Prop 8 - The Musical

Reading Between the Lines

Each Sunday in the NY Times Magazine, there's a first-person Q&A with all sorts of people in the news. It's done by Deborah Solomon and consists of a short transcript of questions to the subject and

 his or her answers. This week, Karl Rove is in the spotlight. 

I'm not fan of Rove's -- in fact, I'd say he's up there with some of the worst people to ever inhabit Washington and that's a long, long, long list. But however you feel about him, it's hard to not come away from even this brief interview and not get what he's about.

Pretty chilling, if you ask me.

The entire article is on the New York Times website, but here is a taste. (The questions are in bold; Rove's answers follow on the next line).

Do you see the election results as a repudiation of your politics? 
Our new president-elect won one and a half points more than George W. Bush won in 2004, and he did so, in great respect, by adopting the methods of the Bush campaign and conducting a vast army of persuasion to identify and get out the vote.
But what about your great dream of creating a permanent Republican governing majority in Washington? 
I never said permanent. Durable.
Do you have any advice for him? You already criticized Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s new chief of staff, as a sharply partisan choice.
I raised a question as to whether this would be the best use of Rahm Emanuel’s talents. If you’re trying to work through a big legislative priority, it is sort of hard if you have a guy who has a reputation as a tough, hard, take-no-prisoners, head-in-your-face, scream-and-shout, send-them-a-dead-fish partisan.
Do you like Joe Biden? 
I think he has an odd combination of longevity and long-windedness that passes for wisdom in Washington. 
Do you regret anything that happened in the White House during your tenure?
 Sure.
Do you have any advice for [President Bush] at this point?
With all due respect, I don’t need you to transmit what I want to say to my friend of 35 years.
Remember, attack politics are out. It’s a new age of civilized discourse. 
You’re the one who hurt my feelings by saying you didn’t trust me.
Did I say that? 
Yes, you did. I’ve got it on tape. I’m going to transcribe this and send it to you.

Excerpts from an interview conducted, condensed and edited by Deborah Solomon.

Change Now Has A Home Page

President-Elect Barack Obama's transition team launched a website today that truly demonstrates how far apart his view of the world is from the previous administration's.

I bet there's more information about government on this page than the Bush White House released in the last eight years. Check it out at www.change.gov

There's also a place for Americans to tell their own stories -- kind of like an Internet-wide town hall (you can get there by clicking the image).

That's right -- a line to the White House, which you might be excused for forgetting during the last eight years, is the People's House. As in We the People of the United States.
Maybe it's a brilliant strategy but it's still a great indicator of the openness we can expect from an Obama Administration (god, I LOVE saying that).

The Grant Park Speech

Sounding like the historical brother of Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, President-elect Barack Hussein Obama sounded a siren call for change, unity and civic responsibility in his speech to his supporters last night in Chicago's Grant Park and to the millions listening on radio, TV and on the Internet.

It was a remarkable speech showing Obama's sense of history and perspective and acknowledging the debt he owes to a nation who rose up to support him and also reiterating that there is much work left to do. I've embedded the speech here, followed by the text as published by CNN on its website, because it's one everyone in America should hear.

Just to put it all into perspective, I'm including George W. Bush's acceptance speech from 2004, this was the day before he told reporters that he had earned "political capital" and he was going to spend it.

The fucker sure spent it. At the cost of American lives, the economy and the basic tenets of our Constitution. Even then, his promise of unity seemed empty but now, after four more years of divisive politics and backroom, shadowy governing, they are even more empty.

Without further ado, here are the two speeches so you can judge for yourself.

Hello, Chicago.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.

We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day. It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America.

A little bit earlier this evening, I received an extraordinarily gracious call from Sen. McCain.

Sen. McCain fought long and hard in this campaign. And he's fought even longer and harder for the country that he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine. We are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader.

I congratulate him; I congratulate Gov. Palin for all that they've achieved. And I look forward to working with them to renew this nation's promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart, and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on the train home to Delaware, the vice president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

And I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years the rock of our family, the love of my life, the nation's next first lady Michelle Obama.

Sasha and Malia I love you both more than you can imagine. And you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the new White House.

And while she's no longer with us, I know my grandmother's watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight. I know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my sister Maya, my sister Alma, all my other brothers and sisters, thank you so much for all the support that you've given me. I am grateful to them.

