G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
In The Last Throes, Judiciously
By David Michael Green
Created Jul 13 2007 - 9:44am
"David Labowitz, an insurance salesman here [Narberth, Pennsylvania], said
he voted for Mr. Bush in 2004 and was eager for the next election to come
along so he could rectify what he called his mistake. 'I am a registered
Republican,' Mr. Labowitz said, 'but I am so embarrassed to be a registered
Republican.'"
-- New York Times, July 9, 2007
Imagine a burning building, with the people inside scrambling to find the
exits.
Now imagine that building located on the deck of a large ship, isolated in
the middle of the Pacific Ocean, riddled with gaping holes and sinking fast.
Keep that image in your mind, and add to it the tsunami that is fast
approaching the ship's location.
It will get there soon, but not before the Enola Gay, which is buzzing
overhead with a special delivery item in its payload.
Got that picture in your mind? Welcome to the Republican Party, July 2007.
Or, the "Grand Old Party", as our regressive friends like to call it. Old?
Sure - as old as greed itself. Party? Well, there ain't a lot of celebrating
going on in its vicinity, but if you mean a congregation of ever-narrowing
numbers of people aggregated around certain political ideas, however
ridiculous they may be, well then, sure, this is a party. But grand? Only in
the scale of its current mess.
If you've got any political antennae at all, any sensitivity to the moods
and trends of American politics, you can't help but conclude that it is all
collapsing fast, and with it as well many of the multiple enablers who have
assisted in bringing us this ugliest of disasters these last years. It's all
coming apart now, bursting its tawdry seams, and doing so not only with a
tremendous rapidity, but with even a tremendous increase in the rate of
rapidity.
What a week it has been.
The most obvious signs of implosion, of course, are the Republicans in
Congress who, one after another, are now ditching the president with
sunrise-like regularity. It seemed like there was hardly a day this week
when one or two more didn't abandon the sinking ship of Bush's Iraq
catastrophe. Or should we say that you are "cutting and running", my dear
GOP friends? Should we now question your patriotism? Should we note that
many of you are up for reelection next year and, having seen what happened
last go-round, are now "playing politics with national security"?
If we were Karl Rove, George Bush or Dick Cheney, we would say those things,
of course. If we were garden variety regressive fellow-travelers - much
like, well ... you, actually - we would. If we were your attack dogs, like
O'Reilly and Limbaugh, we most certainly would. But we needn't do any of
those things, because you folks have spoken for yourselves. You backed an
insanely incompetent buffoon for president, little distinguishable from
Caligula other than by the suit and tie where the toga once resided. You
supported his administration's every move even when you saw that it catered
to the worst possible instincts of our country, and that it represented the
very antithesis of American constitutional government. You stood by or piled
on as its agents berated, vilified and destroyed any and every true patriot
who showed the greatest courage by expressing the slightest objection to
these toxic policies.
Now that you are seeking rescue from the burning building on the
aforementioned sinking ship awaiting the fire of the gods to be quenched
only by the great exhalation of Poseidon himself, you should count yourself
lucky - Mr. Voinovich, Mr. Lugar, Mr. Domenici, Mr. Alexander, Ms. Snowe -
if your too-little-too-late-mealy-mouthed-half-baked attempts to undo the
tragedy you helped create in Iraq results only in the loss of your seats in
Congress. How will you face the mothers of those who have lost so much
more - who have lost everything - for your astonishing lapse in judgement,
at best, and your raw political opportunism at (probable) worst, my proud
Republican friends?
One by one, two by two, they bailed this week, so that sometimes it seemed
that the only Republican senator who didn't jump ship was that good old
patriot, John McCain. I guess McCain must be a religious true believer,
because after Bush and Rove sicced the sickest dogs on him in 2000, he's
done nothing since but love his former enemy. Indeed, so great is McCain's
Christian embrace of George Bush that he seems to have even adopted the
latter's delusional personality out of sympathy. The only week McCain's
presidential campaign has ever had that was worse than this week was last
week. The guy has a whopping two whole million dollars left in the bank,
hasn't bought a single ad with the tens of millions already wasted on a
caviar campaign, is slipping in the Republican polls behind a pro-choice guy
with a lisp and another guy from Massachusetts, can no longer raise
contributions for the campaign, and therefore had to lay off more than half
his national staff. Then, on top of all that, this week he loses his two top
operatives through what appears to have been a civil war going on inside the
campaign. We can't quite tell who quit whom, but either way, McCain's bid
for the White House nowadays looks rather more like an episode of ER than a
presidential campaign.
Asked if he fired these guys, Big John said: "No, no, no, no. I'd describe
the campaign as going well. I'm very happy with it. People are free to make
their own assessments. I think we're doing fine." That's scary. Of course,
it also fully explains how McCain can be just about the only person this
side of Dick Cheney who thinks things are going just fine in Baghdad. And
isn't that just what we need right now, another four or eight years of a
'round-the-clock hallucinating chief executive? No matter. Like Don
Rumsfeld, Tony Blair and the former Republican majority in Congress before
him, McCain is being amply rewarded for his loyalty to The Wrecking Machine
Formerly Known As George Bush, and for sharing the president's megalomania.
Twice McCain has been the odds-on favorite to be the Republican nominee for
president, only to watch the little terror from Texas destroy his great life
ambition, now for a second time as well.
