To its illogical conclusion

by Rich Miles
April 5, 2007

NOTE: This piece was first published as a comment on a thread at AfterDowningStreet.org on April 5, 2007. The thread consists mainly of David Swanson's Articles of Impeachment. It's worth a careful read, but it's also high-blood-pressure-inducing.

I may not be the first person to think of this, but try to imagine what will happen if - when - the above Articles of Impeachment or something like them are presented by the House to the Senate, and a trial begins, and Bush asserts that he has no constitutional requirement to take the matter seriously, respond to the charges, or even to leave office if convicted.

Such a declaration would be in keeping with his stated level of respect for the Constitution all through his presidency.

At that point, the only recourse would be to arrest him and Cheney, and probably a number of other WH operatives including Rove, in order to force them to take the impeachment seriously, and to prevent them circumventing the intent of the arrest.

And when the Senate issues a warrant of arrest, and there's no one who will carry it out because every imaginable law enforcement agency and agent has been compromised and co-opted, what do we do then?

The only thing to do would be to resort to the military for arrest. But in large part - no one knows HOW large - they've been turned to Bush's side as well. As examples, see Petraeus's recent partisan meetings with Republican operatives, Gates's history with secrecy, and on and on. Think Gen. Boykin and his "bigger God."

And even if a military arrest could be effected, there is ample evidence that Bush has created his own armed force in such organizations as Blackwater, who might (this seems to me more likely than not) attempt to defend him from arrest, or if they can't get there fast enough, to "spring" him from jail.

Imagine the international spectacle of a private army getting into a standoff, or perhaps even a shooting skirmish, with the U.S. Army, in defense of a convicted president, perhaps right on the White House lawn. Impossible? Not by half.

You see what Bush et al. have done to America? Not only does he ignore laws and assert the privileges of the "unitary executive", he's actually created a network of people in all branches, perhaps all departments, of government who will support him if Congress even tries to assert their constitutional prerogatives by passing laws to prevent him from anything he wants to do, or by trying to impeach him. He'll simply ignore them, as he has on so many other occasions. And America will then be faced with a set of choices that none of us want to make: either treat our president as an enemy of the people, or allow the destruction of our democracy to continue unabated.

As Glenn Greenwald said, quoted above and paraphrased now, the real problem here is that all of us - citizens, congressional leaders, ALL of us - have been operating on the assumption that "it can't happen here." But it CAN happen, and it IS happening.

I wrote a piece back in June of last year, called He's Not Leaving, in which I offered reasons why I think Bush is going to attempt to stay in office beyond January 2009. NOTHING that has happened since then has caused me to believe I was wrong in that forecast. In fact, if anything, events and actions by the administration since then, and the discovery of things that happened years ago but only recently came to light, have caused me to believe even MORE that this is what the Bush cabal intends - they're simply not going to allow elections to go forward, and are going at least to attempt to seize permanent power.

In that column, I surmised that "some combination of the Armed Forces and American patriots" would try to thwart this attempt - but even that no longer seems inevitable.

I think it was Nick Kristof who said, several years ago, that the trouble with covering this administration is that you have to be rude to get anything out of them.

I'd add to that: in order to tell everything there is to know about this administration, and to parse out what it means for America in both the long- and short-term, you have to sound like a conspiracy nut.

But the essence of this government's hold on power is that their lies, their power grabs, and their crimes are so bold, so audacious, so unbelievable that they are indeed not believed. The Big Lies are SO big that everyone who hears them simply rejects even the possibility that they could be true. And therein lies the danger for the American system of government: that we'll let it go on till it's too late.

There was a fella in Germany years ago who did this same sort of thing. Perhaps you've heard of him. It was in all the papers.

