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August 2, 2005
Open Thread
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Here it comes.
Bush told a roundtable of reporters today, 8/1, that he has the utmost confidence in Rove, who is a valued and essential member of his Administration.
Remember back when John Gotti and Sammy “The Bull” Gravano were just wading into their legal troubles? Gotti told Sammy and everybody else that they were inseparable, brothers, and nothing could change that.
Sammy took that to heart, and kept his mouth shut, even after weeks in jail, under constant interrogation.
Omerta lasted until the FBI played Sammy a tape of his blood brother John saying to one of his torpedoes that Sammy had ‘green eyes’ (was greedy, in Mafia-speak), and needed to get whacked.
Bush saying he supports Rove come what may is a public distancing. This is so he can tell himself, Rove, and others — after he fires him — that it was nuttin’ personal.
Strictly business.
Posted by: Antifa | Aug 2 2005 6:04 utc | 1
In English political custom, when the Prime Minister declares his unqualified support for a minister under attack, said minister normally resigns within a week. What has flabbergasted me about GW Bush is that when he issues these statements, he sticks with them. It is appealing as a kind of primitive honesty, but constitutionally (in a broad sense) it is very damaging to the office of the President and that of the official concerned (in this case, Deputy Chief of Staff).
On the other hand, the machine showed its contempt for the office of the President when it insisted on making a stir over policy-irrelevant pecadillos of GW Bush’s predecessor, so I guess this is nothing new.
Nice governmental framework. Shame about the accretions and the paint job.
Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 2 2005 7:39 utc | 2
You all don’t seem to get the Bu$h-Rove thing. It’s the empty vessel & the rattlesnake. The empty vessel can’t fire it’s rattlesnake. Rove’s ferocity is in direct proportion to Bu$h’s vacuity. Not to mention that Rove’s crime’s are childs play in comparison to those of the squatter in the Oval Office. What if Rovie decided to sing – he’d get immunity in 5 mins.
Posted by: jj | Aug 2 2005 8:18 utc | 3
Jassa,
And thats why some (from the genius thread) think Bush is a genius, and what I was trying to say about his unadulterated ambition (and its corporate ideal coefficient). It is precisely this quality of parading ones own ego in a struggle against compromise, to do the the least diplomatic thing, the most in your face rejection of moderation that elevates the man (in their minds) transcendent or genius. There is a pureness of intent, and inpenetribility in the face of (at this point) worldly opposition that demonstrates the epitome of unhinged exceptionalism — to reduce the complexity of the world to a personified struggle of ones (his) own willpower. This is what both Hitler and Mussolini did to personalize for the masses, their own self aggrandizement. So what, happens when all the mechanics that have been put in place, are perceived to be just that?
Posted by: anna missed | Aug 2 2005 9:00 utc | 4
Somebody mind explaining to me precisely what Bill Frist is playing at? I’m embarrassed to be so damned suspicious of his motives, but isn’t it a little late in the game for him to re-inventing himself as a human being? What’s next… is Tom DeLay going to come out of the closet and throw in his support of same sex marriage?
Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 2 2005 9:39 utc | 5
I know that I’m insisting on this too much, but
Richard Chicakli’s site is worth a visit, especially if you think that the blogosphere doesn’t count for anything. Even more interesting, however is this excerpt:
The FBI and the State Department are acting such as Victor Bout is hiding or that they do not know where he is about? Although this comes as no surprise after using internet Hollywood stories, and a corrupt United Nations contractor to conduct and conclude a FAKE two-year investigation in about two-days before executing an American family and aborting their life and dreams. The US Government, and the Belgian Government (which is the only government supposedly seeking Victor Bout on charges not related to arms dealing) are fully aware of where Victor Bout’s about; however, and strangely enough they have never asked or wanted to talk to him, nor have they ever asked for his extradition or even answered HIS REPEATED REQUESTS TO TALK TO THEM? For a matter of fact there was NEVER a request made to the Russian Government for Victor Bout! That is NEVER!!!