[Last minute update as we go to press: It has been reported that McCain had
a huge fight with Senator Voinovich on the Senate floor (the biggest row
people have seen there in decades), that he illegally called campaign
contributors from the Senate cloakroom (the very thing that he lambasted Al
Gore for doing in 2000), that his two top people in Iowa have joined the
exodus from his campaign, and that his campaign co-chair in Florida just got
busted for offering to perform oral sex on an undercover cop for twenty
bucks. You think I'm making this stuff up, don't you? But I'm not. That's
the beauty of the regressive right - with these guys you don't have to! That
was today's news. I wonder what tomorrow will bring. Oh, did I mention that
McCain turns 71 next month?]
Looking across to the other side of the aisle, one could certainly be
equally amazed at the 'leaders' of the majority party in Congress, Harry
Reid and Nancy Pelosi. If anyone could possibly be more ineffective at the
job of opposing a reckless, dangerous and now publicly despised president,
it is hard to figure how. Perhaps if they were to send Dick Cheney a dozen
roses and asked him please to end the war he might feel more pressure than
he has since January, when the Democrats gained control of Congress. It's
hard to know which would be more intense.
The most astonishing thing to know about Harry Reid is that he was reputedly
once a boxer. Does that mean someone threw a punch at him on the schoolyard
grounds in seventh grade and broke his horn-rim glasses? Is that what they
mean when they say this guy was a boxer? I only ask because I desperately
want the leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate to be a fighter. But,
today, everything about what Harry Reid says, does and even looks like to me
telegraphs punching bag, not fighter. Or wet noodle. Under a doormat. You
know - the one leading into the servants' quarters.
I am therefore at least slightly pleased to see that Reid is apparently
nearing the end of his rope on Iraq. Gee, could that be because Congress now
has job approval ratings even lower than George Bush, and without having
done anything to anger anybody except those who expected it to actually do
something, especially on Iraq? Having utterly and unnecessarily capitulated
a month ago on the supplemental appropriations bill for the war, Reid is
supposedly now already gearing up for action rather than waiting for
September as the White House wants. Whatever else the majority leader is, it
would seem doubtful that he is so stupid that he'd aggravate his base to the
point of frenzy by raising this issue again only to cave once more, so maybe
we'll actually see some action this time... But then, that's what I expected
last month, too.
If he wants to know how much is at stake, he can just ask his pal Nancy
Pelosi next door. The most astonishing thing to know about her is that she
represents one of the most liberal districts in America. So she becomes
Speaker following an election, the clear message of which was 'end this
nightmare', and the first thing she does is take impeachment off the table!
What is it with these people? Do they go native in Washington and just lose
all sense, including any sense of themselves and their own backgrounds? If
Congress met on the moon, would they start acting like rocks?
Life just got a lot uglier for Nancy, and deservedly so, in what is
undoubtedly the political highlight of the week, if not the decade. In the
most clever and thrilling application of progressive politics we've seen
since Larry Flynt brilliantly offered a million bucks to any mistress who
would out her Republican hypocrite paramour during the Clinton impeachment,
Cindy Sheehan has threatened to run against Nancy Pelosi for her San
Francisco congressional seat unless Pelosi proceeds on impeachment against
Bush within two weeks time.
I wish we progressives could do more of this sort of clever infighting, but
here the circumstances are rather unique. Nevertheless, this maneuver by
Sheehan is brilliant. Much like the campaign to embarrass China during their
Olympics if they don't put pressure on Sudan over the Darfur issue, it is a
case of leverage on leverage. Sheehan is leaning on Pelosi to lean on Bush.
If Pelosi isn't crapping in her panties right now, she's a bigger fool than
would be the test-tube offspring of George W. Bush and Dan Quayle, carried
to term by Paris Hilton. Pelosi's district is perhaps the most progressive
in the country. If angry sentiment against Bush and against his Iraq war
doesn't run at least 90-10 there, I'd be shocked. Pelosi's already an
enormous source of disappointment for anyone to the left of Joe Lieberman,
and Cindy Sheehan - backed by an army of motivated volunteers and donations
literally from across the world - would have an excellent chance of
dethroning the New Queen of the House, only two years into her reign.
Sheehan has, with this single bold stroke, completely reshuffled the deck
for Pelosi, Congress, Bush, America, Iraq and the world. A coldly
dispassionate look at the new lay of the land suggests that Nancy Pelosi now
has two options ahead of her. She can either become (the first female)
president of the United States following the impeachment of Bush and Cheney
(and perhaps even keep the job after the 2008 election), or she will likely
lose both her Speakership and her seat in Congress. There probably is no
in-between. That doesn't seem like such a tough choice to me, especially
because the only ones who pay in this scenario are Bush and Cheney. But it
does require a certain boldness - even if its boldness driven by terror -
which is a quality not exactly in abundance among Democrats in Congress
these last, well, decades.
There are two other beautiful aspects to impeachment that should be kept in
mind. One is that the public is ready for it - as Dick Cheney might say,
"big time". Half of those polled - an astonishingly high number - believe
that Bush should be impeached, and probably most of them don't even quite
know why they feel that way. For Darth Cheney the numbers are 54 percent in
favor versus 40 percent against. In short, there is little political risk
here for Pelosi to proceed. That is especially true given that ample
evidence of the administration's lies on Iraq is already in the public
record, and that Bush has already admitted to both breaking statutory law
and violating the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution with his illegal
domestic spying program. He couldn't be more guilty than he already is if he
gave his next press conference in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit.
But the juiciest joy of impeachment, besides of course conviction and
removal (or better yet, conviction and removal of a disastrous president who
also happens to be the leader of a party that wrongly impeached a Democratic
president), is that the White House could no longer continue hiding evidence
by invoking its bogus executive privilege or national security doctrines.