What took you so effin' long, Howie?

by Rich Miles
April 4, 2007

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post is usually not someone I consider serious enough to even read much less comment on, and so it remains today. He is and has been for the past 6+ years one of the most reliable of Bush-suckers, who can take any event or statement or action on the part of the Bush administration and spin it into unalloyed brilliance, no matter how boneheaded the rest of the world thinks it is. His recent mini-epiphanies about how W just MIGHT not deserve canonization after all are dust in the wind to any thinking person who has lived since 2000. Usually, he's best ignored, because it's a waste of time and bandwidth even to address his ongoing attempt to turn the Bushian sow's ear into anything resembling a silk purse.

But ol' Howie has said something in his April 4, 2007 column that I simply can't let go by unremarked. Here it is:

"...Here's the part that bothers me. The president accuses the Democrats of being mainly interested in fighting "political battles" and engaging in a "political dance" (that seemed to be his metaphor du jour). Why is it not politics when he makes the case for a war in which he passionately believes--after years of using the war on terror as a partisan club--but it's politics when Democrats try to end a war they believe has been an abysmal failure? Isn't this precisely the kind of debate we should be having in a democracy?..."

Oh, fer cryin' out loud. So the light FINALLY comes on for little Howie Kurtz.

I mean, is it really possible that the WaPo, largest daily paper for our nation's capital, is actually paying someone to write for them who is as FECKIN' CLUELESS as the above paragraph shows Kurtz to be?

Is it even remotely conceivable that this national columnist, this political "observer" has no idea that this one paragraph pretty much sums up everything Bush's opponents have been saying for that entire six years?

Can he have no inkling that that very Bush administration habit - of making EVERYTHING, no matter what it is or how many people are dying as a result, political, is EXACTLY why people on the Left side of the aisle have gone from merely thinking him incompetent and bumbling to actually, dedicatedly HATING George W. Bush and everything he stands for, everything he does, and everyone who has ever even met him, much less works for him?

As I said in a previous post on this site, I have lost count of the number of times that some spokesperson or other for Bush, and even on occasions he, has said something to the effect that some particular thing is done for effect: the president "wants to appear" etc., or the president "was sending a message" etc., or the president "wants to make sure that people think" etc. - NOT what he will DO, but what he wants to APPEAR to be doing or to have done.

And THAT is the very essence of making everything in the entire effin' world POLITICAL - not what it is, but what it seems to be, so that people who observe this appearance will think something good about the appearance, and thus the one creating it. And thus, vote for him or those he supports, and keep himself and his cronies in POWER. Now, why is that so hard to figure out?

But Howard Kurtz, in that one little graf, has finally seen what at least 50% of the American people, and probably 90% of the entire rest of the world already know: that Bush is an ass, an incompetent and corrupt and unfeeling ass at that, and the worst president this country has ever had. Period. End of discussion - the worst.

Howard, you are complicit. YOU helped make this administration what it is, which is a horrible and gross failure, a literal killing machine of soldiers and civilians, because it's taken you so long to see what is right there in front of the faces of all the rest of us.

You, Howard - and Matthew Dowd, and Former Clinton inquisitor Bob Barr and Bush family friend Victor Gold, and dozens more who stood behind Bush when he had the whip hand but are now bailing on him (as you should have years ago) - you're too late.

You're culpable. And your foxhole conversions and convenient awakening to the patently obvious don't mean S**T to the rest of us - to the reality-based community.

How Low Can He Go?

by Rich Miles
April 2, 2007

I made a mistake.

I know, it doesn't happen often, but I really have to cop to this.

Back several months ago, when Bush's national approval ratings hit the low 30% mark, I said that this was very nearly as low as they could ever go. I said that there was a cadre of Bush-lovers that, if he walked in their back doors, pissed in their cornflakes, and raped their infant sons, would still support him, and somehow be able to twist their thinking around to where the cornflakes and the kid were ordained by God to receive that treatment. I estimated the size of that cadre at roughly 25% of Americans.

I was wrong, and I admit it.

