alternative hippopotamus

I wasn't going to write anything today. Early fall in our nation's capital is not too shabby, and I was out and about. Why would anyone be inside on a day like this?

Later, though, while surfing around, I ran into this HuffingtonPost column. Here's the excerpt Arianna took from the NYT on a letter from Scooter Libby (yeah, that nickname is going to puzzle historians for a few dozen years) to Judy Miller:

Your reporting, and you, are missed. Like many Americans, I admire your principled stand.

But, like many of your friends and readers, I would welcome you back among the rest of us, doing what you do best – reporting.

You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover – Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work – and life. Until then, you will remain in my thoughts and prayers.

I don't know about you, but I read that and needed to take a minute to cool myself down with a sasparilla- extra ice.

There's no exact analogy to Watergate, but can you imagine, Bob Haldeman writing a similar note to Carl Bernstein?

Carl, my friend, my brother in the nascent unfolding of this great conspiracy. The hot shafts of August, have turned to the golden stalks of October. But where is your gentle prose in this hour? The balm that caresses and soothes the terse sentences, and fragments thereof of Woodward. He is man enough, I suppose, but you are his muse- and mine.

Carl, I yearn for you tragically.

Liddy sends his love.
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A reader had written asking some pretty darned good questions. Like:

• Why isn't anybody talking about the attempts the Republicans are making at gutting the Endangered Species Act? Congressman Pombo's bill passed in the House yeserday, so they are one step away from their goal. For the past few days I was bugging my friends to call the congressfolks about this and most of them simply looked at me with a horrified expression, stating they never heard about this.
  
  There's a short article in today's Washington Post here. Also, this TPMCafe post has some useful links.
  
  As I mention over at DCDL, Pombo has a history of anti-environmental legislation. While this reflects a viewpoint that many conservatives share, that the environment is a resource that should be exploited, with Pombo you get the sense it's personal. The bit about openning up Roosevelt island to Condo developers is vintage Pombo.
  
  If folks on the left reacted strongly to every reactionary move Pombo made, then we wouldn't have any energy left over to fight the rest of the Bushies. That said, it's incumbent on us to make sure this bill dies in the Senate.
• Do you think a budget reconciliation bill opening ANWR up to drilling will pass?
  
  It's too close to call. One of the more significant things I've seen on this issue, was a letter signed by 24 Republican congressmen opposed to using the budget process to resolve the issue.
  
  A vote is scheduled for this month. I wouldn't underestimate how strongly people feel about preserving the Arctic Refuge. I also wouldn't underestimate how much money is at stake for Republican donors. ExxonMobil, for instance is the 12th largest Republican contributor, according to boycottbush. They're also first in line at the trough to profit from potential ANWR oil.

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Somehow this breakdown makes reading the news bearable for me. The thing is, there are actual news stories that people should read. Thus the "News" designation. Often the headlines don't accurately reflect the content, but sometimes you have to be reality-based with the headlines you have, instead of the headlines you'd like to have.

There are also a lot of stories that are disinformation. This could be because they're planted by Karl Rove, or the writer didn't do the requisite fact-checking, or because they were written in such a way as to beg to be misunderstood. Or it could be because it was written by the country's foremost doughy pantload, Jonah Goldberg. Whatever the reason, these stories go into the "Noise" category.

Unfortunately, some stories are there so that the newspaper reaches some minimum weight. These stories get the less than 100% flattering label "Fishwrap," referring to the fact that these pages will be used to wrap fish. This doesn't make them bad or wrong. As far as fish need to be wrapped they even serve a useful purpose. It's just that these stories, like wheels on a brick, are pointless.
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When I was back in the People's Republic of Cambridge I used to run a very silly comedy show. Once every couple of months we would do a theme show. For instance, PBS Parody Night, Science Fair (taking a shot at the Creationists), and an awards show parody we called the Sally Awards.

I mention this because this TPMCafe thread got me thinking. You know, it would be fun to have a novel, play or short film looking at the impeachment of Bush.

I have no experience with the novel genre, so I'm not sure how to approach that. A short film would be most straightforward to do as a mocumentary, looking at the last days of the Bush administration before the resignations of Bush and Cheney. The nice thing about the short film approach is that actual news footage can be used along with fictional interviews.

A play could be done either in a "Law&Order" style, meaning investigation leads to plot twists leads to a trial, or as a modernization of a classic work. Since Shakespeare is as close to perfection as anything we have in the English-speaking world, that would be my first choice, and Macbeth comes to mind as a work where the plot and personalities have a good deal in common with the Bushies (think Rove as Lady MacBeth).

