Dick Cheney...um...Talks To Politico

Twenty some percent of Americans think BushCo did a good job. Dick Cheney is one of them. If you take out those who have to take off their shoes to count above ten and those who think god enthroned that bunch and the plutocrats who made out like the Robber Barons you're left with the pants wetters who figure Ossama Bin Laden is going to break into their house and have his way with their Cheetos and get a sick sexual satisfaction out of the idea of mistreating helpless human beings - especially if you say Islamic. Which bunch does Dick belong to? It ain't the god faction so you're left with...

I'm sure Politico figures getting the ex-Vice President talk to them is a coup. I'm just as sure it is no such thing, he'd spout his fear mongering to a gay illegal alien Martian with the IQ of a rock if he thought it would get play. Do some of you think the last election might have taught him something?

“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said.

I don't know about reading them their rights on the battle field but there is a problem.

“The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy. I’m not at all sure that that’s what the Obama administration believes.”
***
“If it hadn’t been for what we did — with respect to the terrorist surveillance program, or enhanced interrogation techniques for high-value detainees, the Patriot Act, and so forth — then we would have been attacked again,” he said. “Those policies we put in place, in my opinion, were absolutely crucial to getting us through the last seven-plus years without a major-casualty attack on the U.S.”

So in case you're wondering what the problem is other than wet pants caused by this kind of talk, there is the little issue of trying to do something in the legal arena with these so-called miscreants. These ham fisted illegal activities that Dick is so proud of preclude courtroom convictions in anything other than a kangaroo court. That's a fine outcome if infinite illegal detention is the route you choose to take, but it is a real problem for a free nation with actual laws and even a Constitution.

If you drifted in here because Dick's name caught Google and you're offended, I have a piece of news for you, the labels are accurate and the fact that you're defined by being a cowardly traitor to the nation of the United States is an outgrowth of the nerve, dedication, and brilliance of those who founded this nation with a revolution. Being spit on would be the best treatment you could expect from those people. And I don't give a damn about Republican or Democrat or whatever, you are an award winning pussy.

The fact that Dick Cheney walks around free and is listened to by anyone is an affront to the law and the very existence of the United States of America. You're all gonna die because the Obama guy is President. I have a two word explicative for you Dick, it starts with an F and ends with a U, since the law won't do it.

Should it be necessary to mention that legal law enforcement methods had enough to stomp the 9/11 attack and the inability of our national police (FBI) and the intelligence (CIA, etc) agencies to talk to each other and act as though they have a clue was the excuse for illegal behavior by the highest officials in our nation? The absolute incompetence of those charged with our safety is reason for us to give up something? Well, there are lots of rude words for that idea as well.

It is beyond me how Dickless Cheney is relevant to a discussion of anything other than how long his jail sentence is.

Wiretapping, BushCo, Now What?

If you haven't been living in a cave, you know that there's been a dust up over wiretapping. In August the Congress extended the FISA reform extension allowing the Administration to wiretap without warrants foreign communications suspected of being terrorism related. The mess the Republicans and BushCo want passed is called Protect America Act, another nice sounding name that doesn't reflect reality. The idea is to permanently allow unregulated wiretapping of calls with an international endpoint and to grant immunity to telecoms that cooperated with the Administration's unlawful wiretapping, including domestic connections. Understand that while the BushCo was engaging in this prohibited behavior they had access to a secret federal court, FISA, that would grant temporary emergency permission without review and that authority still exists. The cooperating telecoms, Qwest did not, were not presented with warrants and you'd be hard pressed to find someone in telecommunications that doesn't know about wiretapping and warrants. BushCo seems to believe it can do whatever it wishes whenever it wishes and its Quislings bear no responsibility.



Dick Cheney got up in front of The Heritage Foundation today and called on Congress to pass the Act before its February 1 expiration, to pass it with no sunset provision and with immunity for their telecom buddies. The problem is that the House passed HR3773 last year without immunity and a December 2009 expiration. "There is no sound reason to pass critical legislation like the Protect America Act and slap an expiration date on it," Cheney said. "The challenge to the country has not expired over the last six months. It won't expire any time soon, and we should not write laws that pretend otherwise."
With the law due to expire in nine days, Cheney said, "we're reminding Congress they must act now to modernize" the 1978 FISA Act.



