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It’s been a very busy week (that job thing again…) so I have not had much time to write much about anything, but I have been able to read and watch a few things that are of interest, so here’s a quick review with links so you can learn more.

Obama promised transparency but, as Glenn Greenwald reports, his Justice Department is taking the exact same stance towards the Executive Branch’s power to tap our phones and read our emails without warrants as Bush did.  I consider this a MAJOR breach of trust.  We should all be as outraged as Keith Olbermann.  You can go here to tell Obama what you think of his stance on this issue.

Jon Stewart explains to conservatives that they lost, and that yes… “it’s supposed to taste like a shit taco.”

He bowed.  Stupid mistake.  What should we do?   Impeach him for breach of protocol?  If our previous president was held to account for such minor lapses, he wouldn’t have lasted a week in office.  Whenever Bush did something stooooopid, his supporters just laughed it off with a “Ha ha ha!  Isn’t that charming?”  Now the Obama haters, the worshippers of Bush, blab for hours on 24-hour news channels about an Obama goof-up that doesn’t warrant more of a comment than “he really shouldn’t have done that.  I’m sure he’ll hear about it from his staff and not do it again.”   (I am looking forward to Jon Stewart’s coverage of it.  It will be funny, and I’ll bet he’ll be done in one minute or less.) 

Glenn Beck is batshit crazy.

Krugman says banking SHOULD be boring. It works better that way.

That’s all…

So the President, behaving a little bit more than usual, like we would all interrupt him while he was watching his favorite cartoons on the DVR, stepped before the press conference microphone and after side-stepping most of the substantive issues like the Israeli raid on Syria, in condescending and infuriating fashion, produced a big political finish that indicates, certainly, that if it wasn’t already – the annual Republican witch-hunting season is underway.

“I thought the ad was disgusting. I felt like the ad was an attack not only on General Petraeus, but on the U.S. Military.”

“And I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democrat party spoke out strongly against that kind of ad.

“And that leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like MoveOn.org or more afraid of irritating them, than they are of irritating the United States military.”

“That was a sorry deal.”

First off, it’s “Democrat-ic” party.

You keep pretending you’re not a politician, so stop using words your party made up. Show a little respect.

Secondly, you could say this seriously after the advertising/mugging of Senator Max Cleland? After the swift-boating of John Kerry?

But most importantly, making that the last question?

So that there was no chance at a follow-up?

So nobody could point out, as Chris Matthews so incisively did, a week ago tonight, that you were the one who inappropriately interjected General Petraeus into the political dialogue of this nation in the first place!

………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

To sum up the rest of it:  “Bush is a pimp and Petraeus is a whore,” but to really appreciate it, you’ve got to watch all six minutes of it and soak up the anger.

Watch it or read it all here.

David Froomkin’s piece in today’s Washington Post is a damn good read.  In it, he quotes Keith Olbermann’s special comment on “sacrifice”:

Your most respected generals see no value in a “surge” — they could not possibly see it in this madness of “sacrifice.”

The Iraq Study Group told you it would be a mistake.

Perhaps dozens more have told you it would be a mistake.

And you threw their wisdom back, until you finally heard what you wanted to hear, like some child drawing straws and then saying ‘best two out of three . . . best three out of five . . . hundredth one counts.’

Your citizens, the people for whom you work, have told you they do not want this, and moreover, they do not want you to do this.

Yet once again, sir, you have ignored all of us. . . .

First we sent Americans to their deaths for your lie, Mr. Bush.

Now we are sending them to their deaths for your ego.

Watch the video here.

And from Jane Smiley:

People always comment on how stubborn George W. Bush is, or how stupid he is, or how ignorant he is, but what they don’t comment on is how selfish he is.

And from an anonymous White House Briefing Reader:

Obviously we will have to change course, but he’s not going to be the guy to do it. He will then maintain that someone else “lost” Iraq because they didn’t have the courage and determination to stick it out.  As with everything in his life, from his National Guard service to his serial failures in business and life in general, it’s all about him – not the country, not the job, not our reputation in the world or our hard won and universally admired heritage of concern for basic human rights.  He’s not trying to save this country or Iraq, he’s trying to save himself and his “place in history.”  He’s completely wrong of course, but given his history of privilege and never having to suffer the consequences of his long record of bad decisions, it does kind of make sense.

And that about sums it up:  George W. Bush is a punk-ass bitch.

The Iraq War always has been and always will be about the oil.  Even Bill O’Reilly admits it:

But you don’t want it to reach the point where, we have to, example, you know, level cities like Tehran, kill hundreds of thousands of people, which we may have to do — which we have already done in Germany and Japan. OK? We have already killed hundreds of thousands of people on one day. Now, do we want to do that again? Of course not, but we may have to.

Example: If Iran takes over Iraq and then fosters a revolution inside Saudi Arabia, which Iran wants to do, and overthrows that kingdom and gets control of all the oil and says we’re not selling to the USA, we are going to level that country, because you, [caller], need gasoline to live. See? Now that’s the biggest example I can give you.

Not only does he admit it, but he even says he’d be willing to kill hundreds of thousands of people to secure it.

As Keith Olbermann often says, “Bill O’Reilly is the Worst Person in the World.”

Link via TMW.

Nobody says it quite like Keith Olbermann says it.  This is from his comments during last night’s Countdown about Bush’s signing of the Military Commissions Act:

“With the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?”

