The Un-Takeover

I just finished reading Charlie Savage's "Takeover." Strongly recommended. Four stars (out of five - and I forget the last time I gave a five.)

The author is the Boston Globe writer who first drew mainstream attention to yet another abusive and democracy-killing practice of the bush administration, namely the president's proclivity for "signing statements." These are annoying - really snotty - little appendages to the laws passed by our Congress. They are crafted by ideological little low-minded lawyer-vermin beholden to the concept of the president-uber-alles, to the general effect that Congress has no authority over the president and thus he will defy some details of the law.

Savage rightly earned a Pulitzer for his efforts in publicizing this imperialistic program in defiance of our former democracy. The disgust for this practice, especially favored by one dick cheney, is not confined to progressives and liberals. The only group seemingly supportive (more accurately mute - this once) of the concept that the president can more-or-less wing it when it comes to obeying the law is the inbred, DNA-challenged set hiding out in the cellar chanting their mantra with hands over ears: george channels god, mumbles on-camera the same sort of garble as aunt matilda, who actually attended high school once, and thus could never be wrong.

Luckily, there are those like Savage, inclined to channel and attempt to deal with reality.

"Takeover" is a terrific exposition of the execrable progress of the multi-decade program of Executive Office takeover of control and erosion of the checks-and-balances form of government the founders tried to pass on to us. There have been brief hiatuses, e.g., in response to the criminal transgressions of the Nixon cabal. Of course that cabal was nothing compared to the last seven years of full-out corruption, Congressional cowardice, and a virtual coma when it comes to the supposed Fourth House, i.e., independent media aggressively acting on check on government abuse. (Totally contemptible performance and makeup of "justice" branch noted below.)

But, as Savage makes ever so clear, even the most enlightened of our presidents (whoever you might crown) has almost inevitably found a way to enlarge the power of the White House. I promise you will be schooled by this book. The greedy aggrandisement of power is not limited to the obvious bad guys. It is a seeming hazard of the job. And one of the big messages of the book is that once a power-grab (e.g., egregious signing statements) has been gotten away with, it is awfully hard to undo the damage. That newly-aggrandized power hangs around to be abused in yet new ways for succeeding administrations.

Frankly, I am not any more happy with the idea of a Democratic administration coming in and having far more power than was intended when our country was founded. Even if I got my wish and John Edwards became president, I want him in a balanced relationship with Congress and the Judiciary. (Regardless of the obviously corrupt and criminal nature of several of our Supreme Court justices of late, conflicted of interest, paid off, and having testified dishonestly in their confirmation hearings. Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, and Alito are conspicuously shameful blots on the history of the Supreme Court.)

But one take-home conclusion is that cheney's involvement has elevated the grasping for dictator/despotic powers for the president to a wholly new level. The man was obviously born in the wrong country and time; he'd no doubt have chided Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini for their pettiness in settling for so little power. Has there ever been such an authoritarian, so totally antagonistic to the form of government so intensely fought for when our country was founded, in such a position of power?

The book reminds me that it is helpful to repeatedly re-visit this material. I know I have self-doubts at how often the material I am reading, in book form or on-line, seems repetitious - what's the point of going over this again? Cohorts are not shy about expressing their similar despair at the value of processing the same material over and over. But I offer that if you are a proper activist in the sense of gathering your own information on any subject (politics in this case), a superbly-connected thesis of the sort Savage presents in Takeover can be highly provocative and inspiring. I encourage you to take this book on.

One more item to personalize and further endorse the idea that this book will almost certainly provide you with detail and story-line you might have missed. Savage has great coverage of the high-tension recovery-room faceoff between patient Ashcroft and sleazy WH thugs Card and Gonzales, with Comey (acting Atty General) present. This was all about trying to get the Dept. of Justice to once-again sign off on what was almost-certainly illegal monitoring and spying on communications being done at White House behest. It is almost irrefutable from the goings-on that the most vital purpose was to expand presidential powers. Secondary purpose was to cover up bush administration lawbreaking. Third, the ability to spy on and provide information to harrass domestic foes. Somewhere way down the list was the purpose for which Congress was originally told this illegal wiretapping and overt snooping was intended, i.e., anything even vaguely resembling fighting terrorism. Even after perusing no fewer than a dozen different accounts of this hospital-room massacree, I greatly valued this one.

But that personal note, you ask? I'd been skeptical in prior readings about the actual mortal state of Mr. Ashcroft. I never liked what I knew of the man, to get cards on table. He had a good long swine history (and from what I can tell he has re-upped in that category). I don't recall reading details of his malaise or surgery, but the fact that he sat up and gave the jackals from the WH a proper going-over inclined me to think his medical issues might have been overplayed. I did indeed applaud his support of the idea that the DoJ should be making the calls on legality and hence his resistance to WH criminality.

But I confess I might have been insensitive or even lacking in empathy (a la george and dick, the unreconstructed playground bullies?) in prior readings of this affair. This time around, I read the words "gallstone pancreatitis" in an entirely different way.

As some are aware, we recently sweated through an emergency gall bladder removal for one of our cocker spaniels. I found the life-threatening aspect of that and tension over the procedures and choices that we experienced quite chastening when I re-encountered Ashcroft-on-the-bed via Savage. My personal research in the aftermath aroused me to the implications of the "gallstone" aspect in particular, together with the overall risks involved. The description as "heroic" for that hospital-bed diatribe now has my full approval. I'm glad Ashcroft and Minnie survived their respective ordeals. Pics are of our dog in early distress, apparently experimenting with all manner of previously-unthought-of contortions in hopes of easing discomfort.