Harry Reid asked the White House to back a 30 day extension since there is little time to reconcile a Senate version and the House. Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader objects, he says there's plenty of time to get a bill "out of the Senate and to the House in a form the president will sign," he said. "Nothing is more important to protecting the homeland than getting this done and getting it done properly." The next time I hear "the homeland" out of one of this authoritarian nits I want to see someone toss up a Nazi salute. Homeland is not a magic word allowing just any kind of behavior.



Now Reid is also under some criticism, he says he is opposed to granting immunity to telecoms, but there are two competing Senate bills, one from JD Rockefeller IV (D-WV)'s Intelligence Committee with immunity and one from P Leahy (D-VT)'s Judiciary Committee that leaves it out. His decision to allow an initial vote on the Intelligence Bill has angered opponents of immunity, “If Senator Reid wanted to win, he would have put the judiciary vote on the floor first,” Caroline Frederickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said. “It seems as if he wants to lose.” “Senator Reid intends to do everything he can to strip immunity from the bill,” Jim Manley, a Reid spokesman said.

Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-MO), the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday, “To stall legislation needed to help our intelligence community prevent attacks and protect American lives is not only irresponsible, it’s also dangerous.” Seems they're in a big rush, but Kenneth L. Wainstein, assistant attorney general for national security, said in an interview that if the August bill was allowed to expire in 10 days, intelligence officials would still be able to continue eavesdropping on already approved targets for another year under the law. They might however have to revert to the more restrictive rules of pre-August for new suspects. I don't believe anything more permissive than the '78 FISA rules are needed or good for this nation. I cannot understand how wriggling toward authoritarianism is good for the nation or leads to preservation of American values. It is another step in the direction of our foe's ideology. Tyranny is just that, whether the ideology is theocratic Islam or BushCo-ism.

Just a little update to think on, this wire tapping bill that is so important to BushCo will get vetoed if it doesn't contain immunity. If immunity trumps national security issues then what is the real deal? What might come out in a suit besides telecom money? These are rat bastards of the first order.

Vice-presidency In Alternate Universe

Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) was complaining that the BushCo hadn't responded to the Senate Judiciary Committee's subpoenas for NSA wire tapping related documents and noted the Admin. had sent a letter asking for time while identifying some documents relevant and providing a Twilight Zone moment, "the administration claims the Office of the Vice President is not part of the Executive Office of the President." I seem to remember bumper stickers, Bush/Cheney '04, and if memory serves from the passing glance this part of the ballot got, their names were linked there.

Now it seems that there are 3 branches of government set out in the Constitution, the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judiciary. Now the VP ain't a judge, Congress doesn't claim him, and now evidently the Executive doesn't want him - I guess we can just dispense with him altogether. Wouldn't this also take care of any of this Executive privilege nonsense?

During the 109th the same committee chaired by Arlen Spector, "In fact, we were about to issue subpoenas then and one of the senators came to our meeting and said that the vice president had met with the Republican senators and told them they were not allowed to issue subpoenas."

OK, my head's exploded, you figure it out...

Who CAN We Talk To ?

Nancy Pelosi leads a delegation to talk to Assad in Syria and the White House blows a gasket all over the media and particularly the right noise machine. Evil countries cannot be talked to by the USA. Evil is one of those words that gets tossed around in politics, it's a sort of generic for us not liking what they are doing. I'm not defending what they do, but I really prefer more specific words.

The White House says they will not talk to Syria. They say it is because they support terrorists and interfere in other countries. I wonder exactly what talking or not talking has to do with that? If we're not to talk to them there must be something about talking to them that somehow benefits them or what they do. Talking to a country recognizes that it exists, um, they exist whether we talk to them or not. I suppose the stance could be taken that it somehow legitimizes them; they belong to the UN, their leaders do actually run the places, in fact they run the places in ways we don't like. I think they're already legitimate and what they do is a fact (or purported fact) so not talking to them doesn't make it not happen. If talking to them is supposed to create an aura of power for them the problem with that idea is that they already have the power to do the things we don't like and they know it and so do their people. These are some of the rationales for not talking that I've been able to come up with and I've actually tried to come up with some that aren't strawmen; but I ain't having any luck. As far as I can tell, not talking to these people makes all our stances regarding them postures. The Prez can pose for the cameras being tough guy, well heck, we already know he can wear a flight suit, "clear" brush, use Old West terminology, and movie lines like, "bring it on." So what?