Today, Booman Tribune, a website that bills itself as a Progressive Community, gives us proof in the form of a new poll from American Research Group that, in New Hampshire at least, Bush's polls have fallen even farther than I ever could have predicted.

Overall approval of Bush's job performance in this poll is 17%. Yes, that's right - SEVENTEEN percent. Even the Republicans polled in this instance only gave him a 42% thumbs-up.

Now, NH is not what one would call "typical" of all of America - which brings up the question as to why they have so much say in our presidential elections, but that's a topic for another time - but it is a significant bellwether for a certain segment of the country.

But just so we don't write off all those independent White Mtn. folks as a statistical anomaly, Booman offers us another poll from a wider geographic sample, showing that 22% of Independents approve of him, and overall only 32% like what he's doing on the economy. That means that the Republicans in that poll are about 42% in favor of what Bush does, and they're the only ones keeping ANY of Bush's numbers above 20%!

So apparently, I was wrong. Bush CAN drop below that fabled 25% mark.

Hey! You think maybe this means we can impeach him now?

Predictable, Hell! Predicted!

by Rich Miles

March 30, 2007

It’s been going on for six years now. Six years and a few months, to be more precise. And until very recently, no one noticed. No one in the mainstream press said a word about it, with the exception of Paul Krugman and Frank Rich and Molly Ivins (may she rest in peace), David Sirota and Jason Solomon and Bob Herbert and the like, and everyone knows how easy it is to ignore or roll over all those leftie pundits.

So now that it’s become unmistakably visible, and the whole world is watching while it happens, those same folks in the national media (not the ones mentioned in the previous paragraph, but most of the rest) are shocked! shocked!! to discover that the Bush administration has been loading the judicial system at every level they can get their grubby hands on with “loyal Bushies” – people in the legal profession who are willing to subvert the laws, the very basis of this country, for political ends. Who will choose who to prosecute and who to leave alone based on what effect those choices will have on elections, and on the “unitary executive”, and on their own personal power bases.

People like John Roberts. Samuel Alito. John Ashcroft pushed out of the AG job to make room for Alberto Gonzales – the president’s own personal lawyer, given the job of the nation’s top law enforcement official. Who didn’t see that coming?

People like Kyle Sampson, credited with coining the term “loyal Bushies”, who sees no fundamental difference between “political” and “the priorities of the president”; and Monica Goodling, a graduate of not one but TWO fundamentalist Christian colleges whose aims are to insert “biblical” law back into the law of our land, and who went from fresh out of law school to being the DOJ’s White House liaison in a scant 6 years. People like – and here’s one to think hard about – the OTHER 85 U.S. Attorneys who were NOT fired. Who were presumably “loyal enough Bushies”, partisan enough, willing enough to do as they were told not to get put on that list that Karl Rove says didn’t exist. And let’s not forget Harriet Miers, so unqualified to serve on the Supreme Court that she finally forced even Bush to face reality – and who is also the great thinker who originally wanted to fire ALL 93 of the U.S. Attorneys. John Yoo. Jay Bybee. The list is just too long of people who have subverted our system of justice in the name of a “permanent Republican majority.”

And all of this was not only predictable, it was predicted. In fact, some folks have virtually SCREAMED that our courts and prosecutors were being set up to aid Republicans politically, that if things kept on as they were there would come a day when no one with even remotely leftish political leanings could ever HOPE to get a fair shake in any federal court and not many state ones, in any matter at all. And no one listened. The High Heidyuns of the American press pooh-poohed, and said, well, Bush won and he has the right to appoint whomever he wishes to these jobs, and it was the duty of the Senate to confirm them. Or, the prosecutors serve at the pleasure of the president, and he can fire them any time he wishes for any reason. Or, this is a personnel matter, and not subject to Senate oversight. Or Clinton did it too. Or – my favorite – the slipping into the Patriot Act renewal of a small codicil that allowed all this to happen without Senate confirmation was NO BIG DEAL!!!

