Vast Left-wing Conspiracy

What if George Bush isn't a republican at all? I know he's been registered Republican his entire life, but bear with me here.

George Bush's poll numbers are down as low as they've ever been, hovering near the 35% mark in most polls. Even among conservatives, his numbers have dropped, and many Americans are beginning to doubt whether Bush's leadership is really leadership or just directional stumbling. Sort of like a field sobriety test - we've asked the President to stay on the line, and he's doing just sort of OK at the job.

This lack of popularity, and the Republican Congress's lock step with the President on such issues as national security and domestic policy, are costing Republicans in the polls as well. Democrats will almost without a doubt win more seats in Congress, and have an outside shot at taking control of both houses.

Which brings me to my point - what if this were George W. Bush's plan all along? What if he was hand-selected by the Democrats to screw up SO badly and expose most Congressional Republicans as such idealogues that the country would naturally swing back to the left come election time?

Now, admittedly 9/11 screwed things up for the Dark Leftist Masters. But then the Democratic overlords hinted to Bush that he should invade Iraq. They'd support him at first of course, until they found out he was wrong (a wrongness which they, the Democrats, knew about but also knew the Repubs would believe).

And now they're back on track, and only four years behind schedule....

The Democrats craft a medicare "reform" bill that they knew would completely alienate seniors, and have Bush introduce it while seeming to have created this monstrosity while in the pocket of the the pharmaceutical industry. Then immigration reform. And rampant spending - all of it done with one goal in mind: to crush the Republican Party's hopes of creating a lasting majority in Congress.

And conservatives say we on the left don't have a plan...

Samuel Alito

An interesting point of politics, and one that is too very often forgotten by both sides of the aisle, is that you can't always get what you want. More often than not, when you are the minority, the party in the majority will do as they please and you have a hard time stopping them.

Such is life.

It's hardly fair, especially if you are actually right, but there isn't much you can do about it unless you gain the majority and then enact laws or rules to protect the minority, in the event you fall into that hole again. Which given the cyclical nature of politics, you probably will.

Samuel Alito is one of those cases. I, for one, am not a big fan of him. The guy's definitely a wingnut from the right, and will probably do his best to overturn a lot of rulings that the Left in the United States considers sacred. Perhaps it will be politics, but more likely he will be able to find what to many seems to be logical reasons behind doing so.

Stare decisis was an oft-quoted term in these last two Supreme Court nominations that made it to the Senate Commitees. It basically means, "What was will stand," though the literal translation is "stand by the decisions." John Roberts, for his part, used it for everything from discussion about Roe v. Wade to his interest in putting sugar in his coffee. Nominee Alito didn't use the term as much, and simply watching him in his hearings was enough to indicate why: he really doesn't believe in a lot of the decisions of the last, oh, 150 years. That said, Samuel Alito is not going to be the chief justice of the Supreme Court (probably ever) and so his interest in standing by the decisions of previous justices isn't as important as it was for Chief Justice, then nominee, Roberts.

John Kerry and Ted Kennedy today announced plans to attempt to filibuster the Alito vote, on the hopes that enough people in the Senate would take their side and not try to break the filibuster. There are currently 55 votes for Alito that have been anounced (52 Republicans, three democrats) and chances are good that there are more than 60.

Kerry and Kennedy are doing the noble thing, but at the end of the day, it's going to be a political failure. The majority of Americans support Samuel Alito for the court, not because the majority of Americans are conservatives, but because many on the left and in the middle recognize that regardless of his politics, Samuel Alito is actually qualified to be a justice. He is intelligent and by all accounts very thoughtful and methodical. He is someone who will do a decent job on the court, regardless of politics. So attempting a filibuster will make these two gentlemen, and all who are affiliated with them, look pouty and out of touch.

The cyclical nature of politics relates to court appointments, too. It creates a lagging cycle of justices and federal judges just as much as it creates a leading wave of ideologues out for personal power and their own ideas. Samuel Alito is part of that lagging cycle, and regardless of his politics, he is qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. The left will eventually have its chance to place its own men and women on the bench, and I'm sure we'll take it. But with a majority of United States citizens behind confirmation, the Democrats should obey the will of the people and at least not stand in the way.

Vote Them Out.

