WHEN THEY GET WHAT THEY WANT....

The gents and ladies at the National Review, those hardy he-men an women of the Hardly-Ever Right, tell me that I'm overly worried about The Constitutional Crisis presently taking place. That there really is no crisis, what with the President commuting Scooter Libby's sentence, admitting he did something wrong, but it wasn't worth 30 months in jail (though if I remember correctly, they were all quite willing to have Bill Clinton impeached and thrown out of office for lying about a blow job, an offense for which he was never even tried; they're just not quite as worried about someone who was convicted on 2 counts of perjury and 2 counts of obstructing justice who may be lying about the underlying crime of treason). Nor should I worry about the US Attorney scandal because I've been told by the Administration that they had nothing to do with it and that's why they are invoking Executive Privilege. Why, everyone can understand the logic there: We never spoke to these people; so you can't speak to them either. Or maybe it's that we did speak to them, but it had nothing to do with anything, so why would you want to,or....never mind.

On the barely legal side of the equation, we have the Fourth Circuit(?) Court of Appeals saying that you can't use the courts to find out if the Administration broke the Law against you; you have to know they broke the Law against you before you can bring any kind of criminal complaint against them. While I understand the Court's reasoning, I wonder how anyone is supposed to find out if the Administration broke the Law agaisnt them when the group charged with finding that out is the group that broke the Law in the first place (See FBI and Illegal Wiretapping and Justice Department)?

We have as well the Supreme Court saying that if you have loads and loads of money, you can pretty much say whatever you want in a political campaign, but if you're a high school student, don't make any bad jokes because we'll slap you down (if you're Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and the ilk, you can call all your demands for the Deaths of other people bad jokes and the Hardly Ever Right will defend you forever against supposed censorship). And as to Clarence Thomas' concurrent opinion which argues that schools in fact have the obligation to instill a set of common values, it may behoove the individuals arguing that position, including Clarence Thomas, to remember that one of the common values we're supposed to instil is the First Amendment. A sign saying "Bong Hits for Jesus" is considerably less inflammatory than what "The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" said about John Kerry during the last campaign, particularly since all of their allegations were outright lies.

But let us return to The National Review's arguement that The Cosntitution is not in fact in crisis; that this is just hyperbole. What we have is a Congress which just doesn't understand its place, they argue. Interesting assessment, but completely wrong. Congress comes first in The Constitution, not the President. The basic reason for the presidency is that it is easier to deal in foreign affairs with one individual than with 435. That is why the President can propose treaties, but those treaties need to be ratified by Congress (a position, I'm sure, The National Review and the Hardly-Ever Right find irksome). There is no, nor has there ever been, a Unitary President as the Hardly-Ever Right presently argues there is. What's more, their position is so shortsighted that were they to but look down the road a bit, they wouldn't want what they are demanding.

The Hardly-Ever Right's call for a strong, unitary executive is so myopic that it defies logic. Imagine if you will what happens when you have such a figure. The Hardly-Ever Right assumes that were a Democrat to be elected President, they would act with a greater sense of decorum and therefore there would be no problem as the Hardly-Ever Right would simply be the Bully they are and shout him or her down. The Hardly-Ever Right believes in ponies. But back to the topic at hand; if we imagine a smaller government limited only to military and policing and a Unitary President, what remains for that President to do? You need only look at what George W. Bush has done to see what you can expect more of, because let's face it, the next guy (or gal) just can't be as incompetent as this one.

IMPEACH THE BASTARDS!

Yesterday was the Fourth of July: Independence Day! And for I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, it was a great day. For the rest of us, not so much.

If you happen to value your independence and freedom, this week may have seen the strongest statement by this Administration and its enablers that your freedom and independence are not considered worth one wit. George Bush, George the Third (an honorific which I gave him when I thought it was just a joke), made it plain that he really doesn't care much about the Law or The Constitution. It's quite simple really: The Law found Libby guilty, a jury of his peers. The judge sentenced Libby according to the guidelines set down by the Justice Department. And George the Third looked at the sentence, agreed the Law had indeed been broken, and said that that didn't matter, because he, George the Third, thought the sentence too harsh. So he gave Libby a free pass. George W. Bush basically said that the Law is what he says it is! That he is the final arbiter of what is and is not legal. George Bush has declared himself King. Or more accurately, Dictator.