Or, more precisely, they could, but only if they wanted to stand by watching
themselves lose the trial in the Senate. Their position would be tantamount
to an accused murderer refusing to present exonerating evidence at his trial
because of devotion to some relatively obscure constitutional principle (I
mean, how many Americans understand the doctrine of executive privilege?).
You can do it if you want, but there will be a price to pay. You'll lose
badly.
Of course, if the evidence you're supposedly protecting on principle doesn't
actually exonerate you but in fact proves your guilt, well then that's a
whole 'nother kettle of fish, isn't it? Once the impeachment process begins,
I see little hope for Bush and Cheney other than that enough Republicans and
perhaps even a few Democrats would prevent the two-thirds vote necessary to
convict. But given public sentiment right now, let alone later, and given
the evidence (or unanswered accusations) that would be brought out via an
effective prosecution combined with the mounting electoral vulnerability of
Republicans generally and anyone supporting this White House specifically,
even thirty-four votes in defense of the indefensible in the Senate might be
hard to muster. Cindy Sheehan has started a pebble rolling down a
mountainside. There is every possibility this could turn into a landslide of
international proportions.
The same failings of Congress must also be applied to the mainstream
American media. Much like the preening blowhards on the Hill, the press is
enormously culpable in the multiple tragedies of Bushism, for both utterly
failed their assigned role in the American constitutional firmament as the
watchdog and check against the accretion of executive power. The media's
guilt regarding the specific matter of Iraq is even more egregious, as they
not only failed both in asking tough questions about the policy or even
questioning the patently bogus claims of the administration before the war,
but also frequently served as a mouthpiece for broadcasting precisely those
lies.
So the New York Times - which has the most to atone for, if only because it
violated the most trust of all - began its week with an extended editorial
calling for the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. Yep, they're fed up
with Mr. Bush's deceits, it would seem, and they've finally figured out that
the succession of benchmarks and breakthroughs claimed by the administration
are little more than smokescreens intended to delay any real action on Iraq
until January 2009, when the agony of Bush/Cheney finally and mercifully
comes to a halt (assuming Cheney doesn't first rewrite that part of the
Constitution as well).
I couldn't be more delighted to see a bit of wisdom from our national paper
of record (still, however, mixed with naivete about the position and power
of George Bush's America in the world), but gee, would it have been too much
to have asked for that back when it mattered? Would it have been too much
for you guys to have covered, two years after the war was launched and when
the rough extent of its utter foolishness was already clear, the Downing
Street Memos, which proved beyond question that the war was based on lies?
And while we're at it, if you folks really want to atone for your sins, why
don't you do something slightly bold now, like call for the impeachment of
the president and vice president?
I suppose we should be thankful for the little we've gained in recent years,
even if the emphasis truly is on the little. I have been reminded of this of
late in reading coverage of the Bush administration in the media. Here's a
decent example, excerpted from an AP article by Jennifer Loven, entitled:
"Bush Rips Democratic Lawmakers' Failures":
President Bush accused Democratic lawmakers on Saturday of being unable to
live up to their duties, citing Congress' inability to pass legislation to
fund the federal government.
"Democrats are failing in their responsibility to make tough decisions and
spend the people's money wisely," Bush said in his weekly radio address.
"This moment is a test."
The White House has said the failure of a broad immigration overhaul was
proof that Democratic controlled Capitol Hill cannot take on major issues.
"We saw this with immigration, and we're seeing it with some other issues
where Congress is having an inability to take on major challenges," said
spokesman Tony Fratto.
The main reason the immigration measure died, however, was staunch
opposition from Bush's own base--conservatives. The president could not turn
around members of his own party despite weeks of intense effort.
Here we see the White House in its usual Rovian posture, simply inventing
reality out of whole cloth, never mind the mind-bending absurdity of it all.
If it is advantageous to describe black as white, up as down, Kerry as
coward and Bush as courageous, Iraq as necessary to our security and its
opponents as America-haters - then just do it. They have very good reason to
continue in this Wonderlandian mode. It's worked brilliantly for years, and
hardly anyone - certainly in the press - ever has the courage to inject
silly stuff like facts and reality into the discussion. Moreover, if someone
is ever foolish enough to do so, there's always the politics of personal
destruction to rely upon. Make an example out of Joe Wilson and Valerie
Plame, and the rest will get the idea.
If you want to see how far we've come, though, take a good look at the last
paragraph in the passage quoted above. It's what the nice folks in the media
biz like to describe as "context". Not so long ago, had this article run,
that paragraph would have been missing - completely AWOL. The
administration, and especially this ridiculous imbecile of a president (but
wasn't it just so endearing how he mangled words and didn't know the name of
the president of Pakistan?!) could make any claim, no matter how absurd, no
matter how contrary to known fact, and you wouldn't find such corrective
context anywhere in sight, let alone in the same article. It was crucial
that the nonsense go unchallenged, and so it did. Of course, to inject such
contextual background into a story of this sort is arguably to add a
political slant to it, something that a 'neutral' American press fancies
that it doesn't do. What they don't tell you, however, is that failing to
add such context in the face of known absurdities (like the notion that the
Democrats spiked the president's immigration bill) is just as much if note
more of an act of politicization as is adding it. Worse, it is also an act
of cooptation.
And, speaking of absurdities, notice also how far we still haven't come.
