kuniform

I couldn’t resist this post after having read at TPM Muckraker that one of convicted former member of Congress Duke Cunningham’s last acts as a free man was to leave a duffle bag full of cash and dirty undies in his wife’s driveway. Now, let’s hear from another veteran, however fictional, and his laundering of dirty undies, money and otherwise (thanks to bednark.com):

The Dude opens the briefcase and paws bemusedly through it as the car starts rolling.

DUDE
What the hell is this?

WALTER
My dirty undies. Laundry, Dude. The whites.

DUDE
Agh—He closes the briefcase.

DUDE
Walter, I’m sure there’s a reason you brought your dirty undies—
WALTER
Thaaaat’s right, Dude. The weight. The ringer can’t look empty.

A good Lou Dobb’s screed on 30 years of US Executive Branch power is worth a read. Use an Andy Rooney voice, and it’s even better. Seriously, he makes good points about this President, the Constitution, and signing statements as well as issues like immigration, NAFTA and more for recent former Presidents.

I’ve been deleting or readying a few posts I’ve had in draft mode for a long time. After reading Josh Marshall’s first story for Time Magazine, I decided to re-work these links I’d had. Marshall’s story talks about how there is a sudden uptick in terrorist activity, mostly amongst wannabee’s and has beens, including these recent plots in Miami against the Sears Tower and the idea of blowing up train tunnels in New York.

As Marshall notes, the tunnel plot was discovered in April but not made news until July, perhaps to help Republicans in the mid-term election. This report from June states that arrests in Canada cause U.S. officials to predict another terrorist attack coming soon on U.S. soil.

Here’s a Lou Dobbs editorial from a few months ago about the estate tax. You know when someone like Lou Dobbs, hardly a Woodstock attendee or commune member, is going after Bushie’s tax cuts, they’re not good for you. Sebastian Mallory at the Washington Post agrees in a column entitled “Reward for the hereditary elite.” That’s just what we should do—reward our elites, when they take advantage of their position of privilege to provide value to society. When they, like Bush, fail to do that, or, like Kerry or Gore, fumble away their opportunity to do so, our leadership class has failed us.

Talking about earmarks in Congress, the New York Times has a great article (now behind the Times Select wall) about the corruption in our federal government. The money quote comes from Dwight Eisenhower, a man not unfamiliar with the right wing attack machine of his era: “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

So, what is the thread that holds all this together? I think the boys over at talkingpointsmemo.com are right: Representative Hoekstra’s claims of Al-Qaeda’s leaking to the press information about our horrific NSA programs are just another smoke screen before the mid-term elections. The link they provide to the Harper’s article “Stabbed in the Back” is dead on. I believe the next few months will lead to another bunch of terrorist attack announcements with very little substance to them, as well as many more suggestions that the Democrats are traitors for rooting for failure in Iraq.
Now, do not get me wrong. I am not a Democrat. They are too into identity politics for me. I am into progressive politics, meaning that I believe in fairness, justice, and equity for all. It does not seem like either party is interested in ideas like the social contract, or that the rich must bear a portion of the burden just the same as the poor. Oh well, enjoy the links.

This article by Jack Balkin puts the whole Congressional uproar over separation of powers in perspective. The money quote:

Instead of being upset about the President spying on Americans without a warrant,and in violation of federal law, the members of the U.S. Congress are upset about the FBI searching a Congressman’s office with a legal warrant. Instead of being upset about the cruel, inhuman and degrading tactics of the CIA and military interrogators, members of the U.S. Congress are upset that a corrupt Congressman’s office has been disturbed. Instead of being upset about abuses of government contracting and incompetence that have cost the tax payers countless sums of money and sapped resources from our troops overseas, members of Congress are busy protecting corruption in the halls of Congress itself.

This Gilded Age redux has got to end. I am not affiliated with the Democrats or the Republicans—I am more interested in keeping our elected officials honest, since they cannot seem to do it themselves. More and more, the media does not seem interested in pursuing these stories. The next ten years are critical to our country, and to our future.

The ability of those in power to lie and cover up, regardless of political affiliation or role (government, industry, etc.), is diminishing with the rise of citizen reporting and the age of the Internet. However, as the mainstream media attacks the blogosphere as another enemy, it ends up siding with those who hate press coverage at all. The media is willingly complicit in this turn of events, as it tries to keep hold of notions like number of eyeballs or impressions, controlling access to those in power, and dictating the narrative of history. If the MSM wants to know why those in my generation and those behind us don’t read newspapers, it’s because kids don’t care to read propaganda.

They’re more concerned with American Idol than presidential elections because American Idol is inclusive and responsive. The presidential elections, well, they’re not as credible (2000 election) or direct (Electoral College). Former Republican Congressman John Kasich, now
surprisingly with Fox News, made that comparison to talk about what is wrong with the kids in this country. Um, John… What’s wrong is that people in power don’t want the kids involved. If they were involved they’d ask our leaders to do things like fix the environment, stop spying on our citizens, stop butchering people overseas, and be honest. And what’s the fun in being a leader if you have to do stuff like that?

An extremely interesting story on how China and Russia, traditionally, two enemies for a long long long time, have suddenly started partnering up in response to our aggressive idiocy overseas. Who knew? No one who gets their news from the TV, apparently.