The Grey Matter

It doesn't get any more surreal and/or desperate than this. Hillary, it's (been) over.
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Click here to view the typically frustrating and bloviating Chris Matthews take a right-wing radio host out to the wood shed. Quite refreshing.

Matthews makes the point that talking with your enemies is not the same as appeasement, with the latter involving the giving away of something. The dictionary defines appeasement as "to yield or concede to the belligerent demands of (a nation, group, person, etc.) in a conciliatory effort" -- again, much different then simply talking. As usual, Bush and the screaming idiots on the right have it all wrong.

It's worth mentioning that a few other past presidents talked with national leaders they didn't particularly like. Eisenhower spoke with Stalin to help end the Korean War, Nixon held discussions with China, and Reagan talked with numerous leaders of the USSR (with Reagan saying, "Living in this nuclear age makes it imperative that we do talk."). Oh, and note all three were Republicans.

Bush's willingness to equate the desire to talk with "enemy" nations as appeasement is just more fear-mongering and irresponsible trash talk -- something we've come to expect from his craven administration. His goal has always been to scare to get his way, as opposed to making any sort of real sense or appealing to anything remotely cerebral. Stirring up fear is just easier and less taxing, and we all know how GW shuns hard work.
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With Bush's approval rating appearing to hit new lows with each passing month, fast approaching historical precedence for worst-ever levels, matching that of Nixon at his darkest hour, the prior president that GW desperately looks to for comfort is Harry Truman. Truman had abysmal poll numbers during the Korean War but later was to be regarded as a very good president. Bush hopes he'll enjoy the same fate.

Dream on. The recovery of Truman's reputation and regard had a bit more to do with just the eventual reconsideration of the Korean War. To that end, Bush's ill-repute goes much further than his regretful decision to invade Iraq.

As an example, read the following excerpt from a Truman speech, replace "communism" with "terrorism" and try to imagine Bush saying any of it.

There is a right way and a wrong way to fight communism. This administration is doing it the right way, and the sensible way.

Our attack on communism is embodied in a positive, threefold program:

One, we are strengthening our own defenses and siding free nations in other parts of the world so that we and they can effectively resist Communist aggression.

Two, we are working to improve our democracy so as to give further proof, both to our own citizens and to people in other parts of the world, that democracy is the best system of government that men have yet devised.

Three, we are working quietly but effectively, without headlines or hysteria, against Communist subversion in this country wherever it appears, and we are doing this within the framework of the democratic liberties we cherish.

That is the way this administration is fighting communism. That is the way it is going to continue to fight communism. Now I am going to tell you how we are not going to fight communism. We are not going to transform our fine FBI into a Gestapo secret police. That is what some people would like to do. We are not going to try to control what our people read and say and think. We are not going to turn the United States into a right-wing totalitarian country in order to deal with a left-wing totalitarian threat.

In short, we are not going to end democracy. We are going to keep the Bill of Rights on the books. We are going to keep those ancient, hard-earned liberties which you lawyers have done so much to preserve and protect.

See the difference? Any questions?

After reading this it should be no shocker to understand why Truman's standing has risen over the years. On the contrary, given the abominations, the screw-ups, the purposeful ruin wrought, the spreading of hate and fear for political gain, the disregard and destruction of our Constitution -- just a few of many things beyond the Iraq War, it should likewise shock no one that Bush will not experience a similar recuperation in standing. It's absolutely inconceivable and with good reason.
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For weeks now, I've felt that Hillary is determined to stay in this thing because of 2012 (stay with me here). If Obama loses in November, she would then be able to do lots of "I told ya so," the wrong person was chosen to represent the party. By staying in the race this long, it has enabled her to point to big states she was able to win over Obama plus perhaps more than a few key states that Obama may lose to McCain. She would then be able to single out those states as turning points, that if she were only the presidential nominee she could have very well beaten McCain. She would try to pound home this logic for the 2012 race.

Whereas the Dem party is not typically kind to twofers (at least not nearly as much as the GOP which encourages multiple runs and then you've earned it), in this case, given the tight primary race and after all she's a Clinton, Hillary would most likely be the front-runner in 2012.

But that's not to say I'm assuming Obama will lose in November -- I'm not. Just laying out what could possibly be going through Hillary's head.

Another potential reason for her staying power was mentioned by Jonathan Alter on Olbermann's Countdown. He basically described a scenario where Hillary's steadfast decision to fight on is to be used as leverage to get asked to be the VP. To restate, her stern determination and will to continue = a sort of blackmail to become #2 on the ticket.

