Letters to the Editor
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Dead Council Walking
The DLC? No, they were buried last year - November 8, I believe.
Even DLC fave Hillary passed up their convention for Yearly Kos.
And Rahm Emmanuel, who cost the dems at least one Senate seat and several House seats last year by supporting milquetoast DLC candidates (Harold who?), gave up and borrowed a set of balls from Howard Dean to propose de-funding Cheney's office.
The Politico's interviewing corpses.
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Thanks for the heads up
on Lincoln Davis' remarks--he's my rep and I'll call to day. No war iin my name thank you very much.
and echoing so very many here--thanks for all you do, your relentless pursuit of shitheels who "speak for us," and your brilliant writing.
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Various Items
Just had to comment on your article today. The NYTimes is almost as easy to manipulate as Tim Russert and his show Meet the Press. At least Dick Cheney's press aid Cathy Martin testified in the Valerie Plame case to the Grand Jury about MTP. Cheney and others(Republican) make derogatory comments about the NYTimes when it suits them and when they want lies that they leak to be believed, they use it (the Times) to make their lies believable. Nice job, when will the NYTimes stop being used for their evil doings? Most of my family are faithful watchers of Fox Noise and when I mention inconvenient news to them, they always say "where did you get that garbage from the NYTimes? I guess the Bush and Cheney duo play the NYTimes as their fiddle when they need to make music.
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The NSA Letter
The letter from Director of NSA convinces me that TSP, as a concept and as a label for a program, is a complete piece of crap, and should no longer be used.
In reality, a single program, filled with diverse but unknown surveillance 'activities' was created by one executive order in 2001. That same program was reauthorized by one internal review every 45 days.
Only a fraction of the activities are known to the public. I have serious question as to whether they are known to the Congress. But we do know that some of those activities were absolutely illegal, in that they violated the 4th amendment to the constitution.
Regardless of the what transpires with the Gonzales perjury investigation, the Congress has an absolute duty to understand the complete range of surveillance activities undertaken by the government, both now, and since 2001. Congress should immediately recieve complete information on these activities, including all documents from the internal reviews conducted by DOJ, or any other reviewing authority.
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What America Needs
And what will never happen, is to stop the over-glorification of the military from all sides.
This almost universal ass-kissing means that whenever they are ordered into battle, anyone who doesn't jump on board right away is anti-troops and anti-America.
At the start of Iraq for example there was just a small group of protestors, dismissed as kooks. Then as the mission becomes a disaster, everyone stands around with their thumbs up their butts hollering about whose fault it is.
We need serious debate when war is proposed or ordered, regardless of what the damn troops think of it.
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The Forever War
It is because even the Democratic politicians do not seem to challenge the notion of a forever war (notwithstanding the fact that a large % of the US population disagrees with them) that I feel that it is more important, in the long run, for the present version of the United States to be defeated now, rather than limp along aggressively for another decade or so.
Once the consequences of the Afghan invasion began to impact the Russian domestic scene, and a reformer (Gorbachev) started tinkering with the system, everything fell apart rather quickly.
(The alternative being Berlin, 1945, which no one wants.)
What we have here is sort of a similar pre-transition phase. Whether we go through our transition quickly, as opposed to protractedly and painfully, is really the question.
This is why I wrote yesterday that, as cruel as it might seem, we should let the fools who think they can win in Iraq go in as deeply as they can. It will only accelerate the process.
The goal here is to save America, not the regime.
My bet is, ten years from now (perhaps less), the CW of today will seem as obsolete as that that dissected perestroika but could never predict or see beyond the fall of communism.
(On a personal note I was in Moscow in 1989-90 and the CW today does remind me a lot of what I heard then.)
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August 7th in DC. 12:00 noon.
I'm grooming my pony's tail.
I'm saddling up wagons of Merlot.
Two thimbles can make things clear.
Girt-up horsey and please no-knock me out of the stirrups.
O, what fun. And free. Yippee. A Happy Chirping Blue Bird will be on my left shoulder.
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It's Madness
The over-glorification of the military combined with the Americano WINNING ISN'T EVERYTHING, IT'S THE ONLY THING.
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re: The Forever War, Obama wants more.
WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would possibly send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists, an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070801/ap_on_el_pr/obama_terrorism_7There will be war forever for at least two reasons
1. Human nature hasn't changed,
2. Democrats can't resist the idea that they are smarter than everyone else, and the world should do what they say.
So of course that means that invading another country is hunky-dory. Heh. -
Have Fun, Glenn!
We'll miss you but, rest assured, the Libertarian Forever Wars will continue apace.
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October 4, 2001, to be precise
According to Dick Cheney: The executive branch has conducted the TSP, from its inception on October 4, 2001 to the present, with great care to operate within the law, with approval as to legality of Presidential authorizations every 45 days or so by senior Government attorneys.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/pdf/0608cheneyresponse.pdf
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"We'll miss you but, rest assured, the Libertarian Forever Wars will continue apace."
Not if I can help it. ;)
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Slightly off-topic
Is it just me or does it seem that the Republicans -- both Bush and those in congress that may or may not be aligned with him -- basically seem to be following a scorched earth policy?
They know they are going to lose big-time in 2008 and there are no popular issues they can really use, so their only remaining card to play is to make things SO miserable that a big section of the malleable voting public just might decide to blame the Democratic congress for deteriorating affairs and vote them out. That's what these headlines that blame things on the "Senate" as opposed to the "obstructionist Republicans" are all about.
I just can't make any other sense out of their current actions. It's like watching Sarumann wasting the Shire or something.