LT Saloon

– As Dick Kay rightly said last Thursday on WCPT-AM, the local progressive radio station in Chicago, this was a political impeachment – it had nothing to do with an actual crime but with the exercise of political power on behalf of the business and political interests in the state.

– Here’s a safe bet: In 2010, Illinois will have a new Governor, either Lisa Madigan or Patrick Fitzgerald, and a new Attorney General, likely Fitzgerald unless he decides to challenge Madigan’s daughter for governor as a Republican. Pat Quinn – who? He’s just a placeholder who won’t have the money or party support to nab a term on his own. Here’s another safe bet: Illinois politicians won’t be jumping on the bandwagon to have themselves recorded talking about deals on the phone, with the tapes later reviewed by a non-partisan group like Public Citizen to determine if they’re corrupt. Like the installation of Junior as president in 2000, this impeachment is a one-time shot, not a precedent. However, as Dick Kay also pointed out, this may very well augur in a new age in Illinois politics, one less forgiving of the typical tit-for-tat deal-making of the past. If so, Mike Madigan will be first on the list to get the heave-ho, along with most of the state’s Democrats and Republicans currently holding office.

Perhaps Blagojevich’s impeachment will have a populist result unanticipated by the 59 incredible hypocrites in the state General Assembly who so eagerly voted for it January 29.

You Can’t Make It Up: “W. did have one other concern: he worried whether there would be enough content for such a book [his biography "A Charge to Keep," which was published in 2000]. He openly fretted to Herskowitz: what had he accomplished that was worth talking about? Bush thought it a better idea for the book to focus on his policy objectives. And what might those be? Herskowitz inquired. Ask Karl [Rove], Bush replied.”
– Russ Baker, “Shock and…Oil?” Common Dreams, Jan. 9, 2009.

Our first Supreme Court-installed president threatened us before the 2000 election that he would run the country like a CEO. He did, just like the inept CEO of busted flat Arbusto and the badly-mismanaged Harken Oil. As per usual where W. is concerned, though, he came out with a profit, as well as his cronies. Considering what legal troubles may be coming down the pike for Junior and his Playmates, he might want to title his new ghostwritten ‘autobiography’ “A Charge to Duck.”

The Two-Story Outhouse Rule: “Even judged by its own yardstick, the trickle-down approach has failed to deliver: Rather than getting richer, we have been slowly impoverishing ourselves. While incomes at the very top have soared to levels beyond imagining even a generation ago, the average inflation-adjusted income of the bottom 90 percent of earners was lower in 2006 than it was back in 1973. And since 2000, the median income of all Americans has actually slipped, proof that tax cuts for the rich do not create general prosperity. Today, more and more of us do not have enough money to live on without going into debt. For each dollar of equity people gained in their homes from 1980 to 2006, they borrowed two-and while a portion of that is accounted for by poor decision making, much has to do with the sheer impossibility of making ends meet.”
– David Cay Johnston, “Fiscal Therapy,” Mother Jones, January 11, 2009.

Finally, just to add to the dismal list of past criminality committed by our government are the ‘Nightbreaker’ and ‘Operation Buster Jangle’ experiments, wherein enlisted soldiers were put in foxholes near A-bomb and H-bomb blasts. When it was noticed they were receiving dangerously high levels of radiation, the Army just ‘readjusted’ the safety level of their badges upward without telling them. Many died prematurely of cancer and other diseases thanks to these aboveground nuclear tests in the 1940s and 1950s — in fact, that was a major point of the experiments: How much nuclear fallout could the average soldier imbibe and keep functioning, and how long would it take them to die from various levels of radiation? It’s hard for Americans even today to believe that the military would do this to their own, but they did. This is the Pentagon’s Tuskegee Experiment; most of these soldiers came down with illnesses related to radiation exposure later in life, but were unable to collect any compensation until 1988 when Congress passed the Nuclear Veterans Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which typically amounts to $75,000 per patient. $75K to a patient dying of cancer is hardly fair recompense for what was done to these men without their knowledge or consent.

B. Or, shouldn’t a son who is old enough to be allowed “free will,” like any adult should have, be allowed to have an opinion different from his father, even if it’s about the very nature of his father?

C. If a father insists on punishing his son who has grown in the way I just mentioned, or allows him to be punished, isn’t it the father who is out of line: who is refusing to let go and let grow?

D. If we are to believe the fundamentalists concept of God’s nature: is “God the father” really a “good” father?

Once again, I’m sure most of us know the result of parents who insist on being too controlling; even into late adulthood with adult children who, in part for that reason, are still children and exhibit the very behavior parents would want the least.

