Sherry Chandler

I didn’t think I was going to do this (post a Carlin YouTube that is) but Susie at Suburban Guerilla has this one up and I have to pass it on. My Daddy used to say this same thing, in language not quite so colorful, twenty - thirty - forty years ago. It’s only gotten worse.

RIP George Carlin.

From Chris Floyd at the Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel (via TChris at TalkLeft), Torturegate: Truth, But No Consequences:

By week’s end, the evidence that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other top government officials had deliberately created a system of torture which they knew was illegal – indeed, a capital crime – under U.S. law was so plain, so overwhelming, and so handily concentrated that it broke through the levees of institutional cover-up and media complicity that had held this clear truth at bay for so long. The grim facts had finally worked their way into “conventional wisdom.” It was now permissible for good “centrist” folk to speak of such things, even condemn them, without being automatically relegated to ranks of “the haters,” the “unserious,” the “shrill partisans,” etc.

And yet, even as this new consensus was forming, you could see the sandbags piling up in the background to make sure that the water didn’t reach too far. A line of defense was being laid that would allow the purveyors of conventional wisdom to vent a bit of righteous outrage at official wrongdoing without actually having to do anything about it or admitting of any flaws in their fundamentalist doctrine of American exceptionalism. No one need take any risks, make any effort, or discomfort themselves in any way to rectify the injustice; indeed, even the perpetrators should be left undisturbed. Instead, our uniquely good and smooth-running political system will magically make everything all better, and somehow prevent the bad things from happening again.

I like this little paragraph from further down in the article:

(This is a point that I’ve never quite understood about American exceptionalists. On the one hand, they say the system is so strong and resilient that it can magically heal itself no matter what happens. On the other hand, it is apparently so weak and unstable that any attempt to actually apply its laws to the powerful could bring down the whole house of cards. A curious conundrum indeed; but then again, fundamentalisms invariably rest on such ineffable mysteries.)

Read all of this.

And then there’s this by Michael Abramowitz of the Washington Post, White House Dismissed Legal Advice On Detainees:

Senior lawyers inside and outside the Bush administration repeatedly warned the White House that it was risking judicial scrutiny of its detention policies in Guantanamo Bay if it did not pursue a more pragmatic legal strategy that considered the likely reaction of the Supreme Court. But such advice, issued periodically over the past six years, was ignored or discounted, according to current and former administration officials familiar with the debates

These guys so obviously think they’re above the law that it would be funny if events weren’t proving them correct.

And if you think Barack Obama is going to provide redress, I think you’re sorely mistaken. He has already proved willing to support warrantless wiretapping. Mind you, I don’t mean to be saying that Hillary Clinton would necessarily have done any better. No Democrat seems Few Democrats seem willing to do this thing. (Not to forget Dennis Kucinich and a few others brave souls.) And certainly John McCain is not going to encourage legal action.

So we are up that proverbial creek.

See Glenn Greenwald on Obama & FISA and the need to pressure the Senator to make good on his promise to filibuster this bill. As Greenwald commenter Hume’s Ghost wrote:

What really rubbed me the wrong way was how Obama in his statement says essentially trust me with these powers, I’ll use them responsibly.

Nope.

“There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.” - John Adams [1772].

Here’s Charlie’s poem that he left in the comments. I thought it maybe ought to get more air, being’s it’s relevant to our current weather situation and also, perhaps, to our great Indian Rock controversy.

FLOOD STAGE

Stealthily, the river slips
Among the barren willow tips,
And bends them with the current’s swirl
At every ripple, roll, and curl.

Through apprehensive, April eyes
I stop to watch the steady rise,
And see the lines that separate
A liquid earth from solid state.

The river comes as if designed
To seek the treasures left behind
Another year in early spring
When warm rain sent her pummeling.

Legends tell of nature’s schemes
Bizarre as any midnight dreams
That what the river leaves on high
She will return for, by and by.

— Charles M. Whitt