Shakesville

What the fuck is Karl smoking?

Welcome to Karl’s Kloud Kuckoo Land:

Presidential adviser Karl Rove blamed the war in Iraq on Monday for dragging down President Bush's job approval ratings in public opinion polls. "People like this president," Rove said. "They're just sour right now on the war."

The president has so inextricably associated himself with this war, it’s impossible to think of one without the other. That’s the risk one takes when one rides into a second term on a wave of “I’m the security president! I’m a war president! My legacy will be to democratize the Middle East!” Let’s not pretend that the American people are confusing their waning support for the war with their impressions of the president. The president himself (under Turd Blossom’s carefully orchestrated direction) made his presidency exclusively about the war—to an unprecedented exclusion of domestic policy, aside from the occasional focus on kissing boys or girls who have the temerity to want bodily autonomy. Get real. The president is the war, and the war is the president.

And both of them are an unmitigated disaster.

Unhappy Base

Yesterday, I wondered who could possibly be made happy by Bush’s immigration speech and said there was no way he could go far enough to appease his wingnut base. Well, it looks like I was right. Here are the current results of the WingNutDaily poll which asks: What do you think of President Bush's speech on illegal immigration?

Somebody call the waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaambulance! (Via Pam.)

Other unhappy conservatives:

Senator Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama: “A few steps, including calling out the National Guard, significant though they may be, will not change the pervasive illegality of our current immigration system to one that works,” said Sessions, a critic of the Senate immigration bill. “And the American people know it.”

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa: "I don't think it moves [the debate] very much," said Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican and a proponent of the enforcement approach. "It demonstrated a willingness to discuss enforcement, but the commitment hasn't been there for 5 years." Mr. King said a wall along the Mexico border would be far cheaper and more effective than the increases in personnel, but he said Mr. Bush does deserve credit for urging immigrants to assimilate, learn English and respect the American flag.

Rep. Walter Jones, R-NC: Bush, by proposing a National Guard deployment, is “just trying to get a bill passed and appease the conservatives somewhat.” Bush's bid for support won't work, Jones said.

Rush Limbaugh: Limbaugh dismissed Bush's plan to dispatch National Guard troops to the border with Mexico as mere "window dressing" that would have little effect on stemming illegal immigration. "They'll be down there for a few weeks. They'll go home," Limbaugh said, according to a transcript posted on his website. "The border will be open as usual."

Richard A. Viguerie, conservative activist: "When President Bush says to his supporters, 'Trust me on immigration,' he has exhausted his reservoir of good faith with conservatives," Viguerie said. "Americans, especially conservatives, are beginning to tune the president out."

Viguerie again: ''It's amazing how tone-deaf this man is. This is the No. 1 issue that will lead to the takeover of Congress by Democrats… The White House doesn't seem to have receivers. They only have transmitters.''

Xenophobe, Warrior Princess: The only good thing about watching the speech was getting to watch it in the Fox News green room with Colorado GOP Rep. Tom Tancredo, a stalwart immigration enforcement advocate. It was nice to have someone to shake heads along with as empty platitude after platitude was laid on thick… Too little too late.

The echo of jackboots on your street

Remember this much-echoed lamentation from Jack Cafferty last week?

We all hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, cause he might be all that stands between us and a full blown dictatorship in this country.

By that token, it's time to shine up those goosesteppin' Guccis in the back of the closet. Glenn Greenwald reports that Specter and other Republicans have rolled over on any substantive concerns over the NSA's warrantless eavesdropping scheme by making the program essentially FISA-proof. Greenwald quotes from The Hill:

Specter has mollified conservative opposition to his bill by agreeing to drop the requirement that the Bush administration seek a legal judgment on the program from a special court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978.
Instead, Specter agreed to allow the administration to retain an important legal defense by allowing the court, which holds its hearings in secret, to review the program only by hearing a challenge from a plaintiff with legal standing, said a person familiar with the text of language agreed to by Specter and committee conservatives.

The rubbishing of privacy rights under this program is now signed, sealed, and all-but-delivered. How do you bring the government to task for intruding on your privacy when, as Greenwald says, "nobody knows whose conversations have been eavesdropped on, nobody could ever make the showing necessary to maintain such a lawsuit, and since the administration claims that all such information is highly classified, the evidence necessary to make that showing can never be obtained"? From this day forward, any challenge to warrantless wiretaps is crippled before it even begins. Judicial review has become a joke, and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is culpable.

Last week, the Washington Post called Specter "Congress's most outspoken GOP critic of warrantless wiretaps of Americans." George Bush must pray daily for even more "critics" like Specter, who reliably caves in at each heavy-treaded step of the Bush administration's assault on individual liberties.

(Via Atrios, and cross-posted.)

FBI says reporters' calls tracked legally with NSLs

Yesterday it was reported that news outlets' phone calls were being tracked by the government "in an effort to root out confidential sources." Late last night, ABC's The Blotter updated the story with the news that the FBI had confirmed the practice and explained (emphasis mine):

"It used to be very hard and complicated to [seek reporters' phone records in leak investigations], but it no longer is in the Bush administration," said a senior federal official…

"The FBI will take logical investigative steps to determine if a criminal act was committed by a government employee by the unauthorized release of classified information," the statement said.

Officials say that means that phone records of reporters will be sought if government records are not sufficient.

Officials say the FBI makes extensive use of a new provision of the Patriot Act which allows agents to seek information with what are called National Security Letters (NSL).

The NSLs are a version of an administrative subpoena and are not signed by a judge. Under the law, a phone company receiving a NSL for phone records must provide them and may not divulge to the customer that the records have been given to the government.

Kevin Drum says, ominously, "The FBI is now harrassing reporters in a way that previously required the consent of a judge -- which usually wasn't given except as a 'last resort.' NSLs, by contrast, are issued by the FBI itself. There. Is. No. Oversight. At. All."

Last November, the WaPo took a look at the FBI's increasing use of NSLs:

The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters -- one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people -- are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.

Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.

..."The beef with the NSLs is that they don't have even a pretense of judicial or impartial scrutiny," said former representative Robert L. Barr Jr. (Ga.), who finds himself allied with the American Civil Liberties Union after a career as prosecutor, CIA analyst and conservative GOP stalwart. "There's no checks and balances whatever on them. It is simply some bureaucrat's decision that they want information, and they can basically just go and get it."

In other words, not only is there no oversight at all; there's also no legal recourse for media who now know their calls are being tracked.

Josh Marshall summarizes, "I guess there's some extremely mild solace to be taken in the fact that the administration has apparently deigned to follow the law in this case. But a police state law still gets you a police state."

(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)

The right-wing goes haywire; calls for “final solution” and Bush’s impeachment

As Misty noted, Crooks and Liars finds WorldNetDaily arguing for patterning ourselves after the most efficient culture-cleansers, the Nazis, to solve our immigration problems:

Not only will [massive deportation] work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American society.

Um, yikes. Digby notes: "These same people, not a year ago were obsessed with terrorism. I guess the thrill of screaming about the Islamofascists wore off. Now they want to follow lead of the Germano-fascists to 'rid themselves' of the mexican vermin. It's all part of the same great racist roar." Too true. It doesn't even matter who they're hatin' on, as long as they get to hate on someone.

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald takes a look at the fiery debate in the conservative blogosphere over impeaching Bush for "his failure to stop the 'Mexican invasion' and protect our nation's borders. He also offers some thoughts on why this passion for immigration now.

I think a lot of the Malkin types have become bored with the whole "War on Terror" business, which provided them good, strong emotional sustenance for the last four years. But September 11 is now almost five years away…

Iraq is so muddled and ambiguous, and not all that emotionally satisfying. It's pretty depressing, actually, to think about how everything they said would happen there is not happening, and trying to figure out solutions, ways out, is just not very invigorating stuff for those who thrive on Hating and Warring Against Evil.

As a result, attention gets turned to immigration…

Like I said, doesn't matter who they're hatin' on. They've just gotta hate.

(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)

The Great Reformer

In what was the first ever speech on domestic policy from the Oval Office in his entire presidency, President Bush laid out his plan for immigration reform by giving us a history lesson—"We are a nation of laws, and we must enforce our laws. We are also a nation of immigrants…"—and by offering a five-point plan.

