Dispassionate Liberal

Ethics, Morality And Palinaide

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:19:00 +0000

(Yes, "Palinaide." It's that tasty beverage best consumed ... luke-warm, like spit ... when you just can't get enough Palinfreude.)

Sweet Sarah, Patron Saint of the Dangling Participle has revealed her true self, at least according to Tbogg and the papers he reads.

Most quotable take was Sully:

That's the dog-whistle behind "If I die, I die." It's a quote from the Biblical figure, Queen Esther, who rose from being a Beauty Queen to being the champion of the Jewish people in their battle for survival. Now imagine if McCain had won, had to resign because of illness, and we were facing an international crisis with Iran. Now take a Xanax.

Make mine a double.

She is a martyr, sacrificing herself on the alter of media stardom like the original beauty queen turned Empress and savior of a misfitted minority, Esther (which fittingly means "star" in Persian), who saved the Jews from genocide ordered because of their eccentric devotion to their deity. Scorned, they just didn't fit into their world, just like the the 72% of the GOP who dig Sarah.

Of course if you do the math, since only 26.5% of adults identify as Republicans, that means 80% of the country have little or no use for the media whore from Alaska.

Sarah Palin, last seen wearing fisherman's waders (which are well known to be the Alaskan version of sack-cloth and ashes) is poised to become Empress of all Media after her sacrificial act of walking away from the glory that is the Governor's Crab Shack and General Store in Juneau. Nears as anyone can tell it's so she can save the Fundamentalist Christian Conservative Whackadoodles from the modern-day equivalent of political genocide -- which according to the American Taliban means not getting their damn way on every fucking thing.

Her moral code drives her. Unfortunately, few if any of us mere speakers of the English language can crack that code she speaks ... or rather, Tweets:

Talk in DC of a 2nd "Stimulus" Pkg: Impacts on AK? We'd be partaking in even more Big Govt largess & immoral natl debt accumulation when...
...NO ONE can measure DC's 1st attempt @ growing debt to "fix" prob. AK seeks development, industry, jobs for econ recovery vs growing govt

Her world view as it affects her governing style and decision-making process is revealed in between the word-salad. She makes "moral" judgments regarding what is arguably a purely economic policy decision -- what to do to fix the broken economy. Being a nation of laws, not men (or women); running a government according to a moral code is problematic at best and in extreme cases, like we see in Cleric-run Iran or Taliban controled Afghanistan, is nightmarish.

Morality and ethics are very different sides of the same coin. Ethics can be codified without regard to any specific religious doctrine, which is likely as not to be in conflict with a competing sect's interpretation of scripture. We know Sarah has a problem with ethics rules and was found to have "unlawfully abused her power as Governor." However, this does not conflict with her notion of morality.

Immoral behavior is subjective and can be rationalized by transgressors who invariably justify their actions as blessed by a higher authority or necessitated by a greater good. Ethics laws are not so flexible or easily forgiven.

Indeed, some of the most pious in our government profess a repulsively twisted morality which can justify all sorts of offensively craven behavior, twisting the Christian mandate of fighting poverty into a might-makes-right justification of protecting the wealthy and powerful from some of their most scandalous deeds -- so these "chosen ones" can bestow their blessed largess on the most well-connected no-bid contract recipient. Sarah Palin fits right in with Washington's "Family," most recently seen smoothing the scandaled waters for Senator John Ensign and Mark Sanford when not fixing pancakes for presidents at their National Prayer Breakfasts.

The group’s approach to religion, Sharlet says, is based on “a sort of trickle-down fundamentalism,” which holds that the wealthy and powerful, if they “can get their hearts right with God … will dispense blessings to those underneath them.”

In practice, it's a glad-hand society who praise each other for how in-tune they are with God as they fuck each others' wives and steal each other's money -- and yours. And yeah, this group formed initially as an anti-New Deal Christianist Cult has been Putsch-ing Palin from day one.

Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard magazine, and Michael Gerson, former chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush and a Washington Post columnist, were among two groups of arch-conservatives who visited Gov. Palin in Alaska in the summer of 2007, bringing back to Washington, D.C. rave reviews of the then barely known governor as potential v-p material.
Both Barnes and Gerson are high-profile members of the so-called Falls Church Anglican, the name the defecting members gave themselves after voting to leave the Episcopal Church in December 2006.
In that congregation, they are closely aligned with a highly-secretive right-wing Christian fundamentalist political activist network known as "The Family," or "The Fellowship," many of whose leading members are active among the Falls Church Anglicans.

***
But the connection of the Palin selection as the GOP vice presidential candidate with Gerson, Barnes and the right-wing schismatic efforts within mainstream churches, generally, finds its broader expression in the mission of The Family, which has had as its objective since its founding as an anti-labor movement in 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression, to influence the political corridors of power in Washington, D.C. and globally.

Its core motive, as reflected in its activities over more than 70 years, is the intermingling of a shallow, unquestioning Christian fundamentalism with radical free trade, anti-New Deal, anti-trade unionist and anti-liberal passions. It has worked overseas to prop up dictators and mass murderers in support of big oil and other American multi-national corporate enterprises, as Sharlet documents in his book.

For all the world these folks look like the religious wing of the neo-con Project for the New American Century. Small wonder Weekly Standard Founder and arch neo-con Bill Kristol has been her media Defender in Chief even before he pushed John McCain to foist this monster on us.

She's less educated, less experienced, less comprehensible, yet more appealing than George W. Bush, in a: "politician I'd rather do beers/shoot moose with" sort of way. A dangerous empty vessel they hope to again fill up with hallucinagenic policy theories and backwards talking points who is even less likely even than "W" to catch on to their nonesense ... like Bush seemed to after six long years of embarrassing cock-ups.

Palinfreude Overdose

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:34:00 +0000

My apologies to everyone for neglecting my blogging duties. Now I realize, too late, that the seemingly endless source of pleasure derived from watching the GOP implode may disappear in one ginormous explosion of fireworks and Palinfreude (Yes, Skippy, I coined that word.)

Other than getting elected to the Senate, just what will comedians do with the Queen of Alaska getting out of politics? This is the first time I've seen only one story on Memeorandum.com. From the moment we all heard her name for the first time, Sarah Palin has been one big bag of jaw-dropping whackadoodle. Her exit from official duties (jury's out on continued meida abuse) was no different. Her resignation speech was as incoherent and void of logic or facts as anything she ever said on a national stage.

Naturally, this is good news for John McCain (who should be ashamed for letting this woman get anywhere near the White House).