Someday in the future, perhaps, there will also be some qualifying context
behind this jaw-dropper: "Democrats are failing in their responsibility to
make tough decisions and spend the people's money wisely". Imagine how
differently - and how much more honestly - the piece would have read if the
next paragraph had said: "George Bush inherited America's biggest budget
surplus in history, and turned it into the biggest deficit in history,
because of which the national debt is now at $9 trillion, or about $60,000
per taxpayer, and rising, and accumulating additional interest every day.
When Republicans took control of government, they went on a spending spree
that dwarfed anything Democrats had ever done. Bush never vetoed a single
spending bill."
Of course, the media - like Congress - have been way behind the public at
virtually every step of this process, and that continues to be the case
today, so that even though the public views the administration (albeit still
too generously, merely) as dishonest and inept, it will be some time before
anyone inside the Washington establishment can hint at such a perception,
despite that it is fully rooted in fact. Outward acknowledgment of any (and
every, real or fabricated) pejorative quality is, of course, reserved for
Democratic presidents only.
And then, of course, there is Bush himself to consider. Fully seventy
percent of the public are now reported to want the troops out of Iraq by
April. My guess is that that number will skyrocket even further now that it
has been revealed that the cost of the war is running $12 billion per month.
The president is due to report to Congress this week on the progress made in
Iraq, but there isn't any. Literally. Reported one story, "The Iraqi
government is unlikely to meet any of the political and security goals or
timelines President Bush set for it in January when he announced a major
shift in U.S. policy, according to senior administration officials closely
involved in the matter". Is it therefore any surprise with these guys that,
as another headline put it, "Administration Shaving Yardstick for Iraq
Gains", and that they are furiously trying to lower expectations in advance
of the report? In yet another media report, the categories they invented
trying to gussy up the corpse of Iraq were described by one insider as
"bizarre". No doubt. Perhaps they'll be citing the Iraqi government for
increased efficiency in addressing the problem of the global population
boom. Could that be a category?
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Robert Gates canceled his trip to Latin America
this week and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley bagged his family
vacation, both returning to Washington in a hurry. According to ABC, an
insider described the White House as being in "panic mode" as members of
Congress are trying to ditch Bush and Cheney faster than a nasty case of the
clap picked up on some overseas junket.
Meanwhile, the usual suspects from the rabid right are desperately trying
their level best to keep the poison flowing, of course. The New York Times
was attacked by conservative papers for capitulating to some very, very bad
people in the Muslim world, while the Washington Times attacked both
Democratic and Republican members of what it dubbed the "appeasement
caucus", who are "are poised to send another unmistakable message of
weakness to the jihadists". I had always thought that spending half a decade
and half a trillion dollars only to see the entirety of your empire's land
forces get the **** kicked out of them was a pretty good definition of
sending an unmistakable message of weakness to your enemy, but what do I
know? The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, cautioned frightened Republican
members of Congress that "their best prospect for making Iraq less important
in 2008 is military progress that allows for a reduction in US forces with
honor and a more stable Iraqi government". Hmmm... "Peace with honor",
"Peace with honor" - where have I heard that gem before?
In any case, the old magic doesn't work anymore, especially when applied to
former stalwarts from their own party. While we may have passed the point
where anyone in the public cares enough about them that trashing wobbly GOP
legislators appears at all unseemly, it nevertheless is certainly missing
more than just a bit in the way of credibility. I don't think many Americans
are going to be angry at these Republicans for only supporting an insane and
hated war for four-and-a-half years, instead of for "a generation", as the
White House has suggested.
We have very far to go, to be sure, but the project of regressive politics
and the Bush administration to which it has been intimately tied is
crumbling before our eyes. Like David Labowitz, quoted at the top of this
piece, voters have lately been clocked departing the GOP at speeds
approaching Mach 5, horrified and shamed at their own foolishness for ever
associating with such monsters in the first place. And still the worst tales
of greed and deceit and murderous violence have yet to emerge from the bog
that produced Bush, Cheney, Rove, DeLay and Scalia, of that I am as sure as
can be. Imagine how it will look when more - and the worst - of the truth is
revealed.
It's worth considering how far we've come, and how perilous was the fate of
the republic, only a short time ago (and, unquestionably, still to some
degree today). The most chilling words ever to emanate from this or any
administration were surely also the most honest these guys ever spoke. In
the summer of 2002, a "senior advisor" to Bush (my guess has always been
that it was Rove) spoke off the record to reporter and author Ron Suskind,
and in so doing revealed the true project of the regressive movement, now
firmly lodged in the White House. Suskind reported this conversation in the
following paragraph from his 2004 article, "Without A Doubt", and the words
have been frightening many a thoughtful reader ever since:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality based
community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge
from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured
something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off.
"That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an
empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're
studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating
other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will
sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to
just study what we do."
Fortunately for the entire world, it turned out a bit differently.
History's actors are now history's acted upon. Perhaps they are stunned to
find that they are mere mortals, like the rest of us.
And the empire has gone the way of every other empire before it. Only a lot
faster.
And they did, indeed, create realities through their actions. Those
realities are called Iraq, global warming, Katrina, the debt, and more.
And we in the reality-based community did indeed study them, and
increasingly, we did so rather judiciously.
And we don't like what our studies have revealed. And we don't want their
empire, especially with them at the head of it. And we don't want their
reality creations.
And so we're creating a new reality, ourselves, we pathetic peons in the
reality-based community.
And they can study our reality. Judiciously, as they will.
And they'll have plenty of time to do so. In their jail cells.
