by the left, he means the people.

It could not have happened to a nicer bunch of “folks”.

OOOOOH, that is just too, too schadenfreudelicious!

Why isn’t Delay in prison?

You don’t put Esteemed Environmental Scientists in jail.

Was this the kinda different Delay had in mind?

Somebody posted that in late night last night.

Let’s hope it takes for them longer to rebuild than it has taken to rebuild the Nazi party!

maybe the hammer will do a better job talking to mrs hammer with bars between them ;)

I just wish Harry and Nancy weren’t so determined to proove Delay wrong.

Indeed. And under the category of “doing something different,” I’d put, “not have the most powerful member of your party in Congress indicted on criminal charges.”

I’d put;

“stop stealing from the middle class to give your donors tax breaks”

that would work too

E.D. “Terrorist fist jab” Hill has been canceled from her Faux SNooze show.

Al Qaeda Ailes strikes again.

-G

Why do fist-jabbing terrorists hate Amer…
nevermind.

The think is that Tom Delay won while he is no longer working….. He still has his Congressional pension, probably healthcare AND watch the trailer of the Robert Greenwald film called The Big Buy ….. Delay pretty much got everything he set out to destroy….

You can take the man out of the extermination business, but you can’t take the extermination business out of the man.

“The conservatives refuse to accept that the left is cleaning their clock

here’s what I really don’t understand;

why don’t they start to shed blame?

they can blame the fascists who overtook their party, (the noe cons) they can blame the robber barons who highjacked their policy, (those who want to redistribute middle class wealth) and they can blame

THE PRESIDENT

once they get on board they should do fine

One point I’ll give DeLay is that modern conservatives were only ever successful at campaigning, not at governing, so it’s not too surprising that he only cares about catching up on campaign techniques. However, he does indeed leave out the part where they have to find a whole new set of ways to dupe people about what they’re going to do, since the country has gotten wise to their old scam.

Because that would be the criminalization of politics — didn’t you get the memo?

Modern conservatives have also been very successful at gathering plunder.

That’s the thing that makes me happiest with the current spate of… would the term be “pre-mortems”, maybe? It’s not a post-mortem, they’re giving a eulogy for a campaign that hasn’t died yet.

Anyway, they seem determined to blame it on the Internets, or more commonly, on McCain. I expect that if Obama wins, we’ll get a big round of “McCain lost because he wasn’t a real conservative.” With any luck, they’ll demand even more ideological purity and purge any dissenters, and we’ll get at least one more good election cycle out of it before they really start to address what went wrong. (This death spiral has been happening for about six years now in the Virginia GOP, and shows no signs of stopping. *g*)

how come he is not in jail?

Sadly, yes.

Because the wheels of justice grind slowly, and we grant conservatives the legal protections they would gladly deny anyone else because it’s the right thing to do (whereas they would deny them because it’s the expedient thing to do.)

that is good point … if they won’t deal w/ reality, they can’t fix their problems. so, we’re actually glad as long as they keep blaming the tooth fairy …

Hell it only took the Taliban a few years to rebuild… …and thank you Republican party for that!

Make America less safe while burning their own party to the ground. Go GOP.

No, the problem is the GOP isn’t raising enough money on the Internets.

Gee BT, why am I not at all surprised that once again the GOP will take the absolutely wrong message from this election?

They never seem to understand (other than recognizing that they have to lie about their policies) that it’s more than just the superficial marketing. Yet they always seem to think that improving the marketing will forever win them elections.

Marketing does win them some elections, when they are particularly effective at hiding their lies and corruption, but it always catches up to them in the end when they can’t deliver anything beyond the marketing slogans.

That’s longer than it took al Qaeda so I guess the Republics can campaign on their success dealing with the Taliban.

Make America less safe while burning their own party to the ground. Go GOP.

Here’s hoping that the 2008 election is enough of a rout to take their matches away for a good long time.

And I am terrified when I meet otherwise educated Americans who simply refuse to see the damage the GOP has done to our country, our constitution, and our standing in the world… …they blame the democratic party for having a slim majority for 15 months for all the country’s woes.

Freaks me out.

if the elections happen at all

my republican friends refuse to acknowledge the damage done by the republican party as well

I make it easy for them, I say;

“the neo cons highjacked your party and they are no longer concervatives they are extremeists”

once I give them a method to shed blame they go along pretty nicely

There’s been no one to speak for the Democratic Party. Harry and Nancy are voiceless for whatever reason. They have well positioned the Party to be blamed.

cause tv news doesn’t tell them any different.

You are just such an optimist! *G* (Although I will admit to an increasing level of suspicion the closer the election gets…)

Delay was the chief architect of the initial cracks in the great wall of Republican rule.

The Terri Schiavo debacle was the first burst of water through the seems….Then the summer of Cindy Sheehan and then Karl Rove’s master stroke of having the King Bush the Turd flyover photo extravaganza of New Orleans….a photo op so foolish, ill conceived and ham handed one would think Rove was an anti-Bush mole.