And that’s just what the mainstream people have been saying – the rightwing nutcases like Limbaugh and Savage and Chris Matthews and Fox Noise have been saying that the Congress has no right to question anything Bush does about anything, including sending our soldiers to war on false pretenses. So he lied us into a war that’s killed 3240+ Americans and who knows how many Iraqis – so what? Whattayou gonna do about it, you wussy Democrats? This is our country now, and you can lay down and die.

But you can’t say this wasn’t predicted. You can’t say it just sneaked up on us out of nowhere. I mean, why do you think we all, those of us in the "reality-based" world, fought so hard to defeat Bush in 04? It was because we KNEW this was coming – a dictatorship, a fascist state, a hate-filled theocracy – in short, an America we could never have imagined even a decade ago, despite the fact that its roots were well-laid by then.

So listen, wingnuts - you who think this is just fine, and what's all the leftie whining about: when they come for you, don’t cry about it to me. I knew it. 49.3% of those who voted in 2004 knew it. 50.4% of those who voted in 2000 knew it, for Christ’s sake.

Why didn’t you?

Not only the Worst Ever, But the Worst Imaginable

by Rich Miles

For perhaps the fifth time in the past several months , today I read an article about how the head of the GAO - formerly the General Accounting Office, now the "A" stands for Accountability - is traveling all over the country, telling everyone who will listen that the American government, under the alleged leadership of the "fiscal conservative" Republican president, is piling up a wad of debt that, quite literally, will bring this country down if it is not brought under control, and soon.

Let me sum up what GAO Chief David M. Walker said: the national debt - not the federal budget, that's another big-ass number - but the DEBT, which is a much BIGGER big-ass number - the money the American government owes to everyone who ever bought a US Treasury note or savings bond or any other loan instrument of the US government, is approaching $9 TRILLION.

Let me say it again, this time as a number: $9,000,000,000,000!

If you don't know what that means, first of all you're too stupid to live in America, and second, here's what it means. And as has been said many times by those far more educated about fiduciary matters than I, an unbelievable lot of that $9 TRILLION of debt is in the hands of people who are not Americans, and who don't have the best interests of America at heart. Like China, and Russia, and even Japan.

You ever know someone whose mortgage got called? Someone who had their home repossessed and sold at auction to strangers? That's what happens people don't pay their debts.

Can you even imagine what happens when a country doesn't pay ITS debts? Who repossesses? Who goes to the auction to buy it? You think this is impossible?

Imagine 100 million pissed-off Chinese who can't cash in their U.S. Treasury bonds because there is NO MONEY TO PAY THEM WITH.

Seeing this - the $9 TRILLION debt figure - said yet again by Mr. Walker, and knowing that the likelihood is great that no one will pay any more attention to it this time than they did the other several times, it brought to the surface a thought that I've had many times:

Not only is George W. Bush the worst president in the history of America, he is the worst IMAGINABLE president that America COULD have at this particular point in history. Here's part (and only a small part) of what I mean:

- Even before 9/11, our relations with governments and peoples in the Middle East were fraught with danger and misperceptions of our intent for them. So we elect a man who set out almost from day one not to make those problems better, but to make them worse - to assert his manhood, and in the process make the people of that region hate and fear us even more than they did. At this task, he has succeeded beyond the wildest imaginings of his neo-con handlers.

- At just the moment in time at which it becomes clear that human activity is contributing greatly to global warming, in a way that is no longer negligible or able to be put off to another generation, we have a president who not only will do nothing about the problem, and not only depends on the sale of fossil fuels for his and his family's fortune - he even denies that the problem exists for several years, while it gets worse. What could we have done to at least start to correct some of the damage in those years? We will never know.

- At precisely the moment in history when medical science starts making exponential leaps toward eliminating or greatly reducing all manner of human suffering and disease, we have a leader of the most powerful nation on Earth whose religious "faith" prohibits him and his followers from aiding that science with government support.

- At the moment in history when America had become the only superpower, and was beginning to see signs that actually meant something for peace in the world, along comes a government who seems almost hell-bent on destroying our armed forces by overuse and neglect, and weakening us to a point where our enemies - of whom there are now far more than there used to be - might actually get bold enough to attack us unprovoked.

- And right after a brief period of prosperity for our country unlike almost any other in our history, when the federal government has surpluses for the first time in decades, and looks like reducing the national debt to a manageable size after the excesses of the Reagan and Bush 41 years, we elect a president who plunges us into a staggeringly costly and unnecessary war, while cutting taxes to keep himself in power and to enrich his political base, and turning a blind eye to cronyism, war profiteering and incompetence, and after six dedicated years of listening to NO ONE who tells him otherwise, our national economy is on the verge of bankruptcy if action is not taken VERY soon to right the ship of state as it lurches toward insolvency.

I could go on and on. But in short, above are a few arguments as to why everything Bush stands for and does is the exact opposite of what America and Americans need at this exact time in our national life.

Not only the worst president ever, but the worst possible president for the times in which we live. And the damage this man and his administration are doing to America is not over yet.

We'll be lucky to come out of it alive.

Parsing the Obvious, When No One Else Will

by Rich Miles

You know what my biggest weakness is as a political commentator and writer?

OK, other than that...

It's that I don't trust my instincts.

I think things that to me, seem so obvious that I simply can't bring myself even to commit them to paper, or bandwidth, because surely everyone KNOWS that already. So I don't say it, but then, neither does anyone else, and so I assume that it's just SO obvious that everyone already knows it.

But several times in the past, and lately an awful LOT, I've been seeing respected voices say the things I've been thinking for years, as if they were new ideas, or novel observations that no one had ever thought of before.

And when that happens, it really pisses me off that I didn't say it when I first thought of it. Here's an example:

Andrew Kohut, he of the Pew Research Center, agreed with me today. He said something that I've been saying since at least the middle of 2004, and I may have thought it sometime in '03.

Here's what he said: that Bush won in 2004 because the country was still being affected by the attacks on 9/11.

Now, isn't that the most obvious thing to say about that election? That a president who had actually lost the popular vote in 2000, and who may have jiggered the vote to steal the election in Florida, was helped to a 50.7% popular-vote victory because the voters were still reeling from the most horrific attack ever committed on American soil? Is that not so axiomatic as not to merit mention?

And so, I didn't mention it. And apparently, neither did anyone else, or at least no one else whose voice was heard in any real way, until Mr. Kohut said it today.

So here's another "obvious" observation that I've never seen anyone else utter aloud or on paper:

Bush started a war, now clearly on false pretenses, so he could then say, "You can't get rid of me - we're at war, and you endanger our country if you change leaders in the middle of a war."

See how it works? See what Bush and his thugs have done to this country?

Now why aren't we impeaching him?

Decider, or Out of the Loop?

by Rich Miles

OK, so let me see if I've got this right:

George W. Bush is the Decider. He doesn't need to read newspapers because he has the best sources of information in the world right there with him - his White House staffers. He knows what's going on everywhere because he has such wonderful people telling him everything.

And now, for the Congress to insist that (at least) two of those advisers - Karl Rove and Harriet Miers - testify publicly and under oath, would mean that he could no longer get full and honest and open counsel from these advisers, because they would constantly be second-guessing themselves for fear they'd be hauled before a congressional committee and forced to justify themselves and tell what they advised the "Decider" to do. That's the current dodge Bush et al. are using to keep the truth from the American people. (Well...that and the bogus claim of executive privilege.)

BUT!!!

Bush knows nothing. Nothing at all, nothing to see here, let's move on.

