Back to the Shadows Again

What shall we call 'em - "non-media"? "un-media"? "a-media"? The terminology seems tougher than the concept. It's those print and network organizations that tend to use "news" in their name and claim a role in informing the citizenry and are now owned by a handful of folks who are probably all only one-half degree of separation apart if they aren't actually inseminating each other. Anyone interested in reality of course long ago turned to alternative resources.

I'm still fully agog over the un-response of the - to pick one - un-media to the future-award-winning Colbert special that the bushes were suckered into attending on pretext it was to honor their dandy relations with the un-media. The Colbert tour-de-force is resonating big-time out here where the real news battles of consequence occur these days.

For the rare reader who might actually relate to subject: isn't it interesting that today "you can pee right into the stream" has lost all of its resonance?! These days you need a danged filter to drink out of the stream due to all the prior peeing!

Come to think of it (okay, this is all Firesign Theater, coming clean for those of you wondering which weeds [none!] I've got going), "Out where an Injun's your friend" has a whole new resonance in this Abramoff era too.

Semi-reluctantly moving on, I was very pleased to run across this post strongly reaffirming that it is way too early to be making allowances for the war-crime-addicted administration that has given few signs yet that they realize they are truly in a fight for more than their reputations. Thinking folks know those reputations will be in perpetuity rejected by any Smart Toilet. This is not a time for making nice, the sick zeitgeist of that silly affair last Saturday night. This thug who was thrust upon us would have no truck with the Marquis of Queensberry rules, for the love of god! There should be no slack cut for the criminal gang occupying that fortress painted white. As you can see, I've got alternative housing all lined up.

Jane Smiley is my muse here, and I couldn't be happier. Piss (and vinegar) is almost a leitmotif tonight!

Imagine my dismay and disgust when I got back from the LA Book Festival and discovered what had happened at the Correspondents' Dinner in Washington on Saturday. The press, such as it is, actually sat down and broke bread with George W. Bush and laughed at his jokes! After I sent my thank you note to the star of the evening, Stephen Colbert, I caught up on what else happened while I was away from my computer.

One thing was that a Boston Globe reporter uncovered the fact that George
W. Bush has declared himself unfettered by more than seven hundred and fifty laws that have been passed by Congress and he himself has signed, and in addition, that the administration's foolish, blind, and deceptive progress toward the stupidest and most evil action a sane person can conceive, bombing Iran with bunker busting nuclear weapons, starting another criminal war, continues.

People, including something like 68% of the American people, wonder why George W. Bush continues to pursue policies that 1) damage America 2) are highly unpopular 3) are misguided and 4) are against both international and US law. How about this for a reason--no matter what he does, the journalists who are supposed to hold him to account are breaking bread with him and laughing at his jokes? What does it mean to the man if his polling numbers are in the basement and and most of the nation looks favorably on impeachment if when he goes out of his bubble, he gets a goodly hit of sucking up? How is he supposed to actually comprehend that he is on the wrong track, that he has put the nation on the wrong track, that he needs to reform and change his ways, if no one makes sure that he feels social opprobrium for what he has done?

Make no mistake about it--George W. Bush has a thick thick skull. He finds it very difficult to learn anything. But he is thin-skinned and easily offended. It is time to offend him! He needs to be offended every minute of every day! Stephen Colbert did a pretty good job, but then all the kids on the playground rallied around the bully and soothed his hurt feelings. No No No! Don't these people know what a collaborator is? A collaborator isn't merely the guy who pulled the trigger with the perpetrator, it is also the guy (and the gal) who made him feel comfortable and happy, just one of the gang, when he was getting ready to pull the trigger. Why show George W. Bush any mercy? He hasn't apologized for the crimes he's already committed and he proposes to commit more! He is preparing and intending to commit more!

Even if he doesn't bomb Iran, he is certainly planning to break a lot of American laws and be brazen about it. Come to me in five years, after he's been impeached and imprisoned and humiliated by history, and ask me if I will forgive him. Maybe I will. But right now, when he can still be encouraged to persist in his inhumane, cruel, and entirely idiotic policies, policies that, as I've mentioned before, have caused pointless deaths, dismemberments, blindings, woundings, orphanings, widowings, parents bereft of their children, homelessness, impoverishment, infrastructure destruction, sectarian hatred and violence, scandalous waste of money and resources, profoundly corrupt government in both Washington and Baghdad, crippling of our army? Right now? No mercy. Those who don't try to make Bush feel shame bring shame upon themselves.

Catonians: Too Late Smart

Glenn Greenwald obviously has more stomach for surfing conservative websites than I can pretend to. It's good to have other foragers out there covering for my squeamishness. Knowing the opposition is always helpful, even if it's only in the limited sense of prepping for combat. This excerpt from Unclaimed Territory is a reminder than there are other bennies besides a peek in their playbook:

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The right-wing Cato Institute has published an extremely well-documented and scathing condemnation of the Bush administration's multiple abuses of power. Later today, I will post about the entire report (.pdf), which is truly excellent; the Executive Summary says this:

Unfortunately, far from defending the Constitution, President Bush has repeatedly sought to strip out the limits the document places on federal power.

In its official legal briefs and public actions, the Bush administration has advanced a view of federal power that is astonishingly broad, a view that includes:

* a federal government empowered to regulate core political speech—and restrict it greatly when it counts the most: in the days before a federal election;

*a president who cannot be restrained, through validly enacted statutes, from pursuing any tactic he believes to be effective in the war on terror;

* a president who has the inherent constitutional authority to designate American citizens suspected of terrorist activity as "enemy combatants," strip them of any constitutional protection, and lock them up without charges for the duration of the war on terror— in other words, perhaps forever; and,

* a federal government with the power to supervise virtually every aspect of American life, from kindergarten, to marriage, to the grave. President Bush's constitutional vision is, in short, sharply at odds with the text, history, and structure of our Constitution, which authorizes a government of limited powers.

In every single respect, this administration has been devoted to one principle and one principle only -- an expansion of its own power. That is its driving philosophy and its ultimate goal, and it is hardly surprising that a true conservative organization like the Cato Institute ("true conservative" in the sense that they are devoted to limited federal government power, rather than the worship of authoritarian power as Bush followers are) would find this administration anathema to every important political value and principal which this country has.

Notwithstanding the fact that the Bush administration has violated every tenet of this strain of conservatism for the last five years, conservatives will not be permitted to distance themselves from this administration -- as they are transparently and pitifully trying to do now that Bush's presidency is failed and is dying a rapid death (see e.g., this characteristically dishonest attempt by Jonah Goldberg to characterize the two failed Republican Presidents - Nixon and Bush - as "liberals" in order to imply that their failure is not a failure of conservatives; funny how we never heard any of that when The Commander had approval ratings in the 60s). With rare and noble exception, conservatives did not repudiate Bush until very recently. To the contrary, they have vigorously supported and claimed him (while he was popular), and he is their creation. They are and should be stuck with him.

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