Category: Politix

It’s November 8, 2006.

I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for six months. I was up late last night watching the amazing election results. The voters returned the U.S. House of Representatives to the Democrats, and even the Senate might go Democratic. It is widely seen as a repudiation of Bush (and, I’ll add, the whole neocon agenda).

• 8:30 AM — Tom Delay says the Republicans will take it all back in the next election. He sneers at the electorate and predicts the first thing they will notice is a $2,000 higher tax bill.
• 9:06 AM — Rush Limbaugh opens his show quoting Nancy Pelosi: “Now we can return to civility in Washington.” Rush asks “Is this an admission that the Democrats went over the top in this campaign?”
• 9:49 AM — From KFI-AM640 (Fox radio in Los Angeles): Administration officials are saying that Donald Rumsfeld will be stepping down. Limbaugh is exasperated and sputters “Why didn’t they get rid of him last week!?”
• 10:19 AM — George Allen still won’t concede in Virginia. It’s close there, but he hasn’t had the lead for 12 hours, and 99.9% of the precincts have reported. The state will pay for a recount if the margin is less than a half of one percent, which it might be. If Tester wins in Montana (looking likely) it all comes down to Virginia, just like Florida in 2000. I expect Jim Baker and a thousand Republican lawyers will show up down there with about a billion dollars to spend, trying to save the Senate. The recount, by the way, can’t even start until the Commonwealth certifies the results on November 27, so we may be in for three or four more weeks of suspense, unless Allen gets his head out of his ass.
• 10:30 AM — Woops, I’ve been missing The Decider’s press conference. Just turned it on and he was saying he doesn’t think there’s a civil war in Iraq, and that, unlike during Vietnam, these U.S. troops are volunteers, and therefore knew what they were getting into.
• 10:39 AM — Continuing the Republican blame-the-stupid-voters theme, Bush says “I thought the people would understand the importance of security, but I was wrong.” His way of saying “I wasn’t wrong, it was the voters.”
• 11:19 AM — Tester has won in Montana. Democrats need one more state to control both house of Congress. I didn’t even allow myself to hope for this much.
• 11:20 AM — Is it just me, or does the sky seem bluer this morning, and the air fresher?

UPDATE: If you don’t think you’ll be able to make it to your voting place today, read this.

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I’m sure by now the Republicans must be sick of hearing us liberals warning each other about tomorrow’s midterm election:

• Take nothing for granted.
• Don’t let them steal this election, too.
• Vote early and often (just kidding).
• Get paper receipts.
• Videotape the goings-on at the polls.
• These Republicans don’t care about the Republic. They’ll do anything to win – voter fraud, machine hacking, vote suppression, intimidation, lying, SO BE ON GUARD!

We seem to take for granted that chicanery and deception is the only way the morally bankrupt GOP can trick the voters into keeping them in office, and we state as if it is undeniable fact that all they really want is to stay in office, not so they can make the country and the world a better place, but so they can remain bellied up to the public trough for as long as possible, the better to steal all the money and violate all the tender young pages. What a snotty, elitist attitude. It’s gotta piss ‘em off.

To you moderate conservatives who don’t think you fit into this description, or who know you are not guilty of these offenses, where the hell have you been for the past ten years or so? You stood back and let this happen. The neocons looked like they were winners, and you didn’t have the balls to stand up and yell “You don’t speak for me!” You let the extremists set the tone, you rode into (and stayed in) office on their energy, on their dirty tricks, on their nutcase agenda. You let them have the keys to the engine, and now you are riding on a runaway train, desperately holding onto what’s left of your honor and your jobs.

Because the radicals in your party don’t have a plan other than to take the money and run, because they have been hiding this behind their false messages of piety and compassion, the wheels are starting to come off. You have let the wingnuts, with their street-fighting style of political thuggery, create an atmosphere of distrust in the land — distrust going toward flat-out hatred — and now you think you can avoid blame by running away from your president and his brutal henchmen at this, the last possible moment.

It won’t work, because the hatred you have spawned is turning back on you, even though in your hearts you know you don’t deserve it. Maybe you don’t, but you’re going to have to spend a long time earning back the trust you have squandered, and that’s only if the voters in your districts aren’t so disgusted with you that they throw you out with the rest of the hypocrites, liars, cheaters and bums.

To The Precious Few who read this blog, and to all good people who stumble on this: Let’s make today the last day of the neocon darkness that has fallen on the United States and the world. Get out and vote. Vote your hopes, not your fears.
Things are gonna get better, but first let’s stop the bleeding.

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[Thanks to Michael Bains for the link to the Image Chef campaign button fabricator.]

Dave Johnson, writing on the Commonweal Institute Blog,

…has a pretty good thought. You might want to check it out.

How many Americans have ever even heard the positive case made for the underpinnings of our government — democracy and community? When was the last time you heard that one-person-one-vote is better for people than one-dollar-one-vote, or that sticking together and standing up for each other is better for people than the conservative vision of everyone being on their own and in it only for themselves? And what do you think the country could be like if more Americans were exposed to those ideas?

He suggests that conservative claims over recent decades – the “Market” is all-knowing and beneficent, government is inefficient, regulation is bad, etc., etc. – have gone so completely unanswered that we’ve been brainwashed by never hearing a differing point of view. Thus the results of this CNN poll.

I’m personally kind of sick of the greed-is-good gang, and ready to see if we can make a better world.

I’m too busy to rant today.

If you need to be ranted at, you might want to check Ian Masters’ article at The Huffington Post. Just a taste:

…I’m told by sources involved that our Special Forces are already in Iran preparing for a pre-emptive strike, not against nuclear targets, but against the mullahs and their Revolutionary Guards. Trick or treat? Regime decapitation from invisible B2’s, with smart bombs sent by dumb leaders, surgically guided by lasers on the ground to smite evil in an October surprise. Another quick victory followed by a slow defeat from our wartime president who wins elections but loses wars.

The moral is – don’t take the Republican meltdown for granted. If they were honorable they’d concede this midterm election and go off somewhere to do penance and think about what they’ve done, and how they need to change to atone for their malfeasance. But all they really care about is holding on to power, and they could do anything to make that happen, up to and including vote fraud, voter intimidation, fake terror attacks, fake “intelligence” reports from North Korea and actually sending troops to Iran.

National revulsion at the antics of Mark Foley and the Republican leadership notwithstanding, in Karl Rove’s office it ain’t over yet, so stay focused, talk it up, register, vote and get your friends to do so.

This goes for you, too, Blue Girl.

Some things are too good for television.

Bill Clinton has taped an interview with Chris Wallace, to be aired Sunday (September 24) on Fox. The interview was supposed to be mostly about Clinton’s impressive charitable fundraising, but Wallace claimed his viewers insisted that he ask Clinton the all-important question Why didn’t you do more to get Osama bin Laden? and that’s when the fireworks begin.

I found out about this at ThinkProgress, and they have a transcript of the interview here (This link contains a synopsis, but there’s a link to the full transcript at the bottom.). The transcript reads like the best televised smackdown I’ve ever seen, sort of like Lloyd Bentsen’s famous putdown of that nincompoop Dan Quayle, only it goes on and on.

Fox will no doubt edit it to make Wallace look good, so I recommend you read the transcript first, then watch the show to see what they’ve done to Clinton’s words. As always, fast for at least twelve hours before tuning in to Fox News, to minimize the danger of choking to death on your own vomit.

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UPDATE, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25,2006: I watched the show on Sunday, and while I wasn’t following along with the printed transcript, I thought they ran the whole thing, so that’s to their credit. However, they did cut it into segments, introduced by Wallace, who (to my mind) kept implying that Clinton “went off” in an unexpected and inappropriate way. They teased the show all day, running little snippets. Their favorite one seemed to be the one where Clinton says “I tried to get Osama bin Laden and I failed.” They always cut that one off before he says “…and I regret that,” so the word “failed” rings in your memory as they cut back to whatever “news” announcer was on at the time. Then they followed the half-hour interview with a half-hour “analysis” of it, in which they tried but failed to portray Clinton as an unstable, hypersensitive, terrorist-loving peacenik who went crazy on the air. I was left wishing the rest of the Democrats were as willing to stand up for themselves and their party and values.

Now that the United States is under the complete control of the right wing, I’m kind of glad we still have elections.

Of course, the Republican Party seems to have figured out how to win the darn things every time, but hope springs eternal, eh? And I know this makes me a privileged, liberal, elitist, terrorist-lovin’ Volvo driver, but I think the Repubs have been using underhanded tactics to take over the country. I mean, from Karl Rove’s whispering campaign that Governor Ann Richards of Texas was an alcoholic lesbian to the theft of the White House in 2000 to the lies of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the strategy has been, well, shady, if not downright sleazy.

So to all you Democrats, liberals, progressives, socialists, communists and terrorists (just kidding – you terrorists talk among yourselves) who think that this November midterm election is going to be any different, that we have a good chance to grab a few seats in Congress and maybe even get a skinny majority in one of them; you who think The People have seen the light (or the darkness, as the case may be) and are ready to correct course at the polls; you who are smugly saying “We knew this couldn’t last,” let me remind you that Karl Rove and company are still the party in power, and I don’t use the word “power” lightly.