Rachel Sklar has a nice rundown of L'afarre Palin and her 10 months of WTF, as does just about everyone, everywhere. My sense, however, is that now that she won't be distracted by the pesky duties of governing Alaska, she can now devote her time to what she and her family really believe is imporatant -- faux outrage and scathing screeds against trumped-up delusional crap, 24/7.

Role Models

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:49:00 +0000

Cleveland Cavaliers' newest cheerleader.

@persiankiwi has gone silent

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:10:00 +0000

UPDATE: Fantastic News Via Twitter Reports: Persiankiwi is okay & safe, away from computer.

One of our best Twitter sources for news from Iran has gone silent. Here are her ominous last messages:

Allah - you are the creator of all and all must return to you - Allah Akbar - #Iranelection Sea of Greenabout 10 hours ago from web
thank you ppls 4 supporting Sea of Green - pls remember always our martyrs - Allah Akbar - Allah Akbar - Allah Akbar #Iranelectionabout 11 hours ago from web
we must go - dont know when we can get internet - they take 1 of us, they will torture and get names - now we must move fast - #Iranelectionabout 11 hours ago from web
Everybody is under arrest & cant move - Mousavi - Karroubi even rumour Khatami is in house guard - #Iranelection -about 11 hours ago from web
they pull away the dead into trucks - like factory - no human can do this - we beg Allah for save us - #Iranelectionabout 11 hours ago from web
Lalezar Sq is same as Baharestan - unbelevable - ppls murdered everywhere - #Iranelectionabout 11 hours ago from web
they catch ppl with mobile - so many killed today - so many injured - Allah Akbar - they take one of us - #Iranelectionabout 11 hours ago from web
in Baharestan we saw militia with axe choping ppl like meat - blood everywhere - like butcher - Allah Akbar - #Iranelection RT RT RTabout 11 hours ago from web
reports of street fighting in Vanak Sq, Tajrish sq, Azadi Sq - now - #Iranelection - Sea of Green - Allah Akbarabout 11 hours ago from web
rumour they are tracking high use of phone lines to find internet users - must move from here now - #Iranelectionabout 11 hours ago from web
phone line was cut and we lost internet - #Iranelection - getting more difficult to log into net - #Iranelectionabout 11 hours ago from web
all shops was closed - nowhere to go - they follow ppls with helicopters - smoke and fire is everywhere #Iranelectionabout 12 hours ago from web
ppl run into alleys and militia standing there waiting - from 2 sides they attack ppl in middle of alleys #Iranelectionabout 12 hours ago from web
so many ppl arrested - young & old - they take ppl away - #Iranelection - we lose our groupabout 12 hours ago from web
saw 7/8 militia beating one woman with baton on ground - she had no defense nothing - #Iranelection sure that she is deadabout 12 hours ago from web
they were waiting for us - they all have guns and riot uniforms - it was like a mouse trap - ppl being shot like animals #Iranelectionabout 12 hours ago from web
I see many ppl with broken arms/legs/heads - blood everywhere - pepper gas like war - #Iranelectionabout 13 hours ago from web
just in from Baharestan Sq - situation today is terrible - they beat the ppls like animals - #Iranelection RT RT RTabout 13 hours ago from web

Public Option Will Complement, Not Compete

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:19:00 +0000

Do we want insurance or medical treatment for what ails us? Insurance is only a means to an end. Health care is what we want.

As the debacle of AIG, the world's largest insurance company (until last fall), so graphically illustrated -- insurance companies are big evil blood-sucking vampires.

No, really. I'm sure I saw that somewhere.

They place bets on the likelihood of us encountering misfortune and like any bookie takes it's cut whether we win or lose. They've made so much money on our suffering, and often denying us the coverage we thought we paid for, they can afford to buy themselves a Congress.

Enough.

The original idea of insurance was to spread the cost of tragedy over as many people as possible so whatever harm befalls one of us can be mitigated by spreading the hurt so far and wide that it's barely noticeable to society at large -- and society benefits by bringing an otherwise productive member who no longer can contribute back to wellness and helping us all move forward.

Our entire tort system is based in large part on this idea, spreading the cost associated with calamity, reducing the risk of doing business far and wide because we are more than the sum of our parts. We're better together than apart. Respondeat Superior, agency, vicarious liability, product liability, and the very concept of a corporation are all legal doctrines ingrained in our law that express this idea -- that we cannot as a society rely on the law of the jungle and be considered civilized. Risk must be spread so no one person alone bears the full weight of failure and injury lest nothing be done for fear of unbearable consequences.

Specifically, when it comes to health care, it's bad enough that the cost of medicine and medical procedures have gone through the roof, but to tolerate the vampires who feed off the system and give nothing of value back is unacceptable. Having a public option will do more to keep them honest than any regulation. Those that can't compete were cheating anyway. They were running a care denial company and not acting as a health care provider should.

Doctors should be paid, and paid well. Nurses and technical staff too. When looking at the system with an eye towards what benefits society, we all are better off if the best and the brightest find it financially and emotionally attractive to enter the medical field if so inclined. I want the best people there and you get what you pay for. I want state of the art advanced facilities and equipment which ought to cost a lot too. And I want everyone to have access to all that.

So you spread the cost. All of us spend some so that we can all enjoy the benefits of a wellness system of the highest caliber. If your Congressional Representative balks at the very idea that a publicly funded health care provider is unacceptable for some sort of ideological reason, you have the right to wonder what is wrong with the government run health plan they use.

I have to admit, the long debate over what form our health system revolution should take over the last couple of years has dented my resolve that single payer is the only way to go and/or a public plan is at least a good start towards running the private insurance companies out of business if not a complete dismantling the for-profit model.

The best argument, to me, for resisting socialized medicine is in the area of research and developments. Private enterprise simply is the fastest and often most effective route to innovation. Pharmaceuticals especially illustrate the greed-is-good effect, Viagra being one of the most stunning examples. Simultaneously it shows how market forces can advance discovery and success, and at the same time proves the market has whacked out priorities and is devoid of social conscience. If there were a market for an AIDS cure as lucrative as that for male-pattern baldness, HIV would be a memory.

So there's good and bad in the market-based approach to medical R&D. The market indeed works, and works well. Yet it doesn't necessarily work for the greatest good. There is no "invisible hand" when it comes to our well being.

So, which way to go? Should we scrap the whole for-profit system or at least pour our energies into creating a competing public system designed to eventually destroy private health insurance -- or accept at face value that a public system really is a benign competitor filling a societal need and not something more sinister.

