I wonder if anyone can tell me if the statement as covered by
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/02/cheney.html
is a deliberate goad, to dare to provoke unavoidable legal action both by the current administration and the International Court(if the summary of this article is correct), thus allowing Republicans to rally around "their man"and all the political ramifications in an election year, or merely stupidity and arrogance from a delusional, power-mad, out-of-touch etc etc etc 

Nothing more to say really

Well, well, well, America has extracted itself from the evils of the Bush Hegemony and dropped itself into the arms of competent Democratic Governance = ridicule. So now because of some arbitrary "if we only win a process by 51/49 it doesn't count" the country that insists on the self-proclaimed mission of bringing Democracy to the world has proved that actually that's not true. How can she postulate when she can't even self-manage? How can she negotiate when principles are cast aside just to pander yet again to the special interests? How can she throw away the safest seat in the US Senate and a 66-33% lead?

So Healthcare looks a disaster by the self-set parameters of the 60 vote rule.I cannot wait for the upcoming Financial Reforms, Green Economy and Carbon Emission negotiations, Israel/Palestine, Iran/Pakistan/Afghanistan, Nukes with Russia, Katrina Rebuilding etc etc etc etc etc etc

You have the government you deserve. Actually that's not true, you have the governance you wantYou want 40 lunatics on the right to scream obscenities at the State of the Union, to pummel society with fearful "Death Panels", to allow the richest to blatantly steal from the general population with absolutely no recourse other than a few "Examples" (Madoff/Stanford) all with Government collusion and assistance, to deny your society some basics such as welfare and healthcare, to sacrifice thousands of lives in the pursuit of unjust and illegal wars, to ravage the world's resources without accepting responsibility, to scream and holler louder ('cause thats how you win), to say black is white, red is blue, green is left, "Press" is Liberal while all the time taking one up the ass from corporate sponsorship and benefitting no-one except the 1% whose lives will never be affected by sickness or foreclosure or hunger or homelessness or failure or anything else that Joe the Plumber has to put up with. You'll be voting in Sarah Palin.

I have invested so much of my hope in believing that under President Obama, anything was possible, and if the rest of the Democratic party was like him, therewould be a future. There was the promise of leadership and the remaking of America to a freer and fairer, more responsible society. There the leadership the rest of the world craved after 8 years in the wilderness. How wrong I was. How deluded, and dispirited, and depressed, and crushed and amazed at the depth of my despair, damning myself for hoping again.

You know, I live in a country where the voting population has been outraged again and again over the last year or so at the dishonesty, the incompetence, the greed, the disconnect, the arrogance, the self serving, the stupidity, the abused privilege and summary fatal flaws of every politician, any one of which should disqualify them immediately. Watching the management of this country display it's nursery school levels of skill leads me to reflect that  we really are America's poodle, the political class kowtowing to the current de-rigeur fashions, slogans, marketing techniques, focus groups and micro management model of the US political elites, mildly toned down for the UK market. Competence - what's that then?

Still, look on the bright side, despite 10% unemployment, at least your export market is working well in one area. . . .

But as for the way things are, America, you're just wasting my, and everybody else's, time

I'm done.

Healthcare - but not healthcare reform.

A country of 2 Right Wing Parties, both vying for the Stupid Award.

Israel/Palestine

Pro-Israeli Gatekeeper on 24 hour duty. Wonder where that one's heading....

Climate Change Targets

President announces non-binding desirable aspirations for cutting targettable greenhouse emissions early so as to avoid embarrassment and hostility additional air pollution caused by AirForceOne flight to Copenhagen.

Meaningful Open Government

More secrecy than a Bedouin harem. And that's saying something.

Financial Reform

For those in the $10m-$250m personal net worth range. All others are "Innocent Victims".

Fair Trials for All Guantanamo Detainees

What's wrong with the Hague? Ah yes.

The Party of Change

Only in the Unseen Places, like Underwear.

Nobel Peace Prize

For what we may be about to receive, depending on whether the choices are made, not whether they are politically hard. Perhaps we should re-title it the Nobel Toasted Teacake,as that may be achievable. Just as long as the Senate is not involved.

Hope

Abandoned/Still in negotiation/Watered down and may resemble Despair in the Final Bill.

The Future

Looks as bleak as the world's 3rd largest economy in 2030,  and still no healthcare.

