Things I'm Pretty Sure I Think I Kinda Know (Maybe) After Iowa (But Don't Quote Me)

• Ron Paul's gonna run third party. Write it down. Can you say "Ross Perot"? Jeez, even the initials are the same....


• Somebody who was against the Iraq War from the beginning has now won a Presidential primary. That's almost as cool as the fact that a black man is now (for the moment) really the frontrunner for the nomination. Whether he gets elected or not, America's ready (in more senses than one)....


• The Republicans might very well have a brokered convention. The possibility has been raised before, but it might really happen after all. I dunno about you but when I say I'm ROFLMAO I'm almost not kidding for once....


• Mike Huckabee's a crazy motherfucker, but he might just pull it off. I still think Romney will whoop him plenty on 2/5, but I guess stranger things have happened. For the time being though, he's in the driver's seat.


• Obama is the ABH (Anybody But Hillary) candidate. Edwards needed IA pretty bad. It's not over but he must win in SC later this month to have a prayer.


• The Republicans might have a brokered convention. Did I mention that already? I might have because it's fucking hilarious it is a wildly entertaining possibility.


• Pakistan might be THE foreign policy issue-of-the-moment over the summer. Iraq/Afghanistan will still be important, of course (how could they not?) but those are Old News and Pakistan (for better or worse) is New News.


• Wait til The Fat Lady sings this year....this will be quite a wild ride. Expect Bush and his OVPuppeteers to try something sneaky over the summer to put Hillary and Obama in some sort of totally unnecessary double-bind, like they did to Kerry in 04 ("I voted for it before I voted against it" etc).


• Speaking of The Thief-in-Chief, his last minute pardons are going to be an incredible list of the early 21st Century's worst con men, common criminals, corporate raiders, neoconservatives, backstabbers, fixers, military-industrial complexers, and all-around shitheads. I'm not looking forward to it, myself. But that's not really on-topic tonight, I guess....

Happy '08!

Happy New Years (to the two or three people that might read this)!

I'm having people over tonight but I wanted to dash off a few bullets before I get ready....

** We got the huge American flag up in the staircase. Turns out it's 9 1/2' x 5'. Pictures to come....
** ....speaking of which, I got a digital camera for Xmas....it kicks ass =)
** Sometime (August?) next year, I will be doing the "music" for a Jeff Dory gallery show. This really deserves its own post, but that'll have to wait til next year....

And, since the IA caucus is this week (!).....

I'm going to go out on a limb and make predictions for the hell of it....

1) Edwards 2) Clinton 3) Obama 4) Richardson 5) Dodd 6) Biden 7) Kucinich

The Donkular side is a three-way statistical tie. The reason I think Edwards will pull it out is primarily because his 2nd choice numbers are strong. Plus, he has had a much more distinctly populist message than either HRC or BHO which I think is going to be a recurring theme in 08. I mean, gas can only be $3/gal for so long before people get riled up....

Anyway, betting against a Clinton in IA is always risky, but I think Hillary is going to bounce back and slaughter the field in NH and will still win the nom. As to who I'll actually be voting for on Super Tuesday, I think I'm going to vote for Obama, but in the last few weeks he seems to be trying to talk me out of it--engaging in a war of words against should-be ally Paul Krugman, etc. The race is going to boil down to Hillary and the not-Hillary candidate; whether the ABH candidate becomes Edwards or Obama, who knows.

Hillary has to finish first or a close second in IA, and then has to win NH. If she does that, she's going to coast to the nom, I think. If she manages to finish third, or fails to win either IA or NH, she might lose just enough delegates on Super Tuesday....

Don't count on it, though. HRC, for better or worse, will probably be the nominee.

1) Romney 2) Huckabee 3) McCain 4) Giuliani 5) Paul 6) Thompson

On the Elephantine side, who the hell knows. The Democrats are bad enough, but Edwards, Obama, and Hillary are all fairly similar policy wise (except on Iraq). The Republican party coalition of corpocrats, theocrats, libertarians, and neoconservatives is not going to come out of this primary season intact. The question is which faction wins.