If I object to my neighbor storing garbage, making a stink, and drawing pests complaining to my wife and friends will have no more effect than stomping my feet and moaning. I could actually go next door and tell him that it stinks and is drawing pests and I don't like it. Blowing up his house is not a good option, persuading him that there is mutual benefit available is a better approach. Syria is not run by a lunatic, there are reasons they do what they do. If there are reasons and we know them and understand them we have an idea of how to approach them with another path. You can't know something by guessing, you get answers by asking and, yes, you have to know how to ask. Trying to understand something is not the same as approving, it is in fact a strategic advantage to know what your opponent is thinking and why.

The world is a dangerous place, bad intelligence and guessing are the tools of failure in an arena where failure is not a good thing. Talking to your friends is nice, they say nice things and sometimes you make nice deals, talking to your enemies or opponents is critical, while you may not make nice deals you get the opportunity to not make real stupid mistakes (Iraq) and possibly make trade-offs. You might find that what is a major issue to your opponent involves what is to you a minor inconvenience, this isn't blind optimism, it has factually been shown throughout history. The problem is that during stare downs the rhetoric frequently obscures the actual issues and stupidity ensues.

Well, stupidity has ensued enough times under this administration, you'd think they'd have figured something out by now, but noooooo.

Dick Cheney, Rush, Truth, Are You Kidding?

Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble wrote a report for the Defense Department about the handling of some intelligence about pre-war Iraq and it featured Douglas Feith's assertions that Saddam and Al Qaeda had a mature and symbiotic relationship. Turns out nobody in the actual intelligence business believed it and for the perfectly good reason that it was hogwash. Dick believed it, Feith was their guy doing what he was told to do and they got what they wanted and it was...garbage. It was then, it was when the report was issued, and it was yesterday when Dick told Rush ,

"[A]fter we went into Afghanistan and shut him down there, he went to Baghdad, took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq; organized the al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene, and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June. He's the guy who arranged the bombing of the Samarra Mosque that precipitated the sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni. This is al-Qaeda operating in Iraq," Cheney said. "And as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq."

Feith's nonsense (and he's admitted it was just that) was leaked to the right-rag Weekly Standard before the war and were praised by Cheney at the time as the "best source of information on the topic." It was certainly as good as the "yellow cake" uranium letter.

And so regardless of the facts and regardless of the ISG's report, the Dick is still playing the same tune. Now is Al Qaeda in Iraq today? Surely it is, after all we took out their secular enemy and made mincemeat of the apparatus that opposed them, not to mention gave them a "cause." The picture of Dick Cheney standing in the bushes watching George II give his press conference regarding the Iraq war funding bill and Nancy Pelosi's trip to Syria must give you pause. I'll leave it to your imagination what was running through his addled pate.


Cheney feels as though they're the only people allowed to talk to foreign leaders, so that if there's a chance things will get screwed up, they're the ones doing it. After Pelosi noted that she hoped peace talks could get under way Cheney's reaction to Rush was,"It was a non-statement, non-sensical statement and didn't make any sense at all that she would suggest that those talks could go forward as long as the Syrians conducted themselves as a prime state sponsor of terror." There are people the US just cannot talk to, Syria being one of them. North Korea used to be one of them, but since they have no oil and do have nukes and a loony in charge they apparently can now be talked to. Of course Bill Clinton was a traitor and Democrat when he talked to them. Boy is the White House pissed, they're so pissed it escaped their notice that Republicans just got back from Syria.

These people are so partisan and so locked into their little ideology or somethingology that they can't keep the lies straight, the players straight, connect dots that are right next to each other, or even tell convincing lies. You'd expect more from a five year old.