1. Secure the borders. He'll be asking Congress for funding for 6,000 new border agents by 2008 and plans to launch "the most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history. We will construct high-tech fences in urban corridors, and build new patrol roads and barriers in rural areas. We will employ motion sensors, infrared cameras, and unmanned aerial vehicles to prevent illegal crossings. America has the best technology in the world, and we will ensure that the Border Patrol has the technology they need to do their job and secure our border." He'll also be deploying the National Guard to "assist the Border Patrol by operating surveillance systems, analyzing intelligence, installing fences and vehicle barriers, building patrol roads, and providing training." But fear not; we're definitely not militarizing the border. Nope. No sir.

2. Create a temporary worker program. "I support a temporary worker program that would create a legal path for foreign workers to enter our country in an orderly way, for a limited period of time. This program would match willing foreign workers with willing American employers for jobs Americans are not doing. Every worker who applies for the program would be required to pass criminal background checks. And temporary workers must return to their home country at the conclusion of their stay." In other words, one of those nifty guest worker programs which has done so well in Europe and hasn't at all led to a disenfranchized immigrant population. Come give us your labor, and when we're done with you, you can fuck off. Meanwhile, it will allow employers to continue to pay wages that ensure no American could possibly afford to do those jobs.

3. Tamper-proof identification. "[C]omprehensive immigration reform must include a better system for verifying documents and work eligibility. A key part of that system should be a new identification card for every legal foreign worker. This card should use biometric technology, such as digital fingerprints, to make it tamperproof." Very Big Brother.

4. Opposition to amnesty. Yeah, that's a part of the five-point plan. "[W]e must face the reality that millions of illegal immigrants are already here. They should not be given an automatic path to citizenship. This is amnesty, and I oppose it." Well, all right then—although this seems like a cheat. I'm not sure stating opposition to a popular idea is technically worth its own point in a multi-point plan.

5. Honor the melting pot. A little Orwellian, that. It's really more like dishonoring the melting pot and demanding conformity, but tomato tomahto. "[W]e must honor the great American tradition of the melting pot, which has made us one nation out of many peoples. The success of our country depends upon helping newcomers assimilate into our society, and embrace our common identity as Americans." Common identity as Americans? Don't get me started.

So that's about it. Oh, wait—there was some stuff about "detention facilities," too.

For many years, the government did not have enough space in our detention facilities to hold them while the legal process unfolded. So most were released back into our society and asked to return for a court date. When the date arrived, the vast majority did not show up. This practice, called "catch and release," is unacceptable--and we will end it.

We are taking several important steps to meet this goal. We have expanded the number of beds in our detention facilities, and we will continue to add more.

Thank you, Halliburton.

David Neiwert's got more.

(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)

Till I can see right through my little blue window

Check it out:

Pretty. And busy too, which I’m not sure I like; I prefer more elegant posters, although there is something to be said for a picture that forces you to look at it long enough to see all the details. Click on the image for a larger version, and you can find the trailer here.

While I loved The Sixth Sense and Unbreakbale, Shyamalan lost me on Signs, and I was never able to work up enough interest to bother seeing The Village. He’s an incredibly strong visual storyteller; while his filmmaking style is easy to mock (lush lighting, slow pacing, a sense of portentousness in Every. Spoken. Word.), I’ve found that when it works, it’s surprisingly effective.

The danger is that, when it doesn’t work, your whole movie is ruined. Which is my major problem with Signs. As a thriller, it’s brilliant- as he showed in a few key scenes in Sixth Sense, that ponderous intensity Shyamalan is so good at works great when it comes to scaring the crap out of you- but when you start thinking about individual plot elements (hydrophobic aliens, a god who murders innocents in order to pass along easily deducible advice) afterwards, the whole thing falls apart. When I went to watch the movie a second time, I had lost all interest in it. The spooky stuff was still pretty spooky, but the rest it, it just felt like I was being hit over the head over, and over, and over with the director’s point.

Not to mention the whole “twist-ending” issue that comes to mind whenever you mention Shyamalan’s name. It was fun the first couple of times, but ultimately, jerking your audience around in the last five minutes of your movie loses its appeal when people spend the preceeding hour and 55 waiting for it. Plus, a good twist ending is damn hard to write, and the more Shyamalan relies on that same structure, the more difficult it will be to convince an audience that the ride is worth taking.