Romney is clearly the money candidate on that side of the aisle this year, and given that, it's hard to not pick him. If he doesn't win IA, he must win NH convincingly, or else it will be a bloodbath on Super Tuesday. Huckabee has managed to piss off a lot of the fundraisers, media hacks, and kingmakers in the party (including His Highness Rush Limbaugh). But he's got a lot of the pro-life/creationist hardcore activists in his camp (who are horrified by both Giuliani and Romney). Huck and Paul are the two guys really stirring up the grassroots (such as they are) on that side. Huck finishing second or first keeps him in the top tier, but finishing below that is OK (since nobody expected him to do anything in IA before Thanksgiving), as long as he picks up the pace in NH. Huckabee will lose some states on Super Tuesday guaranteed, since he doesn't have the pockets of Romney, McCain, or Giuliani.

McCain could actually steal this thing, because compared to the rest of these clowns, he's George Washington. Line up his resume against any of the rest of the field, and McCain blows them all away. His support has been undermined by two things: one, a poorly run campaign, two (more importantly), he actually dared to defy the Party Line on Gimto/torture/Abu Ghraib/tribunals in the debates (and was actually booed, if you can believe that). So the neocons hate McCain. Here's hoping he finishes dead last, actually, because he is honestly the only one out of the entire Republican field that will have a reasonable chance to beat either Edwards, Hillary, or Obama in the general.

Giuliani may as well drop out. The former frontrunner will be a non-factor. If he finishes lower than Paul or Thompson, I'm pretty sure he will drop out after NH. Thompson may as well be walking around with "also ran" scrawled on his forehead. Paul "wins" if he finishes with more than 5%. I'm rooting for him and his supporters to stir shit up at the Convention. I'd say it's 50-50 whether he runs on a 3rd party ticket.

Actually, I'm hoping for a brokered Republican convention. That would be fun. I don't think that's happened in my lifetime, on either side. Actually, I don't think I've ever seen the Republicans not circling the wagons behind The Guy that has been declared The Front Runner from On High. The Democratic primary is enough of a tossup as it is, but the Republican side is a goddamn mess. I love the idea of IA or NH not deciding the nominee on either side, actually; I'd love to see Super Tuesday actually be relevant for once. (And for 2012 we have got to go to a genuine national primary; enough of this silly shit with IA and NH.)

Ultimately I think the nomination is between Romney, Huckabee, and McCain. Romney is the one with the buck$$$, and I think it'll be a Hillary v. Romney general election, and Hillary will probably win 40 states.

And if you, dear reader, are navigating back to this post about 11 months from now and are giggling hysterically at my faulty reasoning, or are amused by my inability to have seen X coming, well, hey, this is why I'm a drummer....

Anyway, fuck all that....there is champagne to be drunk....

the big radio

upstairs turns out to be a Coronado. The serial plate is mostly destroyed, unfortunately, which complicates trying to identify it. The only place I've been able to find that has a picture of this is here (scroll down, or search for Coronado in the page). So it's from the late 40s then. Given the shape that it's in it's probably worthless, but it looks cool and the speaker sounds really good (10" cone). The turntable doesn't work but the radio works fine (it sounds less staticky than the Zenith).

What did I do before Google? Vol. 176851243969

I've had one of these in the basement for quite some time. I got it from my folks, who picked it up at a garage sale (?) someplace. I had wondered exactly how old it is, but until now it'd never occurred to me to look up the model # on Google. Duh.

According to this, it's from 1937 and was worth $30 brand new. I don't know how much this one would be worth--it's not exactly in tiptop shape, although it does work.

I have another radio upstairs, although that one is different (it's much larger and even has a pullout turntable! ZOMG). I got that from a girl two blocks down the street who was moving to Barcelona and selling everything. I'll have to look that one up too.

FEMA presser

Tom Tomorrow frequently notes that the Bushies are exceedingly bad for the satire business: it's impossible to parody them because they continually outdo themselves.

Case in point....according to the
Washington Post, FEMA held a press conference on the SoCal wildfires on Tuesday. Only, there weren't any actual reporters there, and FEMA staff were the ones asking the questions.

I'd like to think this would mean everyone involved would lose their jobs immediately, but I'm not holding my breath.

(via here.)

holy shit!

Yet another nail in the coffin of the record industry.

How will it do? Who knows....but I suspect it's going to be watched very closely. Simply for that reason alone, I'll send 'em ten bucks. Maybe I'll tack on a few more just for being brave enough to try it. It will be interesting, when it's all said and done, to see who contributed, average per customer, etc.

I love being given the choice: kind of an unamiliar feeling for an audience member, isn't it?

