The Fat Lady Sings

Better Angels

So.  As advertized, President Obama decided not to prosecute the Bush torturers – despite in your hand, black and white evidence that extreme torture took place (all in the name of the United States, doncha know).  But that’s OK by Obama.  Lock someone in a box with bugs?  Fine.  Bash some poor son-of-a-bitch’s head against a wall until he loses consciousness?  Peachy.  All this from a man who ran on the promise that torture would become anathema in America.

So he lied.  Big deal, you say.  Or perhaps you prefer to parse his promise – to cling to the belief that what promises were made were, in actual fact, kept.  Strictly speaking – we DON’T torture any more – right (one hopes)?  Oh – we still practice ‘rendition’ – but that’s not US actually torturing – is it?  And so what if the Bush tortures escape the justice they so richly deserve.  They were just following orders.  After all - the Bush ‘Justice’ Department did say it was OK.  Permission was given – so how could any of them be help personally responsible?  

Then there was that blackmail memo – the one the CIA sent to Obama – vowing removal of any and all intelligence gathering: numerous threats, both gross and subtle.  He had to cave, right?  I mean – he couldn’t just FIRE the smarmy bastards, and bring back all the people pushed out by Bush appointees......could he?  Maybe he could.  But then that would make Obama WRONG – and we don’t dare declare President Obama as being in the WRONG – not with all those nasty right-wingers just waiting to pounce.  No matter what – he’s always right.  Ooops.  Bad word.  Whatever you do - don’t label Obama as ‘right’ anything.  Say he’s taken a ‘progressive attitude towards the past’.  Yeah.  That’ll work.

Only it won't.  There is a good 'right'.  The difference between 'right' and wrong - and President Obama's wrong on this.  He's wrong - and we have to tell him so.  Do you really want sadists managing the CIA?  I don't.  I want them dug out - root and branch.  Torture is evil.  No maundering around the subject - it's flat out evil, and we all know it.  Allowing evil people to get away with their crimes only compounds that evil.  Look at how we all view Nazi-ism.  60 years after the fact - and the world is still trying to catch and imprison anyone even remotely involved with that nightmare.  Why persue the Demjanjuk case otherwise?  To prove a point.  Time will never erase that stain – as it shouldn’t regards torture now.

So what point are we proving here?  What is Obama telling America when he says we should all just forgive and forget?  That no matter what you do – if you do it under the umbrella of government – it’s fine; legal and fine.  No one will hold you responsible – no matter how egregious your action.  Well that makes me sick to my stomach.  And it makes me wonder about Obama.  What does he means by this?  I can’t help but be suspicious.....and that’s a very bad thing.  It begs the question, you see: what is it Obama might do that will need such extreme excusing?  Whose nest does he feather?  Has the Bush presidency so poisoned the office, it contaminates anyone who sits in that chair?  And what makes Obama so different?  Perhaps I should be asking what makes him the same.  So far (everything in consideration), Obama wins out.....but that margin of goodness just narrowed considerably.

Congratulations, President Obama.  You’ve just become the ‘lesser’ evil.

GOP Tricks...It's Not Halloween Yet...

                                    

It seems the GOP Tricksters (strategists…crooks) want to reshape the electoral geography of California in their party’s favor. According to the Los Angeles Times they plan to begin raising money (this week) for another one of their “special” initiatives…hoping it will help a Republican win in 2008. Not if I can help it they won’t! California supplies 55 electoral votes…more than 10% of the 538 nationally.

This is intended for the June 2008 ballot…which would change up what it is now…a winner-take-all system. They want to change it up to require that the electoral votes be apportioned by congressional district. Right now…Republicans hold 19 of California’s 53 congressional seats which means they would win at least 19 electoral votes. They want to call this thing…the Presidential Election Reform Act initiative. Beware people!

Arnie Schwarzenegger hasn’t signed onto the deal yet, neither has any of the presidential candidates. So far there is no confirmed financial backing…but these weasels will come out of the woodwork to cheat us yet once again…so I expect they’ll find their funding. That’s part of the benefit of Bush giving them their tax breaks…they can feel more easy about giving to their party’s business. They are aiming at $300,000 to $500,000 for polling and other things. This is before the real work of gathering the needed signatures of 434,00…estimated to cost around $2 million just for the signature solicitations.