Interesting. I can't imagine Obama would like such a predicament but it may be one he's forced to contend with. Would he and Hillary actually get along? And Bill for that matter (can't forget him!)?
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Increasingly I'm seeing more items like this one:

The US military is drawing up plans for a “surgical strike” against an insurgent training camp inside Iran if Republican Guards continue with attempts to destabilise Iraq, western intelligence sources said last week....US commanders are increasingly concerned by Iranian interference in Iraq and are determined that recent successes by joint Iraqi and US forces in the southern port city of Basra should not be reversed by the Quds Force.

Get ready....
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This entire Kevin Drum entry is a must-read. (Whelp, most Kevin Drum entries are a must-read for that matter). It covers not just the flip-flopping hypocrisy of McCain, but also the media's hypocrisy when it comes to coverage of Rev. Wright vs. right-wing hate preachers.

You'd think after years of being shamed with their kid-glove, tepid coverage of the Bush/Cheney debacle they'd at least try to become more even-handed in their scrutiny. Is McCain truly that teflon-ish?
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Although McCain has largely been getting a free press from the media about basically everything, Fareed Zakaria, columnist for Newsweek, at least tries to point out a concern.

On March 26, McCain gave a speech on foreign policy in Los Angeles that was billed as his most comprehensive statement on the subject. It contained within it the most radical idea put forward by a major candidate for the presidency in 25 years. Yet almost no one noticed.

In his speech McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia from the G8, the group of advanced industrial countries....McCain also proposed that the United States should expand the G8 by taking in India and Brazil—but pointedly excluded China from the councils of power.

We have spent months debating Barack Obama's suggestion that he might, under some circumstances, meet with Iranians and Venezuelans. It is a sign of what is wrong with the foreign-policy debate that this idea is treated as a revolution in U.S. policy while McCain's proposal has barely registered. What McCain has announced is momentous—that the United States should adopt a policy of active exclusion and hostility toward two major global powers. It would reverse a decades-old bipartisan American policy of integrating these two countries into the global order, a policy that began under Richard Nixon (with Beijing) and continued under Ronald Reagan (with Moscow).

And to think that foreign affairs is supposedly McCain's strong suit -- yikes! With him, it definitely smells like four more years of GW....
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This kind of news is getting to be quite old, but that doesn't mean we should grow weary of it (!).

A congressional watchdog agency has found that White House officials repeatedly intervened in the government's scientific process for assessing the health risks of toxic chemicals, prompting Sen. Barbara Boxer to threaten giving Congress control of the program.

The Government Accountability Office reported Tuesday that the White House's budget office, the Pentagon and other agencies had delayed or blocked efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency to list chemicals as carcinogens by requesting more research or more time to review the risks.

Isn't it great to have an administration that is so good at spreading fear, all the while claiming they want to keep us safe, and yet they have no problem with willfully interfering with science that is aimed at protecting us from toxic chemicals and carcinogens.... It's all a charade, attempts to achieve and maintain control via scaring us to no end, but when it comes to substances that can truly kill, whelp they must side with big business. We're just puny pawns in their bigger scheme of things. 1-20-09, 1-20-09....
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More evidence that we've been ruled over by a monarchy for the past eight years:

The lawyer for US vice-president Dick Cheney claimed today that the Congress lacks any authority to examine his behaviour on the job.

The exception claimed by Cheney's counsel came in response to requests from congressional Democrats that David Addington, the vice-president's chief of staff, testify about his involvement in the approval of interrogation tactics used at Guantanamo Bay.

Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers expressed his obligatory discontent and outrage -- likely met with laughs and giggles by Cheney and his staff behind closed doors. The branch of government that the President and Vice President belong to (I would normally write "Executive" but these days who knows....) is apparently above it all, above everything, answering to no one, enjoying defacto dictator-like status. They want all of the power, none of the accountability, and they're succeeding thanks to our wet-noodle Democrats.

But wait, they wear an American flag pin quite often, so all is forgiven!
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Hillary will appear on Bill O'Reilly's show? Just when I thought she had already jumped the right-wing-pander shark, she goes and proves me wrong....

What we have is a demented marriage of convenience: she's to-the-hilt desperate and will do just about anything at this point to be the nominee, and the gnashing teeth on the right oh-so want her to be the one given she's got a TON more baggage to attack, assail, and smear than does Obama.

Bill Kristol's column on Monday was all about singing the praises of Hillary at the expense of Obama. Look, isn't it a good enough rule of thumb that if the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Bill Kristol, and the FOX network are for Hillary, we should be against her?

And regarding the the Kristol column, it continues to be the same old pap and recycled snores, but one item in particular really struck a chord. He criticizes Obama for refusing to debate Hillary in Indiana:

On Friday in Indiana, Obama talked tough in response to a question: “I get pretty fed up with people questioning my patriotism.” And, he continued, “I am happy to have that debate with them any place, anytime.” He’s happy to have fantasy debates with unnamed people who are allegedly challenging his patriotism. But he’s not willing to have a real debate with the real person he’s competing against for the nomination.

