by Monolycus
lifted from a comment

It’s certainly not done as well as Billmon’s "compare-n-contrast"
literary style, but even US conservatives are starting to have trouble
swallowing the cognitive dissonance that resonates like a death knell
from the Republican Party. No amount of selective amnesia
is going to wipe away the vile hubris formerly displayed by the likes
of such tools as Michael Ledeen or Charles Krauthammer. That these
people who have been so incredibly, consistently and demonstrably wrong
are still paid to write their "informed opinions", while people like
Bernhard, Billmon, Jérôme, Badger, Justin Raimondo (aw, Christ… I
could go on and on… and that’s not even mentioning the sensible
contributors here) are still plugging away in relative obscurity…
well today, I’m feeling a little bitter about it.

I’m feeling a little bitter about a lot of things, truth be told.  Maybe it’s because I can’t bring myself to suffer from "selective amnesia" and turn around on a
dime. Maybe it’s because I don’t think this moment of relative calm
will last forever and, while I’m making some tiny progress in my
attempts to forgive, I haven’t even begun down the road of forgetting.
I remember the 1980’s pretty clearly… but after Ronald Reagan was
canonised for finally pulling off the miracle of quietly dying, I’m
beginning to think that maybe I’m the only one.

The Republican Party is showing signs of growing at least a very
short-term memory. They were cautioned by Bob Dole against outlawing a
minority filibuster a few years back on the grounds that it was never
written in stone that they would always be the majority party in the US
Congress. It was sound advice that was reluctantly accepted even though
it turned out that there was no need for it anyway… they had
apparently forgotten that their "opposition" was the Democrat Party,
who in their own turn had forgotten where they had left their tickets
when they took their spines out to be dry cleaned.

Now it feels like the morning after a drunken bender when the memory
of the previous night (or last six years) starts to intrude in
uncomfortable little fits and starts. US Rep John Boehner (one of the
more aptly named walking suits on Capitol Hill) seems to be amongst the
first to show signs of that morning-after repentance.
Dimly aware as he sobers up that he behaved like an asshat at the
office party, he’s entreating the Democrats to be good sports about the
whole thing while turning the spirit of the Golden Rule on its ear:

"What we really expect out of the Democrats is for them to treat us as they would liked to have been treated."

Boehner has nothing to worry about. The Democrat Party has no longer
memory (or integrity) than the Republicans do. Sure, there’ll be some
tough talk, but after a few meaningless appeasements and hollow
gestures, the Democrat Party will straighten its skirt, walk out of the
copy room, and rejoin the festivities while pretending that nothing has
taken place. Sadly, the rest of the office will go along with the act
and only the cleaning staff, saddled with the duty of disposing of a
few indiscreet xeroxes of intoxicated asses, will be any the wiser.

As I mentioned, there will have to be some tough talk and
appeasements made before the business-as-usual resumes, so let’s all
put on our most dour expressions for the morning meeting and pretend
that we’re going to address the issue of who did what to whom and how
we will not abide any talk of it around the water cooler. The Democrats
have prepared a 100-hour long power-point presentation about how things are going to be done around here from now on:

Congratulations to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her
fellow Democrats, who begin their new control of Congress today. They
also deserve full marks for paying attention while in the minority,
because it’s clear Democrats learned a few things from Tom DeLay–to
wit, how to rush through legislation without any minority participation
or public debate.

House Democrats plan to pass a pile of legislation in their first
100 hours, bringing the measures quickly to the floor without committee
hearings. These are issues they campaigned on last year and that do
well in polls at first blush, such as a higher minimum wage, price
controls on prescription drugs and "ethics reform." The rush is
supposed to show Democratic resolve to get things done, but it’s enough
to make us wonder if they’re afraid that some of their ideas won’t hold
up under scrutiny.

There’s a lot of bold-sounding initiatives in a short space of time
(but we’re getting used to that, right?). Let’s take a closer look at
just one of the proposals being rushed through; namely, the War Profiteering Prevention Act of 2007 (introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy [D-Vt]). 

"War Profiteering Prevention".  Wow.  Anti-American sentiments like that should have Cheney organizing a weekend hunting trip tout de suite.
Settle down, folks. Nothing to see here. The language of the bill
(which nobody ever reads, anyway) makes it absolutely unenforceable
except in the most half-assed and inconsistent manner conceivable
(read: this will not affect anyone who tows the party line). Turns out
that Leahy is only concerned with cracking down on "materially
overvaluing any good or service with the intent to excessively profit
from the war and relief or reconstruction activities". How’s that for
taking the fangs out of it? To begin with, you still can
"excessively profit" (which means, what, precisely?), just so long as
nobody can prove you "intended" to do so. Put that shotgun away,
Dick… when you have a net worth as high as yours, it will be awhile
before anyone can accuse any single one of your enterprises as
profiting "excessively". We have narrower definitions about what
constitutes "pornography" (HA!), and that hasn’t stopped anyone from
making a quick million on the side with it.

So, really, the only obstacle to putting this whole messy bender
behind us and penciling the next office party into our DayRunners is
the slim chance that one of those aforementioned ass-xeroxes will find
their way into the hands of an oblivious spouse or possibly into an
interoffice memo. Once again, no worries… the Republicans have been
in charge of human resources, and they’ve already given us the best cleaning staff money can buy… just a few snips:

The White House and the Secret Service quietly
signed an agreement last spring in the midst of the Jack Abramoff
lobbying scandal declaring that records identifying visitors to the
White House are not open to the public.

The Bush administration didn’t reveal the existence of the
memorandum of understanding until last fall. The White House is using
it to deal with a legal problem on a separate front, a ruling by a
federal judge ordering the production of Secret Service logs
identifying visitors to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

snip…

In the past, Secret Service logs have revealed the
comings and goings of various White House visitors, including Monica
Lewinsky and Clinton campaign donor Denise Rich, the wife of fugitive
financier Marc Rich, who received a pardon in the closing hours of the
Clinton administration.

The memo last spring was signed by the White House and Secret
Service the day after a Washington-based group asked a federal judge to
impose sanctions on the Secret Service in a dispute over White House
visitor logs for Abramoff.

The chief counsel to another Washington-based group suing to get
Secret Service logs calls the creation of the memo "a political
maneuver couched as a legal one."

"It appears the White House is actually manufacturing evidence to
further its own agenda," Anne Weismann, a Justice Department lawyer for
19 years and now chief counsel to Citizens for Responsibility and
Ethics in Washington, said Friday.

snip…

Last year in the Abramoff scandal, the Bush
administration, in response to three lawsuits, provided an incomplete
picture of how many visits Abramoff and his lobbying team made to the
White House.

The task of digging out Abramoff-White House links fell to a House
committee that collected the lobbyist’s billing records and e-mails.
The House report found 485 lobbying contacts with presidential aides
over three years, including 10 with top Bush administration aide Karl
Rove.

snip…

The Bush administration’s agreement with the Secret
Service "at a minimum will serve to postpone a final resolution of who
these records belong to," said Steven Aftergood, director of the
Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American
Scientists. "This memo reflects the Bush administration’s view of
American government, which is that the people’s business should be
conducted behind closed doors."

So, you see? Everything’s covered. These things happen…
mistakes… blah, blah, blah. Now is the time for us to begin the
process of healing by… well, forgetting anything happened.

Get back to work.