Crisis – Moon of Alabama

January 15, 2006

Crisis

The United States is in a constitutional crisis:

The "momentous" issue (Alito’s words) is whether this president, or any other, has the right to tell Congress to shove it. And even if one concedes that wartime offers the president extra powers to limit liberty, what happens if the terrorist threat looks permanent?

But the opposition party is completely unorganized. Dem senators are only interested in useless self promotion. Biden, after a shameful self-representation in hearings, now calls for abandoning committee questioning of SOCUS candidates and to leave the task to a suppressed press.

But Biden, who notes that Judiciary Committee hearings haven’t always been part of the confirmation process, says ditching hearings would leave nominees to make their cases in the media, where holding back and being boring won’t necessarily fly.

But look at the press or what is left of it. The Washington Post editorial calls for an Alito confirmation as does the newest addition to right wing circle, the LA Times.

After that confirmation the supreme court of the U.S. will have a 9 7 to 2 vote on the more conservative site and a serious majority on anything the Reps will demand.

That with a population that is about evenly split on most issues and much in favor of more central issues like freedom of the womb.

The secret of this devastating Republican area is not how they gathered their strength through a K-Street project, that is public knowledge, but how they eliminated any opposition to it.

How have they done that?

Posted by b on January 15, 2006 at 21:42 UTC | Permalink

Comments

b, the Supreme Court has 9 justices. You probably mean 7 to 2.

Posted by: Rowan | Jan 15 2006 22:03 utc | 1

i feel like throwing in the towel. i off for today, can’t take the heat anymore

Posted by: annie | Jan 15 2006 22:07 utc | 2

Ethics Committees Won’t Commit to Action
THIS COUNTRY IS FUCKED.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 15 2006 22:34 utc | 3

The masses economic fortunes will have to dip alot further than they are. Half the US population is overweight. You don’t see fat revolutionaries. The population has fast food, unlimited shopping at Wal-Mart and the boob tube to keep the masses mulified. Bread and circus all the way. Why does the public need to be informed?
The GOP propaganda machine has outflanked anything progressives have tried to do. Rove is the master of munipulation, the Rasputin of the court. God-dam, this country is in big trouble. The press just mumble the talking points like they thought them up. It is really f—ing scary in these here times. And the problem is the public is really to stupid to understand whats going on. I’m like annie in a sense, I feel disappointed and trapped by what transpiring with this president. Now I know how the Russians and Germans felt when their countries went over the edge right before their eyes. I feel dumbstruck sometimes.
I’m waiting for Al Gores speech Monday. I hope its powerfull and challenges the Bushies with full force. Maybe he needs to run for president again. He won once, maybe he can pull it off again.

Posted by: jdp | Jan 16 2006 0:41 utc | 4

Fucking scared as well, but I will email and fax and call every Senator on the Judiciary Committee outlining all of the reasons not to confirm Alito every day until the Committee votes. If he is confirmed I will then email, fax, and call every Democratic senator demanding a filibuster, and email and fax every Republican senator outlining all of the reasons not to confirm ScAlito every day until the vote. It may not change anything, but I have to know that I have done everything I possibly could. Sadly, I believe it may very well be our last chance. And if he is confirmed, then it will be time to get serious about getting the hell out of the US. I am drained by what I see and hear, drained by disbelief. And I am grateful to Martin Luther King, Jr. for many things great and small – a small, but important one being the holiday tomorrow – a time to regroup and revive these flagging spirits. Can’t let him down.

