crossposted at the brand-spankin’-new five before chaos

I have to say, even though I still think it’s way too early to be focusing on the ’08 elections, and my biggest fear is probably a Hillary presidency, I am enjoying the hell out of watching the GOP continue to self-destruct at so many levels.

First, there’s the Congress and Senate. So many of them are digging in their heels on supporting Bush and the war, it’s making me seriously think that the conventional wisdom that politicians are only concerned about being reelected is very wrong. They’re setting themselves up for an electoral bloodbath in ’08. It really seems that the goal here, as some have already stated, is to keep the war going until Bush is out of office and let the next president clean up the mess. But you can tell they’re getting nervous when Foghorn Leghorn himself is starting to talk about timetables. But what makes it funny is they still have the wingnuts like this one leading them around like a bull with a nose ring.

But where the real humor is to be found is in the presidential race, as the top-tier candidates are finding how hard it is to try to appeal to mainstream voters yet not lose the batshit insane christofascists and warmongerers that make up the GOP base. That leads to things like Rudy Giuliani saying that it would be “okay” if Roe v Wade were repealed but it would be “okay” if it were upheld. Talk about noncommittal. And then the fun begins.  The Politico is reporting that it was just leaked from a rival GOP campaign that Giuliani gave money to Planned Parenthood at least six times in the ’90’s. Gotta laugh as they try to do each other in. It’s all the more satisfying when you consider how poor the ‘top-tier’ even is. It’s like the GOP is finally having their Dukkakis/Kerry moment.

Under every rock is mediocrity and a pander. Consider the sheer irony in Mitt Romney’s situation. The fundies have a real problem with his Mormonism, as though the crazy stuff that they believe, like this and this is any less ridiculous than what he does. And once again, he’s not free to even show any sort of independent thinking (authoritarian types which comprise the bulk of the base have a real problem with that). They’re already on his ass for not being one of the few people at the debate shameless enough to show how nutty they really are when he didn’t raise his hand when asked who didn’t believe in evolution.

So it’s time to sit back and watch the monkey show, as they slowly devour each other and any shred of credibility  as they pander to the worst elements in our nation, all so they can lose big in ’08. Go ahead and gloat. It’s been a long time coming and it’s only gonna get better. Mr. 28% is solidly wrapped around the neck of each and every one of these guys, and he’s not letting go. It’s hard work, right?

George W Bush has signed himself into the position of Supreme Crusader. He refuses to be bound by legislative action, and this Congress has not yet managed to muster any legislation of substance to challenge him.

Vermont Congressman Peter Welch refers to legislation with troop withdrawal timetables that passed in the U.S. House as his greatest achievement thus far in ending this war. The timetables didn’t even make it out of committee with the Democratic Senate, and so were spared the President’s veto. The Congressman thinks that this is real progress, but is unable to articulate why. He is also certain that impeachment proceedings would prolong the war, but offers only his judgment as evidence.

Only after impeachment investigations against him had begun did Richard Nixon start the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam. George Bush is still operating from an undeserved but nonetheless standing power base. Congress can’t pass a law that he feels compelled to obey, but they can impeach him and remove him from office and he can’t do a thing about it.

Bush thinks we’re winning a war. Democrats in Congress think they’re ending it. While Nancy Pelosi keeps impeachment off the table, it’s showing up everywhere else.

Impeachment is the only remedy when the executive usurps legislative authority. But this Congress doesn’t want to tackle that. No, these legislators are happy as clams, taking bold stabs at wrongdoing around the outer edges of the administration, uncovering political meddling in the Department of Justice, Republican politicking being done on the people’s dime, failures at Walter Reed. In the meantime, they do not have a single investigation of Bush or Cheney about the war, or torture, or signing statements, or violating FISA and the fourth amendment, or anything at all that would lead to their removal from office.

The Democrats just want to see Bush and the Republicans twist in the wind until the ’08 elections. The Constitution, American soldiers and the Iraqi nation can be damned in the meantime.

Our house is burning down. We’re asking our representatives to pass us a water bucket, but they’re only excited about their project to dig the fire pond deeper. Just wait until it’s all designed and built they say, and then we’ll really be good at putting out those fires. Only when they discover their own pants burning will they pull their heads out of their plans and go for water.

We’re looking for a measure of competence and honor from our leaders. If they don’t have it in them, we will instill it. If Peter Welch wants us to believe that he’s ending the war, he should tell us how he’s doing it. If he can’t give a reasoned answer why we shouldn’t impeach he should support our efforts. If he wants to end this war, he should stop protecting Bush and Cheney from being held accountable and help us end this administration’s rein of destruction.