California places no limits on the amount donors can spend on initiatives…whereas there are limitations to the donations to the candidates themselves. Confidence is running high that they will find the needed backers of the various Republican presidential candidates. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) says it is…”nothing more than an unfair political power grab.” I couldn’t have put it better myself. Just more cheating on their already full agenda! Opponents of this initiative had better get their armor on…they are going to need it…and they’d better be prepared to spend plenty of money to try and stop it.

The Republicans are going to try and rig the system again…just like in 2000 and 2004. The circumstances are a tad different…but the sentiment is the same. They will be doing their shenanigans under the guise of it being a reform. My aching back! The initiative has already been submitted to the California attorney general. The measure was written by attorney Tomas Hiltachk…whose Sacramento law firm just happens to represent the California Republican Party. Ack!

The Senator Larry Craig Insider’s Guide to Mensroom "Signals":

Same Old Story

Once again the Bush Administration is saying: We're spying on americans, we've been doing it for awhile, and we're planning to expand this program and make it permanent.

   

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States is expanding the use of spy satellites for domestic surveillance, turning its "eyes in sky" inward to counter terrorism and eventually for law enforcement, US officials said Wednesday.

Authorized by US intelligence chief Michael McConnell in May and managed by the Department of Homeland Security, the change will allow more federal and local agencies to tap into satellite imagery and related intelligence products, they said.

It also will expand the kind of intelligence that can be made available to include measurement and signature intelligence, which is used to identify and track targets by their particular physical characteristics, they said.

   

  Charles Allen, assistant secretary of Homeland Security for intelligence analysis, said the main priority is to make more robust use of intelligence capabilities for civil defense purposes.

   

  "The least of my concern is law enforcement," he said in a telephone interview.

   

"We're looking at that and we'll do it in an appropriate way," he said. But he said the government will move slowly on what probably will be limited applications for law enforcement.

   

He said spy satellites already have been used on an ad hoc basis to guard against terrorist attacks at political conventions and major sporting events.

  The Department of Homeland Security envisions using spy satellites to keep closer watch over borders, ports, bridges and other key infrastructure.

They're asking us once again to ignore their previous felonious actions and let them have considerably MORE power and authority to snoop into our business. But it's OK - it's all in the service of protecting us from harm - any smallest chance of harm, even that chance that we'd gladly embrace in order to preserve our privacy from the most overreaching federal govt evah!

Read of their plans and assurances here

Crossposted at The Gypsy's Caravan

Must be a Real, Juicy Scandal

I wonder what Emperor Cheney and King Bush have on Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid. Must be a major faux pas, for them to sell us out like they did on Saturday.

The dems should take a couple of weeks at a Betty Ford Clinic. They need to learn how to JUST SAY NO.

Meanwhile, it may be time to send in an application to get a passport...... even boyscouts are urged to become prepared.

Gone-zoh

Bush's Legacy in Jeopardy...

 

            

          Senator Voinovich, R-Ohio

Little George's legacy being in jeopardy is not news. We've known this for some time now, we haven't needed soothsayers to predict that for us. Personally I don't see how it can be salvaged with all that has gone on...been done...with more spin to come. Rove must be sweating bullets trying to come up with some sort of way out of this tangled web he has woven. He may find himself on a stage one day as the skull that Hamlet holds forth as poor Yoric. This may be their summer of discontent...in spades.

It seems Voinovich has conversed with the Rovemeister and given a dire warning. Georgie needs to develop a workable plan to withdraw the troops from Iraq as a beginning salvage of is historical presidential legacy. It's the impossible dream by now. The Man from La Mancha cannot tilt at windmills anymore...so what makes people think there's any possibility that George could save a slice of good history for himself. I just don't think so plain and simple.

The WH spokesman Snowman Tony said last week that GW's GOPers in Congress wouldn't break with their fearless leader over the war. Check for Kool-aid under the podium next time folks. Anyway...Voinovich warned GW is still young enough and should seriously think about his legacy. It just makes me want to laugh and pound the desk at the same time. We know all these things...and have for some time. I guess the right just didn't want to face it until they had to.

We all know history isn't going to be kind to Dubbie. Even if he can come up with a plan to stabilize the region and protect the troops...(highly doubtful)...he will never be looked upon as some sort of hero president. That train left the station years ago. That train left with lies and corruption, with a multitude of deceptions that would choke a horse. You reach a point when you cannot hide all the sweeping under the carpet business that has gone on. The biggest mistake is thinking Americans are stupid or that we are like pet rocks. Word has it there are other Republicans ever so close to speaking out against the current (ill-conceived) strategy.