Changing Washington

Um......Errr.... but it's really gotta want to change.....

The Elite's Self Interest

Running the country on behalf of the have nots.

The U.S. Constitution (amended 2011)

Article 1 Greed is Good

Article 2 So are guns

The U.S. Congress

For the people, by the people, F**k the People.

The tone of the continuing retroactive legitimatisation and justification of  "43" took another bizarre turn today after a Cheney escaped from a secure ward to prostrate herself in front of a defenceless microphone, claiming the P{resident's mark of respect shown to US military families, as their dead loved ones watched their somber return, were inappropriate and should not have been made public. Why does the US media continue to ingratiate itself with this family? Is it the lack of a class system that gives airtime to this "Ordure"?
Surely the Cheneya position is as backward an attitude to Honour and Respect as Don't Ask Don't Tell is to gay rights. Perhaps if the mad one were to "give up" "Women" in support of and in solidarity with the US Marines as GW "gave up" Golf, she might have a point, even a fatuous one. However this grandstanding-defend-the-reputation-of-the-war-criminal-in-waiting-forgetful-that-we-banned -coverage-of military-deaths-because-it-made-us-look-bad-in-the-court-of-public-opinion-do-I-look-fat-in-this-pantsuit should not even be on the airwaves. Please make her stop . . . . .I don't want to beg as it becomes very ugly and pathetic, but pplleeaasssssssssse . . . . . . 

Ahmadinejad is to free and fair elections?
Kim Jung Il is to Peaceful, Meaningful Negotiation?
Sadaam was to Weapons of Mass Destruction?
Mao Tse Dung was to the liberation of the Chinese People from oppression?
Stalin was to allowing ambition amongst the lower ranks of the Party?
What do you think?
Suggestions please. . . . . 

Could someone please turn the "Iran's got a bomb....or might have.....possibly....maybe......Karl Rove says so and we all know how right he is......." volume control down for a second and just look at some easily discernible facts, for a moment,please?

Let us look in the popular fiction genre of the last century.

In "The Sum of All Fears" Tom Clancy provided a step by step description of the construction of a Fission device. In his end notes he also clarifed that the information was easily accessible and took him little time to gather all the data which he shared with an eager readership.

It was written in 1991.

Let us now look in the current news cycle. Will this be looked on as "fiction" in 18 years time? The current screaming headlines and histrionics seem to conveniently avoid the obvious:-
1) Iran has the right to produce Nuclear Power for domestic energy consumption.The US has admitted this recently - http://tiny.cc/tD7RH
2) Russia is a Nuclear Power and advisor to the Iranian Government.
3) Apparently anyone could get the information in 1991-since then a thing called the Internet has exploded the access of, for example http://tiny.cc/UHUIz
4) Very much in line with the Clancy scenario it takes little to extrapolate that ex Nuclear Industry employees faced with the USSR implosion in the 1990s looked for work elsewhere. Who knows where they ended up. . .
5) In case someone missed recent world events, Pakistan was implicated in the proliferation of Nuclear Technology for example http://tiny.cc/KPbOP

So back to the Islamic Republic.
As http://wikitravel.org/en/Iran states, not much for coffee lovers here.
Also with A-bomb/H-bomb/Medium range Nuclear devices - the current destructive palate has little to offer other than the fallout from a "preemptive" attack - not to say that this may change. North Korea may yet still auction off it's current stock to some "colorful" Mid-Asian Dictator Leader in exchange for a pension pot - who can verify that at the moment?

We're all still trying to finish off one war of choice sold as Nuclear Deterrence without a piece of prosecutable evidence in Iraq. If there is a smoking gun in Iran then I am sure a few retargeted coordinates and the leaking of such retargeting would act as sufficient deterrent. Both to Iran and Israel (who has to date breached 30 UN resolutions, has the stigma of war crimes and crimes against humanity hanging over it, and has developed in secret a nuclear weapons program without sanction).

Breaking News

US Sources acknowledged today that Iran has accrued the knowledge to build a Nuclear Device. State Department Sources laid the blame squarely at the feet of Penguin USA for allowing previously secure, secret information to be widely disseminated in an International Bestseller."We regret that the publisher did not think this through before putting commercial considerations ahead of National Security Interests" said a spokeswoman on the condition of anonymity. "The fact Clancy is a Republican is even more shocking. Clearly he has ignored the party doctrine that all propaganda is centrally managed, and gone ahead anyway just to make money. This is not the American Way."

Give peace a chance - if it doesn't work I will press the button myself.

Sir You are an Ass. Your petulant display of ill-informed disrespect defines your character. "You lie", you shouted at the current President. I think you may have been a little late - you would probably have been more accurate had you offered this outburst to the previous President, or Previous Vice-President for that matter. Goodness knows what the American People will think of you now, fortunately being English I feel marginally less embarassed that your buffoonery erupted on the International stage, and served as a magnificent example of Party - in - denial/freefall/wingnut idiocy. In my opinion this was not an opportunity for a Fox News style "conversation" Mano a Mano. Perhaps you might offer an apology to the world, or at least to the President. Yours sincerely

I think the ultimate insanity of the current system in the US is that virtually the equivalent number of people in the US as the entire population of the UK is uninsured (give or take a few million, but you know what I'm saying). So you have private healthcare companies campaigning for the continued disenfranchisement of a very large number of people. 
This is a statement of intent of the more fortunate in the richest country in the world. It won't take much imagination to guess the ethnic and economic demographic of the 50 million left behind. I choose to see the anti-health reformists as anti-Constitutional, denying the poor and needy the right to acquire parity, in favour of an Apartheid-like status quo.

What a marvellous example for the rest of the world.

In the UK the system is flawed - it's bound to be when it employs more than a couple of million people. It is also sneered at by many European Countries, Denmark considered the system barbaric in it's lack of care, waiting lists and failures to provide adequate care levels in certain areas. Indeed the UK is famous for inventing all sorts of cures for many diseases, yet not being in the position to afford these inventions.
However it is the national system and has survived countless attempts to undermine it, especially under Maggie Thatcher who considered the social welfare system to be unnecessary, succeeded in privatising a large part of that system with terrible consequences (whilst squandering the nation's weath - i.e. North Sea Oil reserves on Trident), and created a rich/poor split so deep that I doubt the country will ever recover.
The NHS is probably the only thing to withstand her assault and it's taken about £100bn of additional spending on top of the annual budget to refund it over the last 10 years, just to get it back to some kind of functioning system.

In my own area there is a severe funding shortfall, A&E Departments are being closed down and staff are being laid off because of the financial mess the Government has promoted over the last 10 years, and yet last week my Father was sent immediately to the local eye specialist within a couple of hours of a check-up for fears of a detached retina, the previous day I took my bleeding Father-in-Law to the local emergency room where he was seen in 10 minutes, sown up, x-rayed, checked the next day, stitches out 5 days later and paid Sick leave for 2 weeks. All for the cost of 20p in the pound. We also get Nuclear Weapons, a couple of wars and a corrupt and inept State-guaranteed Banking system thrown in for free.
My own personal feelings on the current debate is that the core of your Nation's soul is being exposed, and the anti-healthcare reformers' insides look particularly ugly to me at the moment. I hope President Obama succeeds - maybe some of your corporations need to realise that addiction to corporate profit is ultimately bad for business.

Somehow I doubt a sufficiently inclusive package will result, but hey, anything can happen - look who you guys elected as President . . . .

Watched Frost/Nixon last night. Remembered some of the scandal from my childhood. Watched a few programs about it, some dramatisations, never thought I would see the like of it again.
Wrong.
I only awoke recently from the self-imposed deliberate dis-interest of the the fragmentation between the real world and the political, more fool me.
In watching the film, it struck me that nobody has learnt a thing from the fiasco. The (qualified) admittance of wrongdoing was such an acute political moment, the defining example of the lust for power overcoming decency and mutual interest. Yet here the world stands 35 years later, several cycles of Partisanship trailing in the wake of the political maelstrom that was Watergate and still many questions need to be asked, for the opportunity that was offered, dashed, ignored and bypassed now needs to be addressed.
Some initial questions:-
When is it the time for Obama to dispense with the refusal to deal with crimes against the American People by the last administration?
When is it the right time to admit that for most politicans, the mere fact of wishing to be one is disqualifying of itself?
When is it the right time for the Governance of a country be re-established along the lines of competence, rather than favour, for the privelege of service rather than personal gain?
When is it the right time to support, evenhandedly, Middle East peace?
When is it the time to allow the poorest in society the access to the same basic rights as those who are in a more fortunate position, regardless of earnings ability?
When is it the right time to remind the Banking system that it's responsibility outweighs it's importance?
When is it the right time to leave behind the self, to think of the we, the whole, the survival of our future generations, rather than blinkeredly waste, pollute, spend our granchildren's environmental and fiscal inheritances?
There are so many other questions of equal importance, about war, disease, poverty, society, education, food, water, and a myriad of additional items, but actually the answer is the same.
When is it the right time?
The right time is now.