As for the music itself, I'm pretty confident it'll be amazing, and well worth the wait.

By koinkydink, I just listened again to this album closely a few nights ago. That was also released with almost nothing at all in the way of promotion, publicity, fanfare, no touring....

Feel safer yet?

And here we were thinking all this time that this country was founded in opposition to such things.

When did "security" become a catchall excuse for unreasoning, pointless tyranny? Was it on 9/11 itself, or was it in the period between 9/11 and February 2003, when we couldn't find our voices?

today is not a holiday

I hope we don't ever make the 11th of September into a national holiday. Kind of like Memorial Day, or Labor Day, or MLK's birthday--we don't even remember what we're celebrating, but we'll take the day off all the same.

9/11 was and is a monument to American failure. Osama bin Laden--still a free man--murdered 3,000 Americans, on American soil, and no one lost their jobs, or was reprimanded, for failing. The only thing that happened as a consequence was some bureaucratic handwaving, and the Bushies were handed an ironclad excuse to do anything they pleased, up to and including launching a bullshit war with a country that hadn't attacked us. As Rumsfeld said, there aren't any targets in Afghanistan.

I'm feeling very cynical watching newscasters revel in the misery. Lots of pretend-serious chinstroking and navelgazing. Plenty of masturbatory fake solemnity, but very little honesty, very little clarity. The only people who seem to have a clue are the military families I saw interviewed reacting to Petraeus' "testimony", and the 9/11 survivors & victims' families.*

Why the fuck do we have a half-trillion dollar military if we can't stop 19 guys with knives from destroying our landmarks? Does anybody seriously think the situation has improved since then?

Rather than stuff this post with links (it's depressing enough), how about I just leave you with a Bush press conf. transcript (from whitehouse.gov) which says all that needs to be said about the state America finds itself in--that it can't deal with this petty tyrant properly.

Q Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? Also, can you tell the American people if you have any more information, if you know if he is dead or alive? Final part -- deep in your heart, don't you truly believe that until you find out if he is dead or alive, you won't really eliminate the threat of --

THE PRESIDENT: Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all. Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not; we haven't heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is -- really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.

Terror is bigger than one person. And he's just -- he's a person who's now been marginalized. His network, his host government has been destroyed. He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is -- as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide -- if, in fact, he's hiding at all.

So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. I'm more worried about making sure that our soldiers are well-supplied; that the strategy is clear; that the coalition is strong; that when we find enemy bunched up like we did in Shahikot Mountains, that the military has all the support it needs to go in and do the job, which they did.

And there will be other battles in Afghanistan. There's going to be other struggles like Shahikot, and I'm just as confident about the outcome of those future battles as I was about Shahikot, where our soldiers are performing brilliantly. We're tough, we're strong, they're well-equipped. We have a good strategy. We are showing the world we know how to fight a guerrilla war with conventional means.

Q But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.

But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became -- we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore. And if we -- excuse me for a minute -- and if we find a training camp, we'll take care of it. Either we will or our friends will. That's one of the things -- part of the new phase that's becoming apparent to the American people is that we're working closely with other governments to deny sanctuary, or training, or a place to hide, or a place to raise money.

And we've got more work to do. See, that's the thing the American people have got to understand, that we've only been at this six months. This is going to be a long struggle. I keep saying that; I don't know whether you all believe me or not. But time will show you that it's going to take a long time to achieve this objective. And I can assure you, I am not going to blink. And I'm not going to get tired. Because I know what is at stake. And history has called us to action, and I am going to seize this moment for the good of the world, for peace in the world and for freedom.

That press conference is dated March 13, 2002.



*The one bright spot has been that non-New Yorkers are getting some New Yorkers' unvarnished opinion of Giuliani, which if you don't know the source of the bad blood between the NY firefighters and Giuliani, see here. The man will never be President because of his feud with the IAFF. The reason that's been getting airtime is because RG will not be speaking at the memorial service this year for the first time, and that's why.

Petraeus/Crocker/Lantos/NYT poll/jackasses

I caught a little of the Petraeus/Crocker hearings on NPR today....Petraeus and Crocker are both completely full of shit. I can only have my intelligence insulted so many times by somebody before I tune them out.