Okay, we’ve all heard the numbers about how many more people are checked into American Idol voting than actually voting in the political process. We’ve also all bemoaned the rise of reality shows and their effect on our collective psyche.

Well maybe it’s time to stop whining, embrace it, accept it, and make it work for Democracy. But instead of looking to American Idol, let’s retrofit Survivor into our political process.

Credit where credit is due: my friend Allison Sultan blurted out this idea, and the two of us went on to flesh it out. It goes like this:

We’ve got our two partisan tribes, yes? There are a zillion Democrats and another zillion Republicans running for President. Let’s embrace the fact that most folks are more motivated by who they’re against rather than who or what they’re for. Instead of debates, each Party should give their candidates a task a month, like – tour a factory, or kiss two dozen babies. Then every month they have TV specials where we review how they did. Then, at the end of the show, we have a 1-800 number everybody in America can call, and we vote out the one we don’t like. Clean. Simple. And so satisfying. Good bye Biden. Better luck next time Huckabee. Maybe you can go on Larry King to talk about your experience.

Ten months later, our process of elimination leaves us with two candidates. We can then have a final episode and vote one more off the island (island o’ politics, that is), or maybe we could even mix it up and put them through some sort of Fear Factor schtick. Climb in the tank with the snakes, Barack! Down a whole glass of pureed grasshoppers, Fred!

I know I’d set my Tivo for that.

And the great American experiment rolls on…

I just saw this mentioned over at Candleblog. But, apparently (former?) Seven Days writer Peter Kurth, whose Crank Call column has always been one of my favorites, spent two months in a British prison after an incident of air rage.

Here’s an excerpt…

My sins, in brief: When the cabin crew refused to radio JFK to see if I’d left my laptop at the gate and also declined to move me to another seat, “an altercation ensued” — not physical, but verbal, with the flight attendants becoming snootier by the minute and me becoming, well, let’s say, more American. I behaved badly in-flight, yelling at the crew, “I am an American citizen! You are our lapdog ally!” and other remarks of a vulgar and unhelpful nature. Very vulgar, I’m afraid: At one point I called that tired stewardess the worst thing you can call a woman — you all know what it is — but by then I was in full-blown air rage, something the airlines used to understand but, on the evidence, no longer do.

Finally, I went back to the galley and sat on what is called the “bustle,” which is where they keep those rubber slides should a plane go down in water and where, over many years of these flights, I’ve seen lots of people sitting and children playing without anyone making a fuss about it. But times have changed, and now parking your ass on the bustle constitutes “endangering an aircraft,” which is a very high crime under Britain’s new anti-terrorism laws, and can get you sent to prison for a minimum of two years. I was warned about this (so they tell me), but I still refused to move; and when we finally landed at Heathrow the next morning I was escorted off the plane by two of London’s finest — not the sort of “bobby” I remember from many years in London, but fully outfitted SWAT-team types, bristling with munitions and in no mood for smart alecks. They dragged me past customs straight to police headquarters at Uxbridge, an indescribably dreary, prefabricated suburb and corporate-operations center west of London, where “incidents” originating at Heathrow are all referred for jurisdiction.

It wasn’t until I got to the police station that I began to realize, slowly, the nature of the trouble I was in.

And it goes way downhill from there.

All I can say is, hey, better you than me, buddy.

No, I mean, wow, that sucks.

Greg Palast will be in Montpelier tonight. I urge you to go see him, if you can. Among many interesting things, Palast compellingly ties the prosecutor purge scandal to the RNC’s effort to purge Democrats from the voter rolls.

Go here to listen to the excellent interview by Mitch Wertlieb this morning on VPR.

And here’s the text from VPR’s site complete with event details…

A recent Bill Moyers journal on PBS looked back at the events leading up to the war in Iraq and asked why so many journalists weren’t skeptical enough about Bush Administration claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

BBC correspondent Greg Palast was not one of those journalists. Palast appeared with Phil Donahue and expressed serious doubts about WMD assertions before Donahue’s show was cancelled by MSNBC.

Palast did some investigative reporting in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and was charged with anti-terror violations for his efforts.

And tonight in Montpelier, Palast will talk with more of the investigative journalism from the updated paperback version of his best selling book Armed Madhouse. In that book Palast says vote rigging determined the last two presidential elections, but that news didn’t get much play in American media.

He spoke with VPR’s Mitch Wertlieb about his book.

Palast will be speaking at 7:00 pm at the Unitarian Church in Montpelier.

I can’t tell you how great it is to have Pat Leahy as chair of Judiciary during the U.S. Attorney purge, or, to be more accurate, during the investigation of the corruption that has infested the Department of Justice from top to bottom.