But in the sentence just prior to this paragraph, Kristol offers the completely understandable reason why Obama has made this decision: "[D]ebates would give Clinton equal time in the spotlight, and would make Obama’s advantage in paid media in Indiana and North Carolina far less significant."

Duh. Kristol knows how this game works and even makes that obvious, yet that doesn't stop him from sticking head up butt and writing something naive just after it. If he was backing a Republican front-runner in Obama's spot you'd hear none of this from Kristol. It's Campaigning 101.

It just makes Kristol look disingenuous and laughably stupid. Another in a series of dopey columns by him. Bravo NY Times!
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Let's just hope we never see one of our soldiers captured by a terrorist outfit and waterboarded, with the justification offered being some cobbled-together logic inspired by the recent revelations that our Justice Dept. gives it the OK, and top White House officials also approve.

Did a terrorist outfit always have the opportunity to do this? Sure, but before learning that we apparently do employ torture and find it to be legally acceptable "under certain circumstances," we stood on firmer ground of no-tolerance for such acts with one huge reason being we don't do it ourselves. That precedent just went out the window. Instead, we've decided to cross over and join the legions of primitives and thugs.

Not to mention the evidence showing these tactics simply don't work (just Google "torture does not work"), and instead we've open our soldiers up to harm via reciprocity.

Just more backwards, idiotic reasoning from this reigning cabal. As with their idea to outsource many federal jobs (you know, like a good deal of our military presence in Iraq), forcing current government employees to justify their existence else be shown the door. The problem is this program hasn't gone quite as expected (surprise!):

It turned on a simple idea: Force federal employees to compete for their jobs against private contractors and costs will decrease, even if the work ultimately stays in-house.

But as Bush's presidency winds down, the program's critics say it has had disappointing results and shaken morale among the federal government's 1.8 million civil servants.

Private contractors have grown increasingly reluctant to participate in the competitions, which federal employees have won 83 percent of the time.

The program fell short of the president's goals in scope and in cost savings. Between 2003 and 2006, agencies completed competitions for fewer than 50,000 jobs, a fraction of what Bush envisioned.

Moreover, the Government Accountability Office found that the administration has overstated the savings from some competitions by undercounting the costs of running them. Collectively, they cost $225 million, or about $4,800 per job, according to White House figures.

"The competitive sourcing initiative did little to improve management, produced a ton of worthless paper, demoralized thousands of workers and cost a bundle, all to prove that federal employees are pretty good after all," said Paul C. Light, a professor of government at New York University's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

Just more incompetence from these fools. Meanwhile, recall what Clinton/Gore did to shrink government and make it more effective. Ah yes, the good old days....
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Nicholas Kristof recently wrote:

Imagine if President Bush announced a plan for Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs that declared: They will cease accumulating nuclear weapons by 2025. We will accomplish this through incentives and voluntary action, without mandates.

Mr. Bush would be ridiculed, but in essence, that’s the plan he announced for climate change on Wednesday. He set a target for halting the growth in carbon dioxide emissions by 2025, without specific mandates to achieve that, and in the meantime he blasted proposed Senate legislation for tougher measures as unnecessary.

I've written about another comparison that could be made to emphasize the absurdity and hypocrisy of this administration's stance on the environment: Cheney's 1% doctrine.

But also there was a time when the build-up of nuclear arms was referred to as MAD ("mutually assured destruction"), implying rational thought would insure that the lethal stockpiles would never be used. That scary assumption appeared to work for decades, despite the inherent evil and waste associated with building such bombs. Nonetheless, fewer nukes on the planet is a good thing and worth pursuing.

Cut to climate change. It too is MAD, as we're all "mutually assured destruction" if we continue to ignore this problem. However, the fact that global warming does not conjure up jarring images like hundreds of war heads pointed at our country or "finger on the button" jitters makes the entire issue less frightening, less impending, less urgent. Yet with each passing year of no mandates, no action, no urgency makes the probability of MAD that much more irreversible and certain.

When will this enormously pressing problem generate the fear it deserves, to be treated less as a luxury that can be managed or curtailed at the margin? And we've observed what this administration can do when it wishes to crank-up the nail-biting on anything meaningful to them. Even more alarming is things are getting increasingly worse as is -- before even factoring in the millions of additional cars and hundreds of additional coal plants that will be built in fast-developing countries like China and India.

Whereas many believe GW will go down as the worst president in history due mainly to Iraq and Constitutional transgressions, his purposeful and unconscionable delay(s) on anything having to do with climate change will more likely become his primary demerit. His eight years of stonewalling and water-carrying for industry on this front has literally adversely changed the course of nature to the point where we may never recover.

Maybe that's why he cares not a wit about the federal deficit: who will be around to collect?
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