But I did get to hear a snippet from Tom Lantos which I thought was pretty sharp. I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have been--I knew there was something unique about Lantos but couldn't recall what it was, and I'm not talking about his very unusual accent. The thing that he said that got my attention was in response to a question about military success in Iraq. Lantos challenged the question--something Democrats never seem to do, but Republicans jump at it every chance they get--by saying the political success is what matters. I can't remember his exact quote, I'll look for a transcript later.

When I sat down to write this post, I was thinking I should look Lantos up on Wikipedia so I could remember what his story is, where he's from with that accent. Turns out he's Hungarian. Also turns out he's the only Holocaust survivor to ever get elected to the House of Reps.

Oh yeah (slaps forehead). That's what it was.....

In the meantime....

CBS News/New York Times Poll. Sept. 4-8, 2007. N=1,035 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3 (for all adults).

"Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the situation with Iraq?"

  Approve  Disapprove  Unsure      

ALL adults 26   71   3      
  Republicans 52   44   4      
  Democrats 4   96   0      
  Independents 23   72   5      

8/8-12/07 26   69   5      
7/20-22/07 25   69   6      
7/9-17/07 25   70   5      
6/26-28/07 23   70   7      
5/18-23/07 23   72   5      

"Do you think removing Saddam Hussein from power was worth the loss of American life and other costs of attacking Iraq, or not?"

  Worth It  Not Worth It  Unsure   

9/4-8/07 35   59   6   

"Do you think the United States made a mistake getting involved in the current war with Iraq, or not?"

      
  A Mistake  Not a Mistake  Unsure   

9/4-8/07 62   34   4   
5/04  50   46   4   

"Looking back, do you think the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, or should the U.S. have stayed out?"

      
  Right Thing  Stayed Out  Unsure   

9/4-8/07 41   54   5   
8/8-12/07 43   51   6   
7/20-22/07 42   51   7   
5/18-23/07 35   61   4   
       

"How would you say things are going for the U.S. in its efforts to bring stability and order to Iraq? Would you say things are going very well, somewhat well, somewhat badly, or very badly?"

  VW      SW      SB      Badly   Unsure

9/4-8/07 4  29  32  32  3
8/8-12/07 3  26  29  38  4
7/20-22/07 3  29  31  35  2
7/9-17/07 2  23  29  45  1
      

"Regardless of how you usually vote, do you think the Republican Party or the Democratic Party is more likely to make the right decisions about the war in Iraq?"

  Repub   Dem Both (vol.) Neither (vol.) Unsure
9/4-8/07 32  42  1  9  16
      

"From what you have seen or heard about the situation in Iraq, what should the United States do now? Should the U.S. increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, keep the same number of U.S. troops in Iraq as there are now, decrease the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, or remove all its troops from Iraq?"

      
  Increase Same  DecreaseRemove All Unsure
9/4-8/07 11  19  35  30  5

8/8-12/07 13  17  31  30  9
7/20-22/07  12  15  30  36  7
7/9-17/07  12  18  29  34  7
      

"As you may know, the U.S. has sent more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq. From what you have heard or read, would you say this troop increase is making the situation in Iraq better, making it worse, or is it having no impact on the situation in Iraq so far?"

  Better  Worse  No Impact  Unsure  
9/4-8/07 35  12  45  8  
8/8-12/07 29  15  46  10  
7/20-22/07  19  20  53  8  
7/9-17/07  20  22  51  7  
      

"If you had to choose, who do you think is most likely to make the right decisions about the war in Iraq: the Bush Administration, Congress, or U.S. military commanders in Iraq?"

  Admin.  Congress Commanders None (vol.) Unsure

9/4-8/07 5  21  68  3  3

"In making its case for the war with Iraq, do you think members of the Bush Administration intentionally misled the public or not?"

      
  Misled  Did Not Mislead Unsure   

9/4-8/07 60  36   4   
12/05  52  44   4   
      

"Right now, is the U.S. involvement in Iraq creating more terrorists who are planning to attack the U.S., eliminating terrorists who were planning to attack the U.S., or is the U.S. involvement in Iraq not affecting the number of terrorists planning to attack the U.S.?"

      
  Creating  Eliminating  Not Affecting  Unsure  

9/4-8/07 40  23  27  10  
8/8-12/07 46  18  27  9  
7/20-22/07  44  18  27  11  
6/26-28/07  51  17  24  8  
      

"Do you think Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?"