Despite an incomplete paper trail of emails, which even in its incompleteness shows pretty conclusively that SOMEone inside the White House was deeply involved in the efforts to fire at least 8 US Attorneys and replace them with "good Bushies", or as they're better known "political cronies", the President of the United States was not one of those people. He didn't know about it in advance, he wasn't consulted about this, it was all someone else's fault.

So which is it? Is he the Decider, who has his finger on every pulse on every topic, or is he the guy the WH staff keeps in the dark so they can protect him from his rightful culpability when the shit hits the fan, as it's doing now in ProsecutorGate?

Because he can't be both. He can't know everything and nothing at the same time. So the question boils down to this: what did the President know, and when did he know it?

Why does that sound so familiar?

Remember the Iran-Contra Affair? Google it if you don't, because there are some alarming similarities in the actions of the father and the son. Remember "I was out of the loop"? Remember that Bush the Elder was the first US President EVER to issue a pardon to anyone for any reason on the eve of the start of a trial?

But mostly, remember "I was out of the loop"?

Maybe it's not totally true that Little George won't do ANYTHING his daddy did.

Geez, people! Get a freakin' grip!

by Rich Miles

Author's Note: The following piece was originally posted as a comment on opednews.com on March 10, 2007 at this permalink: When Losers Talk About Victory and Supporting the Troops

I'm getting just about fed up with this stuff about what "The Democrats must" do!!

Have we already forgotten that it took SIX YEARS to get us into this mess? Not just Iraq, that's only the worst of it - but the whole stinkin' neocon mess in which America now is mired?

Have we forgotten that for FOUR of those years, Bush was still more or less liked by somewhere in the range of 50.001% of America? And was having his bloody way with us, with virtually no resistance, ALL that time?

And left-leaning folks all over the web, including here, want it all cleared up and cleaned up in only two months! Hell, even if you count the Dems as being in control of Congress since Election Day, which we can't, it's only 4 months!

And people piss and moan about how the Dems haven't "done" anything yet - what the hell do you think they're supposed to do, storm the Oval Office and drag the bastard out kicking and screaming? As soul-satisfying as that mental picture might be to many of us, it just ain't gonna happen that way.

We are in the midst of a process - a very difficult and delicate process, and one that our leaders on the Left are a little unfamiliar with, since the Repugs essentially shut us out of government in 1994.

So lighten up a little, OK?

Yes, I want our soldiers out of harm's way ASAP if not sooner. Yes, I want impeachment proceedings to start. Yes, I want Bush and Cheney and the whole lot of them not only removed from office, but humiliated and punished, lest some other tinpot tyrant in the future decide to try this again, since there were no serious consequences this time.

But it's gonna take a while, and for our side - the Reality-Based Side - to whine about how long it's taking to undo 6 years of tyranny and its concomitant effects just PLAYS INTO THE HANDS OF THE NEOCONS, fer cryin' out loud! They say the same things, because they're too effin' stupid to simply shut up and let the Dems destroy themselves - which is exactly what we're headed for if we don't get it together, and support our people as they get their bearings and figure out where the toilets and the dining room are on Capitol Hill.

Frankly, I think they're doing pretty damn good so far - but they're not miracle workers, and we - the PEOPLE - need to remember that!

Keep at it. Work toward 2008. But don't take down our people the way the criminals in power are trying to! Have a little patience. As much as it hurts to do so.

A Cure for Global Climate Change

by Rich Miles

(Thanks to DemforChange for the inspiration for this piece)

Omigod! The brilliance of the plan! The sheer, world-class genius!

I've been wrong about George W. Bush. He really is a great leader, and the Decider he keeps telling us he is. He's formulated a plan to end global warming!

It's called nuclear winter.

Think of it: Our president is intent, is totally committed to, is obsessed with attacking Iran. He's dying to kick some new raghead ass, and this time he really means it.

This time he's going 'nucular'.

See, here's the kicker: Bush has shown himself willing to use nuclear weapons against Iran, despite the indisputable fact that Iran has no nuclear weapons now, and isn't expected to have them for at least 5 years.

