JP Nordin: Gryoscope 11/15/04

Gyroscope

A newsletter for those unmoved by spin.
No. 53, November 15, 2004

by John Nordin

Early signs of the fall of the regime

I certainly don't know what the next two or four years will bring. But one theory is that the excesses of a Bush unlimited by the need to be reelected will lead to an overreach and a collapse. There are signs if you want to read it that way.

Leaving the ship

Are all these cabinet officials just going now by accident? Or have some of them just had enough and want to get while the getting is good? Powell, was the one person thought to give the Bush regime seriousness, even though he's been a good soldier supporting whatever insane thing he's been asked to do.

It's not a good sign that so many Democrats seems to be rolling over for Alberto Gonzales, the man who described the Geneva Conventions as "quaint." He received the memo arguing that the U.S. could torture those the government defined as terrorists and did not throw it back in their faces, demand their immediate dismissal or even, apparently, complain about it.

Ultimately, the best legal commentary on this memo may belong to Professor Jay Leno:

According to the “New York Times”, last year White House lawyers concluded that President Bush could legally order interrogators to torture and even kill people in the interest of national security - so if that’s legal, what the hell are we charging Saddam Hussein with?

Human Rights First and the National Lawyer's Guild are opposed already, and the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International is suspicious. But Sen. Biden calls him a "pretty solid guy."

Democrats still apologizing; still billing clients

As the Biden quote indicates, some Democrats who should know better are still trying to be nice. Josh Marshall quotes a letter to him by a senior Democratic consultant that suggests what a closed little group is at the top of the party. This letter suggests that this group of professional politicians is more focused on staying in business from election to election than it is on overturning a danger to the republic. They're not angry and determined to win.

Posts in Marshall's column and other places reinforce what I suspected: the Democrats just did not have an effective war room to combat the rubbish being thrown at them. Odd, but something we have to fix for next time.

Early signs that Bush is unleashed

Making Sen. Spector twist in the wind for his comments that he might actually exercise his constitutional responsibilities and evaluate the candidates for the Supreme Court. Spector, a senior member of the Senate is now being forced to beg for his committee chairmanship. It must be humiliating. But will it make him actively oppose Bush? Probably not. Loyalty is a much stronger force in the Republican party than commitment (see Powell).

The CIA is being cleaned out of its senior officers. Remember, before the war, the CIA furiously leaked that the case for WMD was weak. Senior leadership at the CIA then twisted the data to support what Bush wanted. Then -- oops, no WMD. So then it became the fault of the CIA for supplying to the president what he wanted to hear. Bush got his hack in charge of the CIA replacing the hapless Tennant. This hack brought in sub-hacks to run the agency and the career professionals are quitting. The always clueless David Brooks thinks its just OK, as the CIA is Bush's "enemy."

The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources. Knut Royce, Newsday

I want to join the Resistance

I wrote a poem with that title. It was about the church, but could just as easily be about the current political situation. An excerpt

Like all tyrannies,
the Hierarchy succeeds
because they succeed,
and no one can speak of the distance
between what they say and what they do,
no one can permit themselves to see
because then they would have to join the Resistance,
and that thought can't exist.

Early signs of the Resistance

Sorry Everybody is one of those irresistible ideas: simple, moving and thus profound. It consists of web-cam photos of people apologizing to the world for the election of Bush. There are perhaps 2000 or more photos on their now and I suspect the web masters are drowning under more and more submissions.

What makes it even more moving are the words of comfort from all over the world telling those of us who fought to defeat Bush that they support us. A German man thanking us for saving his country in WWII. Others simply asking us not to invade them. Many offering shelter to us Americans if we can't take it any longer.

We can't do this alone. We have to find each other and support each other. I so much regret that I did so little to stop the nonsense. I want to find the Resistance and join it.

I want to join the Resistance,
and breath the tangy air of adventure,
sleeping under the stars,
perhaps not alone,
caring that deeply, and suffering for real,
and knowing my commitment matters,
but it may not exist.

Thomas Jefferson, obviously not "with us."

First a reminder from the late unlamented John Ashcroft of why we need our freedoms written down in laws and the Constitution:

"To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve."

Let's leave the reply to John Stewart of the Daily Show:

Thanks to the attorney general, the phantoms of lost liberty aren't scaring anyone as they're being held in a ghastly undisclosed location with no access to their spooky attorneys.

And now to Thomas Jefferson, commenting on the Sedition acts of 1798 (very, very similar to the Patriot Act)

...A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to it's true principles. It is true that in the mean time we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war & long oppressions of enormous public debt. But who can say what would be the evils of a scission, and when & where they would end? Better keep together as we are ... If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, & then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are the stake....

Never give up

We need to find each other and support each other. Send some links! Some quotes! Invite me to your meetings, let's help each other build the movement for change.

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