Others have written far more eloquently about this than I have. Read Glenn Greenwald, read Atrios, read Digby, read anyone but the idiotic hypocrites over on the Right. Not only are they hypocrites, arguing that Libby did nothing wrong except what Bill Clinton did (except Bill Clinton was never brought to trial nor convicted), they do not realize just how effectively they have damaged the rule of Law. Because, let's be honest here, Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in a treason case. If Libby would have come clean, the people Fitzgerald would have prosecuted would have been prosecuted for acts of treason against the US Government and the American people. The Administration and its enablers have commited treason, and they don't even realize the door they have opened!

It is self-evident that George Bush believes he is above the Law. It is self-evident that Dick Cheney believes that he is above the Law. It is self-evident that the enablers of this Administration, the MSM, the Republican Leadership, the Religious Right Leaders believe that they are above the Law. Are we, the American People, ready for the slippery slope that this president has placed us upon? If we do not act to curtail this power-grab, what will we do when the next president decides that he can more flagrantly ignore the Law? Are we ready to abdicate our rights to the government? The reason we have the government we do is so that no one group or person could become a tyrant. The Repiublican Leadership and its enablers chose to install a tyrant. Are they ready for when that tyrant turns on them?

We have but few means of recourse. Congress must do its duty. Impeach him! Impeach Cheney! Throw the whole criminal cabal in jail before it's too late! Do it now while we still can.

YOU CANNOT SPEAK UNLESS YOU HAVE THE MONEY

The Supreme Court recently ruled that if you are a corporation or union, you may pay to have political commercials put on which, while not directly calling for you to vote for a candidate, can indirectly influence your vote just before the election. They deemed this to be a Free Speech issue, protected by the First Amendment, the arguement coming down simply to money equals speech. Bench Memos at The National Review applauded this decision as a victory for Free Speech.

The Court also found that a high school student could indeed be punished for holding up a rather nonsensical sign at a high school function because he violated school rules and his speech was not in fact protected under the First Amendment. Bench Memos applauded this ruling as well, arguing that those damn high school kids just don't have the same rights as Corporations. Bench Memos, it seems, has no problem with Corporate Free Speech. It's just individual Free Speech they don't like.

I found one particular defense of the ruling in the "Bong Hits for Jesus" case completely nonsensical. The following is a quote from Clarence Thomas to defend his concurrent opinion in the case:

"I am afraid that our jurisprudence now says that students have a right to speak in schools except when they don’t—a standard continuously developed through litigation against local schools and their administrators. In my view, petitioners could prevail for a much simpler reason: As originally understood, the Constitution does not afford students a right to free speech in public schools."

Now, I'm no legal scholar. Nor did I read the entire opinion by Justice Thomas, but on its face, this is ridiculous. I did read the beginning of Justice Thomas' opinion, and even he concedes that the public school system did not exist until the 1800s, so saying that the Constitution did not originally afford students a right to free speech in public schools is absurd as there were no public schools at the time!

But beyond that, if we follow Justice Thomas' logic, he should not be handing down opinions as The Constitution as originally understood does not afford Justice Thomas any rights as a citizen. Nor does it afford women any rights as citizens. In point of fact, as originally understood, The Constitution disenfranchises a significant portion of the population. Now, while the good folks at Bench Memos may believe that that would be a good thing, I would beg to differ. Justice Thomas, as well as the four who concurred with him and Bench Memos, is wrong; plain and simple. Their position in this case is against individual liberty and for Corporatism. Even were we to read The Constitution as Charles Beard interpreted it, it is evident that The Bill of Rights was meant as a protection of Individual Liberty, not corporate liberty. It does not take a legal scholar to point out that the Tenth Amendment provides that all rights not enumerated within The Constitution to the national government revert to the people. That includes the right to put up nonsensical signs, even at a school function.

