I genuinely savored a couple responses to prior food post, one taking it as a sign the election is behind us (sort of a groundhog?) and speaking of the cooking of Bay Scallops, the other seeking recipe for Bok Choy. Always a pleasure to exchange on whatever topic, but food is especially near-and-dear. I'm recalling now that I actually specifically called you out on what you are eating. I hope you non-responders are still taking nourishment.
I'm not entirely at one with the program, but if there is anyone to blame it is probably me. We have come to watching Rachel, Keith, Jon, and Steven semi-routinely on Tues-Thurs (the only days the full lineup is available - we do tend to pick up the first two on Mon and Fri at times also). I cherish all four of those hosts and what they bring to the screen, but I don't like being beholden to three hours of prime time tube regardless of how good. What we see is obviously far superior to the "evening news" and other entertainment we formerly dabbled in (ok, I admit to hankering for some recorded Seinfeld). But I think we are all getting a bit restless with this program. Each of us skipped some last week.
But among the benefits of being captive tonight were the appearance of Paul Krugman on Rachel's show (guest host - Eric amused at prominent Princeton/WW wallpaper in background, PK arguing that we dare not let our automotive industry go bankrupt - seems pretty obvious and danged sensible to me), Dennis Leary on Daily Show (I just caught him in movie "Recount"), and Paul Simon on the Colbert Show.
PS was induced to play a tune, which I intuited would be "American Tune," a la excerpt in recent post. It's been a long time since I saw this particular maestro of tune and lyric. I was disturbed to see how worn he is. But this champ rang the changes on AT with enough to have me misty-eyed, both as to lyrics and aging, evoking classic "Bookends" album:
And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered or driven to its'
knees
But it's all right, it's all right
We've lived so well so long
Still,when I think of the road we're traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what went wrong.
It was very special to have the opportunity to watch Paul Simon perform this tune semi-live.
But following up on the "battered" theme, Glenn Greenwald had a great post yesterday disputing the idea that we have just survived a heinous era of nasty partisanship in congress and government in general and are in desperate need of a new religion of "bi-partisanship." He is doing the heavy lifting here for what we knew (or should have known) was coming. This is the theory that although Obama was elected by a grand majority who obviously are demanding change, he should be doing some odd genuflection to the thugs on the right. This would be in the spirit of some mythical "bi-partisanship," seemingly different from the sycophantic relationship that both the robotic republicans and way too many dems had with the Darkside House last time around. I.e., in plain language, a
crock of shit:
As Senate Democrats this morning prepare to reward Joe Lieberman with the powerful Chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee, the most commonly recited claim -- both with regard to the Lieberman issue and Washington more generally -- is that Barack Obama's campaign to "change" Washington requires, first and foremost, an end to partisan bickering and a renewal of bipartisanship. As but one of countless examples, Steny Hoyer told The Hill yesterday "that bipartisanship will be a priority" and the 33 new Democratic members of Congress "were elected on promises of bipartisanship." In The Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein complains about "escalating partisan conflict" and "hyper-partisanship" and claims that "American politics has been polarized as sharply as at any point in the past century."Whatever else one might want to say about "bipartisanship," there is nothing new about it. By definition, it does not remotely constitute "change." To the contrary, the last eight years have been defined, more than anything else, by overarching bipartisan cooperation and consensus.
Where is the evidence of the supposed partisan wrangling that we hear so much about? Just examine the question dispassionately. Look at every major Bush initiative, every controversial signature Bush policy over the last eight years, and one finds virtually nothing but massive bipartisan support for them -- the Patriot Act (original enactment and its renewal); the invasion of Afghanistan; the attack on, and ongoing occupation of, Iraq; the Military Commissions Act (authorizing enhanced interrogation techniques, abolishing habeas corpus, and immunizing war criminals); expansions of warrantless eavesdropping and telecom immunity; declaring part of Iran's government to be "terrorists"; our one-sided policy toward Israel; the $700 billion bailout; The No Child Left Behind Act, "bankruptcy reform," and on and on. Most of those were all enacted with virtually unanimous GOP support and substantial, sometimes overwhelming, Democratic support: the very definition of "bipartisanship." That's just a fact.Moreover, Bush's appointments of judges were barely ever impeded, resulting in a radical transformation of the federal courts. Other than John Bolton and Steven Bradbury, not a single significant Bush nominee was blocked. Those who implemented Bush's NSA program (Michael Hayden) and authorized his torture program (Alberto Gonzales) were confirmed for promotions. The Bush administration committed war crimes, broke long-standing surveillance laws, politicized prosecutions, and explicitly claimed the right to break our laws, yet Congress did nothing about any of that except to authorize most of it, and investigated virtually none of it. With regard to many of those transgressions, key Democratic leaders were briefed at the time they were implemented and quietly acquiesced, did nothing to stop any of it. Both parties are in virtually unanimous agreement that our highest political leaders should be exempt from accountability under the rule of law even for the grave crimes that have been committed.
As The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin observed at the end of last year: "Historians looking back on the Bush presidency may well wonder if Congress actually existed." How much more harmonious -- "bipartisan" -- can the two parties get?-clip-You owe it to your education to follow link to last few paragraphs - and, who knows, a bookmark?