Wise words.

And ironic ones, Mr. Bush.

Your own, of course, yesterday, in signing the Military Commissions Act.

You spoke so much more than you know, Sir.

Sadly-of course-the distance of history will recognize that the threat this generation of Americans needed to take seriously was you.

We have a long and painful history of ignoring the prophecy attributed to Benjamin Franklin that “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

But even within this history we have not before codified the poisoning of habeas corpus, that wellspring of protection from which all essential liberties flow.

You, sir, have now befouled that spring.

You, sir, have now given us chaos and called it order.

You, sir, have now imposed subjugation and called it freedom.

For the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And – again, Mr. Bush – all of them, wrong.

…

“These military commissions will provide a fair trial,” you told us yesterday, Mr. Bush, “in which the accused are presumed innocent, have access to an attorney and can hear all the evidence against them.”

“Presumed innocent,” Mr. Bush?

The very piece of paper you signed as you said that, allows for the detainees to be abused up to the point just before they sustain “serious mental and physical trauma” in the hope of getting them to incriminate themselves, and may no longer even invoke The Geneva Conventions in their own defense.

“Access to an attorney,” Mr. Bush?

Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift said on this program, Sir, and to the Supreme Court, that he was only granted access to his detainee defendant on the promise that the detainee would plead guilty.

“Hearing all the evidence,” Mr. Bush?

The Military Commissions Act specifically permits the introduction of classified evidence not made available to the defense.

Your words are lies, Sir.

They are lies that imperil us all.

“One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks,” you told us yesterday, “said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America.”

That terrorist, sir, could only hope.

Not his actions, nor the actions of a ceaseless line of terrorists (real or imagined), could measure up to what you have wrought.

Habeas corpus? Gone.

The Geneva Conventions? Optional.

The moral force we shined outwards to the world as an eternal beacon, and inwards at ourselves as an eternal protection? Snuffed out.

These things you have done, Mr. Bush, they would be “the beginning of the end of America.”

Read or watch it all here. 

Pass it around.

Here’s what Keith Olbermann had to say about it:

Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done in five years.

He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential
administration.

“At least I tried,” he said of his own efforts to capture or kill Osama bin
Laden. “That’s the difference in me and some, including all of the
right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try; they
did not try. I tried.”

Thus in his supposed emeritus years has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and
triumphant action for honesty, and for us; action as vital and as courageous
as any of his presidency; action as startling and as liberating, as any, by
any one, in these last five long years.

The Bush Administration did not try to get Osama bin Laden before 9/11.

The Bush Administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its
predecessors.

The Bush Administration did not understand the Daily Briefing entitled “Bin
Laden Determined To Strike in U.S.”

The Bush Administration did not try.

….

After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts-that he was
president on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our,
unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or
shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the
responsibility, entirely Mr. Clinton’s.

Of course he is not honest enough to do that directly.

As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency
since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him, by proxy.

Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News Friday afternoon.

….

The basic plot-line was this: because he was distracted by the Monica
Lewinsky scandal, Bill Clinton failed to prevent 9/11.

The most curious and in some ways the most infuriating aspect of this
slapdash theory, is that the Right Wingers who have advocated it-who try to
sneak it into our collective consciousness through entertainment, or who
sandbag Mr. Clinton with it at news interviews-have simply skipped past its
most glaring flaw.

Had it been true that Clinton had been distracted from the hunt for bin
Laden in 1998 because of the Monica Lewinsky nonsense, why did these same
people not applaud him for having bombed bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan
and Sudan on Aug. 20, of that year? For mentioning bin Laden by name as he
did so?

That day, Republican Senator Grams of Minnesota invoked the movie “Wag The
Dog.”

Republican Senator Coats of Indiana questioned Mr. Clinton’s judgment.

Republican Senator Ashcroft of Missouri-the future attorney general-echoed
Coats.

Even Republican Senator Arlen Specter questioned the timing.

And of course, were it true Clinton had been “distracted” by the Lewinsky
witch-hunt, who on earth conducted the Lewinsky witch-hunt?

Who turned the political discourse of this nation on its head for two years?

Who corrupted the political media?

….

Thus was it left for the previous president to say what so many of us have
felt; what so many of us have given you a pass for in the months and even
the years after the attack:

You did not try.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people.

Then, you blamed your predecessor.

That would be a textbook definition, Mr. Bush, of cowardice.

To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of
the past.

That was one of the great mechanical realities Eric Blair-writing as George
Orwell-gave us in the book “1984.”

The great philosophical reality he gave us, Mr. Bush, may sound as familiar
to you, as it has lately begun to sound familiar to me.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in
the good of others; we are interested solely in power…

“Power is not a means; it is an end.

….

The “free pass” has been withdrawn, Mr. Bush.

You did not act to prevent 9/11.

We do not know what you have done to prevent another 9/11.

You have failed us-then leveraged that failure, to justify a purposeless war
in Iraq which will have, all too soon, claimed more American lives than did
9/11.

You have failed us anew in Afghanistan.

And you have now tried to hide your failures, by blaming your predecessor.

And now you exploit your failure, to rationalize brazen torture which
doesn’t work anyway; which only condemns our soldiers to water-boarding;
which only humiliates our country further in the world; and which no true
American would ever condone, let alone advocate.

And there it is, Mr. Bush:

Are yours the actions of a true American?

There’s more here.  Watch it here.