http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451c45669e20115713045d8970b http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/the-purging-of-froomkin-ctd.html

I don't tend to get pissed off that often - at myself for my clumsiness and diminishing faculties mainly, however the news that the Post had fired Dan Froomkin made my blood boil. I got into Dan in 2003 which led me here a little while later, so although we are strangers, I've always enjoyed his tone and analysis. I got good and mad last night and wrote a letter to the Editor, then the automated response informed me that many conditions were required for consideration etc etc including a 200 word limit, hence the abbrieviated rant below.

So anyway, I qualified my entry further, and sent it. It won't get a look in, it will be perceived as "left, liberal, socialist" or whatever. I am none of these. I am in the middle, watching the Post veer right, and what a pitiful sight it makes.

So I thought I would at least get it in print, if only virtually, here at my reading matter of choice. I sent it to Dan at Niemann  Watch as a small gesture of solidarity towards his unfortunate situation. It 's all here below.

Subject: White House Watch, no more.

Dear Sir

You have fired Dan Froomkin. He was the reason I felt compelled to register

with washingtonpost.com, his departure the reason for my cancellation. 

I found him cutting, interesting, pithy, rightly critical of US Government

malfeasance and it's enablers, whilst you leant towards the now-bankrupt

politic, in an overtly cosy, increasingly blinkered, unquestioning

relationship with fair and balanced, accurate, in-touch print-edition

luminaries such as Gerson, Krauthammer, Kristol.

Dan's coverage represented, for me, a drive for the essential truth I

associate with the reputation of the Post's Watergate series. Perhaps the

celluloid experience deluded me about the Nobility of Journalism.  I looked

to your .com edition ahead of BBC and other coverage in Britain, for

defining, reasoning, questioning recent issues of great world import, and

tended to find possibly the only counterweight to your institutional

political bent in Mr Froomkin's articles. The general coverage I have read

over the last 6 years has increasingly failed it's duties of major 4th

estate partner, in asking the tough questions on behalf of the world. Mr

Froomkin's end is mine, also. Trusting that you survive the new media

revolution,

Date: 18 June 2009 23:34:52 BDT

To: letters@washpost.com

Subject: White House Watch, no more - further information

Dear Sir

(Redacted contact details)

While I accept it is your rule to ignore Website-only matters, I

felt compelled to write as I am personally disappointed that you have

decided to remove the one writer from your roster who offered points of

view that resonated as honest and truthful with me. Clearly the Idealist in

me is piqued - however I am reasonably certain that in removing him you

will alienate a significant proportion of your online readership. In my

opinion, Mr Froomkin continues to raise issues concerning the G W Bush

regime's allegedly illegal practices, that have yet to be fully addressed.

The decision also appears politically motivated to me, although I can offer

no proof of this, save to say that the Right Wing  and

Neo-Conservative contingent on your payroll  appears to have succeeded in

silencing the one visible critic searching for accountability for what the

Red Cross calls torture, what the UN calls an illegal war and what most of

the world considers to be a distortion and blemish in the United States

moral record. The position that the Washington Post has taken in not

pursuing this issue aggressively as a corporate directive,when one

considers the Post's record on other, older matters of national and

international political importance, is to me indefensible.

As Andrew Sullivan put it, you are in big trouble when you fire the most succesful blog.

I congratulate Josh and all who get involved here. This model is the way forward. It's also why TPM is doing so well, long may it continue. As for the Post . . . . . . . .bye, bye, bye baby bye bye. . . . . . .

As David Kurtz recently posted, the alarming misrepresentation of the dying right might almost be considered Clancy-esque, save for the mild difference that at least Sir Tom was a) well researched, b) well-written c) alarmist only as a cautionary warning. The RepubicHair party is currently a) hysterical b) factually flawed c) fundamentally damaged. They are however comparably entertaining although the emphasis is more on comedy than cold-war drama.

Has the 4th Estate just grown a pair after 8 years of kowtowing to the previous ineptitude?