Professor-rat's Blurty
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Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
| Time |
Event |
| 10:57a |
Yoo is to the left of Pelosi and Reid
TPM - '...This is from the interview, where Yoo is speaking about his time as the general counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee under Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) during the late 1990s:
Certainly there was this whole industry of people outside the Congress, all these Clinton-haters, who were making a career out of attacking Clinton, but I thought it was a legitimate subject for investigation. The president and his advisors were trying to cover up financial misconduct or sexual harassment. I think Congress is allowed to ask about that. For example, I think Congress is fully allowed to ask about interrogation procedures. That's one of their roles. They should have oversight. It can be crippling, obviously, to the executive if Congress goes forward guns blazing in its oversight powers, but I don't think there's anything unconstitutional about it.
Certainly for Hatch it wasn't vindictive. I can't speak for everyone who worked in the Senate. Hatch thought there were things that could be wrong here.
Clinton certainly didn't make it easy. Same as the Bush administration. Knowing what you know now about what they had done, if they had been much more open and forthcoming coming out of the gate, it would have been better for everybody.
But I will say this: I wasn't in favor of impeachment. I don't think what Clinton did rose to the level of what impeachment is really for. I think if people in Congress wanted to impeach President Bush they could, not because he committed a crime but because they think he's a bad president.
That was the phrase ["high crimes and misdemeanors"] that came from Britain, and the British used to, under that phrase, remove people just because they screwed up a war.
There are great examples. Allegedly these were the same standards of impeachments when they impeached a minister because the British suffered a setback in the war with the Dutch. It wasn't a crime, but you were a bad leader. But it has to be something of significance to the state. Clinton, what he did didn't seem to rise to that level...'
So on this issue Yoo is clearly to the left of the Dumpocrats. ( At the time anyway. Trad Dumpos should just shoot themselves if they have a shred of self-respect) | | 11:18a |
The lights are going out all over Australia... ...never to be lit again in our lifetimes. Paul Norton May 14th, 2008 at 9:18 am On the question of the relevance of election results, I have found some statistics on electoral returns for the Federal seat of Sydney from the 1960s through to 2001. You will see that in 1969 and 1972, candidates such as Nick Origlass (trotskyist) and Laurie Aarons (Communist Party of Australia) were polling over 5 per cent. By the 1980s, despite the odium of the association of the words “communist” and “socialist” with the USSR, its crimes in Poland, Afghanistan, etc., and its inept and corrupt leadership, CPA and SWP candidates could still attract percentages measurable in whole numbers. In 1998 and 2004, the DSP/SA vote was down to 0.7 and 0.8 per cent respectively, despite the Soviet monkey being off the far left’s back. Then there is the 2007 Senate result in NSW in which the combined SA and Socialist Equality Party vote (0.08+ 0.04 = 0.12 per cent) was less than that for Graeme Bird’s Liberal Democratic Party (0.13 per cent). The conclusion to be drawn from this, and from a reading of the hundreds of tortured pages of documents on the DSP’s purge of the LPF, is that a number of basically well-meaning and talented people are squandering vast amounts of energy on a political praxis of utterly minimal relevance to the millions of working class people, women, queers, migrants, Aborigines, refugees, environmental and peace activists, etc., on whose behalf such parties endeavour to speak - and in the process doing themselves and each other a good deal of psychic damage, as the DSP/LPF purge/split documents attest. FROM http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/05/13/are-you-obsessed-with-sects/ | | 1:00p |
Marxist malaria
And the boogie-woogie flu
'...The DSP majority leadership would have difficulty lying straight in bed.
Peter Boyle and narrow bunch of supporters on the national executive of
the DSP must believe that people on the Australian left can’t read.
Their expulsion declaration this evening is really quite mad, even at a
cursory reading. They insist on a mythical scenario that they possibly
don’t believe themselves, but that they want their supporters to
believe, that the division is a split by the Percy group, not an expulsion.
They rely for this dishonest version of events on the rather impressive
old-time Cannonist energy of the Percy bunch in hitting the ground
running by publishing their side of the story a few hours before they
were due to be expelled.
Boyle and co insist on calling this a split, not an expulsion, but
that’s Orwellian doublespeak.
Who could believe that the national executive wouldn’t carry out the
appointed political execution recommended by the three Judge Jeffreys on
the investigating commission?
That raises a question about the process. Most socialist organisations
at their better moments have a control commission, or something similar,
to investigate disciplinary matters, usually consisting of older,
respected members not involved in day-to-day disputes.
Nothing like that for the DSP majority. The key figures doing the job
were extremely multi-skilled: they served as investigators, prosecutors,
judges, juries and political executioners. What a bizarre process!
Boyle and his very narrow group of supporters in the DSP leadership have
created a dungheap and they dare to call it Leninism. In doing so they
perpetrate the worst possible libel on Lenin and his real practice.
The more serious people who so far have supported the DSP majority
should soberly consider the implications of this whole strange process.
All of us, the people in the DSP, and outside observers such as myself,
are a bit like the boiled frog that doesn’t notice the water being
slowly heated. We get blase about political processes because we think
we’ve seen it all before, or it’s par for the course in a bitterly
contested factional struggle.
In my view, after a second careful reading of the 107-page Moscow Trial
style document, we’re very close to boiling point. This vicious
procedure hasn’t been seen on the Australian left since about 1932.
As I study this material I’m getting increasingly angry, and it takes a
lot to make me really angry.
Bob Gould ( Ozleft - Marxmail ) | | 1:24p |
The presidents Barney
The new campaign slogan chosen by House Republicans — "Change You Deserve" — turns out to also be the trademarked slogan of the antidepressant Effexor. This gives credit where credit is due, due to the only anti-depressant to help the president shake off his black dog. | | 1:32p |
Plutocrat planet
TPMCafe - Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels is talking about his new book, Unequal Democracy. Here's one of the results of his research:
Insofar as elected officials are responsive to the policy views of their constituents, only the views of affluent and middle-class people really matter. The preferences of millions of low-income citizens (in the bottom third of the income distribution) have no discernible effect on senators' roll call votes, whether we consider the whole range of issues that come before Congress or specific salient roll call votes focusing on the federal budget, the minimum wage, civil rights, and abortion. Aristotle wrote that "where the possession of political power is due to the possession of economic power or wealth ... that is oligarchy, and when the unpropertied class have power, that is democracy." By that standard, America is, at best, a very unequal democracy.
Our local alternative liberal party seem to have twigged that this is not a good look at all - so they are investing heavily in cosmetics. | | 1:46p |
Vichy dogs
'...an interesting post last night about the Bush Justice Department's legal opinion outlining what kind of power the legislative branch has to stop an out of control Executive without resorting to the courts. He concluded:
Here's the thing. These may be Bush Administration lawyers doing the talking here, but they're absolutely right. The Congress has all sorts of tools in their arsenal to force compliance from the executive branch. They can shut down the nomination process. They can eliminate any and all expenditures for the President and staff or executive agencies. They can refuse to enact spending bills for programs and policies prized by the executive. They can constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court that may investigate the executive. They can use the power of inherent contempt to try those neglecting a Congressional subpoena, and imprison them. And they can, you know, vote to remove the President from office, or all civil officers of the United States, for that matter.
There are dozens of ways for this Congress to get the attention of the President, as the Justice Department's own lawyers recognize. But of course, they won't do that. They worry about their image, their perception by the voters, what the Republican noise machine would say about them, and all the rest...'
DIGBY | | 2:52p |
Dirty tricks done dirt cheap
Dem Dirty Tricks in Mississippi? [David Freddoso]
Who would have thought? From Roll Call.
[I]n Mississippi today, a last-minute mailer from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has Republicans crying foul in a race that was already very nasty.
The DCCC mailer...accuses Republican nominee Greg Davis of wanting to honor Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who is considered to be the the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, with a statue in Southaven, the suburban community where he serves as mayor.
...Davis spokesman Ted Prill called the mailer “11th-hour gutter politics” and said Davis never supported bringing a statue of Forrest to Southaven...Prill said that three years ago, when Memphis officials were trying to remove the statues of Forrest and Confederate President Jefferson Davis from city parks, Greg Davis offered to take only the statue of Jefferson Davis and put it in Southaven, a suburb of Memphis. He said Davis never indicated he would accept the Forrest statue.
The DCCC stands by the mailing — and they only have to until this evening, since the voting is going on right now.
05/13 02:57 PM - The Corner
No one could have predicted...even if Truman once said ' I tell the truth about them and they think its hell' and of course Orwell's ,' Sometimes telling the truth etc...'
This is the third seat in a by-election to fall so a swing is on - even if its just a swing for more Blue dog DINO's at the helm of this Titanic. | | 2:58p |
Question time
Julia Gillard observed that her opposite number on education was the Marcel Marceau of Australian politics who may, at some future date, come out from behind her glass wall. Downer got booted out for an hour.
Tanner accused Turnbull's evil science fiction twin of messing with his head by adopting opposing positions in response to the budget. Previously Swan had delivered a polished performance at the Great Hall on the budget. So after years of droning Howard bores and clown-cars this wasn't a bad show actually. Swanee's dig at Turdbulls knack with numbers was sharp enough to penetrate deep.