Now imagine there is a father of all fathers and mothers. This father’s sons and daughters have been a big disappointment from time to time. They live in sin. They covet. They… well you know the list. In response, if you believe some standard versions of God, you stop talking to your children and send another son to talk to them instead. After all these years it’s horrible, but understandable, that some might be so angry they would consider Cain-ing this Abel.

Much of this started when God had an in-family squabble and Satan left in a huff after being heavenly booted with a deity-size set of Tony Lamas; presumably after a fight regarding who rides a better mechanical bull at some celestial cowboy bar. Levity aside, isn’t this a little analogous to divorce? “You better behave yourself or you’ll have to go live with your horn sprouting; torment loving, Daddy…” Daddy, of course, has been painted as pure evil; the monster under the bed… true or not.

Trillions of children over the ages have suffered under this dynamic.

I am not Cain.

I am not Abel.

I know little of the place and the events that led God to turn someone who just happened to look back into a pillar of salt. Was that with iodine, or not? Intrigued theistic nutritionists really want to know.

To paraphrase a now departed; linguistically limited, president, “Are our father learning yet?” After billions of years; thousands… if you believe some, could it be that God still needs to work on his parenting skills?

I want to know.

Why does God blame me?

-30-

Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.

© Copyright 2009
Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
All Rights Reserved

As if it had learned nothing from Tillman, the Army again lied to the family of at least one victim, Staff Sergeant Ryan Maseth, electrocuted while showering at his base camp. The Pentagon first told his family he had taken an electrical device into the shower. A few more days brought a different explanation: the large number of exposed live wires surrounding the shower area. Maseth’s family is suing KBR for wrongful death.

Dan Smith
Colonel, USA (Ret.)
Senior Fellow on Military Affairs
Friends Committee on National Legislation

The article kind of fizzles at the end, context/style-wise. But the story is an important one that needs to be told to the nation along with the rest of KBR’s/Halliburton’s involvement. Maybe we might get away from no bid contracts and vending out crucial services? Plus it would delight me to no end if we emptied out at least a little of Cheney’s pirate booty that was held in his blind trust.

LINK

– Odd that Junior didn’t pardon any of his cronies in his final days, not even Scooter Libby, who fell on his sword for the Little King. (Well, in truth, Libby didn’t spend any time in the Graybar Academy dodging kisses from Bruno on the top bunk, and he won’t be missing any meals in the foreseeable future, so it’s not quite a ritual suicide. Like any good mob boss, Dick takes care of his own.) This means that Bush, Cheney and anyone else in the administration are open to prosecution for illegally sanctioned torture or other crimes committed, such as Nixonian warrantless wiretaps for political reasons. (Soon-to-be breaking news.) There are only four reasons I can think of to explain why Bush didn’t pardon anyone in his White House: a) he really doesn’t think his administration did anything wrong; b) he’s convinced Obama’s AG and Congress will never prosecute him or his gang; c) Dumbya still thinks he has 90 days after leaving office to grant pardons (“Whut? But I signed that signin’ statement sayin’ I had the right to pardon folks for three months after I left office!” ); d) he was playing video golf and clean forgot. (Note: Nattering Nabobists in the BM have speculated that Bush issued ‘secret pardons.’ If so, what is Cheney flapping his gums about?)

– Except for Big Media pundits and idiot Republicans, swirling in their cocktail party talking points, no, it’s not that hard to close Gitmo and move whatever prisoners can be prosecuted based on solid evidence to federal prisons in the US. Ideally, we would turn over these illegally held ‘enemy combatants’ to the World Court for incarceration, trial and sentencing but, politically, that wouldn’t be a good move for Obama at this time. Next best thing: quickly review all of the cases; of the 200-plus detainees, there are certainly some who have done nothing prosecutable. They should go free and if they don’t want to return to the country where we apprehended them, or that country won’t accept them, then they should be allowed to live here at our expense. (It’s the least the US can do for illegally depriving them of their freedom for so many years.) Of the remaining number, try them in a regular federal court – not a military court – subject to Constitutional guarantees governing evidence and witnesses. I realize that this may expose the torture that’s been routinely practiced at Gitmo and elsewhere, but let the chips fall where they may and clean this mess up.

– Laugh-A-Bullwinkle: Sarah Palin will only be the GOP presidential candidate in 2012 if the Republicans decide they’re fine with winning just Alaska, Mississippi and Alabama. Look for the GOP Big Money Whales, what’s left of them, to start truckling up and opening checkbooks to Romney or Huckabee. The very idea of Gov. Wasilla Hillbilly becoming the party’s standard-bearer scares the bejeezus out of them. Then there’s the glacier-sized dartboard of scandals with her face in the center; a bull’s-eye by a prosecutor would bring her down like a baby caribou hit by an AK-47 at five yards. Besides, with the economy down, they can’t afford her clothes anymore.

