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Today the Supreme Court decided to wish the El-Masri case into the cornfield, thus providing the second half of the one-two punch that began with Torture President’s sneering TV appearance last week when he said that our government doesn’t torture people. No, it just beats them, rapes them, freezes them, waterboards them, terrorizes them. Hey, el-Masri’s crime was that he had the same name (approximately) as a known terrorist, and for this he was kidnapped by the CIA and sent to a prison in Afghanistan and tortured. Sorry, not tortured: beaten, raped, those other things. But we won’t be hearing about that any more, ’cause el-Masri is in the cornfield now. Along with the Geneva Convention, the Constitution, all that bogus reality-based community crap.

And what can I, disgruntled citizen, do about it? Not a goddamn thing as far as I can tell. Have a drink, maybe. That sounds good. What time is it? Is the sun over the yardarm yet?

Meanwhile, the bobble-heads on TV hosted another debate today to see who gets to be the next Republican candidate for Merovingian king. Why not just wheel them out in carts so we can look at their long hair, see how pretty they are, how nice they look in their king suits, that sort of thing? Why bother with the questions? We might as well have them tap dance instead. Actually that would be better! Tap dancing!

Definitely time for a drink.

The undead Nelson Mandela.

Mandela still alive after embarrassing Bush remark.

Originally posted on September 11, 2006.

The ones who used 9-11 to hijack the country, that is.

The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, were unspeakably vile. What is even more vile (and I use the phrase deliberately: more vile) is the way the thugs running our country have exploited those attacks to their own craven political ends. It will surely go down as the most extraordinary act of national treachery in our history.

Who would have thought, in those stunned days after 9-11, that while the rest of us were traumatized and sickened, our leaders in Washington were already calculating how to profit from the horror? To the American people 9-11 was a nightmare; to the neocons and neofascists in the GOP, it was a dream come true. Just what we need, they thought. Now, how can we use this to justify that war we’ve been planning? How can we use this to get rid of those pesky civil liberties and that annoying rule of law? How can we use this to establish a GOP dictatorship?

Five years on, and thanks to Bush and the other hijackers pictured above, the 9-11 terrorists have won. We are now the most hated nation in the world. Millions of Muslims are united against us. Whatever moral standing we used to have has evaporated: we are now known around the globe as a nation that tortures, a nation that “disappears” people, a nation that spies on its own citizens, a nation that stifles dissent, a nation that invades other countries without provocation, a nation that cannot be trusted.

Those nineteen hijackers accomplished quite a bit.

Fact: Presidential Speech Factsheets From The White House Use Many, Many Capital Letters!

A Speech Is Born
A Play in One Act

The Scene: The War Room. The space is littered with empty pretzel bags. A gigantic sensory deprivation tank occupies the center of the room. President Bush floats inside, wearing a suit. Attached to his head are electrodes trailing corroded wires.