We already have an example of a system that uses public institutions and private enterprises that both compete and complement each other in a uniquely American way. Bumbling and stumbling but always chugging forward -- Education. America higher education exploits both a market-driven environment and public finance in the form of assistance to students in private and public institutions, as well as universities that are wholly manufactured creatures of government.

Which would you get rid of? Would you rather have only Harvards and Yales or do away with those hoity-toity schools in favor of funding Ohio State or Michigan University? Of course we do neither and accept that the Ivy League Schools are the envy of the world -- but cannot boast anywhere near the volume of citizens who recieve excellent educations at State run universities throughout the land -- most of whom rooted for way better football teams than the Ivy League had in over a century.

The Big Ten pretty much doomed decent football in the Ivy League (apologies to Doug Flutie and Fran Tarkenton), but these public universities, big as they are, in no way threatened to undermine the existence of the private colleges who still keep going despite costing double, triple or more than their public counterparts.

Don't knock the football factories, which not only pay for all the other athletic programs but earn a lot of their graduates millions as pros -- the only measure so many conservatives who deplore public anything recognize as the meaning of success. Next time a Republican insists that anything the government runs turns to crap, ask him or her which NBA team drafted the starting point guard from Princeton.

It is relevant if making cash is what counts. If it's about educating as many people as possible to make the country more productive, where would we be if we relied solely on private colleges? Not the leader of the free world, that's for certain, since the vast majority of our population would be embarrassingly undereducated.

We spread the benefits of a world class American education far and wide through both public and private systems which both fill complementary instead of competing market and social needs. They work side by side and I wouldn't eliminate either. Having both a public and private educational system spreads knowledge and wealth. Now it's time to spread the health.

The Eyes Roll Back And The Sea Goes Red

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:29:00 +0000

JUMP!

Shark reference brought to you by the cloistered Ladies of Perpetual Outrage and Publicity Hounds. (Yes, that was a dog metaphor. Sue me. How appropriate G.H.W Bush - 41 - is jumping out of a perfectly good airplane again today.)

I guess there aren't any important issues to discuss, slow news week and all. Best to dive head on into the Politics of Grievance the tabloid media prefers. Von Brunn would approve. We can talk about North Korean Nukes and hostage journalists, Iranian elections shaping the Middle East for the next decade, health care, the rise of right-wing violence, the economy or those two pesky wars when we don't have Sarah Palin's hurt feelings to console.

Maybe I should take heart, that this is merely part of the death rattle of the conservative movement. But better minds than mine are still trying to grip with the right wing mentality -- and the examination of the Paranoid Style of American Politics has been going on for a long time with no satisfactory answers or effective strategy to bury it. This description of the phenomenon from 1964 applies to rages against the Illuminati as well as rants against the fictional Liberal Fascist ghosts: (H/T Jay Rosen)

America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.

P.S. Hey Steve. Palin should stay "above the fray?" You're hilarious dude. How would she get any airtime that way?

Today's toll: 11 Iraqis Killed, 23 Wounded

Ya Know What Reagan Did Not Do

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 03:13:00 +0000

Wax delusional about some Reaganite of the past. [Or plagiarize, updated below.]

Ronald Reagan did not look back at some successful conservative politician of a by-gone generation as somehow bestowed with a kind of divinely inspired wisdom whose every platitude was gospel and approach to every policy to be followed to the letter.

I don't recommend reading AKMuckraker's account of a recent speech by Sarah Palin, except for the schadenfreude humor content of his running commentary. If you dig too deep into the word salad only the Ninny from Wassily can deliver and actually try to understand what the hell she's talking about, it's clear her message can be boiled down to one thought bubble: Ronald Reagan was right and we need to go back and do everything he told us to do.

Mind you, it should come as no surprise I'm no fan of our 40th President and never was. But I never remember him revolving his entire political philosophy around some previous prince of conservative thought -- let alone completely miss the boat when it came to understanding and applying history's lessons. At least he had the good sense examine the world honestly and try to make it better (as he saw it) without applying a three decade's old doctrine to contemporary problems. The man certainly was an original.

His imitators make themselves look so very small by their constant comparisons -- incapable of original thought.

Between Reagan and the two Bush boys we've had Reaganite conservatism running the Executive Branch for 20 out of the last 28 years, and Clinton only had two years to screw up their right wing paradise until Newt Gingrich took over Congress and stopped any chance of liberal reform dead in it's tracks. So dammit ... where's my perfect supply-side utopia?

Oh, that's right. We're living it ... never mind.

Honestly, go back? Sarah Palin wants us to go back to Reganism? When did we ever leave it? Obama's done a lot in the last 4 months, but a complete roll back of Reaganism will take a bit more time. Do these cookie-cutter conservatives really miss the Cold War so much?

Over grown military budgets ... Check. Out of control deficit spending ... Check. Unrestrained government bloat with a side dish of cronyism, incompetence and bureaucratic stagnation ... Check. Concentration of executive power at the expense of States rights and civil liberties ... Check. Shoot first and never answer any questions later foreign policy ... Check. Hell, Clinton did the right's dirty work on welfare reform.

Go back? Ronnie, we hardly missed you. These were the realities of Reagan's rule, despite his rhetoric to the contrary. Governor Palin, however, in her own unusual lexicon, remembers it differently some how.

Reagan knew that real change and real change requiring shaking things
up and maybe takin' off the entrenched interest thwarting the will of
the people with their ignoring of our concerns about future peril
caused by selfish short-sighted advocacy for growing government and
digging more debt, and taking away individual and state's rights and
hampering opportunity to responsibly develop our resources, and
coddling those who would seek to harm America and her allies.

She knows nothing, nothing -- absolutely nothing of what Reagan wrought. I think. You can't be too sure what the hell she means most of the time. One can only conclude she hasn't much of a clue either. Does she really think Reagan was some kind of a deficit hawk? Hell, not even Dick Cheney was so deluded, merely concluding that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." The Bushes piled on more debt to Reagan's record spending. Clinton was the only one since who tried to get a handle on the budget, and left office with a surplus.

Reagan talked tough, but he also talked to our enemies. He got a lot more out of Gorbechev from private meetings between respectful equals than he ever did calling the Soviets names. The "Evil Empire" shtick was strictly for domestic consumption to win the hearts and minds of supporters who really thought he was John Wayne, and thought John Wayne was for real.

Iran? Obama is getting considerable push-back for daring to think we should talk to Iran. But Reagan not only talked to them, he sent Ollie North over there with plane loads full of weapons -- to trade, not to fire. If a Democrat tried that, I think they'd call it more than "coddling."