-G

Compare their lack of visibility to the endless appearances by Newton Leroy Gingrich endlessly flogging his ideas and agenda and propaganda.

-G

Heh, give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a billion.

http://firedoglake.com/2008/06…..fiteering/

Newt’s endless flogging lead to the Republics seizing Congress and maintaining control for so long. Someone has to speak regularly for the Democrats or the Republic right wing does it for them.

DeLay is still married?

I remember shortly after Bush was elected, I saw a picture of him and DeLay & Trent Lott at the ranch.

I was so horrified these people were running the show.

GOP in trouble? That’s right, only because there isn’t any money flowing their way. That’s when they stop and notice something’s amiss. bwahahahaha.

It really is that simple. Money coming in, good. Money not coming in, bad.

Laws
upset voters
bridges falling down
completely irrelevant.

Delay made a statement in his days of power that should be engraved somewhere in stone (possibly his headstone). He was at the Smithsonian for some function and lit up a cigar. The guard asked him to butt out, because it was against government regulations to smoke on the property. Delay told him ‘I am the government’. Which was pretty much the case in 2002.

As to misbegotten Republicans. I use the same tack as Perris. Their party was hi-jacked by fascists. When I have more time, I discuss the German CDU and its post-war equivalent in Italy as examples of conservative parties that got their honour back (more or less).

repugs have an outlet for all their propaganda – the faux news channel…. finally americans are shaking loose and waking up to that.. ’bout damn time

Newt’s endless flogging lead to the Republics seizing Congress and maintaining control for so long. Someone has to speak regularly for the Democrats or the Republic right wing does it for them.

corporate media won’t give the democrats the same play they give republicans

for instance, who in corporate medai is hosting kucinich’s articles of impeachment?

I rest my case

New Jane upstairs on some sock puppetry

The Democrats need a charismatic spokesperson. Unfortunately, their Congressional leaders are basically colorless and, therefore, uninteresting on TV. Newt was the charismatic spokesperson the Republics needed to seize control.

And I am terrified when I meet otherwise educated Americans who simply refuse to see the damage the GOP has done to our country, our constitution, and our standing in the world… …they blame the democratic party for having a slim majority for 15 months for all the country’s woes.

Freaks me out.

This dynamic freaks me out, too. If they are GOP it is a little easier to understand because they only listen to what they are told/brainwashed to think. They’ve been the entitled supporters of the powerful for so long, that if their “team” is losing, it freaks them out too. So they keep telling themselves they are “winning” and the dems are the “losers”. I am tired of this black and white type of thinking myself.

mccain is starting to get wise, check this out, if he keeps this up he might actually have a shot;

McCain Adviser: McCain Opposes ‘Reckless Favors For Oil Companies,’ Will Eliminate ‘All Special Tax Breaks’

from think progress

Dodd would be an awesome replacement. I’m sure there are others.

I volunteer for the position

All McCain has to do is declare later that the current tax breaks are not ’special’.

yes, he will find a loophole to be sure but he has now got the right method for gaining votes

Pardon the length but sometimes I need to vent:

Further Adventures in Reading the New York Times

Eric Lichtblau is often considered a hero reporter because he broke the story on the NSA warrantless wiretapping program. Lost in the shuffle is that Lichtblau and the Times sat on the story for 14 months through the 2004 elections and the Times only decided to publish the story after Lichtblau learned that James Risen with whom he had done the original investigation was going to use this material in a book he was writing.

In today’s Times (June 10, 2008) Lichtblau has an article Return to Old Spy Rules Is Seen as Deadline Nears:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06…..tml?ref=us

It is a piece that Michael Gordon would be proud of it since uses one of his signature devices, the needlessly anonymous source:

With Congress at an impasse over the government’s spy powers, Congressional and intelligence officials are bracing for the possibility that the government might have to revert to the old rules of terrorist surveillance, a situation that some officials predict could leave worrisome gaps in intelligence.

Snip

But those orders are growing staler by the day, officials said, and will begin to expire this August if nothing is done. (Wiretaps intended for Americans already require individual warrants issued by a secret court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, or FISA court.)

As the last sentence indicates, this article is a hopeless, White House spinning botch. The revision that has been under consideration in Congress is precisely to FISA. Surveillance that is strictly foreign was never covered under FISA and has always been considered to be completely legitimate and not to require any legislative authorization. So right away, you see that Lichtblau is involved in a bait and switch.

A return to the old rules, they said, would mean that government lawyers, analysts and linguists would once again have to prepare individual warrants, potentially thousands of them, for surveillance of terrorism targets overseas.

Again this is just a straightforward lie. FISA covers cases where there is an American angle to the surveillance, i.e. if one end of a communication originates in this country or if the target is an American overseas. As I said above, FISA has nothing to do with foreign on foreign communication although this is a favorite talking point of right wingers.

Lichtblau does give some idea about what the Bush Administration is having fits about though:

the broad orders given to the companies starting last August cover tens of thousands of overseas phone numbers and e-mail addresses at one time, people with knowledge of the orders said.

In other words, blanket wiretaps. So say a resident of Dearborn, Michigan where 1/3 of the population is of Arab descent calls someone in the Middle East then very likely he/she and the person they called were “targets” and got hoovered up.

As to the politics of this, Lichtblau blows through them. Democrats caved last year and voted for a 6 month extension the Protect America Act (PAA) before the August recess. They did so in part because DNI Mike McConnell lied to them, reneged on a deal he had made with them, and then fabricated threats to pressure them. When the issue was taken up at the end of last year, the spirited opposition of Chris Todd forced the enabling Harry Reid to back off. Then the Republicans, you know the party of National Security, began to play political games with the issue. Despite this, Harry Reid and Jay Rockefeller successfully caved and the Senate passed an amended FISA Act on February 12. Boehner and Republicans in the House tried a similar tactic but when they voted against the House bill, to the surprise of both Republicans and Democratic leaders, a group of Democratic progressives joined them and voted the bill down. As a result, the PAA expired. It did not die completely, however. Wiretaps begun under it could run for a year, meaning that these would start to expire in August. The principal snag in this for Bush was the issue of immunity for the telecoms. The telecoms didn’t need immunity because they were covered under existing law. They certainly didn’t deserve it, but that wasn’t the point. Immunity would kill the lawsuits that might expose the extent of domestic spying that Bush and his Adminstration had been engaged in. Lichtblau covers none of this. Instead we get spin. There were problems, now there are negotiations, both sides “have given some ground in the talks.” Yeah, right.

As for the FISA court (FISC), Lichtblau raises the scary possibility noted above that “individual warrants, potentially thousands of them” might have to be prepared for approval by the FISC and notes:

A senior intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the administration was concerned that reverting to the older standards and requiring individual warrants for each wiretap would create a severe gap in overseas intelligence by raising the bar for foreign surveillance collection.

So the FISC is portrayed as this insuperable obstacle to foreign surveillance. Yet of some 25,000 FISA requests from 1979 through 2007, the FISC has turned down a total of 9.
http://epic.org/privacy/wireta…..stats.html

Lichtblau also raises the issue of foreign communications going through American switches. Again this is a diversion. All sides have signaled that they would be willing to sign off on this and if Bush and the Republicans wanted a bill on this and they could have had it 10 months ago. Lichtblau even uses the old line that the Democrats want to get this over and done with by the convention because by caving in to the Republicans and a deeply unpopular President at the end of his term they will appear strong on national security.

Perhaps the most disingenuous flourish in the whole article Lichtblau saves for the end when he accords the last word finally to a real critic Caroline Fredrickson of the ACLU. “Why not just kick it down the road” through a short-term extension, she asked. “If there’s a need to do something, they should do the least harm possible.” This is the traditional media’s idea of balance: write a whole article full of spin and distortion, throw in a final comment by someone with an opposing view and voilà you have achieved fairness and balance.

sheesh.

Hugh where does Congress stand in processing the current FISA bill in question? I called my rep last week to give a hearty hell no to telecom immunity and a hell yeah to right of privacy. where are we now aside from bellyaching from the right? if you know. maybe I should check EW before asking…

It’s not about governing for them; it’s about profiting from their power.

All I have heard is the standard rumblings that the Democrats would like to cave on this, you know set up cosmetic votes where most Democrats can vote against but that just enough of the more conservative ones vote with the Republicans to get it passed. But nothing definite.

Immunity would kill the lawsuits that might expose the extent of domestic spying that Bush and his Adminstration had been engaged in. Lichtblau covers none of this. Instead we get spin. There were problems, now there are negotiations, both sides “have given some ground in the talks.” Yeah, right.

Thanks for this. FISA is a tough issue to explain or get people to act on, like calling Congress. I am so grateful to the FISA watchers like Greenwald, mcjoan, you … thanks. Makes me pick up the phone one more time and leave after hour messages for the dems in both houses.

Is Obama reluctant to get near this? Lose nervous nelly Dems in Congress who don’t want to look weak on security? Or get populace who can get hopped up over homeland security at the price of privacy … and not care about grotesque inefficiency and stupidity and greed and abuse of power in the hands of our leadership and surveillance forces. Spying is sexy and an easy sell… macho connotations.

Europeans aren’t bothering to protest Bush on his trip. But he still has power and we can’t afford to look away waiting for these months to go by. That is when sociopathic-narcissists do ANYTHING to have attention paid to them like start a war Iran as a last touch.

And also though it is nauseating to see the concreteness of their depths of corruption, dizzying, to fathom it, it must be done to turn this battered ship of state around.

O/T: Pics of weebits here

Classic sociopath.