Doing a little personal reflection, I think a defining moment for me came a few years ago when I saw George W. Bush literally dancing like an Egyptian on stage during dire times; and dire times pretty much defines every second of the past eight years except for the rich and large corporations like Halliburton or Shell. During that defining moment I collected in my head all the “doin a heck of a job” moments during the past eight years and realized I’m embarrassed to even be a member of the same species as George W. Bush; the man who will forever “misunderestimate” both the evil and the mental banality that inhabits his heart, his mind; his very soul. Not that he hasn’t had a lot of help and encouragement doing just that: and always has.

His has not been a life of just a silver spoon, but also golden diaper and platinum pacifier. His supporters will do anything; say anything to pacify and praise a man who has never had to grow up. That’s because he has never had to accept responsibility for the multiple foul, vile messes he has made; and he has made, oh, so many. Just change the diaper and attempt to make Democrats, Bill Clinton or gremlins swallow the excretions.

“No one could have predicted.”

“No one could have known.”

But they did. They tried to tell us. They tried to tell him. But saying that listening isn’t one of his skills is like claiming a rock doesn’t have ears.

Duh.

I was not a Barack supporter either. I still have questions. But I have grown to respect his abilities; his obvious talents and how events seem to mold themselves in a positive way around him. Can he deliver all he has promised? I’m sure he can’t, but won’t hold that against him as long as he tries. I was actually impressed with his appointments. I know, “same old, same old,” but as long as he holds the reins and does what he thinks is right, I’ll be happy. Tapping the inexperienced; rather than relying on what experience we do have from previous administrations and elsewhere, just to please those who can only accept politically correct appointments, would have been a bad sign.

I won’t hesitate to pounce when I feel he’s wrong. For instance, if he decides just to let everything done during the Bush administration, like approving torture or risking national security by exposing a CIA operative, just slide by, I will denounce that.

But as far as this day goes: January, 20th, Inauguration Day: 2009, my major criticisms have nothing to do with Barack, or Bush. More like; where the hell did they get that announcer who asked everyone to sit and then kept mentioning what was coming up next: “Worst DJ’s Ever R Us?” Isn’t that the same voice used on one of the first Star Trek episodes: The Corbomite Maneuver? You know, the one where that short little alien used a big scary mannequin to scare the hell out of the crew of the good ship Enterprise?

And what was that Aretha had on her head? I half expected it to light up like a decoration for the top of some Christmas tree, or blink the following words in time as she sang: “worst hat ever.”

Switching hats, let’s have a brief pause for a little tinfoil time: looking back at it now… could the Hillary/Barack race have been less a battle and more, “You pretend you have the ball and split left, I’ll pretend to have the ball and split right, and whomever is nominated will get to the White House before ye?” If we had had a candidate that attacked the opposite without mercy the response might have been less favorable. If we hadn’t had Hillary for a foil would Barack have gotten this far? This odd bad cop/good cop routine sure as hell confused the Hannitys and the Limbaughs out there, didn’t it? They kept trying to follow the ball so they had less time to do some Swift Boat or serial exaggeration routine. Part of the plan or not, it worked.

Where the ball goes now is up to you, Mr. President.

Listening to his acceptance speech I found hope in pessimism when he spoke of “gathering clouds” and “collective failure to make wise choices.” As a believer I was amazed and felt relieved when he mentioned the rights of non-believers along with believers. Has a President ever dared to do that in so public a manner? Not that I recall. They are Americans too, and if we really believe in freedom of religion they deserve freedom from religion just as we deserve freedom of. I found the honesty of, “…the ways that we (are using) energy strengthens our enemies…” and “…the worn out dogmas that have strangled our politics…” both refreshing and needed. “We will restore science to its rightful place?” A necessary slap. Maybe it was just the cold, I actually think Bush’s cheek had turned rose red as if he had been slapped… and his usual pissy stare when someone dares to point out just how ignorantly partisan he has insisted on being for the past eight years; the good of the country be damned.

There were other quotes I found bothersome. Like his goals: “..all are equal, all are free…” and “…the stale political arguments no longer apply.” Good luck with either of those, with so much of our history invested in keeping some in a state that is obviously less than “equal” or “free,” and so much of Murdoch’s money in promoting stale foam at the mouth partisanship as “fresh.” Giving a major role to a preacher who believes Gays deserve to be treated as inferiors in some matters doesn’t help.

