BTC News: If It Says ‘News,’ It Must Be True » Blog Archive » Democrats keep Americans safe from democracy; odds and ends

27
Feb
2010

Democrats keep Americans safe from democracy; odds and ends

The PATRIOT Act was up for renewal this week. Democrats wanted to add some civil liberties backstops to it, but were unable to get it done because, well, they’re Democrats, and the getting done of things just isn’t among their areas of expertise. So they compromised with themselves by kicking the can down the road for a year, leaving in place all the provisions documented to have been abused by every law enforcement and national security office with half a chance to do so. This is exclusive of all the abuses by people smart enough not to get caught at it, not that getting caught at it leads to any actual consequences. Remember that old saying about hindsight being 20/20? Well, not when you stick a hot poker in its eye …

Not all Nobel Peace Prize winners use their acceptance lectures as an opportunity to brand Martin Luther King and Ghandi as unrealistic saps who didn’t understand the heroic necessity of bombing the brown bejeebers out of impoverished peoples in far off lands. Mohammed ElBaradai, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency who was roundly hated by the Bush administration for advocating against blowing people up for stuff they weren’t doing, both in his capacity as the IAEA chief and in a Nobel acceptance speech that admittedly didn’t come close to Obama’s for sheer reluctant-cowboy-strapping-on-his-guns-and-riding-off-to-blow-some-bad-guy’s-shit-up-real-good drama but nevertheless had its moments, is now back home in Egypt stirring up trouble for America’s long-time Man in Cairo, Hosni Mubarak.

ElBaradai is a very smart man and an astute politician, and one hopes he isn’t setting himself up to get killed by the afore-mentioned Mubarak, something the US would no doubt find regrettable and requiring of the most stern recriminations.

I’m not a big fan of Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post’s “media” “critic”, but in this instance someone threw an acorn at him and when it glanced off his noggin and fell to the ground at his feet he recognized it for the seed of a story that it was, which is about how Ron Hubbard’s science fiction religion gone rogue hired some investigative journalists to investigate the St. Petersburg Times. The Church of Scientology commissioned the no-holds-barred, chips-fall-where-they-may report in response to many, many years of unfriendly press from the Times. Although actually it isn’t a chips-fall-where-they-may kind of thing, because if the chips fall somewhere the church doesn’t want them to fall, they’ve reserved the right to sweep them up and run them through the shredder.

I’m fond of the St. Pete Times because of its lineage, and of course any paper that can mess with Scientology for decades on end and live to tell the tale is inherently laudable.

If you want to shock and amaze your friends with your incredibly accurate predictions about the fate of financial industry regulation over the course of the Obama administration, here’s your secret decoder ring.

Megabank CEOs didn’t have time for President Barack Obama when he gave a major speech on Wall Street in September, but they had no trouble making it to Capitol Hill this morning to plead their case to the 20-something staffers who can help them stop reform in its tracks.

Kicking off a two-day event designed to “help” legislative aides who will be writing the rules designed to rein in and reform Wall Street, the CEOs made it clear that they would be there “anytime” a young, confused congressional aide needed help understanding a complex topic.

“Call us, say we met in Washington,” said Richard Davis, chairman, president and CEO of U.S. Bancorp. “We’d love to help.”

This regulatory climate is freezing! We’d better huddle together for warmth.

The number one reason I should have known that the Saints were going to beat the Colts, and if I’d seen this I would have changed my bet accordingly … remember Michael “Heck of a job, Brownie” Brown? The Federal Emergency Management Agency head who oversaw the homicidal Bush administration response to Hurricane Katrina? He’s now a talk radio host in Denver, and he picked the Colts. They were doomed from that moment forward. The only thing that could have saved them was if Brown had drawn up the Saints game plan.

Oh, and Brown’s classiest comment in the story? The former Bush administration official admits he has his fair share of callers bashing him, saying that some “can’t get over the whole Katrina thing.” Hmm. Imagine.

Mo betta latah …

Bookmark and Share

Close Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks