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E & P

The mainstream media has failed to cover Stephen Colbert's performance during the White House Correspondent Dinner. Colbert offered a scathingly satirical  look at the Bush Presidency and the nation's sycophantic press corps. But Editor & Publisher give a good summary of the performance and the audience's reaction.

The mainstream media's contemptible refusal to cover this event--an event with implications far more profound than stories the media routinely covers about, say, celebrity breakups--makes the work of organizations like Free Press all the more urgent.

(By the way, so many people are trying to find the video of Colbert's skit that  C-SPAN's website is having difficulty handling the traffic. It's difficult to find there. The ENTIRE SKIT is in 3 parts here, here, and here.)

Politcal sex. Corruption sex. A real sex scandal.

The personal sex lives of politicians and elected or appointed public officials should be irrelevant to the American people. Period.

But what is a "personal sex life?" It's not a political one. It's not a sex life in which sex is tied to political influence; it's not a sex life in which sexual gratification is a political tool, a bribe essentially, inveigling its way into the realm of law-making and policy-making.

Yet, that is what seems to have happened in the emerging Republican sex scandal:  sex bought Republican political influence.

I've never encountered the phrases "political sex," "political sex lives," or "corruption-sex." But I think the phrases might do well to contrast  the sort of sex-related topics that voters should see as irrelevant, like:
--the number of marriages a politician has had,
--whether or not a politician is sexually attracted to the same or opposite sex or both, or
--the age of a politician's spouse or domestic partner.

Corruption sex is different. Corruption sex gratifies the politician but rapes the voters, sexually abuses the American people. Particularly hideously in the case of the emerging Republican sex scandal, "the American people" being treated as sexual pawns may include our troops. The scandal involves, according to Harper's, at least two defense contractors seeking to buy the influence of "current and former lawmakers on Defense and Intelligence committees—including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post."

When the President of the United States has sex with a young intern of no influence or relevance politically, it demonstrates poor judgment in sexual matters; but, it is sex as sex. It would be unethical, in my opinion, for the President to publicly lie about it; but, it would be ridiculous for the American people to treat the episode as a criminal matter, or for the media to, say, fan the flames of "scandal" (remember the holier-than-thou columns by Maureen Dowd during the Lewinsky "scandal," fearing for her dear daughter having to hear about sex on the nightly news?)

But what we're seeing emerge now is not sex as sex, but sex as corruption: sex in exchange for political favors.

The questions this time around aren't about the color of a dress, but about significant and technically public implications. It will be interesting to see who cares.

DarkSyde on "The little party that couldn't"

From DarkSyde on dKos:

The defenders of our White House, who routinely claim that their much vaunted War President can do anything, have now flip-flopped to say he can't do a thing and neither can anyone else. To hear them whine and bleat you'd think the nation that won the cold war, the guys who sent people to the moon, the country that invented the atomic bomb, the descendants of the very people who took on the greatest empire on earth and won, twice by the way, is as helpless as a kitten up a tree. They can't do a thing.

They Can't.

Ask the Republicans, how about using less oil? They'll tell you: We Can't. How about redirecting ALL oil company giveaways to providing incentives for alternative energy companies and mass transit? We'll pretend to reexamine them, but We Can't really eliminate them. How about putting the same kind of resources into achieving energy freedom we put into Iraq or Halliburton or the pockets of billionaires via tax cuts? We Can't. How about mandating higher fuel efficiencies for cars and trucks from every manufacturer allowed access to our markets, with some tax credits thrown in for our domestic auto industry to comply? We Can't. How about getting rid of the lavish tax breaks for Hummers and mega-SUVs and instead lavishly reward every compact and hybrid buyer? We Can't.

Instead, in what has become a ritual for this GOP and WH, George Bush and friends show up way too late and billions of dollars short with a PR campaign ...BushCo's vague muttering seems to indicate they will

: Wring their hands rhetorically, blame the democrats, remove the gas tax (Thus forcing state and local governments to raise sales taxes and property taxes through the roof), and 'take a fresh look' at oil company subsides. And you can bet the latter means this oily Republican Rubber-stamp Congress will cleverly rewrite Cheney's sweetheart energy bills and end up giving the most profitable industry in the world more breaks! More free drilling rights! Less pesky regulation! It would be hilarious, if it was a joke. The recycled excuses and lack of accountability, underscored with blood and treasure, are bad enough. Siphoning off even more of our paychecks for Exxon and the Saudi-Bush Family is simply disgusting. But those two words "We Can't" should send a chill of revulsion up the spine of any American who hears them.

