Better Buckle Up! -- CheneyBush's Final 10 Months

| Bernard Weiner |

If anyone still harbors any illusions that the lame-duck CheneyBush Administration will taxi relatively harmlessly to its departure gate in January 2009, recent events suggest otherwise. It's been made abundantly clear that in the next ten months, these guys are going to behave even more brutishly in amassing and misusing their power, and in screwing things up, than they've already done in the past seven-plus years.

In essence, the message emanating from the White House to the country can be summed up this way: "You want us? You come and get us. Otherwise, get out of our way! We've got a whole lot of unfinished business to complete."

In foreign policy, we should expect CheneyBush to continue locking-in agreements with the Iraq government that will permit permanent stationing of troops and aircraft and missiles on that country's soil, which in effect means a continuation of the war perhaps for decades -- or, in the approving estimate of John McCain, for 50 years or more. (But you can bet that CheneyBush will withdraw some troops from Iraq, for partisan reasons, just prior to the election.) Then there's the prospect they will bomb Iran's military/scientific installations from the air, something Cheney and Bush and the other neo-cons, in and out of government, are salivating about.

In domestic policy, one can expect even more bad policy: placing a whole lot more incompetent ideologues into positions of administrative power and onto the courts, selling off more of America's public lands for energy exploitation, cutting more vital social and infrastructure programs as the economy continues to tank (thanks to Bush policies of spending upwards of three trillion dollars on the wars and associated costs), etc. etc.

Consider just four examples from last week:

1. ENJOY YOUR "DOWNER" BURGERS

Americans were justifiably horrified when they saw recent hidden-camera footage on the nightly news of emaciated, scabrous cows being dumped into the food supply that winds up as hamburger meat in schools and prisons and God knows where else. According to Department of Agriculture regulations, those so-called "downer" cattle (those too sick or weak to stand) are not permitted to be placed into the public food-supply chain, for fear of passing on "mad cow" or other horrific diseases.

Nearly 145,000 million pounds of such potentially tainted meat from the slaughterhouse in question had to be recalled, 37 million pounds of which already had been consumed in school lunches and other nutrition programs.

Good, the meat-processors in question were shamed and embarrassed. The government's regulatory system was in place and all was well in the world. Right?

Wrong. CheneyBush and their GOP enablers in Congress are in hock up to their eyeballs to their corporate benefactors, and ideologically opposed in any case to the concept of regulating a free market. So, how did the Administration handle this black-eye episode?

Were the fines increased for meat-processors that skirt the rules? Their corporate owners shunned and contracts canceled? Nope.

Instead, last week, the CheneyBush Administration officially authorized the use of "downer" meat as fit for human consumption. A few more random inspections were ordered at meat-processing plants, but no systemic overhaul of the limited inspection protocols were devised to protect the public from dangerous meat.

"So you caught us red-handed bowing to the meat-processing lobby," Bush&Co. seemed to be saying. "What are you going to do about it? Bugger off and get out of our face."

2. WHO WATCHES THE WATCHERS?

The CheneyBush Administration is probably the most secretive in U.S. history. It doesn't like anybody looking over its shoulder and knowing what it's up to, mainly because so much of what it's up to is either immoral, illegal or the result of massive corruption, often all three at the same time.

CheneyBush have been especially secretive about the many and various ways they've mangled and decimated the Constitution, especially in how the massive intelligence-gathering techniques available to it have been marshaled to data-mine and spy on American citizens. New technologies have enabled federal agents to secretly enter citizens' computers, read their personal email, tap their telephones, etc., without those victimized ever knowing. Such privacy violations are done, of course, in the name of "national security" and/or "fighting the war on terrorism."

Just like authoritarian governments all over the globe, the CheneyBush regime keeps its illegal operations top-secret, and fights like the devil to keep them that way. One way they do this is to make sure nobody -- no court, no congressional committee, and certainly not the public -- is privy to what they're doing. To have total control of the inflow of information, they had to figure a way to avoid the post-Nixon law establishing the FISA Court as the one legal entity for oversight of all Executive requests for wiretapping and the like.

Even though the FISA court has been a virtual rubber-stamp for whatever Bush&Co. choose to do, CheneyBush don't want to be observed and don't want to have to seek official "permission" to listen in on phone calls of American citizens. But they especially don't want to admit that the President can be reined in by any other institution. And so, shortly after CheneyBush took office, but before 9/11, on their own order they had the NSA begin massive wiretapping and eavesdropping. After 9/11, they asserted an even greater desire to have all intelligence in their hands, always using the "national security" excuse, and, in effect, maneuvered the FISA court out of any meaningful say in their intel-mining programs.

