Think for a Minute

Personally, I'm livid about the airliner bombing attempt on Christmas Day, 25 December 2009. Specifically I'm angry that more than eight years after the attacks on 11 September 2001 we still don't have security measures in place that perform whole-body scans or ambient chemical analysis.

But the former administration — on whose watch occurred 9/11 and the shoe bombing incident which parallels last week's attempt in many ways — and the minority party — who are currently thwarting efforts by the Obama Administration to staff the TSA — have decided to try to shift the conversation away from substantive security reforms and from their failed records by attempting to blame the President for this recent attack.

Thankfully, Rachel Maddow did what much of the media couldn't, and took a couple minutes to examine the statements made by the former vice president and others, revealing the mischaracterizations and outright lies being spread:

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(If you can't view the video above, a transcript is available on the Rachel Maddow Show website.)

Some of the most egregious, self-serving, and un-American statements:

• Dick Cheney insisting that prosecuting the alleged bomber using our American court system is actually catering to the terrorists, despite the fact his own administration followed the same legal course for several famous terrorists, including 9/11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and "shoe bomber" Richard Reid.


• Multiple Republican representatives and party flacks insinuating that President Obama was ignoring the issue because he took 72 hours to respond, when it took Bush II a full six days to comment on the Reid bombing attempt.


• Republican Senator Jim DeMint's outright lie that President Obama "doesn't even use the word" terrorist anymore, when there are multiple examples of the president doing just that. And this statement is from the man who has spent the last year blocking Obama's nominee for head of TSA.

But the topper is the minority party's demand to use a military tribunal system to try the alleged perpetrator of last week's attack. Nothing I say could be a better response than the one from Ms. Maddow:

The rallying cry now from Republicans is that we shouldn't try the Christmas bomber in civilian court—that, instead, he should be tried in a military tribunal, declared an enemy combatant. I mean, what's the value of a military tribunal here, other than trying to make political hay out of this case? Really, what's the justice, anti-terrorist, counterterrorist value on this?

You really think this kid can't be convicted? You really think we don't have enough evidence beyond the—beyond the, I don't know, 300 or so eyewitnesses who were on the plane? The fact that we have the weapon that he tried to use? The fact that he confessed? You think that's not enough to get this kid convicted?

You have that little faith in our criminal justice system? That little faith in the rule of law? You don't believe that a supermax federal American prison is capable of holding this kid? You think it might be cool, instead, to martyr this kid as some impressive soldier, instead of some idiot confused rich kid who couldn't even handle blowing up his own junk with a bomb that was secreted in his own underpants?

We're supposed to take national security advice from you guys?

Really?"

But after a year of their increasingly deranged shenanigans, I can't be too surprised by the Republican response to this. I am, however, deeply disappointed in the media for not being able to call out any of the aforementioned shenanigans. Or as Ms. Maddow put it:

Again, my friends and colleagues in the media have two choices in covering this. You can just copy down what the Republicans and Vice President Cheney are saying, and click “send,” call it journalism, or you can actually fact-check those comments and put them into context. Your choice. It's your country."

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Think for a Minute	Song by The Housemartins

Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills, and everywhere.

Looking back on the decade past is a common activity 'round about New Year's Day. I was marshaling my thoughts and thinking about how to best characterize my feelings when I found the always-enchanting Devilstower over at The Daily Kos posted precisely the political retrospective I wish I could have written.

It's really worth reading from the top, and you should do so now. But if you don't, here's the nut:

They will try to disown it, and God knows if I was responsible for this mess I'd be disowning it, too. But the truth is that the conservatives got everything they wanted in the decade just past, everything that they've claimed for forty years would make America "great again." They didn't fart around with any "red dog Republicans." They rolled over their moderates and implemented a conservative dream.

What did we get for it? We got an economy in ruins, a government in massive debt, unending war, and the repudiation of the world. There's no doubt that Republicans want you to forget the last decade, because if you remember... if you remember when you went down to the water hole and were jumped by every lunacy that ever emerged from the wet dreams of Grover Norquist and Dick Cheney, well, it's not likely that you'd give them a chance to do it again.

Because they will. Given half a chance — less than half — they'll do it again, only worse. "

I remember well the media's interest in Bush II as our "MBA President." No dithering meaning-of-"is"-is lawyer like Clinton, but rather someone who will run American government like a business. Imagine that!

Except the goal of business — especially those shady shell games like Arbusto — is to create profits. The explicit charge of American governance is to protect the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of each and every citizen. Two wholly different aims, which should be targeted in significantly different ways.

In business, when you appoint your unqualified cronies to high-level positions, you get their loyalty and support in inter-office politics. And if they don't follow through on their responsibilities, the reduced departmental expenditures can translate to greater corporate profits.

Do the same in government and what do you get? Americans drowning in their own attics.

(But, hey, at least the government could listen in on their phone calls and read their e-mails. You know, before they died.)

Representational democracy is not a for-profit enterprise, and its primary purpose is to protect and engender the citizenry, not to foster unregulated capitalism. To forget this is to say you'd like to relive recent American history, circa 1999 - 2009.

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"Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills, and everywhere."	Lyrics from the holiday classic Go Tell It on the Mountain, performed by Frank Sinatra (and many, many, many others)