Take Your Allies Where You Find Them, AFA

Awhile back I posted about the formation of the American Freedom Agenda and said that I would find out what I could. You will find the AFA website here . Do not think that Barr, Keene, or Viguerie have changed their political stripes, they are Conservatives. Yes, with a capital 'C.' On social and economic issues our paths may coincide infrequently, our ideas about the role of government in those arenas is quite different, but here we are in complete agreement. I am going to directly copy and paste their 10 point agenda, so there is no mistaking my words or wishes with theirs :

Prohibit military commissions whose verdicts are suspect except in places of active hostilities where a battlefield tribunal is necessary to obtain fresh testimony or to prevent anarchy;

Prohibit the use of secret evidence or evidence obtained by torture or coercion in military or civilian tribunals;

Prohibit the detention of American citizens as unlawful enemy combatants without proof of criminal activity on the President’s say-so;

Restore habeas corpus for alleged alien enemy combatants, i.e., non-citizens who have allegedly participated in active hostilities against the United States, to protect the innocent;

Prohibit the National Security Agency from intercepting phone conversations or emails or breaking and entering homes on the President’s say-so in violation of federal law;

Empower the House of Representatives and the Senate collectively to challenge in the Supreme Court the constitutionality of signing statements that declare the intent of the President to disregard duly enacted provisions of bills he has signed into law because he maintains they are unconstitutional;

Prohibit the executive from invoking the state secrets privilege to deny justice to victims of constitutional violations perpetrated by government officers or agents; and, establish legislative-executive committees in the House and Senate to adjudicate the withholding of information from Congress based on executive privilege that obstructs oversight and government in the sunshine;

Prohibit the President from kidnapping, detaining, and torturing persons abroad in collaboration with foreign governments;

Amend the Espionage Act to permit journalists to report on classified national security matters without fear of prosecution; and;

Prohibit the listing of individuals or organizations with a presence in the United States as global terrorists or global terrorist organizations based on secret evidence.

Since their roll-out was March 20th the website is a little bare yet, but you should see it for yourself to ensure you know what I'm talking about. I am under no illusions about the differences in our Party affiliations, I also am under no illusions as to whether these matters supersede those affiliations. What is at stake is so basic to the structure of the US that our disagreements amount to small change. There is absolutely no point in trying to advance Democratic agenda absent our basic structure of government and law. That amounts to no more than spitting into the wind. The DOJ fight marks a beginning of Congressional interest in this, but is not any more than a first baby step.

The AFA has a Freedom Pledge for candidates, which is at least something. I am interested, but only in concrete pressure our public representatives to redress these grievances. Posturing bores me, quite plainly there is an ass kicking over due and it needs to be an enthusiastic one. This stance will put more stress on the politics of Republicans than Democrats for the obvious reason that Democrats didn't instigate this mess, though the amount of their kicking and screaming about it left quite a bit to be desired.

A little over 200 hundred years ago the instigators of this Constitutional mess would have been taken out and hanged for trying it. Today generating something close to discontent is difficult. It takes no more than the latest details of the affairs of a deceased blond to distract our attention. I will point out that in the face of all the BushCo crap, a NY Democratic Representative has the temerity to bring forward an assault weapons ban just to add to the insult and injury inflicted by the Republicans. Sometimes I really wonder just exactly how such stupid and asinine people manage to get themselves elected and if we really do deserve the kind of government the Framers put together.

Eight years ago I'd have fallen out laughing my butt off if somebody had suggested to me that Bob Barr could be an ally. I ain't laughing, I ain't smiling, I'm flat out pissed off and I'll take his hand, gladly. If you can't, maybe you'd better think over what kind of country you want to live in.

I Suppose You Can Say This Stuff

...but it really might help if it had anything to do with anything. VP Dick Cheney was in Australia and apparently the change in magnetic field disrupted something in the part that controls his mouth.

"a remarkable achievement" describes the War in Iraq. I'm pretty sure quite a few Iraqis disagree and some Americans might disagree, in fact Speaker Pelosi's opposition would "validate the al-Qaida strategy."

Just to make sure nobody thought his eyesight was failing (other than shooting Texas lawyer as a quail) he noted, "You get some waves, and then you get some other waves. And that goes with living in a democracy..." I guess that one finger salute can count as a wave.

We Still Have A White House

You may have noticed that I've tried pretty hard to come up with some kind of uplifting post. It's been difficult, but a little practice at getting my rose colored glasses on correctly is helping. So in that spirit, Libby Jury Still Out. And why is that good? The story is not yet dead and the BushCo pardon must wait.