The only thing Palin gets remotely right, no doubt quite by accident, is Reagan's hostility to environmentalism. Palin is a kindred spirit with the millenialist bigot Ronnie put in charge of the interior, James Watt. He too wanted to sell off all undeveloped public lands to the highest bidder for gas and oil drilling, but in these modern times I'll bet she'd opt for a no bid contract if they threw in a nice pair of shoes.

UPDATE:
Seems that Sarah Palin is so devoid of original thought, she stole most of this speech from Newt Gingrich.

Sarah Palin's garbled, often incoherent speech delivered in Anchorage on Wednesday--the one in which she declared "screw political correctness" and wondered why "we have to pussyfoot around our troublesome foes"--was largely lifted from an article written four years ago by Newt Gingrich and Craig Shirley.
Palin apparently also felt that she could "screw" intellectual integrity.
While Palin twice mentioned Gingrich in the speech (she never once acknowledged Shirley), virtually every single reference she made to Reagan was lifted directly from the Gingrich-Shirley article. It's a pure case of unadulterated plagiarism.

Gah! Teh Stoopit! It Buurrrnnnnnsssssss.

Roeder-Muhammad: The Difference

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 18:31:00 +0000

Sully agrees (grudgingly to be sure) with Malkin:

Dr. Tiller's suspected murderer, Scott Roeder, is white, Christian,
anti-government and anti-abortion. The gunman in the
military-recruitment-center attack, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, is
black, a Muslim convert, anti-military and anti-American. Both crimes
are despicable, cowardly acts of domestic terrorism. But the disparate
treatment of the two brutal cases by the White House and the media is
striking.

There are obvious differences, and profound similarities. None fairly explain let alone excuse the difference in attention -- which of course adds fodder to the victimization card the Malkinites of the world love to play first and foremost: liberal media bias.

There's really something more visceral at play here to my way of thinking. The SOURCE of Roeder and Muhammad's radicalization are as far removed as possible.

It's dog-bites man when a Muslim black man radicalized in Yemen hates America. Quite another when the victim's job description does not comtemplate him being in the line of fire like a soldier, and the shooting is in Church not a military recruiting center -- that's shocking enough. Add to that the shooter belongs to the majority religion, not a marginalized minority; is a member of the predominate political demographic, being a white male; and the cognative dissonence of trying to save lives by taking them as Roeder no doubt would argue, as opposed to Muhammad simply being on a killing spree.

As foreign as Muhammad may seem to so many in the heartland, we "get" him. He's pissed at us and he has his reasons, no matter how warped. Roeder on the other hand could be a neighbor and we'd never suspect he was dangerous, and the reasons for what he did leave us shaking our heads and arguing amongst ourselves.

So it's not bias or anything sinister, just human nature why the two incidents are treated differently. In so many basic, gut level ways they couldn't be more dissimilar.

GOP: Cornered, Dangerous

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:33:00 +0000

It's one thing to be outmaneuvered and lose power and influence, even daily. Quite another to face ruin and irrelevance.

The last time an American political party disintegrated so dramatically, falling from the pinnacle of holding the presidency and a congressional majority to near obscurity was when the Whigs disintegrated in the wake of the Compromise of 1850. The last Whig President, "Know-Nothing" Millard Filmore, could not retain the White House and the death-spiral was swift and dramatic, culminating in the worst Democratic President, James Buchanan, the rise of the newly formed Republican Party, the election of Abraham Lincoln, and the Civil War, all in less than a decade.

I'm in no way predicting that we are on the road to ruin, quite the contrary. However, the political evolution this nation is currently undergoing could be as dramatic when historians look back, and the demise of the Republican Party may be seen as a symptom of social upheaval as their emergence likewise reflected turbulent times.

Instinctively, they know they're in trouble. As an organization they have been devastated by their continued lack of coherent leadership which a party known for lock-step, top-down management cannot endure. Not surprising that when every day President Obama's cool demeanor and rational approach to the problems the GOP has left us makes them look worse and worse each and every day -- they lash out. Yesterday's stunt blabbing about a classified intelligence briefing is no exception.

Republicans ignited a firestorm of controversy on Thursday by revealing some of what they had been told at a closed-door Intelligence Committee hearing on the interrogation of terrorism suspects.

This from the chest-thumping, flag-pin obsessive, oh-so-patriotic Republicans simply desperate for anything that looks like a win. Their party and their own hides once again trumping any notions of national security or the rule of law, this was at best stupid and at worse, treason.

Here's the dangerous irony. These administration critics have claimed that the Obama Justice Department releasing memos authorizing torture techniques that by and large did not seem to work has made us less safe because our enemies can now train to techniques the Bush administration quit using years ago. But what they and former VP Cheney want the public to know are techniques that they allege DID work.

Cheney said. Yet, this authority would have little use because, thanks to the release of the documents, "the enemy now knows exactly what interrogation methods to train against."

Good luck to 'em Dick, since we don't use these any more, and won't and they weren't particularly effective from what we know so far. What Cheney wants exposed are the methods he claims did work. That would be useful information for our enemies.

Why, Dick? Why? Will the world knowing what we learned through the torture program prevent future attacks? No. If we developed a silver bullet means of fool-proof information extraction through these methods, is it really a good idea for anyone to know we have such capability? No, no, not at all.

Wouldn't it be better for captives on a battlefield to give up voluntarily like they did in droves during the first Gulf War, believing they will receive humane treatment at our hands instead of bringing down as many of our soldiers as they can in a futile last stand rather than be treated like animals? But no. Typically myopic, these petty Republican zealots are wholly unable to appreciate the big picture when it is at odds with their own self-serving interests.

I've no sympathy for the remaining Republicans right now, and in the long run their antics are more an annoyance than true danger to the republic. If they want to win these arguments, let them get organized, offer some solutions instead of tired slogans, and win some elections. Then they can declassify anything they want -- just like Cheney and his pals selectively released self-serving intelligence over the last eight years, including burning an under-cover operative and her entire non-proliferation operation.

He had his chance to "prove" torture worked. Dick Cheney, his daughter Liz, and all their dead-end supporters can tell their stories to a jury, because the world neither needs nor wants to know their version of revisionist history.

Shorter Yglesias

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:28:00 +0000

::...Don't really care what complicated schemes you come up with to pass health care, as long as you Git Er Done....::

[All due appreciation to the guys who are always credited by the guys at Sadly No! for the whole "Shorter" concept, being aware of all internet traditions and such ... and that Cable Guy too.]