America was not built by the "I Can't's." These United States were first forged as a sovereign nation and later strengthened to world super-power status by generations of visionary statesmen and leaders who stepped up to the plate and said loudly "I Can and I Will!" If the Republican "I Can'ts," really can't (Or won't) then maybe they're in the wrong line of work. And maybe We the People would be better off replacing them with people who Can.

Web whorls and eddies

The Web is not straight lines....

A charming little eddy in the Web: Jimmy, A Tiny Marmoset.

A couple of worthy Web whorls--the expected stuff, the Web spinning back on itself, but still fun to see--photo by Pedro Simoes of Lisbon, Portugal:

And this is making the Inbox rounds--forwarded from my Great Uncle Neil in Arizona with the subject line: "proof that dogs can read"

Counting the incalculable cost of Bush

Comments of former Sen. Max Cleland as quoted in Bill Katovsky's new book, Patriots Act: Voices of Dissent and the Risk of Speaking Out:

As Richard Clarke put it, "Invading Iraq after 9/11 was like invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor." Instead of going after bin Laden and all of his terrorists in the mountains, Bush transferred those resources and those men on the ground to Iraq. We now see a new generation of terrorists willing to blow themselves up to take out a bunch of Americans. And you add the Iraqi people. What you have is an absolute disaster.
.....
Sooner or later, the U.S. will ultimately withdraw from Iraq. What they have created in Iraq is a terror haven, a civil war that has no end. We destabilized Iraq. It had a stable government. We didn't like it. We had Saddam Hussein in a box. But this president went in and took Saddam Hussein out and thought that was gonna be the end of it. He didn't listen to Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said, "Mr. President, do you understand the consequences?" Of course he did not. Not only didn't he know the consequences of those decisions, Bush wanted to be macho and be better than his daddy.
.....
The main problem is that there is no exit strategy to win in Iraq. What was our exit strategy in World War I and World War II? My answer was to win. Former Army Chief of Staff General Shinseki requested 250,000 to 500,000 troops for Iraq. These additional troops were necessary to secure the population. Bush didn't want to go with that number. So there are not enough troops on the ground to win. We are trapped in the quagmire. And the American people will ultimately reject that. As a matter of fact, the majority of Americans think it is not worth it anymore. I knew it would happen. It took the American people about two years to come to that realization.
.....
Sooner or later, the impact of the politics of unmitigated war in the Middle East will be felt here in America. But it will take time as the impact of these policies is felt in our pocketbook, in the gut, in the minds and hearts of American people. There is a great line by Benjamin Franklin. Coming out of Constitution Hall in Philadelphia, a lady asked, "Dr. Franklin, what kind of government do we have?" And he said, "We have a Republic -- if you can keep it." So this sense of an American experiment is not a given thing.

Morford's commonsense

Mark Morford's column (SF Gate) on Bush is echoing loudly in the blogosphere today. When the noise is music this sweet, however somber the message, I'm all for kicking up the chamber's decibel level in whatever small way I can. After all, repetition is key...in music, poetry, and messaging.

Mr. Morford, take it away . . . . (excerpt)

[George W. Bush] authorized the leak of classified security information merely to smear an Iraq war critic, he lied about WMD and lied about Saddam and lied about making the United States safer and lied about, well, just about everything, on top of launching the worst and most violent and most expensive, unwinnable war since Vietnam.

His pile of betting capital is down to a tiny lump, nothing like back when he had the table rigged and all the pit bosses worked for him and the pile was as big as a roomful of Texas cow pies. But now, fortune is frowning. In fact, fortune is white-hot furious at being so viciously molested, spit upon, raped lo these many years. The truth is coming out: Bush has now lost far, far more bets than he ever won.

What's to be done? Why, do what any grumbling, furious, confused, underqualified alcoholic gambler does: reach down deep and say, "To hell with the nation and to hell with the odds and to hell with the rest of the planet," and pull out one more desperate, crumpled war from deep in your pants, slap it on the table and hear the world moan.

But this time, try to make it serious. Do not rule out the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Do not rule out another massive air strike, ground troops, special forces, a strategy so intense it makes Iraq look like a jog in the park. Think of yourself as creating a masterful legacy, going down in history as the guy who "saved" the world from Iran's nukes while protecting American oil interests. Yes? Can you smell the oily sanctimony in the air? Is God speaking to you again, telling you to damn the torpedoes and kill more Muslims? You are the chosen one, after all.

Sound far-fetched? Don't think even Bush could be capable of using nukes to slap Iran? Perish the thought. All reports from underground White House sources -- most notably by way of Sy Hersh's horrifying report in a recent New Yorker -- indicate that Dubya and his remaining team of war-happy flying monkeys have been secretly laying out plans to attack Iran for months, possibly including the use of tactical nuclear weapons to get at those deep Iranian bunkers, all because Iran just celebrated its entrance into the world's "nuclear club" by finally enriching some uranium for the first time. Cookies all around!

