, and in any event, it's not up to me to risk men and women's lives for a people who owe no loyalty to the united states." that is what i'd like to see. now regards to the people who are outgoing? i'd want to say the president should announce that he certainly will open criminal investigations if there was wrongdoing in the prior administration, ah, and he's gonna make certain that and pledge that he would expect a succeeding administration after his to do the same, if his administration committed any wrongdoing. um, and so he's not gonna hold this administration up to any more immunity than he would grant a predecessor administration.
jane:	i hope we get that president.