      
  Yes  No  Unsure      
ALL adults 33  58  9      
  Republicans 40 51  9      
  Democrats 27  63  10      
  Independents 32  60  8      

33% of Americans still persist in believing that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. 26% of Americans persist in approving Bush's Iraq policy. The Pollkatz Bush Index is 30.8; RCP has him at 32.7.

When Petraeus and Crocker, or whatever else crawls out from under the rocks to lie and obfuscate on behalf of their masters, say idiotic things about progress this and security that, they are speaking only to that fraction that still upholds the Bush "plan" for the Middle East. They are speaking to roughly a third of America--if the electorate is somewhere around 120M voters, they're speaking to 40M of them. That's it. In their world, the Green Zone is safe, John McCain didn't look like a fucking moron strolling around a Baghdad open air market with a flak jacket, a helmet, 50 Marines, helicopters....In their world, George Bush making surprise visits to Iraq is no big deal (after all, it's how he does it here in the States....).

So we're going to have this silly song and dance out of Petraeus and Crocker, who aren't going to deviate from The Party Line one bit. They're going to keep asking for more Friedman Units and they're going to keep getting them. Nothing changes. The stalemate continues.

Which brings me to another subject that really deserves its own post, but I'm on a roll so here goes....

The Congressional Democrats have been failures so far. It's one thing for them to point to Blue Dog defections to explain losing the spring battle over defunding, but the collapse on the FISA bill right before the August recess was both pathetic and unnecessary. The Blue Dogs didn't monkeywrench that--you guys got outmanuevered by Bush the incompetent. You should have seen it coming, or somebody should figured out how to prevent the fucking vote from happening. You're not in the minority anymore. Stuff you don't want to come up for a vote doesn't get voted on, period, full stop. The fact that it came up at all was a failure of leadership. And then when it passed? That was just a fucking whopping failure.

And that kind of thing is why I've never registered as a Democrat. I'll work for em, but I'll be damned if I'm going to call myself a Democrat until they can actually get their shit together, or find somebody who will.

It gets better.

The traditional Sept/Oct annual budget war between the executive and the legislature is going to be used as a cudgel by Bush against the squeamish Democrats: fund my war or I'll blame you for losing it! Which is perfect nonsense, of course, but it's been awfully effective nonsense....

I'm expecting the Democrats to, as the saying goes, fold with aces. It's the same shit....can't look weak, yadda yadda. Even though the polls are clearly, overwhelmingly on their side. Even though this occupation is hated by 99% of the planet, even though it's bankrupting us, even though it's killing a hundred people a day, they keep falling for the same fucking tricks.

So let's have some more hearings! Strike up the band! Let's have some red white and blue bunting! Order another crate of magnetic ribbon stickers! SUPPORT THOSE TROOPS!!

WASHINGTON -

Sapped by nearly six years of war, the Army has nearly exhausted its fighting force and its options if the Bush administration decides to extend the Iraq buildup beyond next spring.

The Army's 38 available combat units are deployed, just returning home or already tapped to go to Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere, leaving no fresh troops to replace five extra brigades that President Bush sent to Baghdad this year, according to interviews and military documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

That presents the Pentagon with several painful choices if the U.S. wants to maintain higher troop levels beyond the spring of 2008:

_Using National Guard units on an accelerated schedule. [that wasn't a problem during Hurricane Katrina, nope, no sir, uh-uh--nb]

_Breaking the military's pledge to keep soldiers in Iraq for no longer than 15 months.

_Breaching a commitment to give soldiers a full year at home before sending them back to war.

But Harry Reid wants to compromise.

Fuck Harry Reid.

That sound you hear is another IED going off, taking with it some 20 year old from some place like Boise, or the Bronx. That sound you hear is the siphon Halliburton hooked up to the Treasury. That sound you hear is a car bomb blowing up yet another mosque, killing dozens, receiving no more attention in the U.S. than page 24B.

It will continue until the followers in Washington start to lead, or are replaced by leaders.

high wind

A pretty nasty storm went through last night....



There was a wind gust at the leading edge of that damn thing that had to have been 60+ mph.

At about 1:15 am Chris and I were doing some mix tinkering when the back door blew open with a bang. At the same time I could hear the rain firing up on the driveway outside....I knew it was going to rain but I wasn't aware of a storm coming....I had seen a Severe TS watch up, but that was further west in Kansas. I started thinking I should check the radar, and no sooner had I started reaching for Mozilla than the power failed. The breaker box made a humming sound for about four seconds and then gave up. I ran to shut the back door and it looked like a movie. I ended up bumping around in the dark for a few minutes before I remembered where the flashlights were, then we spent another five minutes moving all the gear away from where the water sometimes comes in the SE corner of the basement.

