This Week in Tyranny
Sunday, July 27, 2008 at 12:27PM NYT:
Britain should no longer rely on assurances by the United States that it does not torture terrorism suspects, an influential parliamentary committee said in a report released [July 20th].It’s almost turning into drudgery to catalog all the different ways our country’s torture program is a bad idea. One of our closest allies now believes we are untrustworthy, and there’s no reason to fault such a conclusion.
You know you’ve got a weak case when evidence starts getting thrown out of your custom-made kangaroo court.
Memo to Linda Sanchez: Unlike me, you can actually do something about Karl Rove’s illegal defiance of Congress. Leave the blogging to the amateurs, you twit. Just do your job.
The Miami Herald has been doing a fantastic job covering Guantánamo and even has a dedicated page for it. Carol Rosenberg’s latest dispatch (via) reports that the U.S. released one of the actually important suspects it captured, and did so for
no apparent reason. We’ve more or less resigned ourselves to
criminally incompetent behavior from the government on the domestic
front, but as more and more gets revealed about its conduct in foreign
affairs it is becoming increasingly obvious that “heckuva job”-level
hackery is a primary characteristic there as well. Forget bad PR
internationally over torture - the administration might be fighting
transparency and oversight so ferociously because they know what the
American public will think when its abysmal performance is revealed
there as well. (The Herald’s Guantánamo page has been added to my “Window Washers” blogroll, and I certainly hope more lofty recognition is in the offing.)
Finally, a non-executive power note. The video of the President saying “Wall Street got drunk” got lots of attention, but what jumped out at me more than anything was: “The question is, how long [until it sobers up], and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments?” Did he really say “all these fancy financial instruments”? Isn’t it embarrassing that our Harvard MBA President sounds like a rube whose idea of financial planning is stuffing money under a mattress? And isn’t it outrageous that he doesn’t know even the most basic particulars of the meltdown? Isn’t it a damning indictment that he apparently never picked up the phone and said “Paulson, get in here!” That he evidently never asked anyone “what are these here HELOCs I keep hearing about?” I don’t expect the President to be a financial wizard - though lately it seems no one is, just a bunch of impostors - but isn’t it reasonable to expect him to take the time for a quick tutorial on a handful of the major details? “Fancy”?! God help us.
Reader Comments (3)
I've long ago quit being amazed at our President's ignorance. The American people knew he was an intellectual lightweight with almost zero curiosity about anything but chain saws, pick-up trucks and riding bicycles. But that is what the electorate thought they wanted. A plain-spoken (read: ignorant) dry drunk from a privileged background who had never been successful at anything he had done without being carried on the shoulders of people with an aged allegiance to his family.
And here we are, contemplating electing another Republican who somehow has never seemed to be able to find the time to figure out what he really believes. Or worse yet, what the actual facts are surrounding issues he is supposedly championing as a presidential candidate.
Watch this video to see the parallels here.
Are these types of people now the chosen standard-bearers for the Republican Party. If so, how can anyone say they are proud to be a Republican?
Sheesh. He could have called up his old buddy, Phil Gramm, for an explanation.
The New Repukelican Party's mantra is its own undoing.Their philosophy stops at capitalism's "Law of the Concrete Jungle". But that's no idealogy, it's just a mechanism. So they're hollow and obtuse having no Great Idea or purpose beyond cash, and as they eventually double-back over time on every cause they pick up from the headline polls, they wear and stress like an old Budweiser can ending up with all the same appeal to any considering mind.