Stop Drinking and Start Doing, Dem Dumb Dumbs

Sober up, Dems.

You started sucking suds when you captured the Congress in 2006. Since 2008 you've been binge drinking with Congress and the Prez. You even nibbled on some hot wings and pub nuts. Burp!

And now the bartender just cut your drunk, lazy, liberal, progressive, leftie ass off. You dig, Dem dumb dumbs?

You thought you could just party like it was 1999. You can't take a beer bong and pour healthcare reform, trillions in spending and bailouts to fat cats down the average 'Merican's throat and not expect a fight. But, as usual, you didn't fight - you just kept doing Jager-bomb shots.

Let's not only blame the Prez for this election. Just go straight down the line - all the way to the grass root dumb dumbs who didn't lift a finger to dial up fellow dems to get them out of the bar and into the polls.

Too many Dems turned away after 2008, assuming the Prez and the Congressional majority would take care of "our" business. We drank up, while they did what we asked them to do. But, we didn't follow up on our end of the bargain - work our butts off to help them stay in office.

Look at yourself in the mirror. Can you say you worked as hard in 2010 as you did in 2008? Did you bring your neighbor to the polls? Did you give $$ to a candidate? If you didn't do that, how can you expect Joe the Bartender, Joe the Plumber, or any average Joe, to understand the complexities of the issues of the day?

How can you expect Joe to deal with this: the worst economy in two generations; soaring debt; jobs lost; home foreclosures, etc. That stuff scares the crap out of people. If you don't help them to understand that you're trying to solve their problems today - and for tomorrow - they're going to do exactly what they did: vote for the other team.

You have to expend energy to inspire 'Mericans to vote. Let's make a quick list of the "no shows" when it came to putting energy into this fall's campaign: Chris Dodd (thanks for nothing), the Prez, the Veep, Rahm "Windy City" Emmanuel, Chuck Schumer, John Kerry, Al Gore, etc. I'm sorry - you can't count the Prez's work in the final week as really getting it done; he should have been out there since labor day. Were you all having a beer in the Rose Garden?

Who deserves real credit for working his tail off? William Jefferson Clinton. He was busting his hump out there, putting his stent-laden heart on the line 24/7. Let's give the man some credit.

Learn from Bill: you have to work hard to win elections. Not other people - YOU! You have to get it done. You have to contribute time, energy, $$. If you can't contribute any of these, then you can't complain about the outcome.

To bring it back to a local level, look at Chris Murphy. He worked his butt off! I saw him in New Milford a few times - and I never saw Sam Caligiuri (if I had paid $100 to attend the RTC's Reagan Dinner, maybe I would have caught a glimpse of Sam C).

And I saw Ann Cutter (local Dem) leading Chris Murphy around the Harvest Festival. She worked hard the entire election cycle - organizing phone banks and other get out the vote efforts. Where was the rest of the local Dem leadership? Show up or shut up!

Here's the deal: You've gotta work hard lefties, or the righties are gonna kick your butt in 2012, too.

Thought new FISA laws would sunset in 6 months...

Then you better think again...

Constitutional scholar Marty Lederman points out a little-noticed provision of the law that shouldn't surprise any of us:

Although section 6(c) provides that the operative provisions of the Act "shall cease to have effect 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act," i.e., on February 1, 2008, there is an express exception in section 6(d), which reads as follows:

AUTHORIZATIONS IN EFFECT.—Authorizations for the acquisition of foreign intelligence information pursuant to the amendments made by this Act, and directives issued pursuant to such authorizations, shall remain in effect until their expiration. Such acquisitions shall be governed by the applicable provisions of such amendments and shall not be deemed to constitute electronic surveillance as that term is defined in section 101(f) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1801(f)).

Thus, "acquisitions" authorized by Attorney General Gonzales will be permissible for one year, even if that period extends beyond the ostensible February 1, 2008 sunset date. I think it's fair to assume that the Attorney General will authorize a system of such acquisitions on or close to February 1, 2008, which will mean that the warrantless surveillance can continue until . . . February 1, 2009, or twelve days after the next President is sworn in.

That's right. Dubya and Attorney General Gonzales didn't get a six-month window in which to spy on everyone and everything—the PAA gives them 18 months.

Essentially, the criminal bush administration has just been given the right to spy on you - barring someone sane impeaching them all OR changing the law - right up until until the end of this nightmare regime.

Think about this. They will still be able to spy on Americans right up through the next election cycle... Right on until a couple of weeks after the next president takes their oath of office.