Then we went to outright absurd…

How about “..our journey has never been one of shortcuts…” Who is he kidding? Native Americans in the way? Exterminate them to the point they desperately choose being shoved into concentration camp quality “reservations,” unless their willing to denounce their own heritage and also stay to the back of the bus. They were here first, folks. One can see a direct line between that and waltzing into Iraq, and when our excuses prove to be, at best, nothing but excuses, insist on staying until they become more like us. What do Iraqis really want? Well, everyone has to want whatever we want for them, right?

Proving freedom is something the citizens of a nation should choose to fight for, not be forced to accept. Speaking of “shortcuts…”

President Obama, since your family came here after slavery, maybe you should ask your wife’s family about this. When forming our own Constitution we agreed to a “shortcut;” a compromise that eventually wound up killing thousands of Americans and kept half of your heritage; once again, to the back of the bus.

But being a Constitutional scholar you know that, don’t you? You said it yourself…

“…a man who could not be served in a restaurant 60 years ago can now stand before you and take a sacred oath…

Do you understand why I have a suspicion that despite pretty words you may not be all you claim to be, kind of like the big box of cornflakes that’s less than half empty when you open it? And when you pointed at our adversaries and said they should judge themselves on what they can build, not what they can destroy, do you understand that the past eight years have made that statement very, very ironic? We’ve had eight years of finger pointing and WMD quality accusations: millions of deaths worldwide because a very small man activated a military death machine using those kind of lies. So now we wish to lecture others… again?

Somewhere Osama is laughing at that kind of less than change oriented audacity. He has heard it all before, and is still free to laugh about it.

Please, President Obama. Prove me wrong: especially when it comes to rejecting the battle between having safety and our ideals. You’re right, we can have both. A lot of tormented prisoners await your promise. And to fulfill that promise those who did these things must be held responsible.

No, I’m not going to try to mimic the color of one of the Blue Men performers by holding my breath.

Maybe this pool of change is shallow.

Maybe it’s deep.

We hope for the latter, but pray either way that whatever change we may get is more clear and clean than the sewage we have been forced to swim in; that never, ever could have even the slightest possibly of reflecting our ideals as a country, unless those goals are at the wrong end of a waterboard, or breaking into citizens houses because someone said that someone said they might have said something suspicious.

As far as “American ideals” those are more like ideals from Backwardica, or Upsidedownland. We expect our enemies to advocate such sludge, not our leaders.

Here is my promise. In my own small way I will attempt to support what I like and try to correct through my own meager efforts what I do not. It is the best any American can do. For to support what one really should not isn’t “patriotism,” and neither is silence. That’s a lesson lost during the past eight years. One hopes that; more than any other change, has finally come to pass.

If that works for you, then you have my best wishes and most of the nation’s.

-30-

Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.

© Copyright 2009
Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
All Rights Reserved

Ah, self assaulting rhetoric; a grand weapon for the insecure, is it not? Is it KNOT? Yes, that’s what Scribe feels, a worry knot almost as big as Lush Dimbulb’s anal cyst, forms in his gut as he interviews the protesters. Is our new leader safe and secure as he ascends to retake Junior’s monkey excrement stained throne? Scribe isn’t sure as he interviews those kept away from the proceedings.

The protesters; comics.

Leading the chant; Jon Stewart.

“Eight more years! Eight more years!”

Scribe stops Jon and pulls him to one side.

“What the HELL ya doin, Jon? You know what this criminal cabal has done to the country.”

“Yeah, Scribe, but a comic’s got to eat. Who am I going to mock now? What, they actually expect me to do Black jokes? That’s what we’ve got Wyatt Cenac and Senior Executive Commander-in-Chief Who Happens To Be Black Correspondent, Larry Wilmore, for. What am going to do now, eat out of dumpsters in Crawford, hoping to snag a mock interview?”

Some protesters are being allowed through the barricades. One comic was screaming at them with a gravely voice, “Hey you? What makes it right for you to get in and not us, mudderfrucker? Dat pointy white hat?”

Just then Robin Williams walks up, dressed as Mrs. Doubtfire, caressing his wig, he says, “I’ve been so worried I haven’t been able to take a shower for a week. What am I going to do now, sell my services as a transvestite? Go find the next Katrina and sing, ‘I’m stinking in the rain…’”

He wanders off, still talking to himself and anyone who will listen.

