WB: Fools and Liars – Moon of Alabama

May 15, 2006

WB: Fools and Liars

Billmon:

If the House Dems are serious about fishing for impeachable offenses (assuming they get control of the fishing rod this November) they could pick a worse place to start — for Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld, I mean. For Shrub, though, I think they’re going to have look elsewhere. The problem is that in the end, no matter where they look, they’re probably going to run up against the Nuremberg defense — he was only following orders.

Fools and Liars

Posted by b on May 15, 2006 at 18:26 UTC | Permalink

Comments

PsyOps, eco chamber, meme, truth?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 15 2006 19:49 utc | 1

Federal Source to ABC News: We Know Who You’re Calling

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.
“It’s time for you to get some new cell phones, quick,” the source told us in an in-person conversation.
ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.
Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 15 2006 19:55 utc | 2

You’re in really deep organic fertilizer when the truth is “politically impossible”.
That is as good a definition of terminal corruption as one needs.

Posted by: Scorpio | May 15 2006 19:57 utc | 3

“But I think it’s important to keep wailing away, particularly since Big Media seems perfectly content to let them do it again.”
I hope Billmon meant whaling away.
I know the situation is bad, but I don’t think he’s crying(or rending his clothes) over it.

Posted by: Boander | May 15 2006 21:01 utc | 4

I second Boander’s thought: to “whale” means to beat or thrash, and since the nineteenth century, it has been used figuratively to suggest vehemence or repetition. The OED states that the etymology is obscure: “Commonly regarded as a spelling of WALE v.1, but there are difficulties of form, chronology, and meaning. Perhaps orig. = to thrash with a whalebone whip (see WHALEBONE 3b).”
Also, the proper meaning of the phrase “beating a dead horse” is working on a task for which one has already received full payment. I acknowledge, however, that misuse of this figure of speech is nearly universal.
Those offended are asked excuse this pedantry.

Posted by: lawyerbitesjudge | May 15 2006 23:30 utc | 5

Billmon has another post up…while b, hopefully, gently sleeps…
Earlier I referred to the ongoing revelations about the Cheney administration’s domestic spying operations as an Orwellian strip tease act, and now it looks like the pasties are finally coming off:
I cannot tell you how disturbing it is to me for Billmon to invoke an image of Cheney’s man tits with pasties on them.
The proprietor of the Whiskey Bar goes into Nixon’s plumbers and spying on the dems, and some news ppl…obviously NOTHING compared to the level of spying going on now.
and while Billmon wonders if it’s either spasms of paranoia or ratfucking ala watergate…or mixed motives that relate to the executive power grab contained in the “unitary executive” of the bush junta.
personally, I think it’s that the ratfucking is the jr high school version of the banana republic that does not have spasms of paranoia…it feeds on paranoia. And thus, yes, all reporters have no privacy, nor do their sources, because those sources are traitors to the unitary executive junta that demands total loyalty because, otherwise, they have to answer to the “reality-based community” for things that, in any other time in US History, would not only be impeachable offenses that both parties would recognize as dangerous to constitutional democracy, but also acts that deserve to be punished via the criminal justice system.
I just saw the Daily Show, where every talking head on Fox spewed the b.s. that you are not included in this blatant violation of constitutional rights (and would Griswold also work as a precedent here?) if you aren’t calling Afghanistan six times a day…the talking point of this was soooo obvious…almost identical language… Stewart gave a little ham on wry smile and said that apparently all the Fox anchors are working as the president’s press secretaries.
So, yeah, I think the paranoia runs deep in the bush junta — because they’re criminals.

Posted by: fauxreal | May 16 2006 3:59 utc | 6

The Changeling
For Billmon to posit in some fantasmagorical future six months from now or two years and six months from now or maybe never, that a plethora of hitherto unimaginative and unpatriotic House Democrats are suddenly going to stand up, grow full beards, chain themselves to The Machine, and then pull the Temple of Power down upon themselves is simply …
… in … f–king … insane.
Star Trek played it better, with blase humor. Nomad had more logic than this jerkoff schtick.
Take a pill, Bill. You’re stinking up the joint.

Posted by: Nomad 6157 | May 16 2006 4:11 utc | 7

Democrats? My eyes just glaze over.

Posted by: DM | May 16 2006 10:07 utc | 8

Democrats make their money by playing good cop to bad cop; by pretending to some kind of ‘opposition’ they rake in the dregs, and can hypocritically claim to be low man of the pole – for moral reasons.
To top it all off, they are actually more dangerous than the Republicans, although that wasn’t the case in the past. Billy C is not representative here, He was Pres at a very particular time in history and as an efficient pol managed to keep things stable on the surface.
More dangerous? That is a bit wild perhaps. Nevertheless, foreign policy is fixed, as it the ‘take over’ by various Corporations. The Dems would deal with everything in a slightly different way – bit more Medicare, etc. none of it would make a damn bit of difference. The discourse would change, that’s all. The fascicstic bent would be transmuted into an even more patriotic ‘egalitarian’ renewal – all together and forward march. Even the daughters of the rich would be subject to the draft, everyone would have their proud ID (biometric, kick started by Billy C) and drivers would be judged not on their amount of debt (the more the better!) but their past ‘dangerosity.’ Little kids would be tested for deviant tendencies, and not just put into horrendous drug trials to let some pal in a drug company market dangerous junk to unsuspecting parents. The whitewash on that would be – worse. One could go on: Americans would finally have to admit that Blacks are dumber than whites, but as I have heard a Dem friend say, that would be right, a step forward, because you have to know the real situation to deal with it right. (Again, that word…) You have to go with what you have…
Bush is not Orwellian – he is a dope. Now I admit that when I was writing the above I was thinking of Hillary C. And not of Al Gore.
Americans, I think, don’t understand that Fascism is an extremism of the Center. And believe you me, the Dems are better placed to push it forward than the Republicans or even the neo-cons. The neo-cons have an elitist, weird, 19th cent. oligarchist, Straussian (just one philosphical strand) ideology. They are also personally grasping and greedy; arrogant; disorganised, and stupid. The Dems would be cleverer, smoother, softer, more organised, more appealing (after all, as the opposition, about 63 % or more ppl would vote for them if they did vote and their votes were counted.) ..no time for more.
As for foreign policy, that would, or might, change on the surface. They would appease Iran and go for manipulating a Shiite majority…Israel would agree with that as well (not that they have much say.) The domino theory and the Carter doctrine would be implemented in a different way.
I’ve made this post rather extreme, and left root causes out. It is just for argument….But beware of the Democrats…

Posted by: Noisette | May 16 2006 20:46 utc | 9

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