Via Cannonfire, and emphasis mine:

Picture two teams pitted against each other: Ashcroft, Mueller and Comey on one side; Gonzales, Cheney, Bush and Andy Card (and Rove?) on the other. Somewhere in the middle is the MAEP.

Cheney felt that the decision could not be put off until Ashcroft got out of the hospital. The hospital incident took place on March 10, 2004.

The crisis in March 2004 stemmed from a review of the program by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which raised "concerns as to our ability to certify its legality," according to Comey's testimony. Ashcroft was briefed on the findings on March 4 and agreed that changes needed to be made, Comey said.

Then came Ashcroft's illness and, on March 10, the mad rush to the hospital room, as Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card tried to get the gravely ill non-acting A.G. to sign off on the program. Robert Mueller called up the security guys protecting Ashcroft and told them that no matter what Gonzales or Card did or said, Comey was not to be kept out that room. Ultimately, Ashcroft told Cheney's henchmen that Comey was the acting AG and that he, Ashcroft could do nothing. (In this case, I think we can presume that "could" means "would.")

Ashcroft left office, for reasons still not fully understood, in February of 2005. You-know-who replaced him.

So what made the NSA program a matter of such dire concern on the might of March 10-11?

In the past, I've offered the opinion that the Mother of All Eavesdropping Programs was being used to spy on political opponents. I still have strong suspicions along those lines. However:

The next day, as terrorist bombs killed more than 200 commuters on rail lines in Madrid, the White House approved the executive order without any signature from the Justice Department certifying its legality. Comey responded by drafting his letter of resignation, effective the next day, March 12.

Comey was persuaded to stay after Bush promised unspecified changes to the law.

Could the race to the hospital have had any connection to the Madrid bombings? Did the Bush administration have advance warning of the plot?

One would have thought that, after Risen's article came out, the Bushies would have used Madrid as a propaganda point: "We could have prevented tragedy in Spain," that sort of thing. But they never made any real attempt to sound that note, although Gonzales did make a brief en passant mention of Madrid during his testimony.

On the other hand, if the Bushies were (say) spying on John Kerry, Comey probably would have so testified -- if, in fact, Comey knew. It may be that Comey had suspicions but did not know.

You all remember the rumors of the bushy campaign supposedly spying on Kerry. Questions still remain about testimony that left everyone in the Blogosphere scrastching their heads and asking if there was more than just the one illegal spying operation going on that everyone already knew about from the whistleblower Or just how much bigger it was than just simply spying on the real terrorists?

From TPM Muckraker, an except of their roundup on what we knew at the end of July on the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) and what they termed "Program X":

Unfortunately for Gonzales, not even he has been able to keep the distinction between the Terrorist Surveillance Program and Program X straight. During a June 5th press conference this year, he said that Comey's dispute “related to a highly classified program which the president confirmed to the American people sometime ago” – precisely the opposite of what he’d testified before. By way of explanation, Gonzales testified Tuesday that his spokesman had subsequently contacted the reporter who’d asked the question, Dan Eggen of The Washington Post, to retract that statement.

Despite that embarrassing admission, Gonzales hewed to the same line this Tuesday he’d taken in the hearing the previous February, saying that Comey’s disagreement was “not about the terrorist surveillance program that the president announced to the American people.” He maintained that line under blistering questioning – including the questions of senators, such as Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), who also sit on the Senate intelligence committee and have been briefed on the program.

Following Gonzales' testimony, Democrats' contention that there was only one warrantless surveillance program was bolstered by the release of a May 2006 letter from John Negroponte, then the director of national intelligence, specifying that the March 10, 2004 meeting was, indeed, a TSP meeting. In response, an anonymous DOJ official told the Washington Post that in his testimony on Tuesday Gonzales "did not say that the TSP was not discussed at the meeting" -- underscoring the absurdity of the distinction that the administration is still trying to draw. Similarly, FBI Director Robert Mueller told Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee today that he and Comey had objections to the "much discussed" NSA program, a reference clear in context to the TSP.

In essence, the issue is this: if Gonzales succeeds in convincing the committee that there really is a material distinction between the program as it existed before and after Comey’s intervention, he won't just save himself from perjury. He will perhaps have preserved an administration strategy of concealing the scope of Program X from the public and most of Congress -- making it appear that the program that Bush disclosed in December 2005, incorporating Comey's objections, is the same program that existed since October 2001, long before Comey put the brakes on at least some aspects of it. That may be at the heart of the White House's claim of executive privilege to prevent the Senate Judiciary Committee from seeing documents detailing the genesis of Program X.