And to my campaign manager, David Plouffe, the unsung hero of this campaign, who built the best -- the best political campaign, I think, in the history of the United States of America.

To my chief strategist David Axelrod who's been a partner with me every step of the way.

To the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you've sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston. It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to the cause.

It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation's apathy who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.

It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

This is your victory.

And I know you didn't do this just to win an election. And I know you didn't do it for me.

You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime -- two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.

Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.

There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after the children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage or pay their doctors' bills or save enough for their child's college education.

There's new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

I promise you, we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can't solve every problem.

But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it's been done in America for 221 years -- block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter cannot end on this autumn night.

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

Let us remember that, if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers.

In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let's resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.

Let's remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House, a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity.

Those are values that we all share. And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.

As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not

have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

To those -- to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

That's the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we've already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight's about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons -- because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America -- the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes

dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.

And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.

Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves -- if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.

This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

(end of Obama's Election-night address).

Bush's Acceptance From Election-night 2004

Thank you all. Thank you all for coming. We had a long night -- and a great night. The voters turned out in record numbers and delivered an historic victory.

Earlier today, Senator Kerry called with his congratulations. We had a really good phone call, he was very gracious. Senator Kerry waged a spirited campaign, and he and his supporters can be proud of their efforts. (Applause.)

Laura and I wish Senator Kerry and Teresa and their whole family all our best wishes.

America has spoken, and I'm humbled by the trust and the confidence

of my fellow citizens.

With that trust comes a duty to serve all Americans, and I will do my best to fulfill that duty every day as your President.

There are many people to thank, and my family comes first. Laura is the love of my life. I'm glad you love her, too. I want to thank our daughters, who joined their dad for his last campaign. I appreciate the hard work of my sister and my brothers. I especially want to thank my parents for their loving support.

I'm grateful to the Vice President and Lynne and their daughters, who have worked so hard and been such a vital part of our team. The Vice President serves America with wisdom and honor, and I'm proud to serve beside him.

I want to thank my superb campaign team. I want to thank you all for your hard work. I was impressed every day by how hard and how skillful our team was. I want to thank Marc -- Chairman Marc Racicot and ---- the Campaign Manager, Ken Mehlman. And the architect, Karl Rove. I want to thank Ed Gillespie for leading our Party so well.

I want to thank the thousands of our supporters across our country. I want to thank you for your hugs on the rope lines; I want to thank you for your prayers on the rope lines; I want to thank you for your kind words on the rope lines. I want to thank you for everything you did to make the calls and to put up the signs, to talk to your neighbors and to get out the vote. And because you did the incredible work, we are celebrating today.

There's an old saying, "Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks." In four historic years, America has been given great tasks, and faced them with strength and courage. Our people have restored the vigor of this economy, and shown resolve and patience in a new kind of war. Our military has brought justice to the enemy, and honor to America. Our nation has defended itself, and served the freedom of all mankind. I'm proud to lead such an amazing country, and I'm proud to lead it forward.

Because we have done the hard work, we are entering a season of hope. We'll continue our economic progress. We'll reform our outdated tax code. We'll strengthen the Social Security for the next generation. We'll make public schools all they can be. And we will uphold our deepest values of family and faith.

We will help the emerging democracies of Iraq and Afghanistan so they can grow in strength and defend their freedom. And then our servicemen and women will come home with the honor they have earned. With good allies at our side, we will fight this war on terror with every resource of our national power so our children can live in freedom and in peace.

Reaching these goals will require the broad support of Americans. So today I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent: To make this nation stronger and better I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust. A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation. We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America.

Let me close with a word to the people of the state of Texas. We have known each other the longest, and you started me on this journey. On the open plains of Texas, I first learned the character of our country: sturdy and honest, and as hopeful as the break of day. I will always be grateful to the good people of my state. And whatever the road that lies ahead, that road will take me home.

The campaign has ended, and the United States of America goes forward with confidence and faith. I see a great day coming for our country and I am eager for the work ahead. God bless you, and may God bless America.