But see the especially good part is that there is still a White House Administration. You might remember that our Defender of Democracy had Scott McClelland promise that anybody involved in the "outing" of Valeri Plame would be fired. So far that's about 10 top people, including the Dick, um, VP Cheney. Now since the VP is supposed to have a boss (a direct superior) that person would also be involved as well as all the little busy bees who wrote memos and placed calls and ... that would mean that there'd be no BushCo left. How're we supposed to run a country with no White House? Good news that jury has not yet come in with a guilty verdict, because if all those reporters didn't just make up the story about Valeri and an innocent verdict could be rendered; we need some time to get things organized for all the firings.

I've been worried for two days now that we'd be suddenly bereft, rudderless in a sea of terrissss. We still have a White House.

The Media Lies ?

Regarding "Scooter's" trial and testimony Mary Matalin on Don Imus:

Chris (Mathews) who purported to be on a nightly basis an objective analyst who would get on there and say things which we knew not to be true, as in Cheney saw this report. The Cheney we knew -Cheney didn't know Wilson, Cheney never sent Wilson, Cheney never saw the report, and the report that did exist corroborated the agency's belief that there was some effort by Saddam to procure yellowcake.

Once you start lying it gets really difficult to cover them all. She no longer "likes" Chris because the Admin pap isn't going over quite as well. You might remember that Matalin is also one of those who spread the "inaccuracy" that everyone knew Wilson's wife was CIA because he blabbed it. (oh hell, LIE) In fact is was quite a big deal. Lets stop and actually think about her job in relation to today's world conditions.

Plame was a specialist in WMDs. Her operation was counter WMDs, and it was secret and the cover company was covert and anybody associated with that company is now blown. WMDs, um, war in Iraq, N Korea, Iran, and various other not as newsworthy. The Dick and the Scooter obsessed over Wilson, they talked and schemed and finally had their retribution at the sake of the security of the United States of America, that's exactly correct, the Vice-President spent an ungodly amount of time working on payback involving screwing security when he was supposed to and claimed to be working hard on our security. Make no mistake, he was busy scaring people half to death while he was busy making them less safe and both were about political advantage, not the good of America.

At about this time the media was starting to shake off its BushCo doggy leash and ask and look, in that sheepish caught being a bad dog half-hearted manner, so they became the enemy. Now the people who'd said, no really, what WMDs and Iraq is secular, those traitors, started to have press for company. Now it's 2007, Scooter's on trial, they look just exactly like what they were, and the same noise machine has started over Iran. (just as much evidence, as well)

I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, but if you aren't scared and mad as hell, you aren't paying attention. And when the Democrats that want your vote pussy foot around and qualify qualifiers over this mess, you should be demanding something clear, unequivocal, and active.

Nepotism & Patronage Is BushCo

It's really nice to be validated by the real world when you've stuck something up into the cyberspace. William Bush, GeorgeII's uncle, has gotten himself mixed up in an SEC probe of backdated options in a defense contractor corporation, ESSI. The board of directors gave themselves stocks worth $6million in an unapproved stock issue.

Now defense contractor means working for the government, Reuters reports that ESSI was acquired by DRS for about $2billion last year. DRS sells engineering services to the government, ESSI sells cargo loaders, trailers, and generators to the Pentagon. Here's a real surprise, the board of directors is described as politically connected including several retired generals - maybe Bucky Bush is connected. ESSI's stock rose 900% between 1995 and 2005. Now if Bucky had been on the board for a long time, it might be coincidental, but somehow he became that asset in 2000. He served on the audit commission, oddly enough.

By the way, Cheney's son-in-law Philip Perry is the same DHS counsel who wrote up security laws for chemical firms that are non-existent enough to scare the pants off you. Any of those guys happen to be Bush/Cheney pals? Just since we're beating the Bushes we wouldn't want to leave Dick out.

Nepotism

Maybe it has something to do with winning Daddy's job, or maybe a nation of 300 million is seriously lacking in talent, but what are the chances the the best qualified head of the FCC would be a Supreme Court appointee's son? Or maybe the best assistant undersecretary for blah blah would be the VP's daughter? Suppose you needed a Chief Counsel for Homeland Security, I'd look no farther than Dick Cheney's daughter Liz's husband (she has one), Liz being the State Dept. hack as well.