_______
--
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Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By David Michael Green
Created Jul 13 2007 - 9:44am
"David Labowitz, an insurance salesman here [Narberth, Pennsylvania], said
he voted for Mr. Bush in 2004 and was eager for the next election to come
along so he could rectify what he called his mistake. 'I am a registered
Republican,' Mr. Labowitz said, 'but I am so embarrassed to be a registered
Republican.'"
-- New York Times, July 9, 2007
Imagine a burning building, with the people inside scrambling to find the
exits.
Now imagine that building located on the deck of a large ship, isolated in
the middle of the Pacific Ocean, riddled with gaping holes and sinking fast.
Keep that image in your mind, and add to it the tsunami that is fast
approaching the ship's location.
It will get there soon, but not before the Enola Gay, which is buzzing
overhead with a special delivery item in its payload.
Got that picture in your mind? Welcome to the Republican Party, July 2007.
Or, the "Grand Old Party", as our regressive friends like to call it. Old?
Sure - as old as greed itself. Party? Well, there ain't a lot of celebrating
going on in its vicinity, but if you mean a congregation of ever-narrowing
numbers of people aggregated around certain political ideas, however
ridiculous they may be, well then, sure, this is a party. But grand? Only in
the scale of its current mess.
If you've got any political antennae at all, any sensitivity to the moods
and trends of American politics, you can't help but conclude that it is all
collapsing fast, and with it as well many of the multiple enablers who have
assisted in bringing us this ugliest of disasters these last years. It's all
coming apart now, bursting its tawdry seams, and doing so not only with a
tremendous rapidity, but with even a tremendous increase in the rate of
rapidity.
What a week it has been.
The most obvious signs of implosion, of course, are the Republicans in
Congress who, one after another, are now ditching the president with
sunrise-like regularity. It seemed like there was hardly a day this week
when one or two more didn't abandon the sinking ship of Bush's Iraq
catastrophe. Or should we say that you are "cutting and running", my dear
GOP friends? Should we now question your patriotism? Should we note that
many of you are up for reelection next year and, having seen what happened
last go-round, are now "playing politics with national security"?
If we were Karl Rove, George Bush or Dick Cheney, we would say those things,
of course. If we were garden variety regressive fellow-travelers - much
like, well ... you, actually - we would. If we were your attack dogs, like
O'Reilly and Limbaugh, we most certainly would. But we needn't do any of
those things, because you folks have spoken for yourselves. You backed an
insanely incompetent buffoon for president, little distinguishable from
Caligula other than by the suit and tie where the toga once resided. You
supported his administration's every move even when you saw that it catered
to the worst possible instincts of our country, and that it represented the
very antithesis of American constitutional government. You stood by or piled
on as its agents berated, vilified and destroyed any and every true patriot
who showed the greatest courage by expressing the slightest objection to
these toxic policies.
Now that you are seeking rescue from the burning building on the
aforementioned sinking ship awaiting the fire of the gods to be quenched
only by the great exhalation of Poseidon himself, you should count yourself
lucky - Mr. Voinovich, Mr. Lugar, Mr. Domenici, Mr. Alexander, Ms. Snowe -
if your too-little-too-late-mealy-mouthed-half-baked attempts to undo the
tragedy you helped create in Iraq results only in the loss of your seats in
Congress. How will you face the mothers of those who have lost so much
more - who have lost everything - for your astonishing lapse in judgement,
at best, and your raw political opportunism at (probable) worst, my proud
Republican friends?
One by one, two by two, they bailed this week, so that sometimes it seemed
that the only Republican senator who didn't jump ship was that good old
patriot, John McCain. I guess McCain must be a religious true believer,
because after Bush and Rove sicced the sickest dogs on him in 2000, he's
done nothing since but love his former enemy. Indeed, so great is McCain's
Christian embrace of George Bush that he seems to have even adopted the
latter's delusional personality out of sympathy. The only week McCain's
presidential campaign has ever had that was worse than this week was last
week. The guy has a whopping two whole million dollars left in the bank,
hasn't bought a single ad with the tens of millions already wasted on a
caviar campaign, is slipping in the Republican polls behind a pro-choice guy
with a lisp and another guy from Massachusetts, can no longer raise
contributions for the campaign, and therefore had to lay off more than half
his national staff. Then, on top of all that, this week he loses his two top
operatives through what appears to have been a civil war going on inside the
campaign. We can't quite tell who quit whom, but either way, McCain's bid
for the White House nowadays looks rather more like an episode of ER than a
presidential campaign.
Asked if he fired these guys, Big John said: "No, no, no, no. I'd describe
the campaign as going well. I'm very happy with it. People are free to make
their own assessments. I think we're doing fine." That's scary. Of course,
it also fully explains how McCain can be just about the only person this
side of Dick Cheney who thinks things are going just fine in Baghdad. And
isn't that just what we need right now, another four or eight years of a
'round-the-clock hallucinating chief executive? No matter. Like Don
Rumsfeld, Tony Blair and the former Republican majority in Congress before
him, McCain is being amply rewarded for his loyalty to The Wrecking Machine
Formerly Known As George Bush, and for sharing the president's megalomania.
Twice McCain has been the odds-on favorite to be the Republican nominee for
president, only to watch the little terror from Texas destroy his great life
ambition, now for a second time as well.