Posted by: conchita | Jan 16 2006 1:05 utc | 5

.
Thanks to my perusing your blog, specifically, “moon of Alabama” (dig MACK THE KNIFE), I have arrived at what I believe is a defensible inference. Both you and your readers would welcome news of in-your-face overt opposition to your “smirking chimp”, my “dum’ya botch”.
In plainer terms, I want to run for Representative for Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District on a platform calling for the impeachment of President George Walker Bush.
Incidentally, I deliberately referred to your blog, to indicate that I visited your blog as an individual, and not as a spammer. Yes, that last is an illustion to a “pre-deconstruction” chick flick with a rating of two and a half hankies.
Ah, before you click on any of the enclosed hyperlinks, please read the entirely of my comment. For example, the three planks I nailed together in my platform out to get me elected. “impeach bush” is the first plank. The second is “impeach bush”. The third is like the second, “impeach bush”.
To continue, the first hyperlink below leads to the opening salvo of my campaign.
link
As for the second hyperlink, it leads to evidence that my candidacy is about more than opposition solely for the sake of opposition.
link
toodles
……\
.he who is known as sefton
oh, yeah, I should add that, in Epimethean Comment, I make the case that nominating Judge Alito to the Supreme Court is tantamount to treason.

Posted by: A Alexander Stella | Jan 16 2006 1:07 utc | 6

NYT Recognizes his danger. I think SF paper opposes him as well. What’s puzzling is that this isn’t a party issue. McCain is FURIOUS about his little signing statement he appended to the torture bill. Something seriously sinister is going on, as I think if you sat down w/far more Senators than are required for a filibuster, they’d oppose him.
After all, there is nothing subtle or complicated about this. The Republic is at a turning point. You want one, or you do not. Read the far right wing Paul Craig Roberts for christ sakes. “unitary presidency” is Newspeak for DICTATOR. Hello, anyone around here awake, or is Everyone who counts being blackmailed?

Posted by: jj | Jan 16 2006 3:07 utc | 7

C’mon you guys stop it! I know it is much easier from this side of the world sitting here saying what should be done but this juggernaut can be stopped now.
I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t know it to be true after having witnessed other societies without a nth of the communication modes, literacy or analytical tools achieve a turnaround.
Look I’m not having a go at anyone here but it occurs to me that as long as opponents of this fucking brute force lock on power divide each other into left and right, they are playing the exact game that BushCo and the rest of the wannabe oppressors want.
stick together to defeat this thing then afterwards you will have plenty of time to sort out left from right.
If you don’t gang together and fight it, it isn’t going to matter what particular economic/social theory you imagine is the way to go. That’s because nobody in power going to pay any attention to what anyone from Joe Blow to PCR thinks about anything.
Sorry A Alexander Stella this battle can’t be won through the ballot box. Why fight the pricks in the one area that they do know something about and are skillful at manipulating?
The options are all around you pick one that looks like a goer and stick with it.
The people who say “yes but” need a gentle smile and then move right along to someone that is ready to unequivocally give it a go.
Look at it this way. There’s actually not that many of the fuckers, 435 in Congress 100 in the senate, 9 scotus shitbags, 1 president, 1 vice prez plus assorted hangers-on, say a thousand tops.
Considering they are mostly middleaged flabs in suits, they are going to be very identifiable and very beatable.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 16 2006 5:14 utc | 8

still the same question,
still no answer
s

Posted by: sabine | Jan 16 2006 6:09 utc | 9

This makes me so mad I could stomp on baby ducks!
Bush’s Unlikely Co-conspirators
At least seven House Democrats learned about the NSA’s secret spying program four years ago. So why didn’t anyone blow the whistle?
and if wayne madsen is correct he has a bombshell that will make us tin hats go nuts! :
Anti-leak policy enacted at Pentagon before 911
wonder how many democrats were privy to this info…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 16 2006 7:14 utc | 10