We may be about to learn whether a perjury investigation will pierce the obfuscations and begin to explore the extent of Program X -- a program the American public was never supposed to know about.

We have known for a long time that the FBI has been spying on "peace activists", and groups that oppose the Iraq invasion - You know? The liberal-peacenik, Quaker and Gold Star Mom Types - BUT...

What if this list of people included even the politicians that were working for ending this war? From the moderately Conservative Clintons ,to the more Centrist Kerry types, and certainly including the more Liberal Kucinich type politicians, the GOP and their mangled government institutionalist supporters seeking an eternal GOP government view them all as the enemy and are determined to keep this war going.

Think about how many times the criminal bush administration and it's supporters have said that all of us "liberal peaceniks" are "giving comfort to the enemy." Do you honestly think it would be below the gutter level of bush to authorize spying on all of those politicians they throw that same "aiding the enemy" label at, like Hillary Clinton, as well?

You would have to be a fool to assume otherwise given the already documented criminality of almost everyone involved in the bush administration from the preznit on down.

Media Matters Challenges Power Swine To Tell the Truth

In a quest for truth and honesty in Blogging Media Matters Eric Boehlert puts out a challenge to one of the many disreputable and oft'-times discredited right wing whackosphere Bloggers:

Here's a simple challenge for John Hinderaker, a writer for the popular conservative blog Power Line who recently revisited the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign controversy. Upset by recent media references that suggested the Swift Boat attacks on Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) had been "discredited," Hinderaker claimed, "Most of what the Vets said in their ads has never been disputed, let alone discredited."

The challenge for Hinderaker is straightforward: Read the assembled facts below and explain how I'm wrong about the countless ways in which the Swift Boat ads were disputed and the accusers were discredited, or apologize for your fact-free claim and post a correction at Power Line.

I realize that highlighting the factual deficiencies of Power Line bloggers is hardly a novel pursuit. After all, Power Line played a starring role in advancing the Terri Schiavo talking points memo hoax during the spring of 2005. Power Line played a starring role in the rush to declare guilty an Associated Press photographer who was accused of working with insurgents in Iraq. Power Line played a starring role in advancing the phony accusation that the AP had invented an Iraqi police captain and used him as a source. And just this month, Power Line played a starring role in advancing the phony story that CNN reporter Michael Ware had heckled Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) during a recent Baghdad press conference.

Meaning, Power Line rarely lets the facts get in the way of its pro-GOP spin.

Don't hold your breath on a credible response from Assrocket. He and his fellow Power Swine propagandists are just a bunch of pigs in spaaaaace....

Right Partisan Thoughts on Dodd

As you listen to JimK talk about Kerry and Dodd's planned visits to the Middle East:

Right Thoughts - Dodd Plans Trip To Middle East:
"I’m far more concerned with the idea of two Senators from an opposing party blatantly and openly undermining the sitting President in matters of foreign policy. This kind of behavior has consequences that go well beyond the next two years of Bush’s term.

It’s time to get past this cheerleading for the Dems or the GOP and start thinking about how this dirty political pool is affecting the way we can govern this nation going forward."

Well JimK, when are you going to get past the partisan political cheerleading? You are real quick to paint Kerry and Dodd as having undermined the president and even suggested they are breaking laws, even though the fact is they have not and will not break any laws on their trips.

But if you were really being honest about the paritsan cheerleading your diary would have mentioned the treacherous and traitorous Republican Specter:

Nelson said he reported the information to embassy officials and will brief his congressional committees on the trip. Also expected to visit Syria is Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa..

"We don't think that members of Congress ought to be going there," White House press secretary Tony Snow said, adding that the United States continues to denounce Syria's meddling in Lebanon and its ties to terrorist groups.

It is highly appropriate that Tony Snow starts off the sentence there with "We don't think...", obviously a common problem on the right side of the aisle. If you are going to make a big stink about the Democratic politicians supposedly undermining the president then you show absolutely no bi-partisan spirit by ignoring Arlen Specter. You are just cheerleading against Democratic politicians, and are far more partisan than the people you complain about.

About the only thing that hits the mark in JimK's post:

As I also stated, Bush clearly allowed this (via the State Department) because he’s afraid to tell two Democrats they can’t go. Congress and the press would descend like vultures on a corpse. It’s more evidence that his status as a lame duck is pretty much confirmed…

Yes! Mr. Bush is a lame duck... But he is happy they went, though he is too much of a wimp to admit it in public, and Mr. Bush is praying that those bi-partisan politicians can save his sorry little partisan-GOP-ass.

heh