Knowing how the outfit that runs the Executive branch acts would you be surprised to find out that Homeland Security is at or near the bottom in job satisfaction, leadership, and job performance and that the GAO Comptroller General Walker and Homeland Security Inspector General Skinner can't get documents past Cheney's son-in-law, or manage interviews without interference? What do you suppose the Fatherland...er ooops...Homeland Security bunch has to worry about, other than say, sex for visas, airport screeners stealing from passengers, air marshals smuggling drugs, and various other employee sex crimes? I certainly wouldn't want anything leaking out to Comptrollers or IGs, you know, Security and all. Maybe Philip Perry is a really nice extremely competent fellow with a poor choice of relatives - somehow I doubt it.

Here's the mind numbing part of all this, BushCo wants your rights and is competent and capable of taking care of them for your security but government is not important enough to take the time and energy to look farther than your daughter's bedroom to find expertise, or what ever other relative or party hack is at hand with their hand out. Go get out a serious history book and see what dysfunctional failing governments have in common - just to check me out:

Severe restrictions of civil liberties, particularly relating to trials
Wide disparity of income
Patronage
Nepotism

You will find these failings in a wide variety of truly sickening states, Nazism/Fascism, Communism, Theocracy, Despotism, Imperialism...

I am not calling BushCo any of these names, they've hit on something new entirely, Reaganism taken to its illogical extreme. They're not drowning government, they're selling it or stupefying it. After Caesar Augustus the Roman Empire doddered on for a long time through capable and imbecilic Emperors because the bureaucracy kept things going despite the "leadership," I don't like the looks of this...

The Patronage Plan

Webster's Ninth New Collegiate has this to say about patronage: 5 a: the power to make appointments to government jobs esp. for political advantage.

Through the centuries patronage has been one of the banes of governmental efficiency, people got jobs they weren't up to or ran the jobs to benefit their benefactor rather than the citizenry. It is a practice that stretches back to time immemorial though some examples are fairly recent and instructive. The Boss Tweed administration of New York stands out on the scale of corruption, though Chicago and St Louis were right in the running. The institution of Civil Service Boards and Administrations was designed to relegate patronage to the dust bin of history, though it left plenty of nooks and crannies for political rewards in Agency heads, Ambassadorships, and other appointments. One of the great achievements of civil service was that the "troops" were competent enough and merit responsible enough to keep egregious failures as chief from doing great harm. Things have changed.

The The NY Times has an article about contractors which you may find frightening in the extent and breath of US governmental contracting outsourcing. The GSA hired a contractor to process claims of ...(wait for it)... government contractor fraud and abuse. The GSA had to do the hiring because allegations of abuse outstripped its ability to process claims, that means - a lot of claims. From 2000 through 2006 the federal spending on contractors went from $207 billion to $400 billion, yes that's billion with a "B." If there are 300 million Americans, that's $1,000 per man, woman, and child in the country for contractors. Do you feel like you've gotten your money's worth?

Now Republican philosophy of government (less) and free market (for the rich folk) is supposed to accomplish a few things through certain means. Competition is supposed to reduce cost and improve service - 48% of contracts are competitive. Supervision of contracts has gone down, the number of supervisors has remained static while spending has skyrocketed. With reduced supervision getting contracts has less to do with competence and pricing and more to do with contacts and ability to game the contracting process. You cannot have competition in an arena where actions are hidden, companies are not subject to the FOIA and can bury their actions under layers and layers of subcontractors.

To understand the level of contractor spending, Lockheed Martin gets more money than the Dept of Justice or Energy while spending $53 million on lobbying and $6 million on donations. The top 20 service contractors since 2000 spent $300 million on lobbying and $23 million on political campaigns. Some of these businesses get 90-95% of their income from government contracting, they are no longer businesses but pseudo agencies.

I may be just a small time construction contractor from NE OR, but I can see a lot of money and a lot of opportunities for corruption. Not just in contract failures but throughout the entire system, through the agencies, their political appointees, and their elected "masters" in the White House. It bears remembering that Cheney's actions as CEO of Halliburton took it from one of the most profitable companies in its industry to one facing bankruptcy. BushCo indeed.

And I Give A Rat's Patoot?

I sit at a keyboard and have my little say, it's opinion, sometimes it's the relation of facts, but nobody asks me to write for WaPo. I'm not real confused about why, my really big political achievements amount to getting a gun rights related resolution passed by DPO and a not real well received run for the OR 02 CD Dem Primary. Now that's not related particularly to my intelligence or political acumen, it's just not a real impressive resume for a national audience.

So why is that the WaPo is carrying Liz Cheny's little screed "Retreat Isn't an Option?" Maybe it's the part where you're impressed by who her father is. Hey, my daddy's an important guy, I got a job with the State Dept, you know I got it because I'm really qualified. I suppose the next thing is we get to hear how Barney feels about Iraq... We now know Liz can parrot Dick. You can find her Bio and see if it contains anything that nepotism didn't confer on her...

Can you think of a good reason to give a rat's patoot what her opinion is? Jeeze, I hope Hillary pays attention to it, I don't like her, either.

Some Things Are Just Plain Fun

Charlie Rangel gave "The Dick," Cheney that is, the boot yesterday. Well he told that "SOB," as he called him to the NY Post, to pack up and leave the office he'd occuppied since 2000. It's historically been the office of the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee but the Republicans gave it to Cheney, as a loan. (the Republican version was: we've got the Ways, screw the Means) The NY Post describes it as the "choicest and most politically central real estate in all of Washington." Maybe that's one of the rooms BushCo accused the Democrats of measuring for the drapes. The Post quotes Charlie as saying, "I'm trying to find some way to be gentle as I restore the dignity of that office. You gotta go, you gotta go." And I gotta laugh and laugh, that must've stung that Dick.

Let's Go For A Dunk

The Vice President of the United States of America told Scott Hennen of WDAY that the debate over interrogation was "a little silly" and that it was a "no-brainer for me" in response to a question as to whether "a dunk in the water was a no-brainer if it could save lives." He has since denied that he was referring to water boarding, that he was in fact referring to no particular interrogation tactic. President Bush stated, "This country does not torture," and Tony Snow said, " A dunk in the water is a dunk in the water." Apparently nobody knows what Dick Cheney was talking about.

Now I've been know to say I'd like to "dunk my aching carcass in a hot tub," after a hard cold day's work and I've known of some Mid-western friends to refer to a swim as a dunk, but quite frankly I can't think of any interrogation that was going on. This leads me to think that the "dunk" the V-P was referring to wasn't quite as innocuous as the White House would lead us to believe. Now I've got a son who was at one time four years old and had that unfortunate four year old disconnect from the truth, even when he was standing in the midst of his mess. The White House is standing in the midst of its own mess and denying that it exists.

The problem with secrets is that they aren't, and the problem with hiding things is that they just refuse to stay out of sight, and this Administration has gone to great lengths to be the "most" in both catagories. The so-called rebellious Congress gave the President the authority to interrogate with whatever he determined was short of torture, he apparently doesn't think a dunk is torture. Tony Snow doesn't know anything and Dick Cheney didn't mean anything. Orwell postulated a world where words had no meaning, I'm afraid somebody's been reading his book.

The President of the United States of America won't tell Americans what torture is or what his definition of torture is. So it's a secret and all you're allowed to do, until the truth leaks out, is guess. There are a whole lot of ways water and getting information can be mixed together, the problem for Americans, on whose behalf this stuff is happening, is that no reasonable person can come up with something that isn't torture. Add into the mix that Congress also handed participants in interrogation a "get out of jail free card," and the whole thing starts to look twisted.

Subjecting a helpless human being to overwhelming fear or pain is twisted. We go to movie theaters to be frightened by twisted images, or at Halloween to haunted houses, but we certainly should not be seeing it in our White House. Let's get down to the very basic part of this issue, the things done by our country are our responsibility, they are done in our name, my name, and I object. If it were your child, your cat, your neighbor's dog and you saw it you'd go nuts. Just try real hard to get me to believe that your response would be, "oh they were bad."

Have a really nice day, but stay away from the water...