But one final institutional outlet needed to be made toothless. It's called the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), established in 1993, which had the power to question the legal authority of intel decisions made by the Administration. By executive order last week, it has been renamed (taking the word "foreign" out of its title) and its most important committee, the Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB), was effectively stripped of its oversight responsibilities. Most notably removed was the requirement that abuses of executive power "shall be reported" to the Attorney General and that investigations can be carried out by the IOB to determine how bad the situation is. The IOB now merely reports to the Director of National Intelligence.

Here's the sum-up, as explained by Daily Kos' Sminthius: "The Bush administration is engaged in an epic struggle with Congress to keep its illegal domestic intelligence activities secret. That is what the battle over the FISA bill is all about. The last thing Bush, Cheney, and Addington would wish to do would be to leave the IOB in a position to start investigating or exposing that illegality -- now, or in a future administration."

What are CheneyBush hiding in their all-encompassing intel-mining of U.S. citizens? It could involve listening in on their political enemies, or it could be something huge in the works (an attack on Iran?) that they feel would require a nationwide clampdown on intel collection and dissemination. Stay tuned.

3. TRUE CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS

Another way of avoiding scrutiny and oversight is to ignore and neuter the other branches of government. Given how many HardRight judges they've appointed, CheneyBush more or less can count on getting their questionable actions approved by the appellate courts and even by the Supreme Court. In addition, they control the Department of Justice through the ideological toadies they appointed as Attorney General, most notably Alberto Gonzales and now Michael Mukasey.

Recently, the House voted to hold two key Administration figures (White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolton and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers) in contempt of Congress for their failure to honor a subpoena by the House Judiciary Committee requiring their testimony and relevant documents relating to the matter of the fired U.S. Attorneys. They were informed by the committee that they could assert a claim of "executive privilege" as a justification for not answering questions and not providing the documents, but they had to do that by appearing and making that claim in front of the committee. They were not simply free to ignore a lawful subpoena to appear. In short, nobody was above the law.

The committee gave the Administration all sorts of extended deadlines and opportunities to have these witnesses make whatever statements they would like to the committee, but all they got back was silence from the White House. CheneyBush didn't want them to appear and so they didn't; for them to appear, in this twisted theory of governance, would be to acknowledge the validity of Congressional oversight and the separation of powers under which the U.S. has operated for more than 225 years.

Congress can not challenge the authority of the President, this White House reasoning goes: "We will not submit to your requests or demands or subpoenas, so go stuff yourself." (Of course, it's easier to strike this attitude when you know that the Democrats in charge of Congress have taken impeachment "off the table.")

Eventually, the House leadership had had enough and Miers and Bolton were cited for contempt, which could earn them jail time. But the citation is meaningless unless it can be enforced and guess who is in charge of referring those contempt citations to a grand jury for possible indictments? Right, Michael Mukasey, CheneyBush's handpicked lackey as Attorney General. And sure enough, Mukasey refused to refer.

Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein and Charles Schumer voted to confirm Mukasey because, they said, he promised to be an objective independent AG. It didn't take long, as was demonstrated last week, to figure out that Mukasey, like Gonzales, is little more than a trained poodle willingly and energetically doing the White House bidding whenever called upon to protect Cheney and Bush from possible legal problems.

And, even if Muksasey had sent the contempt citations to the criminal court, the U.S. Attorney for the D.C. District, Jeffrey Taylor, would have to sign the request in order for criminal indictments to be delivered. Taylor is another made man, one of Bush&Co.'s handpicked U.S. Attorneys, and he's made clear that he would not enforce Congress' contempt citations against Administration officials.

4. YOU'VE GOT (NO) MAIL

Another way Bush&Co. hide what they're really up to is to make sure there's no evidence lying around. Rove and his minions, to keep their less savory projects secret, used both White House email addresses and Republican National Committee addresses. The White House claims that several million of its requested emails have gone "missing." When Congress subpoenaed the tens of thousands of RNC emails to the White House, they were told that, glory be, those emails likewise had somehow "disappeared" and couldn't be found. Angry Democratic chairmen said look again. The Republicans said they would try to restore computer backup tapes.

Many months have now gone by and last week, the RNC told Congress that it "has no intention of trying to restore the missing White House e-mails." No explanation. That's it. "Up yours. Whatya goin' to do about it, suckers?"

