progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital
I haven’t seen anyone advance this theory, so I’d like to lob it out there.
It occurred to me while reading Varied Rationales Muddle Issue of NSA Eavesdropping by Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus.
The article referenced the behavior of various Bush defenders of warrantless surveillance of US citizens. Eggen/Pincus observes that the Bushies are united only in terms of defending El Arbusto. As far as why they’re defending him, different reasons are given, some better than others. For instance, when one official said that Saddam Hussein had eaten his homework, I started to lose patience.
Here’s where we come to my theory. Why all the hemming and hawing and shrugging of shoulders from Bush defenders? Because Bush didn’t think he’d get caught. The program was classified, just 8 members of Congress were briefed, and at the time the Bushies owned controlling shares in Radio Silence, Inc. Also, because Bush has an inflated sense of self-worth and an exaggerated view of his own capabilities
Now, I’m pretty sure that Bush believes in the Imperial Presidency. He looks at himself in the mirror and sees Augustus W. Bush. But he also knows that doesn’t play well in Mizoola. With the cloak of national security, he can be reasonably sure he’s not going to get a lot of criticism, because the only people who know about it, work for him.
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hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.
95. Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
We're asking you to put some of the money you plan to give Obama "in escrow" until he demonstrates progressive leadership on the issues we care about, like warrantless wiretapping. [Link]
The report notes that the administration has gone to “unprecedented lengths to control and suppress information about the human cost” of the wars. [Link]
"We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes," Hansen said during his appearance at the National Press Club. "The Arctic is the first tipping point and it's occurring exactly the way we said it would." [Link]
It appeared to confirm for the first time in an official examination many of the allegations from critics who charged that the Justice Department had become overly politicized during the Bush administration. [Link]
"After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be ans [Link]
It gives me a terrible mental image of the whole country linking arms and goose-stepping in unison, with the politicians out in front doing a straight-armed salute. [Link]
BOULTON: There are those who would say look, lets take Guantanamo Bay, and Abu Ghraib, and rendition and all those things and to them that is the complete opposite of freedom. BUSH: Of course, if you want to slander America. [Link]
In a subsequent e-mail to the employee, Cargol described himself as “a rub-your-belly, grab-your-balls, give-you-a-hug, slap-your-back, pull-your-dick, squeeze-your-hand, cheek-your-face, and pat-your-thigh kind of guy.” [Link]
Democracy Now! Radio and TV News [Link]
Let's take a look at how the Los Angeles Times covered the new Senate Intelligence Committee report on the claims made as part of selling the Iraq war, and compare it to how the editorial page of the Washington Post, by which I mean Fred Hiatt, sees the e [Link]
Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" an [Link]
Hertzberg's analysis is noteworthy because he appears to be able to allow several ideas to coexist in his head simultaneously, which quite an achievement these days. [Link]
That night, George Stephanopoulos, who was then a top aide to Mr. Clinton, declared that it was “mathematically impossible for Brown to get the nomination” — the start of a campaign to declare Mr. Clinton the presumed nominee, even as several other [Link]
If Obama is the nominee, Tonay said, McCain will be just fine with her. "In the end, I won't vote for Obama because I don't know who he is, and I don't trust him," she said. [Link]
Robert Reich, who went to Yale Law School with Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton and later served in the Clinton administration, called Hillary Clinton's attack on Obama "absurd,&q~ adding: "That carries guilt by association to a new level of absurdity. [Link]
Some speculate the Senator Clinton would want the spirit-killing Vice Presidency because she would be willing to wait for two terms so as to be the likely nominee in 2012. I believe that she could well contemplate this scenario. [Link]
A subsequent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research showed that gas prices fell by 3 percent, meaning that only three fifths of the savings from reduced taxes was passed on to consumers. [Link]
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is filing a complaint with the IRS today challenging the conservative group Freedom's Watch status as a non-profit. [Link]
For Barbara, Hillary has become the screech on the blackboard. From First Lady to Lady Macbeth. [Link]
So what's changed? I asked Reich. "I saw the ads" — the negative man-on-street commercials that the Clinton campaign put up in Pennsylvania in the wake of Obama's bitter/cling comments a week ago — "and I was appalled, frankly. [Link]
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