I mention this in the hopes that this could spark the imaginations of some of the creative folks who visit here.
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Next couple of days there will be a lot of gleeful liberals and Republicans claiming that this really does make it possible for Dems to take over the House and Senate in 2006. Here's how it will work. Comparisons, immediately, to the indictment of powerful Democrat Dan Rostenkowski in 1994 adding to the sense that Democrats were out of touch with ordinary Americans and helping bring about the GOP landslide in November 1994. Corrupt Dems in 1994 = corrupt Repubs in 2005. Add to the DeLay indictiment the talk about Bill Frist's stock sale and you have major-league talking points for Democrats all over the country. People will say that as it was with Rosty and the Dems, so it will be with DeLay and the GOP. There will also be comparisons between Bush's problematic poll position in 2005 after Katrina and Clinton's troubles after the failure of health care in 1994.

- from monkeys flinging poo

Actually, I hadn't thought of that, but thanks, I appreciate the heads up.
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News

• Pfc England convicted, with a possible maximum sentence of 10 years. This one's close to being Noise in that it gives us the misleading impression that the system works: the guilty are punished, and the innocent go free. The actual story is that while similar forms of abuse were found at other prison camps, no one has connected the dots to higher-ups who encouraged the abuse.
  
  From the end of the article: "Army investigative documents have indicated that military intelligence interrogators were looking to get tough on detainees at about the same time that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were documented, and senior leaders have been faulted for failing to notice that the treatment was getting out of control. None of those leaders has been charged with a crime connected to the abuse."
  
  See also: Cookie Jill, le monde.
• FEMA Plans to Reimburse Faith Groups for Aid. The argument is that churches were so heavily used as part of the recovery from hurricane Katrina, that they will need federal funds to get back on their feet. The problem with this is that there's nothing in the constitution about temporarily suspending the separation of Church and State.
  
  And, oh by the way, just how many mosques do you suppose will be reimbursed?
• Badabing Badaboom. Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis sells SunCruz Casinos to Republican lobbyist Abramoff and a partner, Adam Kidan, in 2000. Abramoff and Kidan (allegedly) use faked papers to indicate they had invested $23M of their own money in the deal, allowing them to get a $60M loan. Kidan brings in as consultant on the deal Anthony Moscatiello, a bookeeper for the Gambino crime family.
  
  Let's just say stuff happens, and Boulis gets bumped off in 2001.
  
  Today comes the arrests of Moscatiello and two of his associates, Anthony Ferrari and James Fiorillo for the 2001 gang-land slaying.
  
  Strange, they look like such pussycats.
  
  

Noise

• Frist: I Didn't Do Nothin'. By putting this in the context of a he said, she said, the story becomes another Washington tempest in a teapot. Much more to the point, Frist was named one of the 13 most corrupt members of Congress by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
  
  See also The Faces of Corruption by Cartledge.

Fish Wrap

• Department of That Was Predictable: "Everyone knows that Boston Red Sox fans endured decades of pain and suffering waiting for their team to win the World Series. But it turns out that Boston area residents literally put off taking care of real medical emergencies so they could watch last fall's climactic games."
  
  I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that sales of beer and tortilla chips will increase noticably the weekend of this year's Super Bowl.

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Today's top stories:

• Cindy Sheehan arrested. But honestly, aren't Rove, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Delay, the ones that have been truly civilly disobedient?
• President Bush's new energy plan: "He called on Americans to "pitch in" and conserve gas by reducing non-essential travel, teaming up in carpools and using mass transit." What next for Bush, vegetarianism?
• The school board in Dover Township, PA has required its schools to read a statement questioning Darwin's theory of evolution. A group of parents have sued to block that requirement. My thought is that growing up outside Harrisburg is traumatic enough without forcing kids to swallow a made-up science with roughly the theoretical framework of magic beans. (See also CE Petro, Why Evolution Passes the Test)
• Fans of Agent 86, Maxwell Smart are sad. Sorry about that, Max.

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Somethings you need to experience first hand. Take for instance being in the middle of a simmering mass whose mutual interest is that they care about where the country is headed, who refuse to shut up and be ignored, and who take pride and joy in being with others who feel the same way.

This was not the lilly white Freedom March of two weeks ago. This was We the People, up close and personal.

The day started for me as it often does, by oversleeping. Having missed the crowd gathered at the Corner Bakery, I walked over to Freedom Plaza, where I managed to miss the DC for Democracy folks I had planned to march with. I called eRobin, who turned out to be within shouting distance, and managed to connect with Riggsveda and Thomas Nephew. This turned out to be a very enjoyable crew, and hopefully we'll all connect in the future.

While the protest was billed as a march against the war, I'd say neither were precisely true. Meaning, when you gather a couple hundred thousand folks on a few miles of street, it's unlikely they'll have a single focused message. Just as unlikely is that they'll be able to do anything besides stand and shuffle.

For me, the message of this rally went beyond the Iraq War, a war that history will not look at kindly. No, for me this was an indictment of the last four years. An indictment of the politics of division. An indictment handed down not by a Republican-controlled House, but by ordinary citizens.

Bush has famously said that you're either for him, or against him. Read my lips, George: the People have spoken.
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