Last night we watched, Walk The Line, the story of Johnny Cash. It says something about the idea of "entertainment" in our culture when somebody with a Master's degree watches a boring movie about a boring country singer for entertainment, and then needs to spend forty-five minutes watching the interview clips on the website before he understands what the movie was supposed to be about.
But that was Johnnie's take on life, too, in a way. I guess it's appropriate that such a film should hit the theaters and the video screens today, because today is a time of dislocation, depression, cultural regression and enormous human disappointment and frustration.
For example,
The American company appointed to advise the US government on the economic reconstruction of Iraq has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars into Republican Party coffers and has admitted that its own finances are in chaos because of accounting errors and bad management.
We invaded Iraq and privatized the rebuilding of the country. Oops.
Today Reuters has an article describing a running squabble in the international news coverage of diplomatic relations between Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki and Condoleezza Rice.
Baghdad Bombs Kill 19 As Violence Mounts, by Miriam Karouny includes this candid exchange:
Maliki also criticised Bush for complaining about the manner of Saddam Hussein's execution and saying that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was helping "terrorists" by noting publicly that political problems could cost Maliki his job.
"It seems to me that Bush has given in to domestic pressure," Maliki said of Bush's criticism this week that his government had "fumbled" the hanging of Saddam, which was marred by Shi'ite officials making sectarian jibes, captured on video.
"Maybe he has lost control of the situation," the prime minister added, saying Bush was normally a strong character.
Of Rice, Maliki was quoted as saying: "I would advise Condoleezza Rice to avoid statements that may aid terrorists."
I suppose with Scooter Libbey on trial for perjury, BushCo is counting their blessings that the Decider and his Vice President probably aren't going to be impeached. Everything else is other people's problems.
On the domestic front, the country was treated on Thursday to the spectacle of Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States of America, "testifying" in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The New York Times heralded the event with grandiose suggestions about Bush's crumbling clout to trample on the Constitution and expand Presidential powers to forward his domestic security agenda. In White House Retreats Under Pressure, by Scott Shane, the Times speculates that:
The Bush administration’s abrupt abandonment on Wednesday of its program to eavesdrop inside the United States without court approval is the latest in a series of concessions to Congress, the courts and public opinion that have dismantled major elements of its strategy to counter the terrorist threat.
But this is wishful thinking. In fact, before the end of the article, Shane admits,
The several proposals pending in Congress to rein in the N.S.A.’s eavesdropping may now become moot.
In other words, by merely signaling to the Judiciary Committee that they are "going legal" with the domestic spying program, BushCo has deflated the opposition.
The extent of the effrontery in this dynamic became evident in Glenn Greenwald's report on the Gonzales hearing.
For all the posturing and grandiose speech regarding the Epic Terrorist Threat, Gonzales spent a good deal of time testifying on less emergent problems:
So in the middle of the Epic, Overarching, Greatest and Most Important War of Civilizations of this Time and Any Other Time, Alberto Gonzales and Orrin Hatch spent their time at a Congressional hearing designed to exercise Justice Department oversight talking solmenly about Girls Gone Wild.
This is nothing less than reducing the people's government of our country, and the Senate's solemn duty of oversight to the chicanery of clownish distractions. It's another tactic for "running out the clock."
Greenwald points out that Gonzales's testimony on the re-legalized, reined-in domestic spying program revealed nothing about how the program has really changed, whether or not it actually complies with FISA now, whether it will comply with FISA in the future, or even whether BushCo actually thinks they have to obey FISA anyway.
Greenwald speculates:
What seems to have happened is that they convinced one single FISA judge whom they like to sign a broad, sweeping Order allowing them to do everything they were doing before but declaring it all to be in compliance with FISA. That is why the Committee Democrats are so eager to get the Order. But, as Schumer pointed out, they could just start eavesdropping without FISA warrants again any time they want because they continue to insist that they have that power. And if they did, we would never know (unless someone told Jim Risen again).
There's a trend here. This, notice, is following right on the heels of Charles D. Stimson's outrageous remarks last week in which he publicly attacked the attorneys of major law firms, which he then attempted to blacklist, for their pro bono defense work on behalf of the untried and unrepresented prisoners at Camp X-Ray.
The Times reports:
A senior Pentagon official apologized on Wednesday to the lawyers of Guantánamo Bay detainees for suggesting that corporations should consider severing business ties with law firms that represent the detainees.
Yesterday, Steve Dannhauser sent around this email to the Firm:
Last week, a mid-level official in the Department of Defense criticized a number of major law firms, including ours, for their representation of the detainees being held at the Guantanamo military base. The official even went so far as to suggest that the corporate clients of these firms should consider taking their legal business elsewhere. The remarks have received widespread condemnation from numerous organizations and bar associations throughout the country, and have been disavowed by more senior officials in the administration.
The Supreme Court has determined that those being held at Guantanamo are entitled to counsel in defending themselves. The provision of legal representation to individuals who would otherwise go unrepresented is a fundamental ethical obligation of the legal profession in this country and part of the pro bono tradition of this and other firms, even where we do not believe in what those needing representation represent. It is for this reason that our firm, like many others, accepted these representations.
I have personally received an outpouring of support from many, including clients, for our pro bono efforts on behalf of Guantanamo detainees. We should all be deeply gratified – and proud – of this response.
So, who cares? BushCo tried to lock the country and the Constitution in a dark, dank cellar and throw away the key. Now they're publicly eating crow in every forum in every society in the world.
But they've dragged the country, and possibly the world, into the quagmire with them. As they drown in the muck of their own making, we're all left grasping for lifelines while the quicksand keeps rising.
Though the projected budget deficit shrank significantly by the end of the year, mainly due to lower flood insurance liabilities and increased corporate tax revenues, along with the revenue from the sale of the broadband spectrum, the long term budget and economic outlook remains iffy.
Who knew that the House and the Senate were unable to reconcile a budget for 2007, and are just operating on the House budget "deemed" to have been passed.
Behind the scenery of all the political melodrama and slapstick of the last few months,
the House budget plan is now in force in the House of Representatives (but not the Senate) as if it had been adopted by a House-Senate conference committee and then approved by both houses of Congress.
The plan would cut funding for domestic “discretionary” (or non-entitlement) programs by $10.3 billion in fiscal year 2007 and $167 billion over five years, relative to the Congressional Budget Office baseline. (The baseline reflects the amounts that CBO estimates to be needed to maintain current levels of service in these programs, and equals the 2006 funding levels adjusted for inflation.) The plan also would reduce entitlement programs by $5.1 billion over five years. House committees would be required to produce entitlement reductions of $6.8 billion, but $1.7 billion would be allowed for increased entitlement spending, apparently for outstanding flood insurance claims.
The savings from these program reductions would not, however, be used for deficit reduction. They would instead be used to offset a portion of the cost of the budget plan’s $228 billion in tax cuts, as well as its defense spending increases. The net result would be significant further increases in the deficit. The plan would increase the deficit over the next five years by $254 billion above what deficits would be if current policy was left unchanged.
In a Democracy where tax cuts take precedence over fundamental social programs and fiscal responsibility, citizens have to wonder who their representatives really represent, or whether our whole society is simply so corrupt that everyone accepts the quicksand status quo. We look backward wistfully on the days when people knew they had to walk the line.
No comments:
Post a Comment