Rove is promising Republican insiders an “October Surprise,” some kind of staged event that might reverse the anti-Republican tide and keep the government firmly under one-party control for at least another two years, to add to the eternity it’s already been. I don’t think we’ve yet seen the lowest depths to which Karl can descend, but if I were him I’d pull out all the stops for this one. After all, it may be his swan song, since he probably won’t be involved in 2008, and no doubt he’ll want to go out a winner, which I believe is the technical term for what he’s done to the country during his career.

I hesitate to speculate on what Rove has in mind. Another attack? The capture of Osama? Given his history, I am prepared to be ambushed, and steeling myself for the worst.

So let’s not think it’s over. Let’s not stay home on election day. Let’s keep the pressure on in whatever way we can. Let’s support liberal, progressive, Democratic candidates. Let’s not concede one point, one vote, one precinct. If we lose, we lose. But let’s not quit, and let’s not get fooled again.

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PS: I found the advertisement above at the site about the October Surprise. Damned the Liberal Media, trying to hide from me the secrets of scoring with those hawt Republican babes.

I’m not sure where the press has been on this,

…but somehow the humongous 23-page Bill Clinton story in The New Yorker seems to have eluded them. Usually this kind of coverage of an ex-prez gets picked up and quoted everywhere for about a week, but strange silence surrounds this article. I’m not a subscriber, so I haven’t read it yet – hey, I live in LA, what do I want with The New Yorker? Heck, I don’t even know where I can buy a copy. I doubt if they have it at 7-11, the only store I pass on my daily commute. But I’ll find it somewhere, even if I have to go to the public library (I think they’re still open, like, one afternoon a week).

If you follow the above link, you’ll find just about the only mention of the article online, including what will probably turn out to be my favorite quote: “I am sick of Karl Rove’s bullshit.”

So am I, Big Dog.

Bravo to the British police for foiling a plot to blow up a bunch of airliners.

Jeez, these terrorists are obsessed, aren’t they? I wonder what got them so pissed off. I wish I could give a dose of it to the offensive line of the Minnesota Vikings. Those guys don’t seem real mad at anybody.

And, hey, kudos to whomever woke up President Bush this morning and got him to “make a statement” about the arrests. It sounded like he thought there might be some U.S. law enforcement involved, although it’s been the only story all day and I don’t think I’ve heard anything about U.S. cooperation in any of it. I’m sure by tomorrow Bush will have a better-spun version that implies that he was supervising the entire operation.

Seriously, this is the kind of police work needed to keep the world safe, not the Bush administration’s bull-in-a-china-shop, invade-first, ask-questions-later technique. I’m sure it’s not easy, but it’s the right way to fight the small number of wackos who want to become martyrs.

Chicken hawk and military deserter George W. Bush doesn’t want to do anything to halt the ongoing horror in southern Lebanon and northern Israel because he thinks that it is bringing “clarity” to the governments in the region.

What he means is “This is the kind of shitfire we can throw down on you if you don’t submit – in advance – to any and all of our requirements for peace. How do you like it, assholes?” I threw in that last part because I’d bet that’s the way he thinks – like a drunken frat boy with a D-plus academic average.

I have foolishly tried to use a moral argument in the past to suggest that the U.S. should urgently seek to put a stop to the slaughter. I was saying that it’s wrong to kill people, and I actually got a little heat about that, but never mind. Today I discovered an essay that brings a little clarity to me on the subject of war, killing and morality.

As Phillip Slater says in The Huffington Post:

To talk of morality in the context of international conflict is oxymoronic. Until there is a viable system of international government with agreed-upon ethical principles and enforceable laws, bringing morality into discussions of war and conflict is hypocritical posturing.

The fact is, everyone engaging in mass killing of civilians has no moral standing whatever, regardless of provocation or motive or alleged instruction from God.

Get it, everybody? Once you go to war there is no morality. Truly, all’s fair. Winning is the only thing. We are willing to accept atrocities committed by the military that are orders of magnitude more horrific than anything we will put up with on the streets. Slater again:

Supposing a man goes berserk, barricades himself in his house with women and children as hostages and starts shooting at the neighbors. The police come. They spend hours trying to get the man to surrender. They would never think that blowing up the house to get the ‘bad guy’ was a moral act. Or even a sensible one. That’s because police operate in a more or less civilized societal context with a more or less unified set of ethical rules.

Not so the parties to war. In this case, both Israel and Hezbollah continue to drop bombs and shoot rockets into innocent populations. The reasons each side gives for doing so are slightly different, but all are cruel, stupid and wrong.

I should have thought of this before. War lets us drop the pretense of caring about life. It means never having to say you’re sorry. Of course if the Bush administration vigorously pursued an immediate cease-fire, we could probably stop the killing and destruction long enough to talk out a more lasting solution. The U.S. can’t perform such a miracle alone, but the world can’t do it without the U.S.

If, as you have said, Mr. Bush, Jesus is your role model, have you asked yourself lately what he would do?