If you have to dumb things "up" for the peanut brains on the right that still insist tax-cuts are always the answer, just so it looks too weird for the easily bamboozled to understand, so be it. They know single payer is the only thing that really works, even though it's too French for their taste.

Dress it down, mix it up, pull it and squeeze it from five different sides. Just do some fucking thing and we can all tell you why it won't work and why single-payer is the only thing that will. One way or another you got to get rid of the profit motive or by definition, someone is going to get ripped off, which will create some other bunch of fuckers who will become too big too fail through this windfall.

Death Rattle Of The Cult Of Intelligence?

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Sat, 23 May 2009 14:32:00 +0000

Dick Cheney represents the pinnacle of the sputtering rise of the power of our clandestine services. He's a true believer, an apostle and archbishop of what Victor Marchetti dubbed The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, the title of his heavily redacted 1974 book, the first book ever subject to pre-publication censorship by the US government. A book that was a required text book in one of my political science classes in the early 80's (and available to read online at questia.com registration required). There are still deleted passages, and in some cases entire pages, although some of previous redactions I saw 25 years ago have been restored as new material is declassified.

The CIA can start wars, it can start revolu
tions, it can give millions of dollars away with
out the American people and their elected
officials knowing a thing about it. The CIA is
doing all these things -- and much, much more.

This book was written before Iran/Contra, before we missed 19 nutjobs using airliners as missiles, and before WMD's in Iraq were a "slam dunk." However, it's lessons are as fresh as today's headlines.

In the eyes of posterity it will inevitably seem
that, in safeguarding our freedom, we destroyed
it; that the vast clandestine apparatus we built
up to probe our enemies' resources and inten
tions only served in the end to confuse our own
purposes; that the practice of deceiving others
for the good of the state led infallibly to our
deceiving ourselves; and that the vast army of
intelligence personnel built up to execute these
purposes were soon caught up in the web of
their own sick fantasies, with disastrous conse
quences to them and us.

Having a clandestine service is absolutely, without question an essential component of our national security requirements. By it's nature, it impossible for such an organization to retain transparent accountability usually associated with bureaucratic agencies in the traditional sense. And therein lies the rub. They get away with murder because that's what they are trained to do. It's their reason for existing.

"It is a multi-purpose, clandestine arm of power...more
than an intelligence or counterintelligence organization. It
is an instrument for subversion, manipulation, and violence,
for the secret intervention in the affairs of other countries."
Allen Dulles wrote those words about the KGB in 1963
so that Americans would better understand the nature of
the Soviet security service. His description was a correct
one, but he could -- just as accurately -- have used the same
terms to describe his own CIA. He did not, of course, be
cause the U.S. leaders of Dulles' generation generally tried
to impute the worst possible methods and motives to the
forces of international communism, while casting the "de
fensive actions of the free world" as honest and democratic.

Both sides, however, resorted to ruthless tactics. Neither
was reluctant to employ trickery, deceit, or, in Dulles'
phrase, "subversion, manipulation, and violence." They
both operated clandestinely, concealing their activities not
so much from the "opposition" (they couldn't) as from
their own peoples. Secrecy itself became a way of life, and
it could not be challenged without fear of a charge that
one was unpatriotic or unmindful of the "national security."

Sound familiar?

They got their director, George H.W. Bush, elected Vice President and then President. They got his son elected President. They've switched enemies from Soviet Communism to Islamic Terrorism without pause, declaring war against a metaphor, a tactic, against which their paranoia knows no bounds.

There are few cold-warriors who survived the disgrace of the Nixon administration, the purges of the Church Commission or the exposure of Iran/Contra. Two such survivors stand out. Their names are Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney.

Crafty and ruthless, Rummy and Cheney have a different view of what it meas to be a patriotic American. Their loyalty has always been to the preservation and advancement of the United States position as the absolute leader in all the world, even at the expense of those quaint parchment documents preserved at the National Archives.

I understand and appreciate their position, but I and so many of my liberal ilk have loftier ambitions than raw power and military might as evidence of our position in the world. Not only are we a nation of laws, where the "rule of law" takes precedence, but a society based on ideas and ideals.

We're not just dreamers, naive ideologues ungrounded in the practicality of the real world. We believe that to truly be an American patriot, you have to have faith in the ideas and honor the ideals that puts justice and honor above simple expedience.

We're better than that because of what we do, not who we are, because what we do and what we allow to be done in our names defines who we are. We're better than that paranoid old man shouting at clouds we witnessed speaking at his wife's think tank Thursday; a man whose paranoid obsession with secrecy, faith in the manipulation and power of intelligence, and reliance on the nobility of his ends justifying any and all means required, legal or not, embodies the Cult of Intelligence that has dominated our national security apparatus your entire life.

Don't count them out, ever. In one form or another they will be back, even as one of their Grand Pubahs, Dick Cheney, retires to ignominious obscurity and disgrace.

Scarborough Loses Argument With Himself

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:39:00 +0000

It took maybe 25 seconds for Joe Scarborough to completely contradict himself on what kind of machinations the CIA is capable of this morning, all as MSNBC's answer to Alan Colmes vapidly stared, mouth agape, offering platitudes and meek objections until finally stammering agreement with Joe's final statement of utter nonsense.

Media Matters has the video and with regards to whether the CIA selectively leaks classified information, they simply ask: Which is it, Joe? Do they or don't they? [Elapsed time 1:11]

Here's my quick transcript:

JOE: Well, uh, anyway. In 2002 they would have been irresponsible if they hadn't asked that question [re: Iraq connection to 9/11] along with a thousand other questions, which they did. But to say that, that was the purpose. No. The purpose was after 9/11 figuring al-Qaeda out.

And to a bigger point. A lot of people in the CIA thought George Bush politicized them. Did you see what they did to George Bush over five years? They'd leak this document. They'd leak that document. And they bled him dry. You do not politicize the CIA. Bush learned it. And Nancy Pelosi's learning it now.

MIKA: I do so think that the work of these people and...in the wake of 9/11 should be respected, and even honored in some ways. But I will say for balance and not for argument that the CIA is not above question and rebuke.

HAROLD FORD, Jr.: I would agree with that.

JOE: Well sure. We all agree with that. Sadly though, all of the attacks...

MIKA: 9/11 happened...on...

JOE: All of the attacks have come from the left in this debate. Because guess what? CIA agents are patriotic. They don't leak classified information, but their enemies do.

MIKA: I'm with you.

Astonishing what it must be like to live inside Joe's head, effortlessly filling three hours of the "liberal" cable news network with such wisdom day after day -- and then play on ABC radio for a couple of hours too, all while Twittering.

