May 29 2007
Archive for May, 2007
May 22 2007
Keep on Doin’ It Baybee:
Gollum sings Barry White.…or channels him or something. Try this for a romantic evening at home.
May 22 2007
Just in case you need it:
- Plans for using a B-58 as a Minuteman missile launcher.
- How you can store your server in a nuke-proof room.
- How to fix Abe Lincoln’s gunshot wound.
- Getting bagpipers in Egypt. Nice tartan for Pharaoh!
- How to get your Harry Potter stamps from the Royal Mail.
May 21 2007
Riots over the one-child policy:
May 21 2007
How to remove a wart from office:
When in doubt, this sounds like something that should be done. Start with the no-confidence votes, please. Get 77 votes for it in the Senate, and maybe Bush will take notice, but I doubt it.
I’d known about the whole deal with Card and Gonzales trying to get around Comey and have Ashcroft approve a illegal wiretap policy - oh, a year ago, I’d guess, or longer - and while I’m glad to see Comey come out in public and confirm everything, and stir up people on the subject of how little Attorney General Gonzales cares for the law (especially if it gets in the way of Bush Doing What He Wants), it’s the tip of the iceberg. Bush and the White House doesn’t care about the law or your subpoenas, either, and figures he can bluff and wait you all out.
What we’re seeing here is a deliberate attempt to make the Department of Justice operate like something out of a banana republic, where the levers of government are owned and staffed and run for the benefit of the Maximum Leader and his cronies, who are above the law at all times. They can do whatever to you, and make it stick no matter what (or your guilt or innocence), and You. Are. Powerless. And they have *lots* of gold braid on their uniforms.
For my friends who are Republicans or admirers of Bush, I have to ask: if this was Hillary Clinton’s White House, and she was doing this, would you stand for it? And if this is done under Bush, do you realize that *anyone* following Bush could claim the same powers to screw with you?
When I hear people saying ‘tear down the church and state barriers’, I ask you this: if the church makes the rules, WHICH church will make the rules? Yours? I doubt it.
There’s a reason for all of those rules about torture, about excesses of the executive, about the separation of powers or the separation of church and state. There’s a reason that this country has been stable and successful, and able to tolerate new ideas and new ways to do things better.
The reasons that Bush wants Gonzales in office are simple: He couldn’t have another person so willing to do his bidding get confirmed as Attorney General. After this mess, the Senate would need a seriously honest person, independent of the White House and willing to clean house at DOJ and the government in general, and Bush doesn’t want that. He wants someone to keep doing what he wants done and prevent all the dirt that has been done from surfacing. Besides, Gonzales is his bud.
If you think George W. Bush seriously cares about what you think, guess again. Time and time again, I’ve heard the whole ‘oh, Bush couldn’t be dumb/obstinate enough to do X’, and sure enough, he does it. The whole Iraq mess is proof enough of that. Poor planning, incompetent but leader-loyal management, governance set aside for PR and photo-ops as palliatives, and so on.
Give me more time and more power, he says, and I’ll fix things. Well, buddy, we gave you those, and you fixed nothing, made it worse and/or ran it into the ground further.
What you did do is to enrich fatcats, like Halliburton and the oil companies (gas was $1.10 at the beginning of 2002, after 9/11, and it’s now $3.60 at my local gas station) who can spend zillions on managers and stock tricks but none on maintaining or building refineries. What you did do was to try to set up every part of government as a directly controlled wing of your party and to control the hiring and firing of staff people at the agencies to have only your followers in charge of everything. Heckuva job there.
As this proceeds, it becomes obvious that Nothing Gets Done. It’s far more important to Run Things permanently than to govern and get things done for the benefit of the country.
And the answer needs to be made to the question Bush and Gonzales and Rove ask: “Well, what are you going to do about it?”
Raise hell. Write the papers and your congresscritters. Speak out publicly, on forums like this one. Educate yourself as to what’s going on, and not just from the easiest source or only one source. (A smarter, better informed citizen is a better citizen.) Educate others on these matters in the more effective way you can do so. Open their eyes and their minds to think for themselves. Register and vote, dammit.
What these folks depend on is your inaction and lack of concern as they bugger everything this country stands for. This is something beyond party or left and right. This is authoritarianism, not conservativeness or anything to do with any political party. They wanted to scare you into letting them have all the power they could want to Make Bad Guys Go Away. The Republican Party is just a device for power for these guys, and power is what they want more than any ideology.
