While We've Been Looking the Other Way

Politics Over Prosecutors -- by Eugene Robinson

With Wall Street's fate hanging in the balance, and with Sarah Palin's incoherence sparking interest in Thursday's vice presidential debate, it was easy to overlook a major story that got less attention than it deserved yesterday. The Justice Department released a nearly 400-page report with this jaw-dropping bottom line:
"Our investigation found significant evidence that political partisan considerations were an important factor in the removal of several . . . U.S. attorneys."

Remember the controversy over the sudden dismissals of nine U.S. attorneys? Remember the allegation that the Bush administration had sullied the long-held principle that justice should be administered in an impartial, nonpartisan way? Remember the questions about what then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales knew and when he knew it? Remember Kyle Sampson, the Gonzales aide who played a key role in the firings? Remember Monica Goodling, the Justice Department's liaison to the White House, who went so far as to ask prospective Justice appointees to wax eloquent about why they wanted to "serve" George W. Bush?
^^^
The people who have been running our government for the past eight years have nothing but contempt for government. They believe only in politics and ideology, in that order. First, win elections by any means necessary. Second, once in a position to act in the public good, govern with the ideological conviction that government is either irrelevant or harmful to the public interest.

You can draw a straight line between firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons and turning a blind eye to the ruinous excesses of Wall Street. What's impartial justice against the possibility of gaining political advantage? Why shackle the hallowed free market with government oversight?

And, if you want to draw the line a little further, who cares if the prospective vice president appears to know nothing about anything?
Click here for the complete text.
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Yep. If all we want is a puppet government, who the hell cares who we put in charge of it?

Stealing from the Huffington Post

Adam McKay coined the sentence that, he said, we must hammer and hammer between now and November. He's right.

I hear folks say, "The polls don't show the energized young people who only have cell phones."
"The polls are slanted because people are focused on Palin right now."
"The polls are skewed for this reason or that reason or this other reason."
But, the fact is -- there are people who, at the end of the day, simply want to vote with the majority. The folks who don't trust their own judgment. The people with short memories. The people who believe the lies McCain spews so effortlessly. The people who don't bother to look at the 95% voting record. The people who don't look ahead to the Supreme Court appointments.

So, I'm going to blatantly plagiarize McKay's sentence and place it, as a tag-line on all my emails. Everyone who gets an email from me -- be they liberal or conservative [of whom there are a lot in my address book, sad to say] or right-wingnuts [of whom there are a few] and people who are choosing ignorance [of whom there are a few] will receive the reminder.

Here's Adam's sentence:
"Katrina, four dollar gas, a trillion dollar war, rising unemployment, deregulated housing market, global warming...no more."
and while I'm about it, I think I'll add "corporate bailouts" just before "no more".

Thanks for the idea, Adam. I'm unholstering my hammer right now.
Please do the same and ask everyone you know to do it, too.
The alternative is unthinkable.