Petroleum, natural gas. McCain pisses on Russia, we isolate Iran while the Neo-cons try to create a subterfuge association outside of the UN to deal with vetoes from China and Russia specifically for this issue. Sounds like par for the course for our bold foreign policy agenda. All that's left is Israel to bomb Syria and Iran and we wage war on the Axis of Evil by proxy. Bring the popcorn ...

Be sure to check out Scott Horton's Interview with Sid B. over at No Comment.

Here is the money paragraph:

"My last point applies here. Bush, Cheney, et al. sought to create an unaccountable and unfettered executive. In order to do that they kept the Congress under their heel (when Republican) and at bay (when Democratic), as well as exploiting and intimidating a craven and status-driven national press corps. Following the dictum that people are policy, Bush & Co. used the power of presidential appointment to fill the administration with more than loyal Republicans. Bush built a regime, not just an administration. For example, the appointments of Federalist Society lawyers from the commanding heights of the Department of Justice to counsel offices of every department and agency was intended to install cadres of a new ideological clerisy. Professional standards have been construed as mere instrumentalities of conscious “liberal’ ideology, a counterpoint and obstacle to power. Cherry-picking information to support a priori political conclusions has pervaded government methodology from intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to climate change.

Once again, a new government would have to have extensive understanding of the federal apparatus in order to reconstruct it. The Congress cannot do the job, even if it conducted the most far-reaching investigative hearings and maintained diligent oversight. Only a president can truly fix the executive branch. The Bush model of a president who casts himself as a big picture man, while dependent on advisers for working the actual machinery, inevitably leads to a president who would soon find himself in control of neither."

http://harpers.org/archive/2008/05/hbc-90002915

Anybody remember the interview Don Rumsfeld gave to Fox where he showed the interviewer the piece from the Pentagon plane wreckage that was mounted on a small piece of wood as a heirloom? The obfuscation started before the election.

I can't understand why people who lived through the sixties and J Edgar Hoover's FBI investigations could possibly want to hand over to the executive branch a get out of jail ticket for them and their accomplices at anytime they think it prudent. How fucked up is that? Congressional pardons, go have dinner with Trent and tomorrow you'll see the light. Also does anyone think that all of these inflated and thinly tested powers are going to be easily handed over to "the party of traitors" in the next election?

Keith hit that one on the head. the real threat is if the administration can figure out a way to keep themselves in power by creating one, last, little, selfish disaster to exploit for their "shareholders".

Screw Keith, Obama. Thanks Glenn for articulating this epic to its pathetic conclusion. People trust people to give them MORE power over their lives. For what, bullshit promises and abuse?But I guess now we'll never get to hear any complaints about the government's intrusion into ANYONE'S life huh? Again, Glenn thanks for supporting this issue, you have provided a great document of this mind numbing fiasco and this will be the version of history I'll believe in when that power zeppelin implodes on itself from abuse.

I announce with the darkest of irony that the Sci-Fi channel is showing non- stop, back to back episodes of the Twilight Zone all day today.

Dammmm. Brilliant.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/pressing-press-by-digby-bob-cesca-at.html

I think the main danger is that the media, in the corporate role model, has spoon fed it's audience with juicy entertainment distractions to help the MSM transgress from a viable delivery vehicle of truth into just sidelined, well paid and groomed folks who now are simply regulated to being the arbiters of nothing more than a conventional wisdom type of fairness. The details are just too disturbing and change really means pain. And of course loss of the golden knee pad connections for the beautiful talking heads.

After listening to your podcast with Jay Rosen yesterday I'm curious about who at the White House pushed the doubt on the presence of Bentonite after Ari Fleischer had definitively stated that there was none. This seems to me to be a favor to Ross to keep him from looking like a total fool and to garner more hang time for the ABC story to keep repeating itself. Any ideas?

Quote, Glenn: "To the contrary, in touting the FBI's brand new theory, Johnson wrote that "government sources offered more detail about Ivins's movements on a critical day in the case" -- as though the FBI's abandonment of its prior claim in favor of a new one comprised "more detail." The FBI didn't offer "more detail"; it offered completely "new detail" because the last "detail" they leaked to Johnson was almost instantaneously disproven -- a fact Johnson doesn't even bother to mention. Instead, she just allows the FBI's story to change radically and then serves as a vessel for that new story as though it's further incriminating proof, rather than a reflection of the fact that the FBI still has no idea whether it was Ivins who went to New Jersey to mail those letters."

You should address this Ms. Johnson or you'll remain looking like a first class Stooge.

Stooge, get it, a golden knee padded Stooge.