What a douche.

I take it when Joe says only the CIA's enemies leak classified info, he includes Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney on that list for when they burned Valerie Plame.

One question remains. Why is Mika Brezinski there at all when Joe can argue with himself for hours?

Kwick Twits

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:41:00 +0000

Serious Villagers getting paid serious money 4 serious political discourse ...Seriously.

Does Newt realize he agrees w/Pelosi, calling for an inquiry, as he blasts her for being (heh) a partisan hack?

Shocked again, even more shocked that the CIA would ever lie to Congress -- and not get caught.

Not-stradamus: Palin-Prejean link-up = "The slayer of beasts shall meet the barer of breasts."

Reminder: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" was originally a term coined by the Gestapo.

Blood. That's the difference in the new torture pictures we aren't allowed to (but can) see.

Another difference between Obama & Bush: When Barack tries to be funny, he is.

Somerby on Turley re-Obama torture pix: "If pundits don't like some decision or other, the motive must be hidden--bad."

Cracking the Crystal Ball with 11th dimensional chess:
These are my predictions of the likely outcomes of Solicitor General Elena Kagan's Motion requesting a stay of the appellate court's order releasing more torture pictures pending appeal to SCOTUS:

1.) Stay denied, the pix get released per trial/appellate court order, not presidential fiat. WIN.

2.) Cert. denied, the pix again are released, this time because the Roberts SCOTUS was too cowardly to weigh in (and because there's no new law to be made here -- my best guess as to the future). WIN.

3.) Cert. Granted! The Conservative Roberts' SCOTUS picks up the ball and either:

....a.) Sides against Obama, making the right lose their minds when the world sees more of their evil ways, BIG WIN. or,

....b.) The Conservative darlings get Kennedy on their side to rule with Obama (and Bush) -- and it's THEIR fault we don't see the already leaked pix -- causing:

Scalia's brain to explode,
Glenn Beck to have an annurism,
Limbaugh to fart himself to death,
O'Reilly to gag during an auto-erotica session with Lou Dobbs' Salvadorian cleaning lady,
and Hannity to go through with his threat to have himself waterboarded which scares him to the point he apologizes to Alan Colmbs and turns his show over to him leaving FOX with no one to carry on but Gretta, Ms CA, and Sarah Palin - who soon get's arrested for attempted manslaughter when she discovers Todd in bed with Gretta & Ms. CA.

New programing in Wingerstan and an open conservative seat relinquished to the DFH's in Obama's White House. WIN, WIN, WIN, WIN, WIN, WIN.

Enhanced Pelosi Interrogation

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Fri, 15 May 2009 15:29:00 +0000

Which is it? Come on all you lurking conservatives out there, which of these two mutually exclusive ideas you simultaneously hold in your head do you really believe?

Nancy Pelosi cravenly acquiesced to the worst kinds of illegal interrogation techniques ... ie. she was okay with torture -- so she's going down if Bush does, or
Anyone criticizing our brave men and women in the CIA (Durin' Wah Time!) is a partisan hack looking for cheap political points and really are just Jonesin' for Bush in an orange jump-suit (and hates America).

Got it? She either hates (and hated) America by tying the CIA's hands, or is a criminal ... a minor unindicted co-conspirator in the Bush Crime Family's torture regime.

Color me confused. Nancy's going down for being complicit in things they insist are not criminal? How do they live with the cognitive dissonance? My attitude is that "I'm Shocked! Shocked I tell you" that the CIA might lie to Congress. Good grief, they've been doing that my entire life.

It's bait! And the right use it because it works, or so they think. At least it works on media douchebags. They take an outrageous position simply because they believe it will outrage someone. The person outraged thus becomes part of the angry left meme they've been pushing for a half century, and gives legitimacy to their ridiculous talking point simply by refuting it. It's now worth talking about, debating, a topic for discussion by "serious" Villagers. Ugh.

I hate Overton's Window, and these pricks are masters at it. It's wired into their DNA.

That's how partisan hacktacularness gains traction. Never mind we are talking about torture, war crimes identified as one of the worst atrocities a government -- any government -- can commit. They're sitting back and enjoying this, passing the popcorn because Pelosi has to explain to a glamor enamored press corps interested only in conflict, not right or wrong, why she's in a box framed with lies and traps. Damned if she lets the CIA lie about her, damned if she calls them liars because she might damage the fragile morale of thugs who get off making captives scream.

It's sick. Jesus folks. One of the reasons we went after Saddam was because he was torturing his people. He was a despicable despot because he treated human beings like a malicious child pulling the legs off an insect. Get a damn clue. They don't "hate us for our freedoms." They hate us for the same reasons everyone hated Hussein. We're doing the same crap, or at least we did.

You don't defend that. You eliminate it. You prosecute it. You PROVE that you're better, that you deserve the reputation you think you should have. You don't compromise with evil, and what we were doing to prisoners was evil -- period. Do I have to paint you a picture?

It becomes a show, and that's what they're selling on the TV, infotainment, not a serious debate or search for the truth. They love this scorched earth game, and that's all it is to them -- a game. They don't care about right or wrong, they just wanna play poke-da-lib. They don't care if their arguments are relevant: "What about Clinton's rendition?" Or logical: "Pelosi should be crucified for agreeing to Cheney's (not really) crimes." Any stick will do.

"Dance Monkey, Dance!" That's what put's coin in the hat.

That Is It, I Have Had it With Obama

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Fri, 15 May 2009 12:30:00 +0000

... critics who think I am (or should be) pissed off because I don't get to see more torture porn (which I can ... Now with more blood!).

Follow this logic, please. If (as the right and now President Obama believe) releasing more torture porn pictures from abu-Ghraib will both demoralize our troops and inflame the muslm world -- then the behavior the pictures document should not have been conducted.

Whatever you call it (I call it torture) it shouldn't have been done. If releasing the pictures of the results of the Cheney Torture Regime will make us less safe, then the conduct of the CHENEY TORTURE REGIME MADE US LESS SAFE.

One thing these pictures prove, as did those released years ago combined with the Justice Department memos cataloging the hundreds of waterboarding incidents over a period of months, it that the "ticking time-bomb" scenario is utterly without merit. They are evidence that torture became official policy, not merely reserved for a few key al-Qeada operatives, but the default and preferred interrogation technique for captives.