If government were run like the NCAA, today would be the day that a full-blown investigation into Major Infractions would begin, and it would probably end with a sanction for what is known in the world of athletics as "lack of institutional control."

To continue the allegory, let's say that the President and his administration are the College football team. We'll say Congress represents the Athletic Department, and we, the People, along with our Inspector Generals in each governmental administration, are the NCAA.

Normally, a school can get away with a recruiting violation here and there, and just have to pay a fine, maybe lose a scholarship or two. Sometimes, though, the violations are so big and flagrant that the NCAA has to really bring down the hammer. This most often happens in the case of severe and, more importantly, repeated violations.

And that's what the Administration has gotten itself into.

In 2004, viewers of many legitimate news stations saw "news stories" reported by a young man named Mike Morris, describing the new White House efforts against drug abuse. Problem is, Mike Morris wasn't a newscaster - he was a paid actor in a propaganda spot produced by the office of National Drug Control Policy.

Congress's investigative arm, the non-partisan General Accounting Office, said that this was illegal propagandizing, because among other things, the fake news release made itself out to be a legitimate news story.

That wasn't the GAO's first ruling on this sort of case - they said the same thing about a DHHR release that ended in "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting," which is the sort of thing that the public expects to hear from, say, a reporter. It also includes the words "Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details." The GAO said that this sort of fake news story broke two laws, partly because Karen Ryan isn't a reporter - she's a PR consultant who was retained by DHHR at the time.

Anyone with half a nerve cell should also remember the Armstrong Williams fiasco, in which Williams, who was up until then a legitimate media type, got paid $240,000 to tell his readers just how great the No Child Left Behind Act was. Williams's career is now, thankfully, over.

Two days ago the Washington Post, and yesterday the New York Times reported that the Pentagon had hired a consultant, Lincoln Group, to do things like pay Iraqi reporters a few bucks to publish stories written by the Lincoln Group under their own names. These stories are unfailingly positive, because that's what the Pentagon's Information Office likes to have said about the US. It's their job.

But, of course, interfering in another country's media is not going to go over well with our citizenry here, either. Any more than the ONDCP and DHHR fake news did. And interfering in the proper training of foreign media isn't really a great PR move. Ironically enough, the Lincoln Group is a PR firm, so maybe they should have known the benefits of ethical behavior before going into this.

The Times story linked to above (if you don't have a login, go to BugMeNot) also mentions that the White House and General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, had no idea that this was going on.

As President Bush once said, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on...well, you're not gonna fool me again!" I agree with him. There's no reason for us to get fooled again by this chicanery. The President, or at least the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, or both, knew full well that this nonsense and meddling was going on, and once again didn't bother to make sure it was ethical, moral, or even legal. The White House says it's concerned, which we should all know by now is only a half-truth. They aren't concerned that the Pentagon and the Lincoln Group engaged in this behavior.

They're concerned that they got caught.

Maybe it's time for the NCAA to step in and end the football program at this school. Get us a new coach. And probably a new AD too. You can't have "lack of institutional control" without the institution being the problem too.

On Harriet Miers

Perhaps the single-best part of being a Democrat these days is that George W. Bush is a Republican. Between Katrina, Iraq, Afghanistan, bin Laden, the economy, jobs, fuel costs, and controversial "fixes" to programs that the public doesn't want, he's made a fine job of opening himself up to criticism.

Some people, mainly from the Right, say that the Democratic Party is not offering any legitimate solutions for people, only criticism of the current administration. I disagree with their argument, but the wisdom is there; if we on the left do not find ways to differentiate ourselves from the Republicans currently in power, and if we don't find a way to actually offer real alternatives, then the electorate at large will lose faith in both parties and won't come out to vote.

Fair enough.

But sometimes alternatives aren't called for. The case of Harriet Meirs is one of those times. She has not made a positive impression on the Senators who would confirm her, and today President Bush denied release of any papers related to his discussions with her (citing attorney-client privelege).

Story here.

It's not so much a bad thing that Bush didn't want to release notes of his discussions with his lawyer; that's fine. Attorney-client privelege must be protected today if Democrats hope to have it protected for their own future presidents.

The problem is that Bush had to make a public announcement that he wasn't going to offer the papers up to Republicans. His party, if he still had any control over it, wouldn't be asking for private papers because they'd have faith that she was the right candidate for the job, simply based on his own ability to lead a vetting process for candidates.