The United Republic of Fubar

Dry Creek Road After the Rain, Feb. 2007
When I was 17 years old I discovered that Lee Hays, a member of the famed folk group The Weavers was living one town over from me. Being the daughter of what I like to call "Greenwich Village Liberals," Hays was sort of a hero of mine - a fine musician and a brave activist.

We had a good, if not particularly strong radio station at my high school and I managed to arrange an interview with him and edited into a special interview. I have the tapes somewhere but they are on reel-to-reel and I’ve yet to have them transferred. But when I do, I’ll have it transcribed.

Hays was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, the son of a Methodist Preacher and became a union activist in the 1930s, finding his way to New York City where he met, performed and befriended Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Huddie (Leadbelly) Ledbetter, Josh White and Burl Ives. He wrote a number of important pro-union songs, including "Which Side Are You On," and later, co-wrote (with the Weavers) songs like "Kisses Sweeter than Wine" and "If I Had a Hammer." The group was blacklisted during the McCarthy era.

Hays lived in Croton-on-Hudson in a small house at the end of a long, narrow dusty road. I didn’t drive yet and my Mom dropped me off at his house and left me there at his front door. I knocked and heard this bellowing voice from inside telling me to come in.

In the Weavers’ old publicity shots, Hays stands out prominently. He was a big guy with the thick-rimmed glasses, more football player than folk singer who probably resembled in appearance anyway, the union-busting thugs that he and his fellow “agitators” faced off against when they were fighting for workers’ rights.

By the time I met him, he was in his late 60s and in failing health, still an impressive bear of men despite having lost both legs to a long battle with diabetes.

When I walked into that tiny, stuffy one-room house, Hays was still in bed, using his massive arms to grasp the metal bar hanging from the ceiling and pull himself into a wheelchair. We got situated, sitting outside on his small porch, which faced a wooded area. It was a beautiful spot but not so great for making a tape recording - the sound of birds and a barking dog in the background can be heard clearly on the tape, sometimes loud enough to where you couldn’t hear us talking.

The conversation covered his history as an activist and the music and politics, of course. I was already a believer. I grew up in a household where the heroes were people like Richard Wright, Pete Seeger and Martin Luther King, Edward R. Murrow, Adlai Stevenson, George McGovern, and blacklisted writers like Paddy Cheyevsky.

I felt like I was bridging a gap to an forgotten American history, to a place and people who had been bludgeoned under the pressure of the young and oh-so eager young Reagan Republicans who were in the process of turning the word “liberal” into a dirty word.

It was spring of 1981, right before Reagan was shot outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., when Alexander Haig stepped all over the Constitutional chain of power to claim he was in “control” of the White House.

That summer, I was working as a counselor in a summer camp in Connecticut and I was corresponding with Hays. He sent me a postcard about Haig that I’ve kept all these years, “Such men would be funny if they weren’t so ominous,” he wrote.

He never got to see how it all turned out. A few weeks after he wrote to me, Hays died. I don’t know what the cause was but the local newspaper wrote that he had taken several local kids under his wing and one he was particularly close to, who had just gone off to college in Florida, had been killed in a motorcycle accident. The implication was he died of a broken heart.

I’ve thought a lot about Hays since, more so than ever after 9/11 and did not have to wonder how he would have reacted to the way our nation responded to it. He would have been disappointed. He would have wondered how America could have gone so far backward so fast.

I did not support this war with Iraq. I had many reasons, some of which were romantic notions, I admit. I didn’t know that the Bush Administration was lying about WMD, though it was clear from what I was reading, however, that they made up the link between Saddam and the 9/11 hijackers and later, that Saddam had tried to buy uranium in Niger.

I’m not a complete pacifist. I knew what Saddam Hussein was and that he needed to be ousted. But I read about the NeoCons and checked out their manifesto and I just didn't share their opinion of the world. It didn't seem rational to me.

I never made the connection between Al Qaeda and invading Iraq. Afghanistan, now that was a different matter altogether. That I got.

I wanted Osama Bin Laden to be brought to justice, his organization destroyed. Once that was accomplished, I wanted to see our nation ask the hard questions about how we had arrived at this point in history where we were so hated. I wanted to see a policy where we would find a way to reach the moderates in the Arab world, to find a bridge, a shared humanity.