It seems to have been established that despite what this and the previous administration infer, it was not an isolated incident by a few bad-actors but a pervasive torture regime established and maintained by several diferent departments (CIA, Defense and Justice) under direction of the highest administration officials that took place in Cuba where the institutionalized barbarism originated, exported Afghanistan where dozens of deaths via torture occured have not been investigated/prosecuted, and then ended up happening in Iraq where we have more deaths by torture and these pictures turn up.

Torture is bad. Any disagreement here? Anyone ... Beuler?

For all the torture apologists like Liz Cheney and her father, suckit. Notwithstanding your defenses/excuses that what we did was:

Not torture,
Required under the extreme circumstances immediately post 9/11 where it was feared that another attack was imminent (despite it taking months of sleep deprivation and "softening up" detainees before employing the waterboard for another couple of months),
Worked despite clear evidence that it did not.

All the chickenhawks seem to agree that it's dangerous to release more torture porn pictures. That's why allegedly free and open scocieties don't engage in such activities.

The photos are bad because of what they show. We had no business doing what they show. If what we did was defensible, understandable, legal, then the die-hard neo-cons shouldn't object to the world viewing these justifiable and ostensibly innocent acts. It just doesn't pass the sniff-test.

Again I believe the President is playing 11th dimentional chess while the boobs on the right are playing checkers. He now has political cover when the courts decide (as they already have done) to release the inflamatory photos, yet he is not personally responsible for inflaming the world as the situation in Afghanistan and and Pakistan are about to turn ugly enough ... and they are. He's got enough trouble.

This decision to stall their release doesn't undermine his promise of transparency. We know about the photos, we know what was authorized by whom, and we have courts and investigations proceeding whether or not we see more torture porn. If he tried to shut those down, then I'd have problems.

...And Another Thing

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:42:00 +0000

The Cheney spawn, Liz, brought up the unsubstantiated notion that a majority of Americans somehow would approve of torture in the ticking time-bomb scenario.

Liz, if we are to live by polls, which your father doesn't give a rats ass about anyway, you and your ilk would be exiled to a leper colony.

If...If...If...

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:19:00 +0000

Liz Cheney, like her father, is morally reprehensible. It's just that simple. She was on Morning Joe this morning, as documented by Bob Cesca, making the "ticking time-bomb" argument for torture. It's all BS, and you know it.

If you somehow knew doing something otherwise illegal and immoral would save lives, would you do it? Are you required to do it?

Would you torture a terrorist to get information? Under what circumstances? Does that make it "right?"

Would you draw the line at hurting his kids? Would you rape a child to get a terrorist to talk? Is killing children okay?

Keep in mind, you don't know if it will work. You don't know if you could have gotten the information another way. You don't know if the terrorist will lie.

You DO know that torture is a clear violation of the laws of men and any god you ascribe to. You DO know what you are proposing is despicable. Nothing that prisoner says or does will make it legal, will make it anything less than wrong.

The Cheney clan are despicable creatures. They need to be culled from the herd, isolated, shunned.

Cesca notes this outrage:

Adding 2... Liz Cheney: "We didn't know anything about al-Qaeda" on 9/12. Seriously.

Beyond simple ass-covering, is it possible there's a bit of over compensation at work?

I mean, if you were assigned the leadership of an anti-terrorist task force by the President of the United States and never, ever convened a meeting (gathering up your oil executive cronies to drool over a map of Iraq took priority), wouldn't the guilt come out in weird ways -- especially if you were an arrogant ass who refuses to take responsibility for anything?

In fact you didn't take the warnings of your predecessors seriously, ignored the advice of experts and clear warnings that a large scale attack on the United States was imminent and did nothing even though it was your damn job to prevent something like 9/11 -- and then 3,000 people were killed in spectacular fashion -- well, maybe you'd go nutz too. Personally, I would have simply tried to disappear.

What I don't get is how the infotainment industry continues to obsess over a guy whose popularity, even when combined with the equally despicable Rush Limbaugh, is still less than Colin Powell, the man who lied to the United Nation (ie, the entire world) about the threat from Iraq. In fact Powell is more than four times more popular than Cheney.

It's about honor, integrity. Many of you may make the argument that Colin Powell left his honor on the floor of the Security Council. But he is still more deserving of respect than Dick Cheney or any of his kin are capable of understanding.

Jesus, I keep having flashbacks to Dick's wife Lynne yelling to the crowd that John Kerry was a "bad man." WFT. These Cheney people have zero capacity to judge anyone, ever. I don't care if it's about what is or is not torture or what jokes "cross the line." They have no perspective whatsoever, and no standing to tell anyone what is right or wrong.

Of Course Wanda Went Too Far

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Mon, 11 May 2009 11:23:00 +0000

Wanda Sykes at Nerdprom:

"Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails," Sykes
began. "So you're saying, 'I hope America fails', you're, like, 'I
don't care about people losing their homes, their jobs, our soldiers in
Iraq'. He just wants the country to fail.
"To me, that's treason.
He's not saying anything differently than what Osama bin Laden is
saying. You know, you might want to look into this, sir, because I
think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker. But he was just so strung
out on OxyContin he missed his flight. Rush Limbaugh, I hope the
country fails, I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? He needs a good
waterboarding, that's what he needs."

It wasn't funny. Saying you hope someone dies is never funny. It's not supposed to be. It's no more entertaining than Limbaugh's original hope that Obama fails.

Newsflash: she wasn't joking. Neither was Limbaugh. Sadly I really don't expect better behavior from either of them. If anything, having seen Wanda's act before, which is consistently nasty and not always my cup o' tea, I was relieved she toned it down as much as she did.

She knew she went too far. She even said so right there at the podium. Let's face it, Stephen Colbert set the bar extremely high for these things -- just as George W. Bush set the bar low for the President himself ... lest we forget:

Witness For Bush Prosecution Dies In Libyan Prison

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Mon, 11 May 2009 10:40:00 +0000

"Yeah I robbed the bank but look at all the bills I paid!"
~Wanda Sykes

It was an easy pun. Bush/Cheney's "alibi" in the War on Terra, the source of the fabricated link between Iraq and al-Qaeda in the run up to the Iraq invasion, was a link obtained through torturing a man named punnily enough "al-Libi." He died yesterday, reportedly by suicide (conveniently) in a Lybian prison, apparently where he'd been kept since his capture and interrogation by the CIA.

It was al-Libi's relevations of al Qaeda operatives in Iraq trained to make chemical/biological weapons (an outright lie) that appeared in a speech George W. Bush gave in Cincinnati in one of the strongest indictments of the Hussein regime on October 7, 2002. that again despite the objection of George Tenet and the CIA were included in the infamous "16 words" State of the Union Address and Colin Powell's UN speech.