Lady in the Water could be excellent, though. I love Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard- the titular Lady, a nymph whom Giamatti’s hotel handyman finds in a pool- is sufficiently intriguing looking, and the trailer has a nice feel to it. (Actually, I thought the trailer was sort of clunky, but the teasers were cool enough that I don’t care.) Plus, I’ve read in a few places that this movie won’t have a twist, so I’m planning on seeing it. Fingers crossed.

The Reich as role models

Hey, WingNutDaily, you have your true colors showin'. Just thought I'd let you know.

Not only will [mass deportation] work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American society.

Rid themselves of six million Jews? Uh, not by deporting them but, oh, by killing them. I'm sure this self-described "Christian Libertarian" knows this, given he adds:

As the Minutemen have proven, again, unleashing the power of motivated private citizens is far more efficient than relying on government bureaucrats.

Awwww. Adolph would be proud.

(hat-tip C&L)

Question of the Day

If you had the opportunity to ask President Bush one question and were guaranteed that you would get an honest answer (I know; quite a spectacular suspension of disbelief required for this one), what would you ask?

I’ll have to think about this one for awhile, because at this point, all I can come up with is a rhetorical: “Have you no shame?”

On Blogger Burnout

I feel burned out today. So I’m listening to The Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin. All I need is to hear Wayne sing “The Gash,” and then I feel all better. Or, at least, obliged to battle on, battle on…

The Gash
Is that gash in your leg
really why you have stopped?
Cause I've noticed all the others,
though they're gashed,
they're still going.

Cause I feel like
the real reason that you're quitting
is that you're admitting that you've lost all the will
to battle on.

Will the fight for our sanity
be the fight of our lives,
now that we've lost all the reasons
that we thought that we had?

Still the battle that we're in
rages on 'til the end.
With explosions, wounds are open,
sights and smells, eyes and noses,
but the thought that went unspoken
was understanding that you're broken…

Still the last volunteer battles on, battles on, battles on...

Caption This Photo

Bush practices his speech

The Defeatists have the exclusive audio.

Bush v. Chavez

Bush throws a punch; Chavez shrugs.

The US is to impose a ban on arms sales to Venezuela, US state department officials have said.

Spokeswoman Darla Jordan said the decision was taken because of lack of support by Venezuela's government for counter-terrorism efforts.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez later responded that the ban "doesn't matter to us at all.”

And it probably doesn’t, considering Venezuela is basking in an oil bonanza.

The ban on arms sales is in response to “repeated warnings” from the US to Chavez’s administration to stop allowing two Colombian guerrilla groups from using Venezuelan territory. I don’t know the first thing about Venezuela’s relationship with either group, the Farc and the NLA, so I can’t comment worth a damn on the wisdom or necessity of the Bush administration’s decision to start issuing sanctions on Venezuela over it.

Here’s what I do know: I have so little faith in the competency and willingness to operate in good faith of the Bush administration that I automatically assume it’s a stupid maneuver. That’s not a good thing. It’s not a good thing for me to make assumptions like that, which is why I’ve now got to go educate myself on the issue, but it’s also not a good thing that our government has squandered every last shred of trust so thoroughly that I don’t believe for a moment that anything they do could possibly be motivated by good intentions nor done in our best interest.

I also know that Chavez, who has said Venezuela will not respond in kind, instead swatting away this decision like a gnat, comes out looking like a rose to anyone who doesn’t know the back-story, no matter who’s right, because Bush is so thoroughly, deservedly hated and distrusted.

The great irony here is that as Bush bumbles so spectacularly on the international stage, he serves as the perfect foil for Chavez, who becomes increasingly popular with his anti-empire rhetoric (much of which is spot-on), even as he shows much of the same disregard for democracy as his nemesis. But who will convince him that his vision cannot be realized at the cost of his nation’s democratic process, rule of law, and constitution? Not us, that’s for sure.

Hey, somebody do something!

Gettin' really bored and sleepy waiting for the much-anticipated indictment of Karl Rove. Actually, I was bored and sleepy anyway. A Rove indictment would dispell some of this gray cloud cover over St. Louis. It would provide a good excuse to crack open that bottle of bubbly in the fridge, anyway.