“I won’t mention anyone’s name. But I have every reason to believe that the fur is going to start to fly, perhaps sooner than what they may have wanted.” Voinovich also said in a more blunt manner of speech using profanity to describe the WH's management of Iraq by charging the administration..."f*cked up" the war.

I say...right on dude! I guess he expressed his views to Rove for this being a good "opportunity" for George to come together with the Dems and Repubs on an exit strategy that will undoubtedly be good for the country. Imagine that...a Republican that is making some sense. Sense at last...sense at last...thank Gawd Almighty sense at last!

“I got into this to get them to move, and they’re moving,” said Voinovich, who is pushing for the president to put together a workable plan for withdrawing U.S. troops that will be ready in time for a September progress report on the military surge from Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

“I really think that they understand,” said Voinovich. “We’ll see by September what they put together. But the main thing is were running out of time — we should take advantage of this time.”

Voinovich is giving them some time until September to get General Patraeus' progress report. I know I can't wait. But I don't trust any of them. I think it is entirely possible for Petraeus to go along with what Dubbie wants and just fall in with it. So after the surge...we'll need a boost in troops. They'll find some sort of excuse to prolong it. And if they don't...will I ever be surprised! We should all expect a dramatic new strategy to be ready in the fall...but Voinovich said he will endorse a Democratic plan mandating a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days. And I personally think that is the best we'll get for those of us that want out now.

I applaud Voinovich for his spunk and intelligence though. His break with the WH came just one day after Republican Senator Lugar of Indiana...delivered a very dramatic speech on the Senate floor declaring the president's current strategy was not working. Sounds of hope are a good thing now and again.

And The Disgrace Continues:

Every time I think that the current occupants of the White House cannot sink any lower - they prove me wrong:

The White House has refused to give Congress documents about the death of former NFL player Pat Tillman, with White House counsel Fred Fielding saying that certain papers relating to discussion of the friendly-fire shooting “implicate Executive Branch confidentiality interests.”

Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Tom Davis R-Va., the leading members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, objected to the refusal Friday in letters to the White House and the Defense Department.

White House and Pentagon officials have turned over about 10,000 pages of material, but Waxman and Davis said those papers lack critical documents that would show communications between senior administration officials and top military officers shortly after Tillman was killed in Afghanistan in 2004.

Dear god - will Congress finally get its head out of its ass and impeach this man?

(Hat Tip to Crooks and Liars)

Federal Appeals Court Parses Our Rights Along Party Lines

A cold shiver went down my spine as I read the verdict that the republican majority on the Federal Appeals Court denied our right to sue the government to stop illegal wiretapping. Now that the SCOTUS has revealed it's radical right majority, all bets are off, and the dirt of corruption is being scraped up for all to see.

In a 2-1 decision with Republican-appointed judges in the majority, a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the plaintiffs had no standing to sue because they couldn't prove their communications had been monitored by the government.

The decision underscored the difficulty of challenging the anti-terrorism program in court because its secret nature prevents plaintiffs from obtaining surveillance information. The National Security Agency had refused to turn over information about the warrantless wiretapping that would have bolstered the court case.

"This is a Catch-22," said Steven R. Shapiro, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit. "I think what in effect they're saying is that we can't tell you whether you have been wiretapped because that's a secret. And unless you know you've been wiretapped, you can't challenge that program."

The appeals court vacated a 2006 order by a lower court in Detroit, which had concluded that the warrantless surveillance authorized after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was unconstitutional.

~ ~ ~

Shapiro said the ACLU is considering all its legal options, including asking for a full-court hearing in the 6th Circuit or asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider it. If the ACLU doesn't pursue an appeal, the case would go back to the U.S. District Court in Michigan for dismissal.

A law professor who has closely followed the case thinks it will be dropped.

"The case is not moot because the government could continue the program at any time," said Robert A. Sedler, a law professor at Wayne State University. "But because it's not now in effect, the Supreme Court is not likely to hear it. It's simply not an important case anymore."

Read the whole sordid  story <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070707/ap_on_re_us/domestic_spying_20;_ylt=Am7ZzUBEUVsFRtx5qAeSZJ8E1vAI"> here </a>

Anatomy of a disaster

In the new WP article about Cheney's excess of partisan zeal in reducing our environment to a polluted, hothouse mess, we find this scenario:

'Let the water flow'
There was, as it happened, an established exemption to the Endangered Species Act.