And we knew al-Kibi was lying. We got lies because that's was torture was always designed to illicit, false confessions. That's what The Inquisition wanted, that's was the North Koreans wanted, and that's what they wanted out of the Salem Witch Trials, a false, politically useful confession.

This key player in the web of high crimes and misdemeanors that resulted in an unjustified war, hundreds of thousnds of deaths, millions wonded and displaced, and a legacy of torture and illegal detention and rendition is now conveniently unable to testify about how we ended up here -- or how he ended up in Libya.

Mind you, I don't believe al-Libi is an essential witness in the prosecution of George W. Bush, but certainly he was a key figure whose story will now be forever a matter of speculation instead of evidence.

And lest there be any confusion, I am a supporter of indicting and prosecuting the Bush Crime Syndicate for the same reason you rip a band-aid off quickly instead of picking at it a little bit at a time. There is no statute of limitations for War Crimes. No "Truth Commission" will make this go away. I want justice as well as truth.

Without truth AND justice, the "American Way" means nothing.

Gotta Dance

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Sat, 09 May 2009 16:20:00 +0000

Mustang Bobby over at Shakes alerted me to this local story of a 17 year old senior at a Findlay, Ohio Christian school that is going to be suspended for the remainder of the school year for going to a prom at another high school.

Good news is that if he doesn't change his mind they will let him graduate provided he passes his final exams. He won't get to attend graduation, but will get a diploma in the mail.

DANCE ... Dude! DANCE.

This is a real life Footloose in the 21st Century. If I recall, things worked out okay for Kevin Bacon. The kid signed a contract agreeing with his school's rules that forbid dancing, rock music and hand-holding. Shockingly I see no mention of premarital sex or putting firecrackers in a chiuaua's ass, but it might be in the small print.

I could go on a serious rant about backward christo-fascists and the over representation of up-tight white people in northwestern Ohio. Let's just leave it to your imagination as you picture what it's like to live in Wassilla on Lake Erie. A church on every corner and meth lab in every basement.

Hope

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:11:00 +0000

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul...
~Emily Dickinson

Where No Wiki Has Gone Before

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Fri, 08 May 2009 16:35:00 +0000

PLEASE NOTE:

Memory Alpha is currently closed to editing until 0400 UTC on May 9th. For more information on this, and our plans following the release of Star Trek, see our announcement.

Image via Wikipedia

Mushrooms, In The Dark and Fed BS

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:42:00 +0000

The quest to determine what Nancy Pelosi new about the torture or prisoners by the CIA has really gotten into the weeds, but examining the minutia of what Congressional leaders knew, when, kinda misses the point.

There's a systemic problem with secretly briefing the Gang of Four, or Gang of Eight, whatever, when they can't discuss or refer what they learn to any legal authority. What good it is? How is this "oversight?"

I suppose in theory the idea is that they can make recommendations about future legislation, what to fund and what limits to place on the conduct of secret operations -- but what on earth is a legislator supposed to do if they hear a clear admission of criminal behavior? And in the end, without the ability to explain to their fellow lawmakers what they know, theirs is only one vote among many who decide in ignorance.

Would an option of referring such a case to something akin to the classified FISA court work in such cases? Would that just lead to Congress becoming even more mushroom-like, kept in the dark and fed bullshit?

I really don't have an answer, and as Churchhill said, "Its not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required." Yet even in the face of Britain's possible distruction, he did not resort to the kind of barbarism that will define the Bush Administration's legacy.

Perhaps it comes down to character in the end, something unquantifiable. If faith is an indicator, it certainly failed us when you compare the Bible-thumping of nearly all the major players who surrounded the previous president who claimed his favorite philosopher was Jesus. I just know that some truly awful things have been done in my name all of my life, and I'd really like to know how to stop it from happening again.

From Twitter 05-06-2009

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Thu, 07 May 2009 06:01:00 +0000

03:13:48: MarkWAdams: Blog: From Twitter 05-05-2009: 02:04:28: MarkWAdams: Blog: From Twitter 05-04-2009: 04:08:15: MarkWAdams: B.. http://tinyurl.com/cfb4lw
10:17:34: MarkWAdams: @twittinesis I can't seem to unsubscibe my blog. Like it but wanna archive tweets on different site.
15:08:43: MarkWAdams: Go Read- Limbaugh Blasts Colin Powell, Suggests He Should Leave GOP: Updated below with audio.
Dems have.. http://tinyurl.com/c6c57l
18:03:25: MarkWAdams: Go Read- I'M GOING GALT.: I've had enough. Dr. Helen is right. The Chrysler debacle was the straw that b.. http://tinyurl.com/dm2ehr
18:55:14: MarkWAdams: It's not that the President is black (heaven forfend). It's that he's a Yankee. That's why they hate him ... ya think?. http://is.gd/xkhn
21:46:57: MarkWAdams: Who's Headlining? RT @TheFix: It's official..there will be tweeting from the Correspondents Dinner this weekend...oh there will be tweeting!
21:53:43: MarkWAdams: Why is it every time I listen to or read Naomi Klein I wanna hide under my bed.

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From Twitter 05-05-2009

MarkWAdams.esq@gmail.com (Mark W Adams) — Wed, 06 May 2009 06:01:00 +0000

02:04:28: MarkWAdams: Blog: From Twitter 05-04-2009: 04:08:15: MarkWAdams: Blog: From Twitter 05-03-2009: 04:04:02: MarkWAdams: B.. http://tinyurl.com/d35zx8
15:23:51: MarkWAdams: @UKProgressive Is 2 hours longer or shorter than the rest of the planet in "UK Time"?
22:25:29: MarkWAdams: @TeresaKopec Much as it's instinctive to lash out, don't blame the victim. Full disclosure, I was an organizer, ran the Ohio4Edwards blog
22:26:57: MarkWAdams: @TeresaKopec Saddened by the whole thing. But you don't know how U'd react, kids/public/press pressures plus cancer...?
23:29:44: MarkWAdams: RT @owillis: Espn says favre talking to Vikings. Jesus.|| ZOMG, Please nominate him to SCOTUS before he make a fool O'hisself.
23:37:50: MarkWAdams: LeBRON!!! http://tinyurl.com/co7qpy
23:42:57: MarkWAdams: @rkref But if this creep from Utah gets his way, it, um...becomes a FEDERAL CASE. That's a good thing, right?
23:56:56: MarkWAdams: @rkref Which gets challenged & (hopefully) struck down in Fed, not State court...thus become law of the land.

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