I was a bit worried about the new speaker... but he can kick Downer out anytime interest flags. | | 5:30p |
On the psychopathology of the common Gouldian Felch '...anyone who believes Boyle's response to Walter Lippmann on the Green Left discussion list also probably believes in the tooth fairy...' Or the Gouldian Felch - the practice of sucking Santorum out of a Mummy. '...Among the grab-bag of charges against the Percy group is the claim that adopting a different tactical approach to the Boyle group at a Venezuela society meeting was a political capital crime...' Capital crime comrades? Why is there no CHEKA we can report this CAPITAL CRIME to comrades!? These wreckers and splitters and Menshevik's must all be LIQUIDATED comrades! '...The final point I'd make is the aspect of this matters that resembles the history of Stalinism, particularly the Moscow Trials...' Great crimes call for a great terror comrades. No man - no problem. It's factional craziness to try to stop the sexwork of the admirably energetic member of the Percy group who due to her location has been able to conduct exemplary work on Palestine, one of the more unpopular fields of agitation in bourgeois Australia. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenLeft_discussion/message/53823 | | 6:34p |
Before there was the war on SW Asia
There was the war on SE Asia. This invasion is Republican - that one which killed several million was Democrat. Making a token appearance today in veteran-heavy West Virginia, Obama will say this at a rally:
One of the saddest episodes in our history was the degree to which returning vets from Vietnam were shunned, demonized and neglected by some because they served in an unpopular war. Too many of those who opposed the war in Vietnam chose to blame not only the leaders who ordered the mission, but the young men who simply answered their country’s call. Four decades later, the sting of that injustice is a wound that has never fully healed, and one that should never be repeated.
What a stinking Democrat covering up a worse war crime than Iraq. Criminal garbage, just garbage.
There are grunts from that era who need honoring - the ones who deserted, went on strike or fragged their officers. They answered the call of humanity. Garbage Obama is just blowing smoke. | | 8:24p |
Betel juice http://www.epistola.com/sfowler/scholar/scholar-betel.htmlInteresting article on the Betel/nut/lime combination thats at least 4000 years old and used by millions today. '...Perverse as it may sound, betel-drooling is quite pleasurable indeed. There is an almost orgasmic satisfaction to be found in the experience of saliva-ducts open to full throttle. Delicious above all is the aftermath: when the chew is finished, your mouth is left astonishingly fresh and sweet. You feel uniquely cleansed, drained, and purified...' Mmmm...doughnuts | | 9:01p |
Cruelty to rats
West Australian Opposition Leader Troy Buswell says there is "absolutely no substance" to reports he once did something inappropriate to a quokka, a small marsupial found on a holiday island off Perth.
Mr Buswell, who has admitted to sniffing the chair of a former Liberal party colleague and snapping the bra of a Labor staffer, was questioned on the rumours today while attending a press conference at Parliament House.
It followed his sacking from the frontbench yesterday of former leader Paul Omodei, who said recently there would be "more stories" to emerge about Mr Buswell and that his leadership would "die the death of a thousand cuts".
Asked if he had done anything inappropriate to a quokka, Mr Buswell replied: "No".
Asked if he was aware of any rumours about actions involving the small marsupials, which are indigenous to Rottnest Island, Mr Buswell said: "I have absolutely no idea about these stories of quokkas on Rottnest.
"I'm not being backward in saying that I'm not a perfect individual and you know I've had a robust past and there may be elements of that that have proved offensive to people.
"I don't shy away away from that at all, but I'm not aware that I've caused any offence to a quokka."
Asked how the rumours had started, Mr Buswell said: "I have no idea.
"I'm not going to comment on it. All I've heard is people use the word quokka and then smile and laugh.
"I'm just not interested to be honest with you."
He said none of his MPs had come to him to report the rumour.
"Members of the press have in passing mentioned the word quokka and suggested to me that something inappropriate in the past may have happened.
"Nothing has, absolutely nothing." END Press report.
Yeah right - ' I did not have sex with that large marsupial rat'. How many times have we all heard that! | | 11:01p |
Is McCain able?
1) Will you deport those Nazi Gooks Yoo and Malkin you stupid old flying fuck?
What questions would you like the media to ask John W.McCain?
Would you attribute your knowledge of the Civil War to studying it at Annapolis or witnessing it as a boy?
Have you ever introduced Cindy as "The Future First Cunt?"
Do you know anyone who hasn't slept with Meghan?
How many fingers am I holding up?
Would you like to sit down?
I said...WOULD YOU LIKE TO SIT DOWN?! |
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