But the more important point is that Bench Memos feels this is a win for conservatives, if by conservatives we mean people who put Corporate interests before those of individual interests. This is in fact the position of the modern conservative movement - we should not protect individual rights, we should protect corporate ones. Look at the present immigration debate. Those damn dirty illegal immigrants are coming to the US to take jobs from American citizens, according to The National Review and others. But not once has The National Review stated that corporate sponsorship of illegal immigration is one of its root causes. They do not call for punishment of the corporation which employs illegal immigrants; they blame the immigrants for wanting to create a better life for themselves and their families. Something which all of our forefathers wanted to do in this country.

Or we can look to the present administration in regards to the concept of protecting the corporation over the individual. The Administration believes that it's dealings are sacrosanct and must be kept secret at all costs, while individuals' right to privacy (another issue the conservative movement does not believe in - just look at how they would like to be able to tell you what you can and cannot do in your own bedroom as a consenting adult) are simply swept out of the way as The Administration sees fit, and the Conservative Movement goes into paroxyms of ecstasy at the manliness of these cowards. You need only look at nearly every major institution of our Government under this administration to see that the underlying position taken by the Modern Conservative Movement is to protect and strengthen Corporate control while weakening individual freedoms. The Modern Conservative Movement does not believe in individual freedom. They do not believe that we can, in fact, make our own decisions. Unfortunately, they seem to be correct about at least 35% of the population. Most importantly, they are doing everything in their power to deny us what freedoms we have and to allow the entities that they believe to be the only ones with any rights to further manipulate us. The Modern Conservative Movement hates individual liberty.

AMERICA THE PSYCHOTIC! PART 3

In previous posts, I wrote about the media and the rightwing noise machine. Nothing I said was particularly original or different; there are hundreds of other bloggers all pretty much pointing out the same thing. At the end of that post, I also stated that I would be writing about the worse elements in our society which the Rightwing has chosen to ally itself with. One of those elements, and probably the most controversial of those is the Revelationist Movement.

The reason I consider the Reveletaionist Movement to be the most controversial is that unlike the Hate groups, which are not mainstream and are not considered to be viable, the Revelationist Movement is considered to be somewhat mainstream and a viable political as well as religious movement. You need only look at our President and what he has claimed in the past to see just how mainstream this movement is.

Again, there are many bloggers who have already taken great ains to point out just how perfidious this movement is. Talk to Action consistently tallies the Revelationist movement and its abuses. Crooks and Liars also regularly illuminates the insanity of this movement.

Why do I call this group insane? To put it quite simply, they act one way during the day, but believe and pray for something else. They act like your neightbors. They may even be friendly towards you most of the time. Yet given their beliefs, they are really only being nice to you because they believe you are damned to hell and doomed, just like any animal. Therefore, in their way of thinking, it really doesn't matter whether they are nice to you or not. You're dead anyway. And the only reason they are nice to you is because you always treat your animals nicely before you slaughter them.

For what else is their belief in Revelations, but the slaughter of all people except those who are to be raptured. If you are not one of the chosen, you will spend seven years on earth which will be like Hell, and all the unbelievers will either convert to the one true faith or be slaughtered. It is a violent end to everyone who doesn't believe as they do. It has very little to do with the teachings of Jesus.

So why is it a problem that these people believe as they do. Again, they place their belief in Revelations above all other beliefs. They act in a manner to hasten the The Rapture, to hasten the End Times and the conversion or death of all the rest of us. Which means, they don't believe in Global Warming, they want violence in the Middle East, and they do not tolerate any beliefs other than their own.

The problem again occurs when it comes to politics. The initial premise of our society was that a multiplicity of sects and factions would keep one sect or faction from becoming overly powerful. Up to now, this has more or less worked. But with the convergence of the Rightwing Noise Machine, the Incestuous Entrenched MSM, and the Revelationists, you no longer have a single sect or faction trying to dominate all the others, you have a single faction made up of disparate elements trying to dominate American Political Discourse. None of these elements by themselves can dominate the discourse, but together they make up a significant minority in the country.

