Slothrop @ 97

Well then, where’s the story about how he avoids tough questions while hiding behind bodyguards? Where are the news stories about this kind of cowardice?

In practical terms, he’s always too far away to even shout at. He’s the most secretive and isolated VP we’ve ever seen, and that’s by design.

We do not even know, for sure, how many people are on his staff (the estimates vary between eighty and 115, and even the lower number is many more than any previous VP). When asked, the press is told, “we don’t give out that information. He does not release any records–of travel expenses, contracts made by his office, etc. Right now, he’s being sued by the AP for the release of his daily logs of meetings, and my guess is that even if the courts agree, he’ll ignore them.

Everywhere he steps is either federal or private property, and his security forces would simply arrest someone trying to break through that security as either trespassing or, worse, as posing a threat to him–when he was campaigning before this past election, someone did manage to walk by him in Colorado and said something disparaging to him about the war. The person was arrested for threatening the VP.

So, given all that, what functional good does it do for a reporter to get arrested? There’s no story to get by being arrested.

The only way any of this gets busted open is if Congress pushes for accountability from his office–and, even then, it will be a battle royal to get anything from them.

So the thing to do would be to have a congresssional commission to investigate. Grant you he will stone- wall the answers, but it will be in the news that he did NOT ANSWER THE QUESTIONS, and that will be the point brought across. Then the questions of whether he is trying to hide sometime, etc., will start to come.

I think there is a good chance this will happen, and might well be the straw the broke the camel’s back, so to speak.

Food for thought. Bb

Oklahoma kiddo @
3

Until there is a settlement to the Palestinian “question”, there will be no peace in the Middle East. Ever.

Actually, their IS a settlement; Israel needs to give the Palestinians land, and the Palestinians have to live as peaceful neighbors.

But neither side is ready to do their part…

So, are you saying that Israel has given the Palestinians their land back and the Palestinians aren’t satisfied?

One of the most telling quotes ever uttered about the Vietnam War, in my view, came from a former member of the Viet Cong several years ago. When asked his opinion about the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and why the North Vietnamese (NVA) and the Viet Cong continued fighting after so many had died, he matter-of-factly stated, “We’ve been fighting the Chinese for over a thousand years.”

In other words, if the Communist Chinese suddenly got a wild hair and decided to “colonize” Vietnam, then they would suffer the same fate as the French and the U.S. forces, since the Vietnamese have been fighting “the Chinese for over a thousand years” along the Vietnamese/Chinese border. Guerilla warfare. Political assassinations. Etc. Until the last non-Vietnamese was driven out of Vietnam.

So the neo-con Republican fantasy that we could have “won” in Vietnam if we had just stayed a few more years (or decades) is just that…a fantasy. Just like their fantasy about Iraq and trying to spread any semblance of democracy into countries in the Middle East ruled by autocratic, often-religious nut-job despots. Fantasy. Fantasy. Fantasy.

Delusions like those of the neo-con Republicans only end up getting a whole lot of people killed…while the war profiteers make out like bandits. Oh. Um. Maybe their delusional talk is just a cover for their real motives. Money. And yet a whole lot of people must suffer and often die for all the neo-con blood money they hope to reap. And to think that some of these neo-con Republicans still claim that they are followers of Jesus Christ. NOT!!!

The mind boggles, the heart is sick.

But “the wingnuts fucked it up,” ran the war like they did Katrina, betrayed the military in the process, wasted money like a drunken sailor and stole everything that wasn’t nailed down — that plays into many popular narratives that the American people will find acceptable, nay comforting.

Unfortunately, that fails to acknowledge that the whole thing was doomed to fail from the start. It makes it sound as if someone else (Biden? McCain? Clinton?) could have invaded Iraq, set up a puppet government, and had the oil pumping years ago.

It’s not the American people who need the comfort of this fiction. It’s the people in Congress — including about half of the Senate Democrats — who want the cover to say it would have gone down different if only people had listened to them. This is exactly the same scenario that played out as Vietnam was winding down, when the people who said we should never have gone in were exiled to salve the electoral consciences of the Democratic-controlled House and Senate. It’s why people still blame the hippies and the media for “losing” Vietnam rather than the people who got the US involved in the war.

When you jump off a cliff, no amount of flapping (surge!) is going to make you airborne. You’re gonna fall.

…I think there is a target-rich environment to disgrace the right wing idealogues and the extreme zealots of the GOP who planned this little disaster.

Dear Jane,
They must start with at least some small amount of ‘Grace’ in order for that to happen.

Re-read Soros. Re-read John Dean.

Soros connects dots between energy, globalization, outmoded political institutions, international politics, and the economic dangers of poor government policies. That’s what we confront — along with toxins, pollutants, and acidic seas.

The Republican Authoritarians will never, ever admit they lied, tortured, and scammed. The more guilty they are, the more vindictive they become. Take Snidely Whiplash and hand him a cell phone and he’d fit right in with these clods, who got stuck somewhere between 1880 and 1965.

Authoritarians are the LEAST intellectually, psychologically, emotionally, or socially able to grapple with what we confront.

The economic future lies in biofuels, biomedicines, informatics, and related fields. Amoral, secretive, arrogant ideologues are the least qualified members of society to move these technologies forward and develop a new economic base.

We need Captains Kirk and Picard to timewarp back to the 1880s railroad tracks, haul Snidely’s sorry ass before a thorough, compelling investigation, and let the Maiden return to her research into biofuels, while they focus on passing Net Neutrality.

Snidely will end up in jail, wailing he’s innocent.
Assuming that people got a VERY clear picture of how Snidely deliberately, slowly, and cruely tied the Shrieking Maiden to the tracks in the face of the oncoming train –while seeking to extort her knowledge and research leads — his wailing will fall on deaf ears, or perhaps those of his new cellmate, Abramoff.

With any luck, the Clever Maiden will be sunning herself on a sandy, tropical beach enjoying a cool margharita, enjoying the revenues from her biofuels patent, watching colorful fishes swim in non-acidic seas.

Urban Pirate @
91

I thought I saw something about Joe Strummer passing. If so, Bummer.

Is this true?

four years ago, yesterday.

Broken hearts are hard to mend,
I know I’ve had my share,
But life just carries on,
Even when I’m not there

Oh jeez. I’m fucking clueless. RIP Joe.