I was called a traitor by my Republican “friends” who accused me of being soft, of not understanding the threat of not seeing that there were no “moderate” Arabs, that they all wanted us dead. They are, interestingly enough, not lining up to apologize for how wrong they were and how right I was. They are, interestingly enough, being very quiet these days.

I never doubted my point of view, in part because the people who seemed to share it were big thinkers who I respected, people like Joe Conason, Sidney Blumenthal, Seymour Hersh, Frank Rich and others. People who looked beyond the spin, the rhetoric, the blindly nationalistic post-9/11 call for blood, and asked difficult questions, shined a light on the truth.

The war progressed, mistake after mistake after mistake was made, lies were brought out into the open, the whole thing turned into a major political, military and geopolitical disaster, it occurred to me that we so-called weak, uninformed, unpatriotic, traitorous liberals were right after all.

The best book on Iraq I’ve read so far (and I’m going through them all) is “The Assassin’s Gate” by George Packer. It’s so brilliant on a number of levels, not the least of which because it is starkly honest, unflinchingly objective, searing and insightful.

Packer supported the invasion, if for different reasons than the Bush Administration. He spoke with American and foreign officials, military leaders and soldiers, American Iraqis, exiles and those who had lived under Saddam’s harsh rule. His book lays out in painful detail the manner in which the Bush Administration fucked up the war out of fundamentalist views, plain arrogance and outrageous negligence.

The errors the Administration made in the planning and handling of the war, and the post-war reconstruction efforts are horrendous all by themselves, but reading about them first hand, seeing the mistakes as they made them side-by-side with the obviousness of those errors, well it’s enough to make you sick to your stomach.

This isn’t, as some Administration supporters have argued, the result of unavoidable mistakes or bad luck or the residue of conditions and/or events that were unforeseen. They had all the information. They just ignored it. It's a clear example of a kind of hubris of historic proportions, the kind that has brought whole civilizations crashing to their knees.

And the beat goes on, unfettered, apparently.

A couple of weeks ago, there was this exchange at the White House press briefing as reported by Tim Grieve at salon.com:

Reporter: Slides from a prewar briefing show that by this point, the U.S. expected that the Iraqi army would be able to stabilize the country and there would be as few as 5,000 U.S. troops there. What went wrong?

Tony Snow: I'm not sure anything went wrong. At the beginning of the Civil War, people thought it would all be over at Manassas. It is very difficult -- no, Jessica, the fact is, a war is a big, complex thing. And what you're talking about is a 2002 assessment. We're now in the year 2007, and it is well known by anybody who has studied any war that war plans immediately become moot upon the first contact with the enemy. For instance, a lot of people did not think that we would have the success we had moving swiftly into Baghdad. All I'm saying is that -- what happens is, you're looking at a prewar assessment, and there have been constant assessments ever since. A war is not a situation where you can sit down and neatly predict what exactly is going to happen. You make your best estimates, but you also understand that there are going to continue to be challenges, there are going to be things that you don't anticipate, there are going to be things that the enemy doesn't anticipate. And the most important task, frankly, is to continue to try to assess near-term and midterm to figure out how best to address the situation.

Reporter: But this estimate was monumentally wrong. So would the president, knowing what he knows today, still have decided to go into Iraq?

Snow: Yes. The president believes that we did the right thing in going into Iraq. The question is, should you saddle any military planner with an expectation that they're going to have perfect insight into what happens five years later? And the answer is, of course not. And I think if you talk to military planners, they do their very best under a situation. As you know, many reporters who were in the field then probably had different views about how things might be today. The fact is, the war is -- I know it's becoming a cliché, but it's true -- it's a highly complex enterprise. What you end up doing is you make your best guesses going in. It turns out, for instance, their assessment that they would be able to move swiftly into Baghdad was absolutely right. But you have -- it is pretty clear that some of the other assessments were wrong, and you deal with it.

We didn’t know. Things change. These are circular arguments that Bush officials throw out after anything goes wrong over there. Sure, it’s occasionally correct, but as Packer makes clear again and again in the pages of “The Assassin’s Gate,” the Administration rejected post-war planning, intelligence assessments, historical realities and expert analysis that didn’t conform to what they knew was going to happen. Worse, any little shred of evidence that supported their point of view, was given more weight then it deserved. It was a whole organization of sycophants.

This isn’t just policy errors that have damaged the United States’ reputation both with our friends and enemies, there are real world implications from the Iraq debacle.

- Iraq has descended into a civil war and become a breeding ground for terrorism.

- Al Qaeda, which was severely crippled in the military actions on Afghanistan after 9/11, has reportedly regrouped and encamped somewhere in the vast regions of Pakistan.

- Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s stubborn refusal to first send enough troops into Iraq and then later, when his own military and civilian authorities in Iraq were pleading for more troops, refusing to increase the numbers, damaged the military’s efforts at securing Iraq and, in part, led to the success of the insurgency.

- The Administration’s refusal to believe that guerilla war was possible, even though it was learned shortly into the war that this was exactly what Saddam had planned from the start, led to an unprepared military and, consequently, to the deaths of Americans.

- The Administration’s arrogant distaste for so-called ‘nation building” planning because it was favored by the Clinton Administration, led to a series of tragic blunders by post-war planning authorities, all of them either a direct result of Administration policy objectives that had no basis in reality, or from lack of good intelligence or analysis, most of which had gone unheeded or unread by key officials.

Packer makes a very strong case that the Iraq invasion was winnable had so many blunders not been committed by people more concerned with their view of the world, then with doing right by America and Iraq.

There is no question when looking at the overall picture of this war and what and who led us into it, that it was handled as badly as could be imagined. Some of this was just pure incompetence but most of this can only be attributed to a group of people in power who subscribed to a point of view with the kind of religious zeal that we’ve seen from the very people we are fighting.

The NeoCons wanted to spread Democracy throughout the Middle East, wanted them to be more like us. What they have wrought only make us seem more like them.

Like Lee Hays said so many years ago, it would be funny if it wasn’t so ominous.

Dicked

Bend in the Road, Healdsburg, CA 2007

If you haven’t been paying attention to the Scooter Libby trial, you’re a little late to the party. But if you love your country, you might want to tune in.

Bring your barf bag.

Cause you'll be getting a pretty good glimpse into the damage our government is doing to our nation's soul.

S.O.L. takes what she can get but is personally not happy about this trial's reason for being. It's not big enough for us. It’s like watching Barry Bonds batting against Little Leaguers.

We did not follow our mother’s advice and go to law school so we're not really clear on why one of Bush’s minions is on trial for lying to the F.B.I., when there is the unresolved question of outing Valerie Plame and breaking a major big deal federal law. What we’d rather see, what this country deserves, is someone’s head on a stick. We do not consider it asking to much for that special someone to be Dick Cheney.

You see, this is why it’s just so damn hard to believe in God.

If we’ve learned anything in the last few weeks it’s that the Bush White House is a breeding ground for liars and cowards and one-issue nincompoops and (mostly) guys who just don’t have any use for the truth, much less that quaint little ol' thing we call the Constitution.

If you’re a Republican and you support these guys, you are part of the problem. Normally, S.O.L. is happy to give people the benefit of their beliefs. We know a lot of smart people who happen to disagree. But come on now people, there is a mountain of evidence testifying to how fucked up these people are and how little they care about pesky things like laws or human decency or even human life. You can say it’s just business as usual in Washington but we would like to be the first to disabuse you of that notion. These guys make dirty pool seem classy. These things happen somewhere else and we're the first to scream about justice. Happens here and it's just politics as usual.

Everything you need to know has been spelled out for you during Libby’s trial, and for once without the Karl Rove/Fox News spin doctors during their usual number on the facts. It’s as if we live in a world now where facts don’t even matter and all we have left is the spin. (In the world of Fox News, there aren’t facts. There is only “versions” of the facts or “two sides to the story”. Well, we say this without irony and with absolutely no sense of superiority, but we think that anyone who still buys into Bush’s bullshit is either blindly loyal or blindly stupid. That’s a fact, too.)

The reason there is even a trial at all is because the Bushies were trying to cover their asses, most notably the Don himself (Cheney) who is permanent chair of the Department of CYA. S.O.L. knows he’s our vice president and we’re suppose to show him respect but using his title but we think respect ought to be earned. We would like to show him the inside of a jail cell.

One of the numerous, bald-faced lies that the White House was shilling in trying to sell the American public on going to war in Iraq, was that Saddam Hussein’s government had tried to buy yellow cake uranium in Niger as recently as 2002. This claim was said many times by Cheney and other Bush officials, and the President repeated it in those famous 23 words in his State of the Union Address in January 2003.

Well, it's not their fault. Intelligence gathering is an art, not a science. We've been wrong before. Shit just happens, right? No problem really, except these fuckers were telling us that Saddam was getting ready to nuke the shit out of every woman, child and puppy in the entire United States, even though they knew it was a lie. And you thought George Washington’s was a whopper.

How did they know? Because back in 2002, former ambassador and current Republican Joseph C. Wilson, went to Niger, discovered the story was bogus and told them. You know, he actually put it in writing. Six months later, this was what Bush said in the State of the Union:

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Administration supporters (like this "columnist") have cited sources that claim that Bush & Co. had reason to believe the statement above was true (even though the White House eventually admitted it shouldn't have included those words in the speech). But while some sources said the yellowcake story might have merit, numerous others did not buy it. This included the CIA director, Wilson and intelligence officials.

The real fun is how the other thing unraveled.

It was, in fact, Cheney himself who supplied the rope that is about to hang his trusty lapdog from a post, twisting alone in the wind (until Bush pardons him).

Cheney was so certain that the Niger yellowcake story was true, that his office asked the C.I.A. to investigate its validity. That's how Joseph Wilson got sent to Niger. Oops. Lucky for us it's all part of the public record, thanks to Scooter Libby's trial.

Sidney Blumenthal, reporting from the trial at salon.com** today, wrote this about the prosecution's closing argument (emphasis added by S.O.L.):

Vice President Dick Cheney, who was angered at Wilson's public revelations concerning the falsehoods about the justification for the invasion of Iraq, a CIA mission put in motion by Cheney's own inquiries, which particularly enraged him. Cheney tasked Libby to learn about Wilson's wife, the CIA operative, so that Wilson's trip to Niger could be traced to her and not to Cheney's initial request to dig up information about Saddam Hussein's seeking yellowcake uranium for nuclear weapons.

You know damn well it gets better.

The prosecution went on to argue that Libby was doing Cheney's bidding in trying to find a way to discredit Wilson. S.O.L. wants to pause here for a general inquiry: let's agree that there is nothing unusual in politics about attacking one's enemy. But what kind of person attacks the enemy by sending his boy to do the dirty work for him, and then what can we say about this person when he orders said synchophant to go after his enemy's spouse?

Apparently, that would be one Dick Cheney.

Not only a liar. But a cowardly, heartless bastard willing to chuck one of his most trusted confidante's into the pit of hell. Well, I suppose coming from a man who shot his friend in the face, this is behavior that's to be expected.

But wait, there's more. From the Washington Post from August 11, 2005:

The 2002 mission grew out of a request by Vice President Cheney on Feb. 12 for more information about a Defense Intelligence Agency report he had received that day, according to a 2004 report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. An aide to Cheney would later say he did not realize at the time that this request would generate such a trip.

Libby went to State and the CIA to try to dig up anything he could find on Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, according to trial witnesses (the very officials he hit up for dirt). Libby, with Cheney's blessing, constructed a lie out of it that they hoped would cover up the real reasons for the Niger trip, and tried to sell this bill of goods to several different journalists, including the New York Times' Judith Miller who was already buying every other lie the Bushies were telling about Iraq.

As a former journalist who took pride in being actually fair no matter what side of an issue she was on, S.O.L. has only ice in her heart for Miller who is a stain on the face of journalism.

Moving, on ... the fact that their own stoolie didn't write about the Valerie Plame/Joseph Wilson connection was a pretty good indication how transparent their story was but did that stop them? By God, no!

Good thing the Prince of Darkness was ready to come to their rescue. Libby and Cheney discovered what S.O.L. has known for years -- there is always an ass-kisser waiting in the background to kiss ass. They are like cock roaches. No matter how many you kill, there is always another one lurking under the Formica.

How much are we outraged? Let us count the ways.

Robert Novak, the so-called journalist who revealed Plame's name in his column, is still working and not in prison.

Scooter Libby is on trial and not Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby.

And no one's on trial for breaking a federal law by revealing the name of a covert operative for the CIA just to get back at her husband for -- stop me if you've heard this before -- telling the freaking truth. Really and truly, fuck me.



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