[Last minute update as we go to press: It has been reported that McCain had
a huge fight with Senator Voinovich on the Senate floor (the biggest row
people have seen there in decades), that he illegally called campaign
contributors from the Senate cloakroom (the very thing that he lambasted Al
Gore for doing in 2000), that his two top people in Iowa have joined the
exodus from his campaign, and that his campaign co-chair in Florida just got
busted for offering to perform oral sex on an undercover cop for twenty
bucks. You think I'm making this stuff up, don't you? But I'm not. That's
the beauty of the regressive right - with these guys you don't have to! That
was today's news. I wonder what tomorrow will bring. Oh, did I mention that
McCain turns 71 next month?]
Looking across to the other side of the aisle, one could certainly be
equally amazed at the 'leaders' of the majority party in Congress, Harry
Reid and Nancy Pelosi. If anyone could possibly be more ineffective at the
job of opposing a reckless, dangerous and now publicly despised president,
it is hard to figure how. Perhaps if they were to send Dick Cheney a dozen
roses and asked him please to end the war he might feel more pressure than
he has since January, when the Democrats gained control of Congress. It's
hard to know which would be more intense.
The most astonishing thing to know about Harry Reid is that he was reputedly
once a boxer. Does that mean someone threw a punch at him on the schoolyard
grounds in seventh grade and broke his horn-rim glasses? Is that what they
mean when they say this guy was a boxer? I only ask because I desperately
want the leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate to be a fighter. But,
today, everything about what Harry Reid says, does and even looks like to me
telegraphs punching bag, not fighter. Or wet noodle. Under a doormat. You
know - the one leading into the servants' quarters.
I am therefore at least slightly pleased to see that Reid is apparently
nearing the end of his rope on Iraq. Gee, could that be because Congress now
has job approval ratings even lower than George Bush, and without having
done anything to anger anybody except those who expected it to actually do
something, especially on Iraq? Having utterly and unnecessarily capitulated
a month ago on the supplemental appropriations bill for the war, Reid is
supposedly now already gearing up for action rather than waiting for
September as the White House wants. Whatever else the majority leader is, it
would seem doubtful that he is so stupid that he'd aggravate his base to the
point of frenzy by raising this issue again only to cave once more, so maybe
we'll actually see some action this time... But then, that's what I expected
last month, too.
If he wants to know how much is at stake, he can just ask his pal Nancy
Pelosi next door. The most astonishing thing to know about her is that she
represents one of the most liberal districts in America. So she becomes
Speaker following an election, the clear message of which was 'end this
nightmare', and the first thing she does is take impeachment off the table!
What is it with these people? Do they go native in Washington and just lose
all sense, including any sense of themselves and their own backgrounds? If
Congress met on the moon, would they start acting like rocks?
Life just got a lot uglier for Nancy, and deservedly so, in what is
undoubtedly the political highlight of the week, if not the decade. In the
most clever and thrilling application of progressive politics we've seen
since Larry Flynt brilliantly offered a million bucks to any mistress who
would out her Republican hypocrite paramour during the Clinton impeachment,
Cindy Sheehan has threatened to run against Nancy Pelosi for her San
Francisco congressional seat unless Pelosi proceeds on impeachment against
Bush within two weeks time.
I wish we progressives could do more of this sort of clever infighting, but
here the circumstances are rather unique. Nevertheless, this maneuver by
Sheehan is brilliant. Much like the campaign to embarrass China during their
Olympics if they don't put pressure on Sudan over the Darfur issue, it is a
case of leverage on leverage. Sheehan is leaning on Pelosi to lean on Bush.
If Pelosi isn't crapping in her panties right now, she's a bigger fool than
would be the test-tube offspring of George W. Bush and Dan Quayle, carried
to term by Paris Hilton. Pelosi's district is perhaps the most progressive
in the country. If angry sentiment against Bush and against his Iraq war
doesn't run at least 90-10 there, I'd be shocked. Pelosi's already an
enormous source of disappointment for anyone to the left of Joe Lieberman,
and Cindy Sheehan - backed by an army of motivated volunteers and donations
literally from across the world - would have an excellent chance of
dethroning the New Queen of the House, only two years into her reign.
Sheehan has, with this single bold stroke, completely reshuffled the deck
for Pelosi, Congress, Bush, America, Iraq and the world. A coldly
dispassionate look at the new lay of the land suggests that Nancy Pelosi now
has two options ahead of her. She can either become (the first female)
president of the United States following the impeachment of Bush and Cheney
(and perhaps even keep the job after the 2008 election), or she will likely
lose both her Speakership and her seat in Congress. There probably is no
in-between. That doesn't seem like such a tough choice to me, especially
because the only ones who pay in this scenario are Bush and Cheney. But it
does require a certain boldness - even if its boldness driven by terror -
which is a quality not exactly in abundance among Democrats in Congress
these last, well, decades.
There are two other beautiful aspects to impeachment that should be kept in
mind. One is that the public is ready for it - as Dick Cheney might say,
"big time". Half of those polled - an astonishingly high number - believe
that Bush should be impeached, and probably most of them don't even quite
know why they feel that way. For Darth Cheney the numbers are 54 percent in
favor versus 40 percent against. In short, there is little political risk
here for Pelosi to proceed. That is especially true given that ample
evidence of the administration's lies on Iraq is already in the public
record, and that Bush has already admitted to both breaking statutory law
and violating the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution with his illegal
domestic spying program. He couldn't be more guilty than he already is if he
gave his next press conference in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit.
But the juiciest joy of impeachment, besides of course conviction and
removal (or better yet, conviction and removal of a disastrous president who
also happens to be the leader of a party that wrongly impeached a Democratic
president), is that the White House could no longer continue hiding evidence
by invoking its bogus executive privilege or national security doctrines.
Or, more precisely, they could, but only if they wanted to stand by watching
themselves lose the trial in the Senate. Their position would be tantamount
to an accused murderer refusing to present exonerating evidence at his trial
because of devotion to some relatively obscure constitutional principle (I
mean, how many Americans understand the doctrine of executive privilege?).
You can do it if you want, but there will be a price to pay. You'll lose
badly.
Of course, if the evidence you're supposedly protecting on principle doesn't
actually exonerate you but in fact proves your guilt, well then that's a
whole 'nother kettle of fish, isn't it? Once the impeachment process begins,
I see little hope for Bush and Cheney other than that enough Republicans and
perhaps even a few Democrats would prevent the two-thirds vote necessary to
convict. But given public sentiment right now, let alone later, and given
the evidence (or unanswered accusations) that would be brought out via an
effective prosecution combined with the mounting electoral vulnerability of
Republicans generally and anyone supporting this White House specifically,
even thirty-four votes in defense of the indefensible in the Senate might be
hard to muster. Cindy Sheehan has started a pebble rolling down a
mountainside. There is every possibility this could turn into a landslide of
international proportions.
The same failings of Congress must also be applied to the mainstream
American media. Much like the preening blowhards on the Hill, the press is
enormously culpable in the multiple tragedies of Bushism, for both utterly
failed their assigned role in the American constitutional firmament as the
watchdog and check against the accretion of executive power. The media's
guilt regarding the specific matter of Iraq is even more egregious, as they
not only failed both in asking tough questions about the policy or even
questioning the patently bogus claims of the administration before the war,
but also frequently served as a mouthpiece for broadcasting precisely those
lies.
So the New York Times - which has the most to atone for, if only because it
violated the most trust of all - began its week with an extended editorial
calling for the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. Yep, they're fed up
with Mr. Bush's deceits, it would seem, and they've finally figured out that
the succession of benchmarks and breakthroughs claimed by the administration
are little more than smokescreens intended to delay any real action on Iraq
until January 2009, when the agony of Bush/Cheney finally and mercifully
comes to a halt (assuming Cheney doesn't first rewrite that part of the
Constitution as well).
I couldn't be more delighted to see a bit of wisdom from our national paper
of record (still, however, mixed with naivete about the position and power
of George Bush's America in the world), but gee, would it have been too much
to have asked for that back when it mattered? Would it have been too much
for you guys to have covered, two years after the war was launched and when
the rough extent of its utter foolishness was already clear, the Downing
Street Memos, which proved beyond question that the war was based on lies?
And while we're at it, if you folks really want to atone for your sins, why
don't you do something slightly bold now, like call for the impeachment of
the president and vice president?
I suppose we should be thankful for the little we've gained in recent years,
even if the emphasis truly is on the little. I have been reminded of this of
late in reading coverage of the Bush administration in the media. Here's a
decent example, excerpted from an AP article by Jennifer Loven, entitled:
"Bush Rips Democratic Lawmakers' Failures":
President Bush accused Democratic lawmakers on Saturday of being unable to
live up to their duties, citing Congress' inability to pass legislation to
fund the federal government.
"Democrats are failing in their responsibility to make tough decisions and
spend the people's money wisely," Bush said in his weekly radio address.
"This moment is a test."
The White House has said the failure of a broad immigration overhaul was
proof that Democratic controlled Capitol Hill cannot take on major issues.
"We saw this with immigration, and we're seeing it with some other issues
where Congress is having an inability to take on major challenges," said
spokesman Tony Fratto.
The main reason the immigration measure died, however, was staunch
opposition from Bush's own base--conservatives. The president could not turn
around members of his own party despite weeks of intense effort.
Here we see the White House in its usual Rovian posture, simply inventing
reality out of whole cloth, never mind the mind-bending absurdity of it all.
If it is advantageous to describe black as white, up as down, Kerry as
coward and Bush as courageous, Iraq as necessary to our security and its
opponents as America-haters - then just do it. They have very good reason to
continue in this Wonderlandian mode. It's worked brilliantly for years, and
hardly anyone - certainly in the press - ever has the courage to inject
silly stuff like facts and reality into the discussion. Moreover, if someone
is ever foolish enough to do so, there's always the politics of personal
destruction to rely upon. Make an example out of Joe Wilson and Valerie
Plame, and the rest will get the idea.
If you want to see how far we've come, though, take a good look at the last
paragraph in the passage quoted above. It's what the nice folks in the media
biz like to describe as "context". Not so long ago, had this article run,
that paragraph would have been missing - completely AWOL. The
administration, and especially this ridiculous imbecile of a president (but
wasn't it just so endearing how he mangled words and didn't know the name of
the president of Pakistan?!) could make any claim, no matter how absurd, no
matter how contrary to known fact, and you wouldn't find such corrective
context anywhere in sight, let alone in the same article. It was crucial
that the nonsense go unchallenged, and so it did. Of course, to inject such
contextual background into a story of this sort is arguably to add a
political slant to it, something that a 'neutral' American press fancies
that it doesn't do. What they don't tell you, however, is that failing to
add such context in the face of known absurdities (like the notion that the
Democrats spiked the president's immigration bill) is just as much if note
more of an act of politicization as is adding it. Worse, it is also an act
of cooptation.
And, speaking of absurdities, notice also how far we still haven't come.