Chorus of Advisors: Sir, your approval rating is down to 29%. You’re in Nixon territory.
Bush: I Am Not A Crook.
Chorus of Advisors: It’s Iraq. The public thinks it’s turning into another Vietnam.
Bush: Tell Iraq It Doesn’t Get To Be Vietnam. It Has To Keep Being Iraq. We Already Have A Vietnam.
Chorus of Advisors: Yes sir.
Bush: Little Countries Are Tricky.
Chorus of Advisors: Yes sir. Sir, actually, it’s the war. The public thinks the war in Iraq is like the war in Vietnam.
Bush: We Left Vietnam Too Soon!
John Kerry: We?
Bush: If We Hadn’t Left Vietnam Al-Qaeda Wouldn’t Have Killed All Those Boat People!
Tony Snow: (to the Advisors) Is that going to be in the speech?
Bush: Al-Qaeda Killed A Million Cambodians In Vietnam! Sam Waterston Movie.
Laura Bush: Netflix.
Robert Dallek: Actually, the Cambodian killing fields were the result of our prolonged and ill-advised intervention in Southeast Asia, which destabilized the entire region and laid the groundwork for the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Similarly, the crisis in Iraq is the result of our occupation of that country, and our continued presence not only exacerbates the situation but serves as a focal point for regional–
Secret Service Agents: Okay, let’s go, buddy.
Bush: And Then Al-Qaeda Took Over Iraq!
Juan Cole: Al-Qaeda didn’t have anything to do with Iraq before we invaded.
Bush: Japan Used To Be Like Al-Qaeda. Then We Bombed Them. Now They Make Comic Books.
Chorus of Advisors: Uh, Mr. President…
Japanese Ambassador: What the fuck did he just say?
Bush: Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
Dick Cheney: Fuck!
Bush: I’m A War President!
Chorus of Advisors: Yes sir.
Bush: If We Have To Bomb Korea To Save The Cambodians In Iraq, Then Bring It On!
Chorus of Advisors: Sir, we agreed we’d hit Iran next.
Bush: We Don’t Have Relations With Iran On The Table. They Could Proliferate.
Ghost of Nixon: We take this action not for the purpose of expanding the war into Cambodia, but for the purpose of ending the war in Vietnam and winning the just peace we all desire. We will continue to make every possible effort to end this war through negotiation at the conference table rather than through more fighting on the battlefield.
Dick Cheney: Mein Führer! I can walk!
Bush: Hey, I’m The Commander Guy!
Kos: Did I mention I was in the Army?

A federal appeals court has ruled that people can’t sue the Bush administration for illegally wiretapping them because without having already proven that they were harmed by being illegally wiretapped, they don’t have standing to sue.

Got that?

No, of course it doesn’t make sense. Here’s what makes sense: the judges who delivered this ruling are Republican appointees. Nothing like having most of the federal judgships in your pocket.

I’m bored with Shrub’s pardon of Libby. Excuse me; not pardon. Commutation. The sentence has been commuted. No jail time for Scooter, which is a crushing blow for literature fans everywhere who’d hoped he would use his months in the clink to write more novels about children being raped by bears.

Conspiracy-minded folks are indulging in various speculations as to why the Shrub pardoned the Scooter. Was it to prevent Scoot from “singing”? Self-important newspaper folks are writing knowing editorials in which they opine that El Presidente is either exerting his massively erect willpower (still hard as a rock after all these years!) or, alternatively, humbly and courageously following his own difficult path to truth and justice, secure in the knowledge that he’s a lame duck anyway. I read all this and I say: oh for chrissake. We’re talking about Shrub. This is a guy who fries retarded people and thinks the Constitution is a piece of toilet paper stuck to his shoe. Of course he pardoned Scooter. His whole presidency is one giant fuck-you to justice and accountability and basic human decency. He pardoned Scooter because he could. And he giggled while he was doing it.

I half-expected Salon to front with the story today as well, and they do have some opinion pieces on it, but their lead instead is an interview with Paul Davies, who’s still flogging the anthropic fallacy. Poor guy’s been banging on that box for 20, 30 years now; I wish he would find God already and be done with it. You just wanna send him a nice fruit basket or something.

But as I read the Davies piece, I realized that here was the real explanation for the Libby business. The absolutely amazing thing is that if any single aspect of the universe had been even a tiny bit different, the Libby pardon would not have happened. Think about it! If the gravitational constant were just a tiny bit off, if the strong nuclear force were just an eensy bit stronger, if even one trilobite had survived the Cambrian die-off (or two, rather), if Shrub didn’t have that recurring problem with constipation — if any one of those and a billion other things had been different, Scooter Libby would not have been pardoned. Now what are the odds of all those things coming together by chance? It’s astronomical. There’s just no way it’s all a big coincidence. It’s almost as if the universe were fine-tuned to make the Scooter Libby pardon possible — and not just possible, but inevitable.

Doesn’t that make you feel better?

El Generalissimo Torture Presidente, feelin’ good after using his mighty phallic pen to keep the slaughter in Iraq going.

So, without the two-thirds majority necessary to overturn a veto, what else have we got?

Well, there’s always impeachment; that’s right there in the Constitution as a possible check on abuse of power. But it’s become traditional in America to reserve impeachment for high-level offenses, like lying about getting a blow job. Stuff like invading innocent countries and starting civil wars and causing the deaths of maybe 100,000 civilians and creating a perfect breeding ground for terrorism and generating your own personal vortex of pure unadulterated hell that sucks in everything within a 10,000 mile radius — that’s candy-ass shit. Not important enough for the big I.

I know, I know — you folks in the U.K. and points east are thinking, “What about assassination? Isn’t that a standard part of U.S. policy?” Why, yes, it is! It’s not in the Constitution or anything, and technically it’s illegal, but then that’s true of a whole lot of what the American government does nowadays. However, assassination is ideally restricted to foreign leaders, and is best carried out by extranational mercenaries or aging televangelists. Besides, those of us on the left don’t believe in murder; we just want El Presidente to go away. Far, far, far away.

Of course, there’s always this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. —

Could somebody please muzzle President Asshat? And his friend, Captain Kangaroo?

From the Globe and Mail:

The Iranian prisoner crisis revealed a widening schism between Britain and the United States Sunday as U.S. leaders called for tough action and British officials confirmed that they are trying to free their 15 imprisoned sailors by quietly reaching a compromise with Tehran…

But Britain’s delicate diplomatic efforts were set back by U.S. President George W. Bush, who made a statement Saturday in which he characterized the imprisoned sailors as “hostages” — a phrase that Britain has been carefully avoiding to prevent the crisis from becoming a broader political or military conflict…

Other U.S. officials have been even less amenable to the British approach. John Bolton, who until recently was Mr. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations, has appeared on British TV describing the British approach as “pathetic.”

You know, every time Captain Kangaroo opens his mouth I find myself puzzling again over the fact that he’s no longer at the U.N. Why? Such diplomatic talent, such a silver tongue! That’s the problem with our government right there, that we’re not using brilliant people like Kangaroo where they could really do some good.

When I was a child I had a little kiddie book on the Presidents of the United States, with brief biographies and pictures of each one. I remember being bewildered by the fate of Andrew Johnson. Congress impeached him because he fired Stanton? Wasn’t that a bit of an overreaction? The book, you see, omitted to explain the politics surrounding Reconstruction, the bitter divide between the Radical Republicans and the racist Southern Democrats, and the fact that Johnson was an intolerable twit.

(Note for you young folks: in my youth we didn’t have no computers or none of them there intertubes, and a six-year-old was pretty much stuck with the information in whatever books were available.)

At any rate, this whole business with Attorney General Torquemada reminds me a little of that. He’s in deep shit because he fired a bunch of U.S. attorneys, which indeed was a very bad thing and a gross abuse of power, but it actually pales beside the bigger truth that Torquemada is a goddamn psychopath who believes the President is above the law, treaties we’ve signed don’t apply to us, and torture is A Good Thing. That this man is Attorney General at all is one of the most astonishing facts of modern American life. In a sane world, the memos he issued as White House Counsel would have acted as a permanent prophylactic against his ever becoming Attorney General, a kind of reverse-CV alerting everyone in the universe that this person was unsuitable for any goverment job at all. But then, in a sane world Bush wouldn’t be President in the first place. This is a guy whose big achievement as governor was to execute retarded people, for chrissake — and as a matter of fact, Torquemada helped him out with that, too. Bush and Torquie are like the Bobsey Twins of Sadism: started out relatively small in Texas, frying prisoners for fun, then made it all the way to the White House where they could groove by proxy on the rape, torture, and organ failure of hundreds of people. I bet they watch the Abu Ghraib slides down in the White House theatre for shits and giggles on Saturday nights. Kick back with some booze and blow and run those slides. Yee haw.

But what was I saying? Oh yeah, the firing thing. Hey, if that’s what it takes to bring the fucker down, that’s fine with me. Whatever.