The secret of this devastating Republican area is not how they gathered their strength through a K-Street project, that is public knowledge, but how they eliminated any opposition to it.
How have they done that?
b- my guess is that Jeff Gannon was more useful in his sleepovers at the White House than he was at Talon…although both issues are about his whoring for the right wing.
and of course, prostitutes of both sexes have always had a big role in politics…but with spying on Americans now an official Bush position, is there any doubt who would be most useful to spy on?
Debs- like the famous quote in “they thought they were free,” it’s the incremental abuses, the failure to stand up because there is that hope for representation that corrects the abuse, there is the denial that what is happening is happening. But who knows–the moment may soon come when the abuses become untenable–and then we’ll really see Bush’s worst toward the ppl here.
jj- unitary presidency sounds like some liberal religious group’s leader, huh? I want to get out of here because the world is going to bitch slap the fascists back to their graves, and we’ll be cannon fodder just like anyone else in the world who has known what it’s like to live in fear of American bombs.
It’s simply amazing that the US is now opening threatening the Dutch with economic or other payback if they don’t act the part of The Coalition of the Willing to justify their actions.
Stella…STELLA!! Before you run, you might want to make sure you get voting machines with paper trails that are auditable apart from what the machine tells about itself after the fact. and, fwiw, lots of ppl here are from other countries, not the US. b is not billmon.
Conchita- I’m working on being able to leave. But I may not want to if everything collapses, because where I am now, the city council is talking about dealing with peak oil and environmental changes, there are lots of organic farmers, walking and biking are feasible…but I may have to leave anyway for work in a couple of years. who knows how all these various manmade crises will play out.
Maybe none of the Bush maneuvers matter because James Lovelock, the man who theorized the Gaia view of the earth, (which is simply a westernized, science-based view of the earth that other cultures have held for thousands of years) says:
The climate centres around the world, which are the equivalent of the pathology lab of a hospital, have reported the Earth’s physical condition, and the climate specialists see it as seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years. I have to tell you, as members of the Earth’s family and an intimate part of it, that you and especially civilisation are in grave danger.
as far as that diet, jdp:
…as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics.
Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth’s surface we have depleted to feed ourselves.
Lovelock believes we are past the point of no return. Gaia will survive. but as we know it seems to be in for great change.
It means that the harmful consequences of human beings damaging the living planet’s ancient regulatory system will be non-linear – in other words, likely to accelerate uncontrollably.
Kunstler (Clusterfuck Nation) makes predictions for this year, fwiw. His issues are not the same as Lovelock’s, but they are symbiotic.
so it seems to me the right action would to be to make sure you are prepared for madmade or gaia disasters…will Houston be the next city to experience a hurricane like Katrina?
I think there’s a big market in catastrophes right now. Wonder what shares are trading for?

Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 16 2006 7:57 utc | 11

Lovelock

Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 16 2006 8:09 utc | 12

For those who disagree, this may happen:
Translator’s Conviction Raises Legal Concerns

For three years federal agents trailed Mohammed Yousry, a chubby 50-year-old translator and U.S. citizen who worked for radical lawyer Lynne Stewart. Prosecutors wiretapped his phone, and FBI agents shadowed and interviewed him. They read his books and notepads and every file on his computer.
This was their conclusion:
“Yousry is not a practicing Muslim. He is not a fundamentalist,” prosecutor Anthony Barkow acknowledged in his closing arguments to a jury in federal district court in Manhattan earlier this year. “Mohammed Yousry is not someone who supports or believes in the use of violence.”
Still, the prosecutor persuaded the jury to convict Yousry of supporting terrorism. Yousry now awaits sentencing in March, when he could face 20 years in prison for translating a letter from imprisoned Muslim cleric Omar Abdel Rahman to Rahman’s lawyer in Egypt.

Posted by: b | Jan 16 2006 8:38 utc | 13

Faux, speaking of leaving, have you noticed that Lupin, who did, has not been peppering us w/those annoyingly smug posts in awhile. Reading them, I could only hope that he fell flat on his face, or at least far enough to not think he’s so bloody special.
It’s so difficult to make any climate predictions based on a few years of data. While we need to cut back on hydrocarbons, the more they ratchet up the Apocalypse Now crap, the more those who are responsible for the mess in the first place will use it as an excuse to seize control over absolutely everything while pretending to be the solution rather than the problem.