A word on the idea of the president's upcoming immigration speech as a distraction from the indictment, assuming for the moment that there'll actually be an indictment: Isn't this an indication of how weak Bush is now? I mean, if this is the best smoke screen the White House can conjure up, this admininstration is really running on fumes.

(Huh? Uh, cross-posted.)

Monday Night Political Football II

In contemplation of the president’s scheduled address on immigration tonight, I’ve noticed some people across the blogosphere and in the media questioning who, exactly, is going to be mollified by Bush’s speech (no less the border posturing) aside from perhaps some extremist elements of his base—and even the likes of Xenophobe: Warrior Princess (otherwise known as Michelle Malkin) are declaring “too little too late,” to give you some idea of how poorly all this bullshit is playing even with those folks.

I can’t imagine how this was ever identified as a conceivably successful wedge issue for the GOP. The conservative Christians are up in arms because their pet causes—“same-sex marriage, obscenity, and abortion”—are being given short shrift. As for the part of the base who do have a vested interest in immigration, there are two camps who can’t possibly be mutually satisfied. Bush can never go far enough to satisfy the Build-a-Wall Brigade without looking like an utter lunatic and losing forever any moderate Republicans. And just about any reform at all will go too far for the comfort of the corporatists, who would be happy as pigs in shit if the GOP would please stop paying attention to this issue and threatening the highly exploitable and cheap workforce on which many of them are dependent.

Bush’s success was his ability to marry the social conservatives, the corporatists, and the neocon warmongers in one big happy polygamist lovefest. And now that rocky relationship looks to be his undoing, because all the (unfulfilled) promises in the world can’t overcome the unavoidable reality that the interests of these groups are often at fundamental odds with one another. There’s no solution to illegal immigration that will satisfy the Minutemen and the corporatists dependent on undocumented workers for their bottom line.

As far as I can tell, the best outcome for which Bush can hope with this speech tonight is to delay the inevitable revolt of at least one part of his base until after midterms. I’m sure he’s betting on the possibility of garnering more support from moderates if he can cast the issue more firmly as a national security issue, but that’s got to have some kind of scary long odds at this point—and any success there would be dependent on alienating the two extremes mentioned above.

I honestly don’t know what he’s realistically hoping to accomplish, but I can’t believe he’ll have much success, whatever it is. I would hate to be wrongly optimistic about his potential for utter failure, but I really don’t see a way out of this one for the old duffer.

Lordy Begordy

Jesus has made another appearance—this time in a dying asparagus plant in Britain.

Martin Gregory,52, was enjoying a Sunday afternoon in his garden. Deciding that his ten-year-old asparagus plant was dead, he pulled it from its pot.

"I dug out the plant and put it on the side but, when I looked at it again, I could see a face staring straight back at me," Gregory said.

…But the part-time mosaic tutor is trying to keep a level head about the whole affair.

"It has not made me religious. But it could be something supernatural linked to the abbey ruins [across the way]. We don't know what's in the ground."

Jesus juice?

Holy folks are just going hogwild these days, presenting their images on sheet metal, trees, more trees, wardrobes, water stains, grilled cheese sandwiches, potato chips, plates of pasta, drywall, fish, more fish, and other junk. Forget Page Six—we need a Page 777 to keep up with all these holy sightings.

In other movie news…

Mel Gibson says his new movie, Apocalypto, which “captures the decline of the Maya kingdom and the slaughter of thousands of inhabitants as human sacrifices in a bid to save the nation from collapsing,” was inspired by George Bush and his administration “callously play[ing] on the nation's insecurities to maintain power.”

He tells British film magazine Hotdog, "The fear-mongering we depict in the film reminds me of President Bush and his guys.”

Hotdog. Ha.

Has Bush gone so far off the deep end that even conservative Gibson has had his fill? Or is this just a cynical and desperate ploy to attract the secular liberal traitor demographic, who weren’t massive fans of his last film, Christporn, or whatever it was called? Both?

You be da judge.

[Insert clever sinking movies pun here]

For those who care about the weekend box office and want a bit more analysis than the usual IMDB blurb, check out Joblo’s commentary. For those too lazy to click, Poseidon underperformed, Mission Impossible III is still on top (although it, too, had a disappointing first weekend), and the only other new movie to make the top ten, the Lindsay Lohan vehicle Just My Luck was not even able to beat out a second week Robin Williams comedy, R.V..