No matter that most analysts say that Iran is far from being a true threat, that a nuclear Iran is at least a good decade away, if not longer. No matter that 10 years is a good long time to work on ways to force Iran out of the game -- via negotiation, diplomacy, sanctions -- without unleashing another river of never-ending violence.

With Bush in power, there is no waiting. There is no thought of avoiding another hideous war at all costs. To the Bush hawks, diplomacy is a failed joke. Negotiation is for intellectuals and tofu pacifists. In the Dubya worldview, the planet is a roiling cauldron of nasty threats, crammed with terrorists and hateful Muslims and foreign demons suddenly growling on our doorstep when, curiously, they really weren't there before he stumbled into power. Amazing how that works.

It is now seven months before what could be a radically influential congressional election, a vote that could very well give power back to the Democrats, who will (with any luck) waste no time launching a number of long-overdue investigations into Bush's failed war and the various scandals and lies and fiscal abuses that led us all here.

Vocabulary lesson

Today's vocabulary lesson comes from Jet in Columbus, and is brought to you by the letters G, O and P.

Learning is fun!

You will enjoy learning about Jet's carefully-selected terms, such as patriot, law-abiding, pedophile, and normal.

(No orange and yellow cohabitating male puppets were involved in the making of this lesson.)

William Sloane Coffin, a follower of Jesus

The Rev. Dr. William Sloane Coffin, (U.S. Army, Ret.) - June 1, 1924 - April 12, 2006

Rev. Coffin was a great champion of civil rights. He was a infantryman in WWII, Gen. George S. Patton's Russian language interpreter, and a U.S. intelligence officer. He was an advocate for African-Americans, women, gay people, and those who promote peace. He was Chaplain at Yale University in the 1960's and at Williams College. He was the pastor of Riverside Church in New York City in the 1980's. He was despised by some conservatives, including President George W. Bush. He authored numerous books, including, The Heart is a Little to the Left, Credo, and others. Rev. Coffin was a native of New York City and retired in Vermont.

He sought to follow Christ in all things.

"The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love."

"Christians who use the Bible much as a drunk does a lamppost - more for support than for illumination."

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price."

"As a male I consider myself at best a recovering chauvinist. As a white person I am a recovering racist, and as a straight person a recovering heterosexist. To women, African-Americans, gays and lesbians, I am deeply grateful for stretching my mind, deepening my heart, and convincing me that no human being should ever be patient with prejudice at the expense of its victims."

"The United States went from isolationism into interventionism without passing through internationalism."

"In the United States grim poverty is a tragedy that great wealth makes a sin."

"Abraham Lincoln, when he was elected to the House of Representatives, stood up in 1847 and said the war against Mexico was unnecessary and unconstitutional. How many of you think that Abraham Lincoln was unpatriotic?"

"I began to wonder if fighting fire with fire didn't just leave more ashes."

"In our time all it takes for evil to flourish is for a few good men to be a little wrong and have a great deal of power, and for the vast majority of their fellow citizens to remain indifferent."

Clinton notes problems GOP ignores

The idea that I live in a country I spent my lifetime trying to make better, but there's still hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people, most of them people of color, who will die before their time, drop out of school, go to prison, never have a chance to live their dreams, is galling and painful to me. One of the great regrets of my public life is that for all the progress we made in so many areas we are still losing so many of our young people of color, disproportionately African-American males.
- President William Jefferson Clinton

Dems finding some verve

All discussions aside about whether or not or how Dems should go after "value voters," the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of Howard Dean as DNC Chair, the weaknesses or strengths of Hillary Clinton as leading 2008 candidate, or the coalescing or tardiness of a Dem message or vision to voters, scenes such as the one below are undoubtedly a good sign: Clinton, Dean, Gore and other leading Dems all came together at a recent fundraiser to hammer home the reality that rumors of the Democratic Party's demise are greatly exaggerated, and that the momentum politically--at least at the national level (not in each and every Congressional district, of course) is with the Dems, not the Repubs, and could result in great things electorally, if only the momentum can be steered correctly.

Personally, I think it might be preferable if the momentum would steer the Democrats--not the other way around--and deny the Dem leadership much control of message or events. The leadership needs to be listening more to its rank and file anyway, and to those on the outskirts of the party, and to up-and-coming potential leaders--political, partisan, or both--including the organizers of recent immigration justice rallies.

(Associated Press photo by John Marshall Mantel)