Cheney's Family Jewels

While lying media whore Ann Coulter dragged Chris Matthews and Hardball into the gutter today on MSNBC, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was busy tackling serious issues.

Giving Coulter a platform to spew her hateful rancor – thinly and disingenuously disguised as “humor” – is as inappropriate as allowing Noah Wiley to speak about heart disease on a panel sponsored by the American Medical Association. Shame on Chris Matthews.

Meanwhile, Blitzer showcased one of the most fascinating and historically important developments in Washington since the Pentagon Papers: the publishing by the CIA of an internal expose entitled “Family Jewels.” Prompted in large part by Freedom Of Information Act requests, Jewels is a detailed accounting of cold-war era CIA excesses from the ‘50s through the ‘70s.

Though many details are still forthcoming, such excesses included employing the Mafia to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro, providing materials and assistance to domestic law enforcement, spying on domestic anti-war demonstrators and spying on domestic journalists who published sensitive government data.

Recall that the CIA is prohibited from operating domestically - the exclusive turf of the FBI.

Significant about this publication is the weight it gives those who have been screaming for decades that the CIA was involved in dirty and illegal deeds, and the shadow it casts over those increasingly ridiculous deniers who all along claimed that the CIA was a lily-white tower of patriotic virtue.

In other words, this tome is yet another example of how our nation does wrong while trying to maintain the illusion of doing right. This alone should underscore how crucial it is for dissent and criticism to play a central role in government and politics, because sadly, denying citizens their constitutional rights by placing them under illegal surveillance isn’t a thing of the past. The recent warrantless wiretapping scandals are proof. So is Dick Cheney.

As recently as this week Vice President Cheney claimed he was not subject to laws governing how the Executive Branch compiles and stores official communications…because he does not consider himself part of the Executive Branch! At least not today.

Setting aside the fact that Dick Cheney doesn’t want investigators and historians to read his emails and memos because they would reveal damning evidence of his blatant dishonesty, malicious temperament and disastrous incompetence, Cheney would rather insult the intelligence of the American public by claiming that he is above the law rather than complying with it.

While the CIA's Jewels are a chilling confirmation of the excesses of power and the ease with which the institutions of government can be co-opted into actions that are un-American, unpatriotic and against everything we say we stand for, Cheney’s malevolent authorizations of surveillance, rendition, unconditional detention and torture (the very same dirty laundry that the CIA is now admitting) are the most recent embodiments of power run amok.

The CIA did a great service to the nation by releasing this unflattering information. Hopefully it will motivate Congress to hold the Executive Branch accountable for its actions. Because until we hold our so-called leaders accountable for their misdeeds, nothing will change. Thanks to Cheney, the first step will be forcing the Bush Crew to comply with the law instead of holding themselves above it. Because few things are more disgraceful than leaders who hold themselves above the law. And as history confirms, few things are more dangerous.

- JT Compton

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Mayor Mike Madness

I met Michael Bloomberg in the late ‘80s, when his company was gaining traction mainly because it provided high-powered analytics to bond traders. He was already a legendary figure, both for his prior success at Salomon Brothers and his willingness to roll the dice by starting a company that provided technical data on little yellow screens.

Unlike many moguls from that period, I still admire Michael Bloomberg and appreciate the job he’s done as Mayor of New York City. While the city isn’t run as tightly as it was under Giuliani – Subway panhandlers appeared almost overnight after Rudy left office – Bloomberg has been a solid steward. He’s done a great job with the finances and he’s been sensitive to the needs of the most vulnerable.

Nonetheless, what is Mayor Mike thinking?

Perhaps it’s just the hubris that comes with being a billionaire, or the myopia that comes with living in a bubble of constant praise and adulation, but from a real-world perspective, Bloomberg doesn’t have a chicken’s chance in a gator farm of becoming the next president.

Very simply, few people outside the tri-state area know who he is. And even if he’s able to get onto their radar screens, several important cards are stacked against him. He’s a Harvard MBA geek. He's a divorced bachelor. He's been sued for sexual harassment. He’s Jewish. He's switched parties twice. And he has no political experience on a national or international level.

Sure, as an Independent he might be able to avoid the primary process and wind up in debates with the Republican and Democratic nominees, but when it comes to charisma, Mike makes Hilary look like Princess Di. As a public speaker, he’s deadly dull.

I’d be happy for him to run since he would likely steal more votes from the Republicans than the Democrats in states where it mattered. But it would be a fantastic waste of time and effort. Maybe he’s trying to set the stage for a stronger run four or eight years from now, however he would still have significant hurdles to overcome.

It’s hard to imagine a greater insult to the intelligence of the voting public than term limits, and sadly, Bloomberg is prohibited from running for Mayor again. But I’m sure he can find other ways to contribute to public life once his office is up. Rather than spending a hundred and fifty million on a Presidential campaign, he might be better off investing the money in scholarships for disadvantaged teens. At least they would have a chance to succeed. His Presidential bid has none.

- JT Compton

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Conservatives in Wonderland

If the conservative movement were a mental patient, it would surely be diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic.

At this week’s Republican Presidential Debate on CNN, the dominant emotion was self-righteous anger, along with a strong dose of indignation. Anger at President Bush, anger at the Democrats and anger at the nation for parting ways with the conservative agenda. For example, the candidates wailed about how our troops needed to stay in Iraq until the mission was complete. Rudy Giuliani even shouted about the good things that would fall into place “if we can get this right.”

But on this and virtually every other issue, the responses made it clear that these conservatives live in a fantasyland built from the ashes their own failures. Not a single candidate acknowledged the generally accepted fact that the mission in Iraq has reached the point of a zero chance for "success." Providing security and stability to the Iraqi people in the face of a multi-faceted civil war is something our military is not capable of “getting right.”

And counter to what the candidates profess, withdrawal won’t unleash chaos because chaos has already been the rule of life in Iraq for years. Only a delusional mind would believe that a nation we already have virtually no control over would “burst into flames” once we leave. We provide a modicum of security for government officials, but little more. Terrorists and death squads already operate with impunity. Once we leave, politicians will simply get security from their own tribal factions. And while progress, such as it is, may go from a trickle to a stop, it’s an arrogant fantasy to think that our presence is a magic glue holding things together.

But Rudy Giuliani didn’t limit his arrogant fantasies to the subject of Iraq. He also screamed about the health-care mess, bitterly claiming that the system is broken because it’s “government dominated.” That’s right, the multi-billion dollar for-profit industry isn’t dominated by the greedy health care providers or the pharmaceutical industry—it’s dominated by our very own government.

Is he insane?

We should be so lucky for our government to take control of health care, which it clearly has no control over outside of Medicare despite Giuliani’s delusions. But hey, according to conservatives, “the government has never gotten anything right!” Well, under the Bush Administration the government has gotten a lot of important things wrong. But we trust the government to get a lot of life and death enterprises right. The military. The police. The fire department. The coast guard. The forest service. So why not health care? Are the other industrialized nations that much more capable than we are? Or are their politicians just much more capable than our very own Republicans? I don’t hear any mainstream conservatives talking about privatizing law enforcement.

Going on to achieve the Lunacy Trifecta, Giuliani later echoed the sentiments of many Bush conservatives by commenting on the jail sentence handed to convicted felon Scooter Libby, saying he thought Libby was a good candidate for a pardon. As Rudy resentfully pointed out, “a man’s life is at stake.” But Rudy seems unconcerned that the integrity of the Presidency is also at stake. That the outing of a covert CIA officer is also at stake. That the lives of that officer and her husband were at stake, and were damaged by Libby’s lies. That ethics were at stake because the office of the Vice President waged an unethical smear campaign to cover its lies about Iraq’s nuclear capabilities and then tried to cover tracks by lying to a special prosecutor.

Stakes like those don’t seem to register in conservative fantasyland. Because they don’t serve the cause of making conservatives look like capable heroes. And darn it, conservatives have to look perfect in order to feel good about themselves. That’s their fantasy—that they can do no wrong, just like America itself.

But the more conservatives try to push fantasies and delusions and wishful thinking, the more transparent and pitiful they become. Consider the new show on Fox News, “The 1/2 Hour News Hour”, which is meant to be a conservative version of “The Daily Show.” Its mere existence tells us three things about Fox. One, that it is desperately trying not to wither into complete and total irrelevance. Two, that Fox has never really been about news or journalism. And three, that it doesn’t get the joke—Jon Stewart doesn’t skewer Bush and Cheney and the others because they are conservatives—he makes fun of them because they are so damned dangerously ridiculous! And when moderates, progressives and liberals become as idiotic and incompetent, The Daily Show will make fun of them, too.

Conservatives choose to live in a fantasy world to avoid confronting the realities of their own failures, many of which have been egregious and calamitous of late. But the longer they spew wishful thinking and ignore hard facts, the further away they get from the electorate.

If “Angry and Deluded” describes the bulk of the conservative platform, 2008 is going to be a really bad year for Republicans. And a good year for America.

- JT Compton

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