That's bad enough - to unleash the hideous death-dealing power of a nuclear weapon, or perhaps more than one, on a nation that is no threat to anything American except the self-esteem of its president. It's enough that the "most powerful man in the world" is considering using the most powerful weapon ever devised by the mind of man on what will almost certainly be a large proportion of civilians.

But what is worse is that is that virtually every sane voice with any knowledge of the matter believes that ANY attack on Iran will do nothing less than inflame the entire Muslim world against America - and those countries that are now trying desperately to remain on our side, or at least neutral, will suddenly and forcefully become our sworn enemies.

And if there were ever any chance that we will, in America, have to "fight them here" instead of over there, the nuking of Iran will virtually ensure it will come to pass.

But from the psychopathic point of view of George W. Bush, there will be two important upsides as our nation engages in a world war that will make the last two look like school picnics: Once and for all, little Georgie will have proven himself more of a man than Poppy, and when the mushroom clouds start sprouting like...well, like mushrooms, all over the globe, not just in Iran - that pesky global warming stuff will stop bedeviling him.

Oh, my poor nation. Oh the humanity.

Doing it on purpose

by Rich Miles

Today is Feb. 1, 2007.

Within the last week, we've discovered that:

- The US may have botched the training of Iraqi police recruits by outsourcing the job to unqualified private contractors - and then failing to follow up to see if the contractors were even TRYING to do the job.

- Our troops, who are fighting Bush's War, many of whom don't even know why, are underequipped even to the point of not having enough ammunition.

- Our government sold spare parts for fighter aircraft to people who then resold them to Iran, the country that Bush is now fully erect to attack.

and

- The nominee for the Director of National Intelligence has a $2 Million a Year Conflict of Interest

And that's just within the last WEEK.

So a question, actually two questions, that I've asked over and over for the past 4 years or more comes up once again: Are these people screwing up on purpose? And if so, WHY?

I mean, what other explanation can there be? The law of averages would seem to dictate that they'd get SOMETHING right occasionally.

But no - I cannot think of one single thing - not ONE, not even a hospital being built or a schoolhouse being painted - that this administration and this Defense Dept . and this State Dept. and this Justice Dept.(oh, don't get me started on the Justice Dept.!) has not utterly and totally
screwed up.

The above examples in the links are pretty much prima facie - not open to much interpretation. But one has to admit it's true that "screwing up" is a moving target - or "in the eye of the beholder" as my dear ol' grandpa used to say. (It's true - he really did, he said "screwing up is in the eye of the beholder")

So let us, in the interest of fairness, allow that some will not think presidential signing statements are "screwing up", despite their apparent extraconstitutionality and their clear intent to place the president above the law; or that the Justice Dept. removing career federal prosecutors, many of them right in the middle of major cases against drug smugglers, terror suspects, and corrupt politicians, and replacing them with political appointees of questionable competence but unquestioned, unquestioning Republican loyalty is not, on any sort of objective scale, "screwing up."

Perhaps some will say we're too harsh to call it "screwing up" when our country's chief law enforcement officer says that the Constitution does not guarantee the 800-year-old legal principle of habeas corpus, or when Bush signs an executive order 'that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.'

And perhaps there will even be some who think it's not screwing up for the government to interfere in the ability of scientists to tell the world about global warming and other scientific matters.

But as some folks are saying about Bush's War, if this isn't screwing up, what is? Can the world, quite literally, survive any worse screwing up than this entire administration and everything they do?

So - way down the page, back to the second of the two questions: since it seems unquestionable that they're doing it on purpose, why?

Sadly, frighteningly, there is an answer to that question: Christianists on the March

"...A period of instability will permit them to push through their radical agenda, one that will be sold to a frightened American public as a return to security and law and order, as well as moral purity and prosperity."

In other words, they need chaos to thrive. Who better to give it to them than George W. Bush and his humanity-challenged thugs?