The latest is that Leahy and Sheldon Whitehouse from Rhode Island have written a letter to the Inspector General of the Justice Department requesting a review of public corruption cases brought by the Bush Administration.

Specifically, the letter requests a review of the Department’s public corruption investigations commenced under the current administration, and prepare an analysis that is stripped of any identifying information as to target or district, but reveals the breakdown of cases by party affiliation of targets at key investigative points, such as opening of case, commencement of grand jury activity, charging, trial, and conviction.

What this review will demonstrate is whether the administration has focussed on Democratic candidates and office holders when they have pursued charges of election fraud and other allegations of public corruption.

Any predictions of what the statistics will show?

 Loading ...

Those of you who know me know that, for personal reasons, I don’t touch environmental issues. I really shouldn’t go there, especially given that I’ve just never been a party line kind of guy. But I just can’t stand it. Especially after reading SPS’ diary today. SPS, you’re great and I always appreciate your POV, but, well… I just couldn’t agree less.

The Vermont Legislature’s climate change bill is in trouble. BIG trouble. Every corporate lobbyist in the state is trying to scuttle it, and if that’s not enough to tell us all that we need to get off our butts and call our legislators NOW, let me try some explanation.

First; the bill has a LOT of good stuff. Incentives for renewables. Firm goals. And of course, the expansion of efficiency programs into heating fuels. Now I’m as frustrated with this Legislature as the next lefty, but that’s no reason to sit in the corner muttering to ourselves. And sure, maybe this shouldn’t be Vermont’s first priority, but dammit – as we said with impeachment, these people CAN walk and chew gum at the same time. Okay, maybe global warming shouldn’t be the top priority, but if you really think it’s not a priority at all, then you’re a moron living with a bag over your head. This energy/sustainability/climate stuff is becoming life and death. We should take it that seriously.

But there’s suddenly unexpected resistance from random batches of Democrats, and this is not acceptable (continued below the fold).

I’m not privy to what the conversations are, but the close vote in the Senate could simply be a backlash against Shumlin’s wildly egoistic leadership style this session. If that’s it, and it’s essentially personal, the response is easy: Get over it. NOW.

What’s more complicated though is what SPS was talking about; that is, the resistance to the funding mechanism (the windfall profits tax on Vermont Yankee). I would remind folks that this needs funding, number one. That’s just a fact of life – and that the original funding was going to come exclusively from a tax on heating oil itself which was, quite frankly, a heels-dug-in stance from some who seemed patronizingly unmoved by concerns of up-front regressive taxation on a life-or-death utility such as heat regardless of concerns about whether or not some people had the money up front. That idea died an ugly death, and I for one popped the champagne.

But the idea of taxing Vermont Yankee is bringing Dems from out of left field to boost their pro-business bona fides. Treasurer Jeb Spaulding, of all people (who I like and respect a lot) has even decided to weigh in on the issue, presumably as a chance to grab the Dem pro-business crown.

Let me be absolutely clear: This issue is so straightforward, so clear cut, so easy, that if you can’t support this tax, you really don’t buy into the idea that businesses should be taxed at ALL. Period. If this one bugs you, you won’t find one that doesn’t, and what wing of the Democratic Party does that put you in?

If you want to be serious about this, it’s not a “business tax,” it’s a nuclear waste tax, which strikes me as more than reasonable. As far as business is concerned, this bill will drive down costs for small business. Nobody, as far as I know, is even wasting their breath disputing that.

And it has straightforward symmetry. It’s an energy bill, so it finds funding from the energy sector. And it finds funding from an energy producer that we are going to have to wean ourselves off of eventually. Until the waste and safety problems are solved, nuclear power is dangerously unsustainable. It’s not an option. Expanding nuke power to cover even an additional 15-20% of our nation’s needs would require a new Yucca Mountain sized waste facility every few years. Let’s consider this a sin tax, eh?

But more than that, Entergy is rolling in dough. Through no business acumen of their own – simply the market – they are raking in phenomenal profits. They. Can. Handle. It.

The line is that this will somehow break a deal with Entergy made during their relicensing, which walks dangerously close to outright dishonesty. There were no “deals.” Things change, and those things can come into play in the next relicensing if they wanna fuss about it. Just as the fact that the waste was supposedly going to be moved out of state. We might want to revisit that understanding next time.

Folks, don’t let the Legislature weenie out on this. Call your Senators and Reps ASAP. If we let this go by, we’ll be wishing we had a “do nothing” Legislature, rather than a Legislature that is part of the problem… if there was ever an activist ball that needed to get rolling on an issue this year, this is it.

(addition from J.D – Senate contacts here and Representatives here.)