The Revelationists are not by themselves a significant minority. They are a large minority, making up somewhere in the nature of a quarter of the population. Add to this your run-of-the-mill conservative, and other disaffected elements who wish to blame others for their failings, and that minority grows. The power-brokers in the MSM and the Rightwing Noise Machine with the help of the leaders of the Revelationist Movement bring their minions to bear n the Political process. The problem, of course, is that the Power Brokers believe they control the process. And at this time, it seems they do. But what happens when this coalition of the intolerant falls apart, which it will at some point. What will be left of our country when the intolerant have completely gutted our rights and freedoms because of the conviction in their own beliefs?

In the next section of this thought experiment, I shall continue to discuss the other misguided elements of our society.

AMERICA THE PSYCHOTIC! PART 2

Last time I spoke generally about the irrelevance of the Media and how this plays into the advancing US psychosis. To reiterate briefly, The World burns, and we obsess about nothing. Like individual psychotic episodes, the US is disengaged from Reality. There appears to be a collective disconnect from what is actually happening and what we believe or wish to happen.

To continue now with the Media, which is after all supposedly our collective conscience, let us turn our attention to the conservative media and the triangulation which occurs amongst the Media, the Netroots, and the Political Classes. There is no comparable behavior on the Left-leaning side, thus giving the Right even more sway than they should have. While the so-called Middle obsesses over the death of Anna Nicole Smith, thereby rendering itself irrelevant, the Left shouts against the wind, itself relatively powerless since it does not in fact control much in the way of Media; The Right, on the other hand, uses its massive propaganda machine fueled by the consolidation of media, rightwing think tanks, and a single simple message, that message being that if you disagree, you are unamerican to beat us into submission. And so they get away with setting the Media agenda, which is why a story about Nancy Pelosi and her flights back to her district gains traction. Peter Daou does a much more competent job of explaining this than I have.

This, of course, does not completely explain why America appears to be sliding into Psychosis, but it is one major component of this slide. By marginalizing some of those that differ, you make it easier for others to gain traction. The Right, by itself, does not have, even with this triangulation, the numbers to actually gain control of our political system. They simply control the means to marginalize certain other elements in the debate, and by marginalizing those factions, they allow other factions to rise beyond their natural level.

The Middle level Media are also complicit in this, as they seem to take their marching orders from the Rightwing noise machine. There are numerous blogs which look at how the MSM and Washington have an incestuous relationship. See here and here to name but two. But that incestuous relationship is even more eggregious when you realize that Terry Moran of ABC News is the brother of the blogger Rick Moran of Rightwing Nuthouse. Or that Jonah Goldeberg of National Review owes his position to his mother's rightwing predilections. Or that Katie O'Bernie's husband was the hiring officer for the CPA in Iraq. Or that Campbell Brown recently married Dan Senior, the spokesman for the CPA under Paul Bremer. And this list goes no and on.

Not to say that there has never been cross-pollination of Media and Politics before, but now that cross-pollination fits in very well with the desires of these Media outlets since very few of them are just Media outlets anymore.

There is more to this than what I have written, and I could go on forever, but I just want to point out lastly that the Conservative triangulation cannot in and of itself win elections. It does not have that kind of numbers. It is a minority, albeit a significant one, but by itself it is still a minority. So what it has done is insidious. It has allied itself with elements which do not want America to survive. It has allied itself not with the best this country has to offer, but with the worst. And while those worst elements again, do not make up a majority, there are just enough of them to help push elections over. In the next part of this series, I will be discussing those elements.

UPDATE: If the following is true, then you really have to wonder whether there is any difference between the Rightwing Noise Machine and the MSM.

AMERICA THE PSYCHOTIC! PART 1

Now, before anyone starts writing me nasty emails about this, as I expect I will finally have some traffic (Thank you Jon Swift for adding me to your blogroll), I believe that there are many excellent aspects of our Country (Yes, I think it's my Country too). As I have argued many times before, the fundamental principles upon which this Country was founded are some of the most high-minded and exceptional principles ever found in History. Our freedom to think and live pretty much how we as individuals determine our lives is something envied by most of the rest of the World as is our economic prosperity. We have created a country both unique for its aspirations and accessible because of its beliefs in opportunity and self-worth. Which makes this all the more horrifying as we allow our country to slide into psychosis.