What does any of this mean? The big focus is the failure of Poseidon; combined with last weekend’s mediocre numbers, it looks like theater audiences aren’t as automatically interested in the big budget splodey movies as they once were. The summer movie season doesn’t really start till Memorial Day weekend, with X-Men 3; but there’s a lot of attention centered on this coming weekend when The Da Vinci Code hits. If a movie directed by the most populist director this side of Spielberg, starring one of the most famous actors in Hollywood and based on what may be the most popular novel in the world can’t pull them in, the sequels and remakes that pepper the rest of the warm months ahead might be in serious trouble.

Personally, I will laugh long and hard if The Movie That Lets People Feel Naughty About Their Religion While Still Confirming Their Core Beliefs tanks. I’ve never read the novel; I just like seeing large, stupid things fall down.

News Outlets’ Calls Being Tracked

See, this (via Raw Story) is why that whole “I don’t care if the government listens in, because I’m not doing anything wrong” line doesn’t work. Once they get away with one illegal breach of our civil liberties, they’re rarely content to not use it in other ways.

A senior federal law enforcement official tells us the government is tracking the phone numbers we 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.

We do 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.

Seriously, it’s time to impeach this whole administration. They’re traitors, every last one of them.

Oh, and by the way, darling press—this is what we in the blogosphere call karma biting on you on your fat, lazy asses. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to be the lapdogs of this administration, after all, huh?

Damn Dems: Maybe We Don’t Want to Win

Egads. Some Democratic leaders are suggesting that it might be better if the Dems lost in November, because it would be more politically advantageous to let a GOP majority shoulder the entire responsibility for Bush’s failures, because the Dems “would also be under increased pressure to come up with its own solutions to the problems afflicting the country,” and because, according to Bob Kerrey, the former Dem senator from Nebraska and current president of the New School, the “loudest voices…will be those that feel the strongest about their certitude. That’s going to be the left: Impeach him! Investigate him!”

Oh, the horror of actually having to govern and possibly do your fucking jobs.

Listen up, Democrats—this is a disgusting attitude. By this rationale, it would also be more politically advantageous for a Republican to win the presidency in 2008, too, and start the clean-up ball rolling before the Dems swoop in and finish the job. But that’s contingent upon an assumption that the GOP won’t do even more damage than has already been done. You want to stake our lives and futures on that?! Fuck you. This isn’t a game to us, you pricks. You might keep getting your tax-payer funded salaries, or your big consultant fees, and all the perks that don’t really suffer even when your party loses, but we’re not so goddamned lucky. To us, it matters what gets done when and by whom in Washington.

Yeah, I’m clever enough to understand why it would be more politically advantageous to let the GOP be solely to blame for the disaster we’re in, but I’m also, unfortunately for you, clever enough to know that the rubber-stamp Congress who aided and abetted this disaster was not solely made up of Republicans. The Democrats who have been there were all too happy on too many occasions to facilitate the GOP’s various schemes. You’ve been part of the problem, too, and now you need to be part of the solution ASAP—not hang around hoping to pick up a couple of seats but not the majority so you’re not actually expected to do anything until the time “feels right.”

And let me tell you a little something about our “certitude.” The “loudest voices” on the Left who are clamoring for investigations aren’t some thin minority of lunatics. That demand is coming from a majority of the American people. Just yesterday, I spoke to a friend who was so disengaged from politics a couple of years ago that I had to beg and plead with her to vote for Kerry, because she didn’t see a huge difference between Kerry and Bush. And now she’s bloody well engaged. I can’t actually begin to explain the depth of change in her political awareness. She’s pissed off about what’s happening in this country, as well she should be, and she wants something done about it. She isn’t a radical Lefty—she’s an American citizen who’s paying attention and is dependent, as are we all, on an opposition that actually gives a flying shit about opposing the continued ascension of the conservative agenda.

It was the unmitigated failure of the Bush presidency that cast into stark relief for her that there is a difference between the two parties. Don’t betray her hope. Don’t validate the widespread apathy whose roots flourish in a belief that there’s no difference between the two parties by turning away from your responsibilities. Step up to the plate and swing. At least give yourself the bloody chance to hit one out of the park. We’d rather see you strike out swinging than praying for rain so the game gets called before it ever starts.