Here’s the proof!Given these facts, and the FACT that the FBI and the State Department did not want to talk to Bout, the whole story that the action against Chichakli’s is because he new Bout 10-years ago is becoming very questionable and may lead to raising questions about the real cause for the US Government to orchestrate an action of such magnitude against a nearly 50-years old accountant? Rumors related to the government being angrily responding to Chichakli’s refusal to play certain role in a US sponsored “Syrian Government in-exile” similar to the scenario used prior to the invasion of Iraq as being the true reason may be correct, particularly the U.S. Treasury acknowledgement that their action was based on the recommendation of the U.S. Dept. of State.
The allegation made here regarding a Syrian Government in exile is highly interesting, and worthy of investigation. It is, of course, also self-serving and so may not be true. Nevertheless, Chichakli’s father was a high ranking Syrian general involved in 1950’s coups, as well as a close friend to CIA honcho (and friend of GHW Bush) Miles Copeland. Thus he’s not completely extraneous to such spookish doings.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Aug 2 2005 9:43 utc | 6
Here’s a really funny article on Iraq Army and Police numbers:
LINK
Also b, there’s a chart in there that badly needs analyzing:
This dog’s volatile, but do we buy it?
Posted by: Groucho | Aug 2 2005 10:46 utc | 7
The empty vessel can’t fire it’s rattlesnake. Rove’s ferocity is in direct proportion to Bu$h’s vacuity. Not to mention that Rove’s crime’s are childs play in comparison to those of the squatter in the Oval Office. What if Rovie decided to sing – he’d get immunity in 5 mins.
Which is why if he keeps his mouth shut, Bu$h will laugh off any indictment. Bu$hCo’s owners own the Supreme Court, and they won’t let one of their most valuable assets sit in the cooler. Also, anyone so close to the center of things would get Bu$h whacked immediately if there was there was any tendency to sing.
Rove will walk regardless.
anna,
I suppose that makes sense, but I would apply the term “transcendent” only in an aesthetic sense. It seems to me that the man’s hardline stance in these cases is more often than not purchased, in one way or another; it exhausts more nascent power from the office than it secures afresh. Getting a good chunk of the public to say “You tell ’em George” in unison is one thing. Parleying that into a force greater than the sum of individual sour grapes is quite another.
I don’t think he has that talent. Borrowing the words that Grant Gilmore used to describe Christopher Langdell, the first Dean of Harvard Law School, I would say that he is “an essentially stupid man with one idea that he [has] pursued with all the tenacity of genius” (quoted from memory). I can’t bring myself to go any further than that.
Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 2 2005 14:06 utc | 9
A little more on anna missed at 5 AM,
I agree with J Jape that he doesn’t have that talent. Although at least one insider has claimed that the dub is really smarter than we think, it is quite apparent that he is in over his head, and has been from the beginning. The man is totally dependent on Rove and Cheney to guide him, write his speeches, call the next move.
Best to watch Cheney for hints on how things are going, that is whenever he pops his head out from under his rock. Word lately is that Dick is going nuts in his struggle for total control. I see big cracks spreading in the armor.
Posted by: rapt | Aug 2 2005 14:33 utc | 10
@monolycus,
Frist’s income comes from the family business, owning corporations that run hospitals [that committed medicare fraud btw and got away with it]. He also gets $ from big pharma. Perhaps the smell of money is what motivates him. I see a glittering revolving door and a golden handcuff in his future, with Jeb!’s blessing. I also see a plum job in the Jeb! administration for Fitzgerald once he’s done neutering Cheney.
Posted by: gylangirl | Aug 2 2005 15:39 utc | 11
Interesting article from an unlikely source on Russia’s recent past and future:
Link via Robotwisdom
Posted by: biklett | Aug 2 2005 17:54 utc | 12
@ gylangirl,
You hit the nail on the head.
Never fall for all this easy “psychological interpretations” or attempt to interpret future actions based on the past. Always follow the money! After all, that’s what they do, and how they got to be where they are. Senators and Congressman do not have philosophies, any more than goverments do; they have interests, or at least their clients who put them in positions of power do.
You can spend your life analyzing this administrations contradictions on “Free Trade” or spreading “Democracy”, or realize that is all a bunch of hooey–the easy storyline you sell to dumbass Joe Public, who can’t really follow the news, but believes his govmint would never lie to him. Sort of like the fairytales you read to young children to put them to sleep.
In the same manner, don’t get caught up in personalities. George Bush isn’t really a cowboy. (I wish someone could find a tape of him speaking when he was a student at Harvard or Yale; I guarantee he didn’t have the accent he has now.) All of the personalities that politicians adopt are as finely crafted as characters in a movie, and designed and tested to appeal to the constituencies they want. This is an artform, just because it is not what you studied doesn’t mean others don’t understand this implicitly.
Frist didn’t really care one whit about Schiavo. All that was a set-up to burnish his bonafides with the x-tian wingnuts, so he can now tack to port on an issue which really concerns him–stem cells, and the federal funding of private research.
Always adopt the widest possible purview of a situation: They always do.
Anna and Jassa, while you could ascribe to GWB fascist temerity,
he nevertheless doesn’t rise to the level of a Hitler or Stalin.
Bush is, at heart, an insecure lonely man. You can tell both by
looking at him, those facial jestures we find so amusing, and by
his entire career of failure and bailout. Almost endearing, in a
certain way, and evocative of sympathy and pathos, except for his
milieu and his willingness to lead a cosa nostra of absolute evil,
in a “green eye” Croesus sense, willing to whack anyone for $’s.
The *problem* is so many ordinary people find him simple likeable,
and find the screaming liberal hordes so disagreeable. ^ Bush wins.
Posted by: lash marks | Aug 2 2005 18:51 utc | 14
Now, of course, you realize that George W. Bush & Wingnut Wingmen will misunderestimate the title to your post, billmon, and take it as a comliment!
I just know they will read it as The Decent of Man. And you know George W. Bush is nothing if not decent.
Thanks and laurels from those to the right of Joseph Lieberman and Joe Biden will begin arriving… now.
Posted by: SombreroFallout | Aug 2 2005 18:58 utc | 15
rapt, jass,
Well, I think the fact that he is’nt very talented only adds to the mystique. That he could bite off so much with so little, and seem to get away with it, gives him (to his adoring fans), this weird little engine i think I can, I think I can — levity of –a — maze — ment — that must mean that he has this special and secret power ring , or gee maybe God really does talk to him, because how else could he pull all this crazy power mongering and killing thousands and thousands of people, not to mention the unprecedented attack on the constitution, all accomplished by some frat boy C student, never had an original idea in my life, cuz daddy fixed my life with influence, so I drank myself into a hallucination of myself that I could deny with a higher calling, leaving the shell of myself a perfect empty vase — to be filled with the cut flowers of the craven that would bring a tear to Baudelair’s eye — yeah man! This boy can fly.
I think this is why they love him.
Posted by: anna missed | Aug 2 2005 19:25 utc | 16
And this is also to say that Bush, himself, is on the serial killers ethereal rush, of getting away with it.
Posted by: anna missed | Aug 2 2005 19:48 utc | 17
anna,
Sure, on an aesthetic level, GW Bush is really something. And he is a necessary cog in the machine — but not the single sufficient one. Unfortunately, there are plenty of other obliging minds where he came from. I know that it’s a painful thought, but the machine could easily have recruited someone else for the task of President, who would be every bit as transcendentally vile. The machine is after a hammerlock, and some future administration will be much more “productive” than this one has been.
Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 2 2005 21:53 utc | 19
anna,
Sure, on an aesthetic level, GW Bush is really something. And he is a necessary cog in the machine — but not the single sufficient one. Unfortunately, there are plenty of other obliging minds where he came from. I know that it’s a painful thought, but the machine could easily have recruited someone else for the task of President, who would be every bit as transcendentally vile. The machine is after a hammerlock, and some future administration will be much more “productive” than this one has been.
Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 2 2005 21:55 utc | 20
Just something on the Frist surprise from my day job as a hedge fund manager… Have a look at the stock prices of stem cell research companies like STEM, ASTM, VIAC, GERN, and KOOL.
From briefing.com on 11 Jul 05: “We are hearing that some traders are looking to add some stem cell-related stocks to positions ahead of this Wednesday’s Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing, which is expected to focus on the status of stem cell research.”
Just sayin’ that someone with a bit of capital behind them that knew that the outlook was about to change for stem cell research was in a position to make a lot of money very quickly. The buying seemed to gather steam from early June, and then sell off immediately post the announcement as traders(?) took profits.
Circumstantial evidence does not a conspiracy make, but it’s not like the newly de-fanged SEC is about to make any waves.
Posted by: PeeDee | Aug 2 2005 22:09 utc | 21
Well it is that time of year again, time to remember what we can of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The article referenced above, from E and P, traces with scholarly detachment the history of hundreds of reels of documentary film taken by Japanese and American cameramen in the ruins of both cities. It relates the successful suppression of this footage by the us government for over 40 years.
You don’t have to go for the baked-potato haberdashery to understand that your government is hiding things and lying to you all the time. What do you suppose they know about Falluja that won’t be declassified for another 40 years?
On a more positive note this story reminds me what an equaliser ubiquitous digital imaging and mobility of data are. I don’t think that a government can contain images to the same extent that the US managed with these lost reels of film: the indymedia sites, the Rodney King video tape, the leakage from Abu Ghraib (even if we have not seen the worst of it) were not possible in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, even 80’s.
I used to think it just plain ridiculous to have cameras built into cell phones. Now I think, perhaps the more ubiquitous the better.
Posted by: DeAnander | Aug 3 2005 2:08 utc | 23
Juan Cole has an excellent entry about Reagan’s legacy (aka Osama bin Laden.)
Posted by: fauxreal | Aug 3 2005 2:53 utc | 24
interesting article on that suppressed footage of hiroshima/nagasaki. i could swear that, in elementary school (early 70’s), we were shown a quick b&w film that had been taken from a tourist’s movie camera of the actual flash at ground level of one of the two bombings. can’t recall much else but am thinking that the camera was still running after the flash, though it had dropped to the street & was laying on its side. that’s an old memory though & it could be corrupted by subsequent years of television. no luck googling. could have been the iwasaki footage shown in 1970 16-minute film (or w/i it), which others have mentioned being shown in class, and my mind’s playing tricks on me. they did show us kids some gruesome stuff. holocaust footage. the graphic driver’s ed films from the highway safety foundation. footage from vietnam. doubt they show that kind of stuff anymore to kids. hell, they can’t even show the true costs of this war to the adults. used to be a crawl every night on the network news broadcast showing that days’ casualties. we are so abstracted from reality it ain’t even funny.
Posted by: b real | Aug 3 2005 4:00 utc | 25
This link to Imad Khadduri’s
Free Iraq
blog may have already been signaled, but the news from the very recent Beirut Conference should certainly have
wider circulation. The Iraqi government in exile seems to be beginning to take shape.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Aug 3 2005 8:18 utc | 26
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/08/03/iraq.main/“>Fourteen Marines killed in bombing
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Fourteen Marines and a civilian interpreter were killed Wednesday when their amphibious assault vehicle struck an improvised explosive device about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) south of Haditha, Iraq, military officials said….
Posted by: Nugget | Aug 3 2005 11:32 utc | 28
The new
Vanity Fair story (pdf) on Sibel Edmonds is on line
(photo copies, legible but not ideal copy). It makes some explosive allegations regarding Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Aug 4 2005 5:45 utc | 30