That may seem harsh. Psychosis. Isn't that insanity? Yes, it is. But you need only look at the News for the day to see that this judgement is not too far off. As of today, 3,114 US soldiers have died in the Occupation of Iraq, and total non-mortal casualties in the neighborhood of47,657. Yet, given these horrendous figures (imagine how long we will be dealing with this mistake of a War), what was the top story of the day? Why, it was Nancy Pelosi and the Republican outrage over the aircraft put at her disposal to travel home to her district! The third most powerful figure in our Government, and Republican lawmakers were upset about the aircraft that was to be placed at her disposal to go home! And, of course, this is what the News Media deemed to be an important story. (Update: as I write this, the new breaking story is the death of Anna Nicole Smith. This story is considered so big that Keith Olbermann, not one usually associated with tabloid journalism, spent nearly half his show on it: a new low for MSNBC.) And the top story the previous two days was the Lust in Space story; an astronaut who drove some 900 miles to supposedly kill her supposed rival for a fellow astronaut.

So the so-called MSM adds nothing to the conversation. While the World struggles with poverty, violence, natural disasters, and even their own political scandals, which actually pertain to what is happening in the countries in question, the US spends like a drunken sailor and gossips about the death of a person who was famous for being famous. The Main-Stream Media should be considered irrelevant. End of Part 1.

IRAN; THE SCAPEGOAT AND THE EXCUSE!

It has become abundantly clear that BushCo intends to force a military confrontation with Iran, whether a pre-emptive air strike or an all-out ground war is simply the question. The Assistant Secretary of State has been making noises about the so-called Iran threat and the proof they have, recent reports concerning the attack on US soldiers in Karbala have been blamed on Iran, though no proof has been presented. And the MSM has quite simply decided to follow along, though at least this time there seems to be some scepticism.

So why now? Admittedly, Bush has called Iran one of the "Axis of Evil" (odd that given that Iran is a working democracy and actually allows women rights which they do not receive from our allies in the region e.g. Saudi Arabia) for awhile now, but the rhetoric has been mostly lip-service. Not that Bush would not have attacked Iran if he thought he could, but he went first to Iraq. So what new reasons are there for this sudden show of bellicosity?

To put it quite simply, Bush and BushCo. have to find a scapegoat and an excuse for their failure, and the easiest way for this to be effective is to sound the alarm about Iran. Iran, Iran, Iran. The Iranians are providing weapons to the Shia Militias! The Iranians are aiding the suicide bombers. The Iranians wish to control Iraq and to punish the US. I doubt very much that Bush actually believes any of these platitudes. But for him, it's a matter of not being held responsible. Bush, as he has said himself, doesn't care about his legacy; he cares only that he is not held ultimately responsible for the catastrophe that is his Iraq policy. He is the petulant two-year-old who when he sees he is about to lose, changes the rules of the game so that the game continues until he wins. Or everyone else simply becomes bored with playing.

Which makes it all the easier for the truly insane who believe that this is the correct policy to pursue these policies. So while it is obvious that Bush cares little about all of this, there is a cadre of policymakers, the so-called serious men, who believe wholly in this policy and will force US to continue to pursue it, come Hell or High Water. They will in the end destroy the US because they care nothing about the US; they care only about their policies and their belief in those policies. Cheney is such a man. McCain is such a man. Most of the contributors to the National Review are such men and women. The War Whore Michael Ledeen is not only such a man, he is also the ultimate hypocrite. He now says that he never advocated for war in Iraq, even though there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

And so now, unable to admit to the catastrophe that is Iraq, they turn their attention to Iran and blame Iran for all their troubles. Because, as everyone knows, Iran invaded Iraq in March of 2003. And the War Whores that bellowed for War cannot bring themselves to admit that they may have been wrong.