Posted by: jj | Jan 16 2006 9:03 utc | 14

Lupin is over at Eurotrib, along with Colman, whom I miss very much. Along with Jerome and others whose comments and cyber presence I enjoy.
I suppose I have a different view of Lupin. I think he felt a real and deep need to move and was able to do it. Not everyone can, and so that can make comments meant as incentives sound like smugness, maybe.
I know from the experience of ppl from my own life that it’s hard for substantially rich…whatever that means…ppl to understand the economic life of ppl who do not have the same means. It’s not meanness.
I remember when Billmon stopped posting for a while you had also made some dismissive remarks about him. Personally, I miss quite a few ppl who used to post here and sometimes I seek them out on other forums to see what they have to say.
Lovelock is the scientist who postulated the idea of Gaia theory for westerners. As such, he created a new paradigm for western minds to see their place in the world. He’s hawking a book, so who knows, but I think he’s spent quite a bit of time looking at these ideas.
but who knows. maybe these warnings mean nothing at all.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 16 2006 9:24 utc | 15

thanks for posting the gaia predictions fauxreal. he may have his timings off a notch but so what.
i also sometimes wonder about posters who’ve been gone for awhile. hmm. no hard feelings whatsoever towards any. ebb and flow, they may check in from time to time whether we know it or not.
hi to conchita whom i met over a year ago , here or at whiskey bar. we underestimate the size of our tribe, who’s commenting does not always reflect our spectrum of participants. conchita i know from emails, is here regularly.
assumptions, like boundaries, say more about us than those we judge/restrict

Posted by: annie | Jan 16 2006 10:20 utc | 16

Alito Nomination Vote Put Off A Week

Posted by: beq | Jan 17 2006 14:23 utc | 17

An easy way to dumb down half the population is to forbid abortion and send women home to produce kids (future cannon fodder) and work tirelessly, selflessly and invisibly. There the agenda of the PTB and the Xtian fundamentalists merge. (Islam too.) The traditional down – homey touch works in the US, as it harks back to a past where homes were comfy if sparse, food was healthy, good, tasty, children were scrubbed (7 of them, how cute!), well behaved, and had only one hour of TV a day. Teach taught and was strict. Christmas was Christmas and the White Europeans were in charge, the future was electric bright. Santa loved everyone and Church was right and moral. The Earth would provide. The neighbors were assholes (or people to respect, charm and bow down to, take over and corrupt) but basically Americans were the chosen people.
A pro-growth, pro-natalist, pro-cheap immigrant labor was always the key.
Those were the days!
Looks like the white supremacists have had their fill – they think toothless and limping Mexicans who work for pennies are corrupting Ahm-Meri-Ka, and lots of rambuctious agressive little boys should be born. They can hand-ul the farm (practically 50% subsidised by the Gvmint), stand up for work ethic, independence, the old Frontier spirit. Heh.
The Constitution has nothing to do with all this. Nothing much to do with what is really going on. In any case, it has been thrashed, most here would agree with that I guess.

Posted by: Noisette | Jan 17 2006 18:25 utc | 18

The secret of this devastating Republican area is not how they gathered their strength through a K-Street project, that is public knowledge, but how they eliminated any opposition to it.
How have they done that?
Great question. Are things going on behind the scenes that we don’t know about, intimidation/blackmail/death threats/bribes?
THe anthrax mailed in Senator Leahy’s direction comes to mind; so does the aircraft accident with Senator Wellstone aboard. “Taking out” the opposition has always been a tactic reserved by far left and far right. Far left has no power to do so; far right has lots of it at the moment.
Then there’s blackmail. With all that domestic wiretapping going on since BEFORE 9-11, you’d think Cheney or the RNC would find a good use for it. Why let it go to waste?
Finally there’s the elitist theory of American government in which all elected Americans are bought off by corporate elites and that, because of this, there is no difference between the the parties.
In the absence of real evidence that the Dems are being coerced to shoot themselves in the foot, the alternative is to assume that every single member of the opposition party is an incompetent buffoon. [What are the odds?] Which most progressive democrats do assume. And so you have a split on the left.
As long as that split continuess, the 20 percent of the electorate who hate our freedoms will continue to vote into office the .001 percent whose policies eliminate our freedoms.

Posted by: gylangirl | Jan 17 2006 19:40 utc | 19

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