Unless somehow the Democrats can bring more power to bear, the RNC move, writes Lambert at the Corrente blog, "increases the likelihood that an untold number of RNC e-mails dealing with official White House business during the first term of the Bush administration - including many sent or received by former presidential adviser Karl Rove - will never be recovered..." Maybe the Democrats should ask Attorney General Mukasey to look into the likely destruction of email evidence pointing to illegal activity in the White House. That should take care of the matter.

FOLLOW THE POLITICS

The secrets of how and why CheneyBush fired those U.S. Attorneys and replaced them with their own loyalists will remain hidden away from public view, even though it's clear to all what was going on. CheneyBush needed to get rid of independent-minded U.S. Attorneys and replace them with those who would do what they're told, especially harassing and indicting Democrats on trumped-up "vote fraud" and other phony charges prior to the November election, and protecting GOP dirty-tricks operatives working to suppress hundreds of thousands of minority voters from exercising their franchise in the November elections.

So shutting down Congress' contempt citations is par for the course for this administration that makes sure that it is never held accountable for its illegal actions. That's the way autocrats rule.

House Speaker Pelosi said she's now entertaining taking those contempt citations into civil court, thus bypassing the U.S. Attorney. We shall see.

Or, given the CheneyBush penchant for secrecy - aided and abetted by their enablers in Congress, the corporate mass-media, and the courts - maybe we won't see.

-- BW

...could wreak. I think I'll direct him to your post.

be ousted like Gonzo...he must Go!!

Is there not one person in the administration with the guts to blow a whistle? If we get out of this with our government intact no one who works for them should be immune. By now if there was one person who had a speck of decency in the white house, they would have come forward with the dirt that is required to end this.

Are Republican bushies so devoted to groupthink and mindless loyalty that there isn't a single decent American among them? Apparently not. Just Republicans.

is that a whistle blower would need the justice dept. to protect them long enough to testify. We have seen that the only people the justice dept. protects are itself and the prez. A whistle blower would very likely be drawn and quartered for treason.

I would expect the worst kind of consequences from these thugs.

describes them perfectly.

k & r

can it get worse? yes. will it get worse? yes.

does anyone care enough to do anything about it? NO

And doing something, much more productive than waging keyboard wars with their fellow party members or signing online petitions thinking they will give a damn.

They're facing arrests and abuses and suffering both. They're often condamned, even here, as lunatics or extremists that hurt the "cause" but I would say that you don't stop an authoritarian regime simply by throwing flowers.

As usual, CP hits the nail right on its head.

hell, we can get our senators & congresscritters to act the way we NEED them to act.

this fearmongering is no better or worse than the bush regime's fearmongering, except that it's aimed at democrats only.

the hype of an existing or non-existing threat, in order to instill/maintain fear in a given group of persons, for various political reasons (preservation of power comes to mind).

The description of said fearmongering can't be taken for fearmongering. Its rejection, based on partisan politics, and the comparison of this text to Bush propaganda is a denial of reality.

CEO Joseph Nacchio who wanted FISA warrants, Siebel Edmonds, Gen. Shinseki, Don Siegelman among many others. Discredit the Whistleblower, or anyone who questions. Period. Blow the whistle and you'll be working a drive-thru for the rest of your life.
To your Follow The Politics portion as to the reasons for US Attorney firings, consider the following lawsuit about BushCo crimes stemming from the efforts to privatize Medicare/Medicaid in Missouri. Start around #60 for context, but the ugly allegations start around #90. They include the deaths of two US Attorneys, the only two willing to investigate the matter.

http://www.medicalsupplychain.com/pdf/Lipari%20v%20Novation%20et%20al%20Petition%20.pdf

The recorded message said: Due to the special event today!
What would that be? The start of the war on Venezuela? pRes was just on CNN vowing to support his evil drug running buddy the pres of Columbia.
I was calling to see how he enjoyed his downer burger at lunch today!
If we had ANY GUMPTION AT ALL; as a country...........WE would bring the beef industry to it's knees!

Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran . . .

Such as chain mail, worn to protect the body against weapons.

invasive provocations by our US funded puppet and ally Columbia. Weiner doesn't mention the possible intervention needed in a dispute between Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia.

How about an election time skirmish to inflame ignorant patriotic whims of militarist 'moral authority'. A skirmish to help secure Latin America from leftist terrorist supporting regimes? Inflaming patriotic ignorance works well for any of the three candidates, but especially the bottom of the class military hero McCain.

In the end it delivers resources and cheap labor to those who buy the politics, regardless of the party. Same world views, same woeful results.

I've been waiting to say good-bye to these losers for so many years. I keep telling myself, it's less than a year to go. :bounce: