McCain can't help himself.

Ok, John McCain just decided to jump off a cliff and hope he lands feet first.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) plans to promise on Monday that he will balance the federal budget by the end of his first term by curbing wasteful spending and overhauling entitlement programs, including Social Security, his advisers told Politico.

The vow to take on Social Security puts McCain in a political danger zone that thwarted President Bush after he named it the top domestic priority of his second term.

Man, John McCain is about to tick off the one group of people he possibly had going for him: senior citizens.  George Bush decided to hit Social Security in 2005 for 7 months until Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.  George Bush spent all of his "political capital" as he claimed he would, and it got him nowhere, because a Republican can not conceivably fix Social Security because they don't believe it works in the first place.  

Also, didn't McCain claim that important infrastructure spending last year was "wasteful" and then all of the Mid-West flooded?

This guy needs to just stop talking about anything other than defense, because he is unqualified to speak on anything else.

Wanna Guess What President Bush Lied About This Time?

If you guessed that he actually has played golf since the incident that he claims caused him to give up golf in solidarity with the troops, then you're right!

UPDATE: Keith Olbermann provides his, um, passionate commentary on that Politico interview:

Wanna Guess Why President Bush Doesn't Play Golf?

If you guessed "I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died [in Iraq] to see the commander in chief playing golf" then you're right!
I guess those record number of vacation days are perfectly fine, though.

Also, an update on yesterday's post: The AP has called that Mississippi race for Childers, the Democrat.

Sunday (Bonus) Screening

I know, there's not much that can stand up to Markus's bowling videos (btw, I'm sad that I didn't have enough perseverance to win the prize), but here I go anyway:

First up, Barack Obama boils down the Indiana electorate to "Hoosiers" (which might actually work, judging from my knowledge of Indiana (which comes entirely from "Hoosiers")).
The genius of this video comes from the very uncomfortable-sounding announcer and from the graphic at the end:

Hope 15
Away 5

And now to the main attraction: the White House Correspondents' Dinner, the annual event where President Bush makes fun of everything he's done wrong in the past year, a comedian makes fun of Fox News, and liberals act dismayed at the press for laughing with the President instead of standing up to him but then feverishly search the videos out on YouTube anyway.
Two years ago, of course, was the infamous Stephen Colbert Smackdown, which I have embedded here because it is that awesome:

This weekend, Craig Ferguson (the CBS late-night host and newly-naturalized U.S. citizen) gave it a go, and I think he did a great job. While not nearly as ballsy as Colbert's speech, Ferguson managed to get in some good jabs at the administration while also bringing in some great humor, a conversational tone (which made his speech a lot less awkward than Colbert's), and a unique viewpoint as a new American (including playing dumb to great effect).
Below, my favorite quotes, George Bush conducting the Marine Corps band (quite well, actually), and all three parts of the Ferguson speech (I've even put them in order for you). Enjoy!

A reporter from -- what's the name of that paper? The Mound? The Hill!

It's your task to watch the government, to make sure they don't exceed their power. Uh, well done on that, by the way, the past eight years. [knowing look to Dick Cheney]

FERGUSON: During your administration there was not one single sex scandal in the White House. Not one. Except the time when Barney humped the Pope's leg.
BUSH [to guy sitting next to him]: What did he say?
GUY: [repeats it]
BUSH: [George W. Bush laugh/chuckle thing that Jon Stewart is not any good at imitating]

(btw, I love how Barney the dog has a Wikipedia page)

I didn't embed the President's speech, because it was not actually funny at all, except for this one line:

For eight years as Vice President, Dick has ridden shotgun. That's probably not the best analogy.

Ashcroft is guilty of authorizing torture, and he knows it

I would've posted this in the links side-bar, but I think it's an absolute "Must-Read". A couple of students got the chance to ask Ashcroft some questions, and they did, to put it mildly, a much better job than the media's been doing.

ME: I'm sorry, I was under the impression that we still use the method of putting a cloth over someone's face and pouring water down their throat...

ASHCROFT: (interrupting, red-faced, shouting) Pouring! Pouring! Did you hear what she said? "Putting a cloth over someone's face and pouring water on them." That's not what you said before! Read that again, what you said before!

ME: Sir, other reports of the time say...

ASHCROFT: (shouting) Read what you said before! (cries of "Answer her fucking question!" from the audience) Read it!

ME: (firmly) Mr. Ashcroft, please answer the question.

ASHCROFT: (shouting) Read it back!

ME: "The victim was bound or otherwise secured in a prone position; and water was forced through his mouth and nostrils into his lungs and stomach."

ASHCROFT: (shouting) You hear that? You hear it? "Forced!" If you can't tell the difference between forcing and pouring...does this college have an anatomy class? If you can't tell the difference between forcing and pouring...

ME: (firmly and loudly) Mr. Ashcroft, do you believe that Yukio Asano's sentence was unjust? Answer the question. (pause)

ASHCROFT: (more restrained) It's not a fair question; there's no comparison. Next question! (loud chorus of boos from the audience)

He's guilty and he knows it. Maybe some of these other cretins (Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, etcetera; and probably Bush) don't, but Ashcroft realizes it; reportedly he said "History will not judge us kindly." But of course that doesn't matter, he's as guilty as the rest of the lot. We need to get a commitment out of Barack Obama to pursue prosecution of these people, or it'll poison international relations and domestic discourse for decades to come. Read the full post; there's much more where the above came from...

By the way, I'll have an article on torture in tomorrow's Independent; I'll post the link when it's put up on the site. 

Brattleboro, VT does something totally meaningless and yet ridiculously awesome

Updated because I confused the two Vermont towns that start with 'B'. Whoops.

I guess the town of Burlington, Vermont -- famous for not having laws against public nudity and for holding an annual World Naked Bike Ride (note: common sense will tell you that there's some nudity (only a tiny bit) on that page, so click at your own risk) -- is a little worried about people forgetting how liberal it is. But they can worry no more.

Here's the proposal that appeared on today's ballot there in Brattleboro:

Shall the Selectboard instruct the Town Attorney to draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution, and publish said indictments for consideration by other authorities and shall it be the law of the Town of Brattleboro that the Brattleboro Police, pursuant to the above-mentioned indictments, arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro if they are not duly impeached, and prosecute or extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them?

The dulcet tones of Wolf Blitzer have just informed me that the proposal passed with somewhere around 65% of the vote. Which means the people of Burlington Brattleboro just voted to arrest the President and Vice President if they ever show up in Burlington Brattleboro. Which actually won't be much of a problem, because the dulcet tones of Wolf Blitzer have also just informed me that the President has never once visited Vermont since he's been in office.

Anyway, kinda awesome.

Below: the 2007 World Naked Bike Ride in Burlington (again, click at your own risk)

New Jersey, Hillary, and Hypocrisy - all in a day's news

A couple of interesting things in today's paper.

1) Hillary fired her campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle and replaced her with Maggie Williams. Maggie Williams happens to be one of those people you meet who just seem so nice and genuine. Maybe she can change the tone of Hillary's campaign. First she has to convince her own family that Hillary is the best choice. Williams, who is African-American, told a group of Hillary supporters at the IOP last fall, that her little nephew (not voter age...), among others in her family, was pulling for Barack.

2) As usual, I present evidence that New Jersey is better than your state (or at least could kick its ass in a bar fight...).

3) Also as usual, President Bush is a giant hypocrite. After spending his last (!) State of the Union address lambasting Congress for their many earmarks, he goes and does this. I especially appreciate the $6.5 million going to research about the properties of asphalt.

Sebelius' response

The Kathleen Sebelius response speech seems to be getting lukewarm reviews. She spoke rather slowly, and wasn't very passionate.

There's been buzz in some quarters about Sebelius as a possible VP pick, but I think that the chances of that are about nil: true, she's a popular Democratic governor in a conservative state (my home state, Kansas)--and she'd probably bring in the votes of some Midwesterners, but she lacks other qualities that are pretty necessary for a running-mate: namely, the ability to give exciting speeches.

The Democratic response to the SOTU is always an understated affair, but this is the way she always speaks; not a fluke. In fact, her total lack of fire-in-the-belly is probably what's allowed her to be succesful in Kansas. 

Don't get me wrong, she's a good governor--I like her a lot. She's done a lot of good things for Kansas. But I don't think VP is in her future. She should focus instead on running for Sam Brownback's senate seat, which he'll be vacating in 2010, at the same time that she's term-limited out of the governorship. She's got a good chance to be the first Democratic Senator from Kansas in more than 70 years.

Telecom Immunity Again

John Ashcroft has an Op-Ed in the NY Times today in which he says the following:

The Senate bill would confer immunity in only two limited circumstances: if the carrier did not do what the plaintiffs claim; or if the carrier did do what the plaintiffs claim but based on explicit assurances from the highest levels of the government that the activities in question were authorized by the president and determined to be lawful.

Longstanding principles of law hold that an American corporation is entitled to rely on assurances of legality from officials responsible for government activities. The public officials in question might be right or wrong about the advisability or legality of what they are doing, but it is their responsibility, not the company’s, to deal with the consequences if they are wrong.

To deny immunity under these circumstances would be extraordinarily unfair to any cooperating carriers. By what principle of justice should anyone face potentially ruinous liability for cooperating with intelligence activities that are authorized by the president and whose legality has been reviewed and approved by our most senior legal officials?

I have a simple question for Ashcroft, then: if the legal principle involved is so obvious and straightforward, why can't the question be settled by a court instead of by the Congress and the President? "By what principle of justice should any face potentially ruinous liability for cooperating with intelligence activities that are authorized by the president... ?" Ashcroft says. Well, the principle, not so much of justice, but more generally of our government that the executive is one of three co-equal branches of government, and that the law is a higher authority than the President.  In other words, if the President tells you to do something that's illegal, you have to say "No."

If the President were to say, "Shoot Dick Cheney in the face," you would have to say, "No," even if he were to tell you that it were for national security. There's an argument to be made that if the telecoms could have reasonably thought that the actions they were taking were legal, they could be excused.

I'm convinced that the telecoms knew that what they were doing was illegal but participated in the behavior anyway to keep in the good graces of the White House and its checkbook. But others probably disagree, and the proper place to hash it all out is in the independent judicial system. This is all so elementary that I don't believe it has to be said over and over.

Thank goodness for Chris Dodd, who pressured a lot of Democrats into taking a stand against this transparently corrupt attempt to buy a free pass through political donations. 

Gonzales is out.

It was sort of a crummy weekend for me, but it's all better now, because Alberto Gonzales is out. It's taken way too long.

The New York Times article linked above says that rumored replacements are Michael Chertoff and someone that I've never heard of named Larry Thompson, but on whom I'll certainly be reading up.

This gives the Democrats a really good chance to show that they're tough, and that they're not going to put up with any nonsense from Bush. And how many chances have the Democrats had so far this term of Congress? Don't expect too much.

But if the Democrats allow Bush to nominate someone from his loyal inner circle to the position, it'll just be another disappointment. Senator Schumer said in the article that, “Democrats will not obstruct or impede a nominee who we are confident will put the rule of law above political considerations.” 

Well, Schumer better be really confident. And they'd better obstruct and impede Chertoff. 

How we ended up with the Republicans' FISA bill

Everybody pretty much guessed that the White House put out a bunch of really scary, frightening 'intelligence' to try and manipulate the Democrats who are still (ridiculously) afraid that if they don't give the White House unlimited power, they'll be blamed for a future terrorist attack.

Today's NY Times article confirms that that's what happened:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 — At a closed-door briefing in mid-July, senior intelligence officials startled lawmakers with some troubling news. American eavesdroppers were collecting just 25 percent of the foreign-based communications they had been receiving a few months earlier.

Congress needed to act quickly, intelligence officials said, to repair a dangerous situation.

Some lawmakers were alarmed. Others, jaded by past intelligence warnings, were skeptical.

The report helped set off a furious legislative rush last week that, improbably, broadened the administration’s authority to wiretap terrorism suspects without court oversight.

...

“There was an intentional manipulation of the facts to get this legislation through,” said Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, a Democrat on the Intelligence Committee who voted against the plan.

The White House, Mr. Feingold said Friday in an interview, “has identified the one major remaining weakness in the Democratic Party, and that’s its unwillingness to stand up to the administration when it’s making a power grab regarding terrorism and national security.”

...

Democratic leaders did not demand that the security agency seek individual court warrants for eavesdropping. But they did want the court to review and approve the agency procedures soon after surveillance began.

The administration, however, wanted the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to approve the surveillance, with the court weighing in just to certify that no abuses occurred, and only long after the surveillance had been conducted.

The talks intensified in the days before the recess last weekend, highlighted by proposals and counterproposals in calls between Mr. McConnell and the Democratic leadership.

By Aug. 2, the two sides seemed relatively close to a deal. Mr. McConnell had agreed to some increased role for the secret court, a step that the administration considered a major concession, the White House and Congressional leaders said.

But that night, the talks broke down. With time running out, the Senate approved a Republican bill that omitted the stronger court oversight. The next day, the House passed the bill.

If the White House was really so concerned about this gap in the FISA law, they should've been sharing this intelligence consistently instead of doling it out in driblets, and only the bits likely to get the Democrats to do what they want. Any Democrat in Congress who honestly thinks that this was an emergency that just happened to come up right before the August recess doesn't deserve to be in the Congress.

It isn't the Democrats that were endangering national security, it was Republicans who were willing to risk the non-passage of changes to the FISA bill that both sides agreed were necessary, for the sake of grabbing more power for the President.

And tell me, how in the hell did these Democrats decide that it was a good idea to give oversight privileges to Alberto Gonzales, instead of a court?

The Democrats that voted to continue Bush's reign of fear were played for fools. And Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid showed a distinct lack of leadership. If they'd wanted to, they could've stopped this; but obviously the continuing erosion of our Constitutional rights wasn't a big enough deal to inconvenience anyone with.

Gyah.

Evaluating the Surge

I'm back from across the border! I've got some new organisms living in my stomach and some new insights on  the immigration debate, but those will come soon.  

First things first,  here's a  scathing portrayal of just how, and why, the Surge is failing miserably, by Patrick Cockburn, a brilliant British journalist for The Guardian. 

Surge? Remember that thing Bush made a huge deal out of, and we all protested, then everyone sort of forgot about ? (what's it called in current CNN parlance? "Iraq fatigue" among the general public? Pathetic. I'm sure the Iraqis are a hell of a lot more fatigued than we are.)  Anyway, the surge (surprise surprise) is still going on, still not working.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2841425.ece 

Scooter may not have to serve probation, either

From SCOTUSblog:

"Strictly construed, the statute authorizing the imposition of supervised release indicates that such release should occur only after the defendant has already served a term of imprisonment....It is therefore unclear how [the statute] should be interpreted in unusual circumstances such as these."

Lawyers were ordered to file papers by Monday on "whether the defendant should be required to report to the Probation Office immediately, whether he should be allowed to remain free of supervision until some later, more appropriate time, or, indeed, whether the plain meaning of [the statute] precludes the application of a term of supervised release altogether now that the prison sentence has been commuted."

So there goes, potentially, one of the components of Bush's 'harsh punishment.' Keep in mind that it's Reggie Walton saying this, the same judge that bristled at the Borklings amicus brief and handed down the original sentence.

It's fine with me if Libby gets out of probation, too. Libby doesn't really care about probation, I imagine. This just makes it more clear that, with the fine sure to be covered by his conservative think-tank friends, he's getting off totally scot free.

On another note, Digby has a post discussing the future legal ramifications this'll have for the sentencing process:

Indeed, Mr. Bush’s decision may have given birth to a new sort of legal document.

“I anticipate that we’re going to get a new motion called ‘the Libby motion,’ ” Professor Podgor said. “It will basically say, ‘My client should have got what Libby got, and here’s why.’ ”

Perhaps Bush will leave a positive legal legacy after all.

Keep after 'em

I think Markus's image below really sums it up. As Digby points out, it's a commutation rather than a pardon so that BushCo won't have to give up the Fifth:

So Bush did it. The bastard commuted little Scooter's sentence, leaving the conviction in place. I'm not a lawyer, but I have to assume that this means he can still appeal --- which means he can still take the fifth if the congress calls him to to testify. Very convenient.

Suzanne Malveaux (who is suffering from Stockhom Syndrome as the white house correspondent) said that "a lot of people" were in favor of this. Bill Schneider actually set her straight by saying that a large number of Democrats, Independents and even some Republicans were going to be enraged. Their last poll had 72% saying they didn't think Libby should be pardoned and only 19% saying he did.

That poll number is important. Democrats shouldn't be drawn in by Great Prophet David Broder and his ilk, the MSM voices who are convinced that what "the people" really want is for people to stop being so darn mean to Libby and his bosses. Commutation isn't a 'middle way,' but I fully expect the cable news pundits to be explaining it that way.

The next move, as far as I'm concerned, is to subpoena Cheney and Bush (Bush first, because he probably won't be able to keep track of all the party lines), and ask them very politely what their thinking was on the commutation, and, oh, a variety of other questions. And Dems can't let executive privilege claims and other surliness throw them off the trail any more. The majority of the country is in favor, and once the dirt and illegality that the investigations inevitably will dig up begins to surface, the support will increase.

I don't have much doubt anymore that Bush and Cheney have committed impeachable offenses; it's time to find out exactly what they are, and there isn't much time left--567 days, to be precise--to bring it all out and build consensus around conviction and punishment. If we fail to purge out and condemn the taint that permeates this Administration, we'll be dealing with the damage--the breakdown of Constitutional law and moral government--for a long time. If I'm right about how corrupt the Administration is, and it all comes out, there should be a public clamor for impeachment.

Maybe Democrats don't have the courage to do it, but they really should. And I don't think there's a 'higher priority' than the integrity of our government.

Bloomberg, and Bush's Post-Modern Presidency

I really don't see how anyone can look at the overwhelming blizzard of abuses, crimes, and foolhardy errors that have constituted the Bush years and then decide that what they're really sick of is partisanship:

... The forty per cent of the American electorate who regard themselves as Independents would also benefit. Their number has been growing in recent years, and they are increasingly joined in political sympathy by Republicans and Democrats who find their parties captive to a base, fringe, or interest group with which they have little in common. We are living through one of those recurring moments—1912, 1980, and 1992 were others—when disgust with the two big parties stirs a longing for an outsider of upright character, untainted by dirty money or political dealmaking.

Maybe I'm wrong in thinking that voters are sick of what I'm sick of, which is the actions of the current executive, and the actions of Republicans in the House and Senate (and now apparently the Supreme Court). If pressed, I could draw up a specific, and fairly inclusive, list of grievances against BushCo and against the GOP and other enablers. But maybe that's just because I'm on the high side of the news-awareness bell curve.

I can see how, in someone who doesn't spend a fairly significant portion of their waking life reading and digesting news information (this is a class issue as well, by the way; a good portion of the population doesn't have the leisure time or spare energy), my fairly specific dissatisfaction could manifest in a general 'screw the government' sort of feeling.

That it's so difficult for a casual news observer to distinguish between radicals and anti-radicals is also a damning comment on our broken media discourse. After all, most politicians sound the same as one another, they all yell and point when they get angry, and mostly they only are seen on television disagreeing with one another.

Too often, our politicians are quoted side by side making mutually contradictory claims, and too often the media fails to point out factual falsehoods (because to point out a negative about a candidate or official without pointing out a symmetrical negative for the other side would be 'biased' and 'partisan,' perhaps).

I recall a commentator on CNN who, after the Bush/Kerry debates said that it would take a team of Kennedy School of Government fact checkers a week to verify or refute all the truth claims made in the debate. And in terms of substantive discussion, that was apparently it for CNN. All that CNN was prepared to do was identify truly glaring factual inaccuracies. The rest was about who was more effective in their message delivery, the little tics, the gaffes. Coverage shifted over to 'Spin Alley,' a name suggesting fluctuation between two poles, existing simultaneously without cancelling each other out, matter and anti-matter.

It's understandable for people to get sick of it. The lack of attention to substantive policy difference makes mainstream political discourse a cross between a beauty contest and a shouting match. The media itself isn't the least bit interested in changing the dynamic; it makes for good television (Crossfire! Liberal, conservative--debate!). It took Jon Stewart making his own good television to get the show off the air.

There's ambivalence to objective truth; theirs a post-modern feeling that the truth is unknowable and that things can be two mutually exclusive ways at once. Maybe it's best just to call it doublethink. And Bush and his supporters have been disconcertingly open about their post-modern thinking:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

That's a post-modern stance (in the sense where post-modern can mean "counter-enlighment". There are so many senses of post-modern that it's best to specify). When Bush and Cheney say, as they often do, that only History will be able to judge their Administration, they are really concurring with the above. The un-named aide quoted is just, you know, articulater.

Post-modernism made some sense when applied to literary conceits like Justice, Virtue, Love, and all the rest, but it is a terrible paradigm under which to build a functioning government, composed of bureaucrats and cops. It's nonsense to say that truth is unknowable in the context of governance. The government must operate under the premise that truth is knowable, or government policy is governed by nothing but competition to see which narrative is the most compelling.

There are a few issues where one side or the other is objectively correct, and they can prove it. There are a great many other issues where an objective observer would say that the preponderance of the evidence tilts one way or the other.

I don't know that anyone (except maybe that Bush aide) would disagree with that assertion, and yet our media often seems to operate on the premise that all viewpoints are created equal. That stance, more than anything, creates the conditions that I think will consistently allow a sufficiently visible third-party candidate who can "bridge the divide" to claim ten to twenty percent of the vote.

The main way to be 'visible' without joining a party is to have tons of your own dough to pour into television ads. That's what Ross Perot did in '92, and that's what Bloomberg will do if he ultimately decides to make a run. Hell, he may get more than 20%. Perot got 18, and he sure wasn't a popular and effective city administrator with a record of effective compromise.

The question, if Bloomberg runs, is who he will pull more votes from, the Republican or the Dem. To me, it looks likely to be a negative for the Democrats. So what Bloomberg needs to consider, if he's conscientious, is whether he wants to help someone like Giuliani or Thompson ascend the throne of George the Second. I hope he doesn't run. If it looked like he would help the Democrats, I would be pulling for him all the way. I say this because I am not a political post-modernist--I think the Democrats have superior ideas and positions, and as a result, I want them to win.