Chris, Tyree, and I ended up hanging out on the front porch for a while. Chris waited til the worst of the storm abated and then split, since there wasn't anything else to accomplish in the meantime.

A tree from one of the houses on Campbell blew over and knocked out power to the east side of Campbell and the west side of Harrison. Another tree got ripped in half two doors south of me, blocking the road. At around 4 am myself and three neighbors ended up dragging the debris to one side of the street using the straps off my refrigerator dolly.

Power finally came back at about 2:15 pm, so it was out for ~13 hours. As far as I know, nothing was damaged here, although I want to take a peek at the west side of my garage. It has gotten quite overgrown back there, and I had called KCP&L about clearing the lines before, but now I guess something finally got their attention....

Ebay auction of the week

You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Just go look.

So far, no bids....

re: posting

Haven't had much to say here recently, but I want to be doing this more often, even if I just do one-liner posts or collections of links.

I'll post some more .mp3s in the next couple of days. Right now the server isn't letting me connect. I was working on a post about a couple different versions of the same piece of music (antares), which became excruciatingly long (even for me) and I just deleted it. (The occasion was that I've finally finished the transcription for the lead part--whoopeee!!) Got a couple other things to post up here, as soon as we're done recording them (and as soon as the server comes unstuck.)

S.S. Bush listing to starboard; more rats flee

The Bushies are coming apart at the seams.

Just since November '06, one crook after another has fallen.

Rumsfeld. Miers. The insufferable Bolton. Bartlett.

Libby was convicted, at long last, in March.

Then an unceasing parade of no-name apparatchiks from DOJ (still in progress, we think). By my count, I think there have been at least 8, including Schlozmann, who was the U.S. Atty for Western MO for a relatively brief period.

Then a big piece fell: Rove. That obnoxious little fuck is still around though, bet on it. His duties always were more unofficial and behind-the-scenes than anything else, so leaving his "official" post was mostly symbolic.

But now, today, out of the blue (although his resignation had to have been planned at the same time as Rove's), Alberto Fucking Gonzales quits.

Why now? No idea. Same as Rove; beats the hell outta me. It's not like Congress was going to impeach the lying bastard. As long as Gonzo was AG, Bush/Cheney had DOJ (and by extension, Congress and the courts as well!) under their thumb.

Now, the lid is off.

Before, when the Democrats in Congress were investigating the countless bad acts of the various arms of the Bush/Cheney mafia, the process worked like this:

• horrible breaking news of Bushie bad act
  
• Cmte chairman asks Bushie to testify at hearing
  
• Bushie either refuses altogether, like Miers, or shows up and refuses to remember what color the sky is, like Gonzales
  
• Followup reporting on initial news reveals even worse actions by Bushie
  
• Cmte has to vote on authorizing subpoenas
  
• Cmte authorizes subpoenas
  
• Cmte threatens to subpoena various Bushies
  
• Cmte is told to fuck itself
  
• Cmte finally subpoenas Bushies
  
• Bushie still hasn't looked up at the sky once since the last time he was there, but makes vague promises to do so at some future date
  
• Rinse, repeat.
  

At this point, Congress' options are limited. 1) They can hold the witness in contempt, which has to be referred to the D.C. U.S. Atty, who of course reports to....the A.G. 2) They can use the "inherent contempt" procedure, which is arcane, if powerful. The Sgt-at-Arms of the Senate or House actually arrests the witness themselves, and the Capitol Police detain him. Probably, they have to exhaust option number 1 first. 3) They can impeach the motherfuckers.

That's about it.

If there is one thing I will forever hold against the 110th Congress, it's that all of those people didn't recognize the Bushies for what they were years ago. There has never, ever been a situation where a Bushie didn't act in the best interests of Bush, Cheney, or their superiors, if those interests conflicted with those of the country.

When Congress finally screwed up the courage to demand this or that, the Bushies simply told them to piss up a rope. In almost every case, after initially rattling sabers, Congress has meekly backed down to somebody whose popularity falls roughly between Richard Nixon and Osama bin Laden. The roll-over-and-rub-my-tummy manuever they pulled on the war funding bill earlier this year was outrageous enough. But the FISA capitulation as they attempted to go home for the August recess was simply needless.