A rarely invoked panel of seven Cabinet officials, known informally as the "God Squad," is empowered by the statute to determine that economic hardship outweighs the benefit of protecting threatened wildlife. But after discussing the option with Smith, Cheney rejected that course. He had another idea, one that would not put the administration on record as advocating the extinction of endangered or threatened species.

The thing to do, Cheney told Smith, was to get science on the side of the farmers. And the way to do that was to ask the National Academy of Sciences to scrutinize the work of the federal biologists who wanted to protect the fish.

Smith said he told Cheney that he thought that was a roll of the dice. Academy panels are independently appointed, receive no payment and must reach a conclusion that can withstand peer review.

"It worried me that these are individuals who are unreachable," Smith said of the academy members. But Cheney was firm, expressing no such concerns about the result. "He felt we had to match the science."

Smith also wasn't sure that the Klamath case -- "a small place in a small corner of the country" -- would meet the science academy's rigorous internal process for deciding what to study. Cheney took care of that. "He called them and said, 'Please look at this, it's important,'" Smith said. "Everyone just went flying at it."

William Kearney, a spokesman for the National Academies, said he was unaware of any direct contact from Cheney on the matter. The official request came from the Interior Department, he said.

It was Norton who announced the review, and it was Bush and his political adviser Karl Rovewho traveled to Oregon in February 2002 to assure farmers that they had the administration's support. A month later, Cheney got what he wanted when the science academy delivered a preliminary report finding "no substantial scientific foundation" to justify withholding water from the farmers.

There was not enough clear evidence that proposed higher lake levels would benefit suckerfish, the report found. And it hypothesized that the practice of releasing warm lake water into the river during spawning season might do more harm than good to the coho, which thrive in lower temperatures.

Norton flew to Klamath Falls in March to open the head gate as farmers chanted "Let the water flow!" And seizing on the report's draft findings, the Bureau of Reclamation immediately submitted a new decade-long plan to give the farmers their full share of water.

When the lead biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service team critiqued the science academy's report in a draft opinion objecting to the plan, the critique was edited out by superiors and his objections were overruled, he said. The biologist, Michael Kelly, who has since quit the federal agency, said in a whistle-blower claim that it was clear to him that "someone at a higher level" had ordered his agency to endorse the proposal regardless of the consequences to the fish.

Months later, the first of an estimated 77,000 dead salmon began washing up on the banks of the warm, slow-moving river. Not only were threatened coho dying -- so were chinook salmon, the staple of commercial fishing in Oregon and Northern California. State and federal biologists soon concluded that the diversion of water to farms was at least partly responsible.

Fishermen filed lawsuits and courts ruled that the new irrigation plan violated the Endangered Species Act. Echoing Kelly's objections, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit observed that the 10-year plan wouldn't provide enough water for the fish until year nine. By then, the 2005 opinion said, "all the water in the world" could not save the fish, "for there will be none to protect." In March 2006, a federal judge prohibited the government from diverting water for agricultural use whenever water levels dropped beneath a certain point.

Last summer, the federal government declared a "commercial fishery failure" on the West Coast after several years of poor chinook returns virtually shut down the industry, opening the way for Congress to approve more than $60 million in disaster aid to help fishermen recover their losses. That came on top of the $15 million that the government has paid Klamath farmers since 2002 not to farm, in order to reduce demand.

The science academy panel, in its final report, acknowledged that its draft report was "controversial," but it stood by its conclusions. Instead of focusing on the irrigation spigot, it recommended broad and expensive changes to improve fish habitat.

"The farmers were grateful for our decision, but we made the decision based on the scientific outcome," said the panel chairman, William Lewis, a biologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "It just so happened the outcome favored the farmers."

But J.B. Ruhl, another member of the panel and a Florida State University law professor who specializes in endangered species cases, said the Bureau of Reclamation went "too far," making judgments that were not backed up by the academy's draft report. "The approach they took was inviting criticism," Ruhl said, "and I didn't think it was supported by our recommendations."

So, they threw $75 million at the problem, had the worst fishkill in history anyway, and the problem remains and will get worse as the glaciers in the american west disappear and global warming dries out the breadbasket of North America.

How much does it cost to build a desalination plant??  How many could we have built with $75 million and a functioning army corps of engineers?