The fact that Republicans are asking for these documents tells everyone that they don't believe right now that she's the best candidate. They should never ask for protected documents otherwise. And now, knowing that they want to know everything they can, means that those Senators on the committee don't believe she's been totally forward with them in terms of answers or other documents they've requested.

Another notch in the President's cane of goofups and failures.

What I've Learned

When Bush was elected, I figured he'd be wrong for the country because he was a Conservative. I didn't really know what a neocon was.

Now I do.

George W. Bush is NOT a conservative. He espouses family values, but saying that you support the idea of "family values" doesn't make you a conservative. It could make you a liberal who still believes in the idea of a two-parent household. "Family values" is a buzzword that means absolutely nothing regarding your own political slant.

Conservatives tend to be more reactive than proactive. Again, George Bush and his cohort are not conservatives - that reactive nature tends to lend itself to an aversion to large federal spending.

These guys in power now are not right wing, per se. They're way off the starboard rails. They spend and spend and spend, then say, "We're not wasteful! Don Young Way is vitally important! National Security! Nine eleven!" Then they go off and try to weaken government so that it will fail, giving them ammunition to say, "Government fails! Private industry! Nine eleven!"

Let me say something, and I'm generally not this clear: Neocons are very, very bad for this country. The real reason that GWB won re-election is because he became a fearmonger in the year leading up to the election, and managed to convince people in North Dakota (where the unemployment rate is well above the national average, so job growth SHOULD have been their major statewide issue) that terrorism could happen anywhere. I watched an interview with a guy from Montana saying he was voting for Bush for that specific reason.

Montana? FREAKING MONTANA?!?!?!? What is al Qaida going to do, blow up a log cabin and a few FREAKING ELK?!?!?

The current group of powerful neocons has managed to take a hugely devastating event and use it to play on the population's basest fears. They've used it to justify an invasion of a sovereign nation that posed no threat to us while distracting us from our real mission in Afghanistan, which was to wipe out the Taliban (which we haven't done), establish a democratic government (it's alright), and capture Osama bin Ladan and Ayman al-Zawahri (George Bush: "Who?").

Now we're in Iraq because we were:
-Looking for WMDs (Oops. Our bad.)
-Wait, No! We're protecting our allies and ourselves from terrorists like Saddam Hussein! (see previous justification)
-Never mind. Now we're protecting the people of Iraq from terrorists like Saddam Hussein (Yeah, we're sorry about creating more of them, by the way.)
-Go back a second! We're fostering Democracy in the Middle East (Except for Sunnis.)
-Forget those last four. We were really protecting us abroad from Terrorism at home (How a Syrian angry at the US would decide to blow up Baquba rather than Washington is beyond me.)

Neoconservatives aren't conservatives. They're power-hungry idealogues who believe that if they can thwart government, they can have it dismantled. Sounds a lot like Marxism, actually, that people would be better off in a totally anarchic environment. So they lead us off into pointless wars to create profits for their oil buddies, they forget what the hell we're supposed to be fighting, and they spend the government into what they hope will be an irreparable slide into failure and incompetence.

I don't dislike conservatives. Conservatism, on its face, is an understandable and in some cases correct way to go. But I loathe neoconservatism. It's a political bent that does nothing but encourage fear and hatred and unthinking loyalty and whose single, though unstated, goal is the ruination of this country.

The Magnet I Wish I Had

What can I say? I think this is an idea whose time has come:


Alas, I don't think it'll happen anytime soon.

"You want me to be some kind of superhero..."

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Democrats began pushing for an independent, 9/11-style investigation into the hurricane response. Republicans, with the White House leading the charge, opposed that style of investigation, and instead have opened their own Congressional hearings.

Keep in mind that Republicans, with the White House at the head, opposed the original 9/11 commission as well.

Comes out today that 80% of United States citizens believe that an independent Katrina investigation is the way to go.

Democrats can't let this one go. There are a few issues where it's better to let the Administration have its way - Judge Robers, for example. But making sure that the US has a full accounting of everything that went wrong with the preparation and response to Hurricane Katrina, at every level, is not something that the Party should let its officials ignore.

Time to start agitating.

(story here.)