“Just between you and me, Scribe, he’ll probably do OK. He’s ALWAYS on stage…”

That comic screams at the next group being let through, “Hey, Osama Been Raghead!!!!!!! What makes you so special? Is that a tactical nuke in your case or is your latest decapitation happy to see me?”

“God, he’s obnoxious,” Scribe says.

“Yeah, he is, hey look… Jeff Dunham…”

“Scribe. Jon. Have you seen Achmed?”

“Yeah, Jeff, I think he just followed that latest group they’re letting through the barricade.”

“That’s not good. No, not good at all. Oh, crap. He brought his ‘suitcase’ with him. Not good at all…”

Jeff wanders off and starts to talk to a soldier at the barricade who threatens him with his gun saying, ‘Shut up, sir. I can tell you, like warning Junior before 9/11, we don’t want to hear about Achmed.”

“Um, Jon, why are they letting terrorists, skinheads and Klansmen in?”

“Well, Scribe, it’s like a wedding. The Obama team gave tickets to those who helped, civil rights workers and famous entertainers who cared about the cause.”

“And these guys?”

“Junior and Biggus Dickus invited them.”

Suddenly a solid stream of obscenities comes out of the comic screaming as they let some assassin-like people in.

“Wow. He uses words even Scribe doesn’t know. Isn’t that Sam Kinison?”

“Yeah.”

“But I thought he was dead.”

“He is, but not even death can shut him up.”

Before his illegal coronation by the Supreme Court, if anyone attempting acts of journalism besides the battered left side of the blogosphere had bothered to closely examine Bush’s history in business they would have discovered a crooked trail of fumbled disasters, all of them ending in Poppy Bush’s hapless eldest son requiring his parents or family friends to extricate him from the messes he caused, from which he also curiously extracted a profit. Junior’s proudly announcing that he planned to be an extra-constitutional CEO president, considering the model for most corporate top dogs is Joseph Stalin rather than Thomas Jefferson, should have been seen as the national threat it was by the adoring choir of the Big Media, but they were too busy even before the 2000 ‘selection’ testing their voices for proper harmony with the marketing jingles of the new Republican Regime.

And imagine some other president – Kennedy, Carter, Clinton, even Nixon — confessing in their day that they were really an artificial personality manufactured by a shady political promoter to peddle an ideology of ‘them that’s got are them that gets’ to the public against the people’s interests? Our sturdier parents and grandparents would have been denouncing this empty fake at bars, restaurants, kitchen tables and VFW halls across the land. Yet the snobby insider pundits, the vacant television stalagmites, and the cocktail-party bumpkins of the Washington press corps, as well as the bribed bloviators of the right, applauded, encouraged and disseminated the deception, even awarding the title of ‘genius’ to its primary progenitor in return for access to the House of Fraud, the good tidings of the vicious new barbarians and, perhaps, a pot of gold at the end of the dark rainbow.

It’s typical of Bush in his final days that he would attempt to forge his largest blunders, such as the response to Katrina and the bumbled occupation of Iraq, into medals of achievement; that he would blame his mistakes on intelligence officers that he somehow neglected to dismiss; that he would mock those who indulge in self-pity and then pity himself for all of the hard decisions he was forced to make. In his career in public life, Junior hasn’t learned a thing except how to shift responsibility to fall guys, nearly generate believable emotion for the camera, rely on others to do the heavy lifting, and read, or often misread, a Teleprompter.

Tellingly, a month ago his approval ratings hovered in the 25 to 27-point range; after this final concentrated attempt at history-altering huckstering, including a ‘who cares’ last ‘major address’ on January 15th, public approval in yesterday’s CBS News/New York Times/Gallup poll has dropped to 22 points – the lowest for any president since the advent of political polling. (Another lesson Junior failed to learn – keep your mouth shut when every time you open it you become less popular.)

As the intelligent, articulate and charismatic Barack Obama enters the Oval Office with the wind at his back, Bush slouches out the back door, a dismal figure allegedly convinced history will eventually accord him a place in the pantheon of Great Presidents; probably Buchanan, Pierce and Tyler thought the same thing.

But he’s as wrong on that score as he has been about everything else: In the end, Bush will be remembered by history as an embarrassing quirk; a reminder of the dangers of handing power over to a pious ‘Lord of the Fleas’ wedded firmly to an anti-democratic ideology dreamed up by the courtesans of the wealthy; a dire warning of the evils of mixing marketing with politics, and, ultimately, a flash in the pan magnified by the machinations of Karl Rove and the American corporate mass media into a bonfire – and one created solely of the vacuous vanities and contemptible crassness of the Potomac Prattlers and the neoconservative Republican Rattlers for which they stand.