Get yourself a copy of Takeover. And renew your vows for checks and balances! It's going to be a long slog to undo all the cheney-bush criminality.

Schaden-over-the-edge-freude?

Josh Marshall and his crew at the happily and appropriately expanding Talking Points Empire (link is to the original Talking Points Memo, but TP Cafe and Muckraker also merit regular attention) have been making as much hay as any with the Giuliani Comedy Gala Campaign. I believe their dogged staff broke at least a number of the key elements of the history of law-evasion, sexual shilly-shallying, public deceit, and general scurrilousness that seems to be rudy's sine qua non.

I bet a trained professional could offer up some very interesting insights via a trait-by-trait comparison between rudy and george w. Of course there are quite a variety of professional disciplines and "specialties" that might be of use here. But even a casual (though not disinterested!) observer cannot avoid seeing, as a starting point, that they are both apparently congenitally amoral and wholly narcissistic. If it's not about them it is irrelevant and of no interest; no outside moral or ethical codes apply to their behavior; and the rest of us are of such a lesser race that either we cannot perceive repeated lying, self-contradiction, and farcical public appearances that to a neutral observer constitute self-mockery, or our awareness means nothing, as we are powerless in comparison to them.

I suspect that professionals in the mental health trades would have other diagnostic terms and programs to suggest if it were you or I or other less well-defended (and -funded) folks exhibiting these characteristics. But considering the evidence I routinely see downtown, apparently as a result of budget cuts for mental health care, any such recommendations might be basically irrelevant these days.

Both of these guys could easily blend in with the unhappy crowds of displaced and socially-challenged folks lining our urban sidewalks these days, though given their extreme hubris and an absence of empathetic skill and personal shame that few street folks could match, I suspect they'd either be organizing a gang or in the hospital within days.

Josh and the TPM crew have received (and deserve) kudos for their determined pursuit of obvious venality embodied by one Rudy Giuliani. Outing scalawags like him is an extremely important job if we want to at least pretend to have anything resembling civility and/or a republican style of government, where trust must play a large role.

But they did get a little tongue-in-cheek reprimand from one reader recently:

Now, I've enjoyed watching the Giuliani campaign trainwreck go over the cliff and explode in a fiery mess of failure -- in slow-motion -- as much as the next guy. But I think you may be taking the Schadenfreude a little too far.

Amidst all your mockery of Rudy's staggering ineptitude and one-note 9/11 concertos, you seem to have forgotten that the collapse of the Giuliani campaign will have real consequences for real people, who will no doubt suffer greatly once America's Mayor has slinked off the trail.

Who will Chris Matthews fantasize about punching out Ahmadinejad on the flight deck of the USS Charles Bronson?

What will Pat Robertson do while he waits for God to tell him which candidate he really wants to endorse?

Into whose ear will Norman Podhoretz whisper sweet songs about tactical nukes leveling terrorist huts outside Riyadh?

When you see the sad faces of men who've had their man-crushes crushed, their God-chosen candidate forsaken, and their hopes for never-ending war razed, you'll realize that even when mocking an incomparable twit like Rudy Giuliani, it is possible to go too far...

Birds, Big and Small

Our friends who have a terrific new Mt. Baker foothills home-away-from were kind enough to ask us back to celebrate New Year's. It was different up there this time, with up to a foot of snow on the ground and the mania of commuting skiers in the background. But off the highway, blissfully quiet and serene.

We did a bit of slightly stiff-legged neighborhood walking, with hardpack and ice on the roads. This picture was taken from road within a couple blocks of "home." We passed up both the community New Year's banquet ("plans of our own") and the polar bear swim in the unheated pool on New Year's AM. Maybe next time?

We also made a couple expeditions out to what passes for civilization, in one case for things like a toilet plunger and caraway seeds (two separate projects, trust me) and in another for eagle-viewing.

Our version of survival under these harsh circumstances involved sausage-chicken gumbo one night and spare ribs and sauerkraut the next. Breakfasts were similarly lavish affairs. Can you say self-indulgence? It's gratifying to spend time with folks who are similarly interested in taking the time to prepare savory food and chowing down when the good stuff is ready.

But I'm here this time mostly on the topic of birds. Raise your hand if you've seen a Bald Eagle in the wild. How about 100 at one time? Late December and early January are one of the peak periods for eagles in the Pacific NW, keyed to salmon-spawning. So this visit was coincident with that theoretical blip. Our little excursion on NY Eve certainly yielded all the eagles I could have hoped for. They were everywhere, perched on prominent woody outcrops out on the floodplain (binocs revealed that almost every prominent white spot was a baldie) and skulking in trees by the time we got there, presumably having had their fill of salmon, leaving the field to the seagulls and crows.

But in addition to our gluttonous piscean brethren belching and farting away up in the trees, there was the occasional vagabond who came soaring through, scaring the daylights out of seagulls and other smaller birds but leading humans to hold their breath. That is a truly jaw-dropping spectacle.

Later, we were delighted to finally be welcomed to the neighborhood by some other familiar birds. Juncoes! Steller's Jays! And, for that matter, Varied Thrushes. Amazing what a little birdseed and peanuts will do.

Back home, in the meantime, we were thrilled to be visited again as we were two years back by a Townsend's Warbler.