Chairman Leahy and the others on the Senate Judiciary Cmte verbally slapped around halfwits like Gonzo, but so far have taken no really concrete steps. The Bushies have dared them to do something, and they haven't. (I'm gonna get back to Schumer here in a second....)

Now that Gonzo isn't there anymore, the entire dynamic in D.C. will change. Congress has to do one simple thing, and the Bush crony bottleneck won't exist at DOJ any longer. The subpoena/contempt threats wielded by the Cmte chairs will have that much more teeth, since they might actually be enforceable. Other officials will probably leave. Etc.

The one simple thing they have to do is not cave on the replacement Atty General.

I saw Schumer saying the following....

New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also suggested that a Chertoff confirmation hearing would be contentious.

"I would say there are a lot of questions about Michael Chertoff that will have to be answered." Schumer said. "I wouldn't say yes; I wouldn't say no. It's an open book. It's possible, but its hardly a slam dunk. There are some names who could be a slam dunk."

Schumer, one of Gonzales' chief critics, appealed to the administration "to work with us to nominate someone whom Democrats can support and America can be proud of."

Chuck, Chuck, Chuck....there's nothing that says you have to play pattycake with these people. Just go ahead and say no to Chertoff. It's not like he's going to be nominated anyway.

Congress has a chance to make significant amends if they would just simply refuse to confirm anybody who is a Bush loyalist.

Go ahead and let em know, Chuck. Or are you going to cave again, with Arlen nodding in agreement next to you, satisfied with your reasonableness?

There is no reason why Congress should just accept whatever cretin the Bushies finally do nominate. I'd like to see Congress push the White House around a bit, for once, instead of the other way around. How about presenting the WH with a list of acceptable nominees, Chuck? Force the fucking issue, don't just sit back and react. Then if Bush insists on nominating somebody not on the list, then it's Bush who's being unreasonable, right?

I'm just a drummer in a rock and roll band, you'd think somebody smart like Schumer could figure this out.

So if Congress can find their balls, America might have a functional DOJ again soon. And that, my friends, would undoubtedly be a good thing.

Rove

Karl Rove has resigned as Bush's chief fixer.

Speculation is running rampant as to why....the timing seems a little odd. If I had to bet, it'd be tough, because he had his fingers in so many different pies....

One thing it may be related to is how hard Rove leaned on the Dept. of Justice. Don Siegelman, Democratic Gov. of Alabama 1999-2003, has been charged with eighteen zillion different things, and they finally got a conviction. There has been evidence of jury tampering, and also allegations that Rove was personally involved in directing the prosecution. Google Siegelman's name for more information. (Cf. also Georgia Thompson, a Wisconsin official whose corruption conviction was later thrown out by a visibly angry Appeals Court.)

Politicization of the DOJ is a major issue IMHO and the Democrats should make it a major issue in 2008. The scandal that ensued after nine US Attorneys were fired for partisan reasons has essentially destroyed Alberto Gonzales; any reasonable President would have fired him long ago. (A reasonable President wouldn't have hired that useless moron in the first place, but I digress....)

Obviously there's way more to all of this; I'm just trying to give the nutshell version.

Now, before anybody gets their hopes up for justice, recall that as long as Bush is President, Gonzales is AG; as long as Gonzales is AG, there will be no effective prosecutions of people like Rove. Scooter Libby is a perfect example. He was sentenced to thirty months, fined $250K, and given two years' probation. Bush immediately--as in the same day the judge denied bail--commuted the prison term, saying Libby had still been punished. When asked directly whether Libby would receive a full pardon before the end of Bush's term in office, Bush dodged the question. Anyone who thinks Libby will not be pardoned, raise your hand.

Honestly, with the effective corruption of the entire Dept. of Justice, George Bush could eat a baby on live TV with salt and ketchup and he would suffer no consequences. His craven apologists would continue to cast aspersions on those asking questions about their President, and the media would continue the post-9/11 paralysis, unable to actually speak out with any credibility or integrity, continuing to place lies on an equal footing with the truth. If anybody wants to know how Karl Rove was able to pull off his schemes, it's because of that: America's Very Respectable People on TV in their nice suits and stage makeup are too chickenshit to take a side, even at this late date.

And the band played on....

ladies and gentlemen

I give you Rick Ankiel.