And speaking of bookmarks, raise your hand if you have Froomkin's "White House Watch" tagged. Every day reading? I thought not. You might re-think that. Meanwhile, here are a couple recent excerpts. I again strongly encourage you to follow the links to further education and elucidation, something we all could use more of, yes? I am pulling short portions our here, whereas the WHW columns in general cover a much wider arena. First, the
bad burrowing news:
It happens every time a president leaves office: Some of his political appointees don't want to go, so they "burrow in" to the civil service. There are relatively benign reasons for burrowing in, such as financial security. But there is also the potential for ideological mischief-making. So the question we ask ourselves today is: Are Bush and Cheney loyalists entrenching themselves into the federal bureaucracy in order to make it difficult for their successors to roll back their policies? The burrowing-in of the Bushies has been underway in various agencies for some time now, and there are signs that as a result, the Obama administration could face resistance from within on some key areas. Juliet Eilperin and Carol D. Leonnig write in The Washington Post: "Just weeks before leaving office, the Interior Department's top lawyer has shifted half a dozen key deputies -- including two former political appointees who have been involved in controversial environmental decisions -- into senior civil service posts.
"The transfer of political appointees into permanent federal positions, called 'burrowing' by career officials, creates security for those employees, and at least initially will deprive the incoming Obama administration of the chance to install its preferred appointees in some key jobs. . . . "Between March 1 and Nov. 3, according to the federal Office of Personnel Management, the Bush administration allowed 20 political appointees to become career civil servants."
Alarming? One the one hand, Eilperin and Leonnig write: "The practice of placing political appointees into permanent civil service posts before an administration ends is not new. In its last 12 months, the Clinton administration approved 47 such moves, including seven at the senior executive level. Federal employees with civil service status receive job protections that make it very difficult for managers to remove them." But on the other, they note: "The personnel moves come as Bush administration officials are scrambling to cement in place policy and regulatory initiatives that touch on issues such as federal drinking-water standards, air quality at national parks, mountaintop mining and fisheries limits." -clip-And today, Mr F has
encouraging news up front in his WHW post about the proposed new Attorney General. As I guess with dang near every one of the candidates for these jobs I have heard of over the years, many years, many jobs indeed!, I have come upon reasons for concern. But I need to hear more, and I do like this:
If President-elect Barack Obama is the anti-Bush, then Eric Holder, his apparent choice to serve as attorney general, is the anti-Gonzales. The tenure of Alberto Gonzales, who served as attorney general from 2005 to 2007 -- and before that, as White House counsel -- was marked by what critics described as torture, illegal surveillance and the overt politicization of the Justice Department. Holder, by contrast, could offer a restoration of the department's traditional role. Eric Lichtblau and John M. Broder write in the New York Times: "If Mr. Holder is selected as attorney general and confirmed by the Senate, his biggest challenge, legal observers agree, will be to restore the credibility of a department that was badly battered by political scandal during the Bush administration. The dismissal of eight United States attorneys in 2007 and other controversies opened up the Justice Department to accusations that it had routinely let politics trump legal considerations." Josh Meyer writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Supporters describe Holder as someone capable of engineering the kind of swift and significant course corrections that Obama has pledged to make at the Justice Department, which has been beset in recent years by one political controversy after another.
"'He wanted the next attorney general to make broad reforms at DOJ -- someone that has a broad enough basis of support that they can do it,' said [a] source close to the transition team, who was not authorized to speak publicly for Obama. 'It's pretty damn close to a deal. They've done the sounding out and gotten good response back.'" Carrie Johnson writes in The Washington Post: "'It's fantastic that he will be a great attorney general,' said John Payton, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. 'It's also significant that he will be the first African American attorney general. . . . His mission is going to be to restore the soul of the Department of Justice.'" Jason Tuohey blogs for the Boston Globe: "Judging by his past statements, Eric Holder Jr., reportedly Barack Obama's top pick for attorney general, may aim to roll back several of the Bush administration's most controversial legal moves if he is selected for the post."
Here is a summary and video of a defining speech Holder gave before the American Constitution Society in June. "I never thought I would see the day," Holder said, "when a Justice Department would claim that only the most extreme infliction of pain and physical abuse constitutes torture and that acts that are merely cruel, inhuman and degrading are consistent with United States law and policy, that the Supreme Court would have to order the president of the United States to treat detainees in accordance with the Geneva Convention, never thought that I would see that a president would act in direct defiance of federal law by authorizing warrantless NSA surveillance of American citizens. This disrespect for the rule of law is not only wrong, it is destructive in our struggle against terrorism. . . . "Our government authorized the use torture, approved of secret electronic surveillance against American citizens, secretly detained American citizens without due process of law, denied the writ of habeas corpus to hundreds of accused enemy combatants, and authorized the use of procedures that violate both international law and the United States Constitution. "Now, I do not question the motives of patriotism of those responsible for these policies. But this does nothing to mitigate the fact that these steps were wrong when they were initiated and they are wrong today. "We owe the American people a reckoning." -clip-Oh yeah. Indeed. And there are some folks that owe the American people one hell of a lot more than that in the way of recompense as I see it, some still in office, more than a few already having fled.
Left to our own devices last Friday, Eric (okay, I did assist) concocted a memorable Chicken Curry for dinner. I should add that we had the avid attention, if not assistance, of the spaniels and heeler. They were constantly available, or, more accurately, underfoot.
Eric acquired coconut milk, onions, peppers, and chicken breasts, the other more-mainstream prime ingredients for his curry-not-in-a-hurry. We had green curry paste on hand, and the freedom to be semi-lavish with that wonderfully dangerous ingredient, not needing to indulge the more gentle palates. He worked the stovetop and did the main prep and cooking, while I slaved over the herbs and peapods and made the rice.
I.e., sous-chef'd.
Eric acquired coconut milk, onions, peppers, and chicken breasts, the other more-mainstream prime ingredients for his curry-not-in-a-hurry. We had green curry paste on hand, and the freedom to be semi-lavish with that wonderfully dangerous ingredient, not needing to indulge the more gentle palates. He worked the stovetop and did the main prep and cooking, while I slaved over the herbs and peapods and made the rice.
I.e., sous-chef'd.