Someday in the future, perhaps, there will also be some qualifying context
behind this jaw-dropper: "Democrats are failing in their responsibility to
make tough decisions and spend the people's money wisely". Imagine how
differently - and how much more honestly - the piece would have read if the
next paragraph had said: "George Bush inherited America's biggest budget
surplus in history, and turned it into the biggest deficit in history,
because of which the national debt is now at $9 trillion, or about $60,000
per taxpayer, and rising, and accumulating additional interest every day.
When Republicans took control of government, they went on a spending spree
that dwarfed anything Democrats had ever done. Bush never vetoed a single
spending bill."
Of course, the media - like Congress - have been way behind the public at
virtually every step of this process, and that continues to be the case
today, so that even though the public views the administration (albeit still
too generously, merely) as dishonest and inept, it will be some time before
anyone inside the Washington establishment can hint at such a perception,
despite that it is fully rooted in fact. Outward acknowledgment of any (and
every, real or fabricated) pejorative quality is, of course, reserved for
Democratic presidents only.
And then, of course, there is Bush himself to consider. Fully seventy
percent of the public are now reported to want the troops out of Iraq by
April. My guess is that that number will skyrocket even further now that it
has been revealed that the cost of the war is running $12 billion per month.
The president is due to report to Congress this week on the progress made in
Iraq, but there isn't any. Literally. Reported one story, "The Iraqi
government is unlikely to meet any of the political and security goals or
timelines President Bush set for it in January when he announced a major
shift in U.S. policy, according to senior administration officials closely
involved in the matter". Is it therefore any surprise with these guys that,
as another headline put it, "Administration Shaving Yardstick for Iraq
Gains", and that they are furiously trying to lower expectations in advance
of the report? In yet another media report, the categories they invented
trying to gussy up the corpse of Iraq were described by one insider as
"bizarre". No doubt. Perhaps they'll be citing the Iraqi government for
increased efficiency in addressing the problem of the global population
boom. Could that be a category?
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Robert Gates canceled his trip to Latin America
this week and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley bagged his family
vacation, both returning to Washington in a hurry. According to ABC, an
insider described the White House as being in "panic mode" as members of
Congress are trying to ditch Bush and Cheney faster than a nasty case of the
clap picked up on some overseas junket.
Meanwhile, the usual suspects from the rabid right are desperately trying
their level best to keep the poison flowing, of course. The New York Times
was attacked by conservative papers for capitulating to some very, very bad
people in the Muslim world, while the Washington Times attacked both
Democratic and Republican members of what it dubbed the "appeasement
caucus", who are "are poised to send another unmistakable message of
weakness to the jihadists". I had always thought that spending half a decade
and half a trillion dollars only to see the entirety of your empire's land
forces get the **** kicked out of them was a pretty good definition of
sending an unmistakable message of weakness to your enemy, but what do I
know? The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, cautioned frightened Republican
members of Congress that "their best prospect for making Iraq less important
in 2008 is military progress that allows for a reduction in US forces with
honor and a more stable Iraqi government". Hmmm... "Peace with honor",
"Peace with honor" - where have I heard that gem before?
In any case, the old magic doesn't work anymore, especially when applied to
former stalwarts from their own party. While we may have passed the point
where anyone in the public cares enough about them that trashing wobbly GOP
legislators appears at all unseemly, it nevertheless is certainly missing
more than just a bit in the way of credibility. I don't think many Americans
are going to be angry at these Republicans for only supporting an insane and
hated war for four-and-a-half years, instead of for "a generation", as the
White House has suggested.
We have very far to go, to be sure, but the project of regressive politics
and the Bush administration to which it has been intimately tied is
crumbling before our eyes. Like David Labowitz, quoted at the top of this
piece, voters have lately been clocked departing the GOP at speeds
approaching Mach 5, horrified and shamed at their own foolishness for ever
associating with such monsters in the first place. And still the worst tales
of greed and deceit and murderous violence have yet to emerge from the bog
that produced Bush, Cheney, Rove, DeLay and Scalia, of that I am as sure as
can be. Imagine how it will look when more - and the worst - of the truth is
revealed.
It's worth considering how far we've come, and how perilous was the fate of
the republic, only a short time ago (and, unquestionably, still to some
degree today). The most chilling words ever to emanate from this or any
administration were surely also the most honest these guys ever spoke. In
the summer of 2002, a "senior advisor" to Bush (my guess has always been
that it was Rove) spoke off the record to reporter and author Ron Suskind,
and in so doing revealed the true project of the regressive movement, now
firmly lodged in the White House. Suskind reported this conversation in the
following paragraph from his 2004 article, "Without A Doubt", and the words
have been frightening many a thoughtful reader ever since:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality based
community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge
from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured
something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off.
"That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an
empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're
studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating
other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will
sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to
just study what we do."
Fortunately for the entire world, it turned out a bit differently.
History's actors are now history's acted upon. Perhaps they are stunned to
find that they are mere mortals, like the rest of us.
And the empire has gone the way of every other empire before it. Only a lot
faster.
And they did, indeed, create realities through their actions. Those
realities are called Iraq, global warming, Katrina, the debt, and more.
And we in the reality-based community did indeed study them, and
increasingly, we did so rather judiciously.
And we don't like what our studies have revealed. And we don't want their
empire, especially with them at the head of it. And we don't want their
reality creations.
And so we're creating a new reality, ourselves, we pathetic peons in the
reality-based community.
And they can study our reality. Judiciously, as they will.
And they'll have plenty of time to do so. In their jail cells.
_______
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson