What’s the minimum amount of backward-looking clean-up you think the Democrats can do without putting their legislative agenda and political momentum as risk?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Because the minimum amount is nothing. At least it is nothing as long as they can successfully maintain their award-winning advertising campaign.
Why…they even beat out Apple Corp!!!
You betcha!!!
There’s some realism fer ya if I ever saw it.
Them ad boys know hype when they see it.
Now of course…there’s hype for shit products and then there’s hype for good products. If Obama produces a good product…for instance if he starts to truly clean up the toxic kleptocracy that has nearly run this country into the ground over the past 65 years or so…why his hype machine will protect him way deep into the process.
The maximum? Start putting away people who are properly symbolic of this rot. Putting them away for a long, long time.
My own favorite candidate?
Cheney, of course.
In a cell with a very active, bisexual Bubba.
Or lesser figures if the hype quotient appears to be too high. Which is of course much more likely.
Or…he can do the minimum.
Which is nothing.
His hype machine can certainly handle that load. It’s done great so far, and he hasn’t done shit yet except speak really good English.
We shall see.
Any way he approaches his coming task he’s going to have one hell of a tightrope to walk.
Bet on that, for sure.
Best of luck to him.
He’s gonna need it.
And so are we.
Later…
AG
Maximum is better.
I’m not even going to indulge in this little exercise, because the real answer is “nothing remotely like that will ever happen”. To bother even thinking about “the minimum” or “the maximum” is a recipe for getting myself all angry and riled up.
Why speculate, nothing’s gonna happen.
There might be prosecutions of Richard Clarke and John Murtha for undermining the morale of our brave fighting men.
There will be an investigative report in some right-wing newspaper suggesting that Bruce Ivins blew up Building Five on 9/11 on orders from Bill and Hillary. Obama was directing the airplanes.
l agree with AG, “Start putting away people who are properly symbolic of this rot. Putting them away for a long, long time.” l would, however, consider that to be the absolute minimum that needs to be done, that starts with prosecution to the fullest extent possible of the people who have ignored congressional subpoenas, notably miers, bolton, and rove for starters.
then you go to work on cheney and the ex-cabinet members such abu gonzales and rumsfeld, then the semi-secret wh “iraq study group” that originated and spun the propaganda for the debacle we’re mird in, rumsfeld, for obvious reasons, addington……the list in interminable.
a little cooperation w/ the icc to put those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the dock in the hague would go one hell of a long way to restoring americas’ standing in the world community as well.
that’s not to say any of it will happen, but failure to restore the respect for the rule of law, and congress is, imo, absolutely required.
Expect nothing from the Obama coalition administration sprinkled throughout with Republicans and crafted by Wall Street. No time for recriminations. The Left has been left behind.
When did Obama guarantee prosecutions of BushCo during the campaign? And didn’t he praise Bush Sr’s foreign policy during the campaign? He never said exactly who would be in his Cabinet, but we knew there’d be some Clintonites and he said there’d be some Republicans. If you do the math, and consider that there are what 20 or 30 top positions, some would have to mean more than one or two, And it would at least be half Clintonites and Republicans.
So far Obama has done everything he said he would. I’m surprised that some are surprised.
I took everything he said during the campaign, and his list of advisers, and looked at each and every thing in the worst possible light. Then I asked myself, ‘if he does these things that I’m not crazy about, could I still live with myself in the morning?’. The answer was yes. I was on the O train, so to speak, then, and have no reason to be off it now.
reported at large — Biden on the campaign trail offered, the Obama-Biden gang would investigate the mis-deeds of the Bush administration.
I know, but investigate just means investigate. It means “we’ll look into it.” In the worst possible light, that could just mean having some low level staffer look at some files and make a report.
They could have used more specific language but didn’t. That was the red flag right there.
None at all. That would be “vengeful” and “partisan”.
Unless the investigation was broadened to the last 16 years, and not the last eight.
Apropos of nothing – I wanted to encourage people to read my review of Slumdog Millionaire over at Consortium News and then go see the film. This is my favorite so far for best picture of the year.
I also loved Australia, but in a very different way, and will write that up at some point in the near future.
And I HIGHLY recommend Milk as well. That’s the second best film I’ve seen this year.
When I heard that “Quantum of Solace” had James Bond pitted against CIA corporatism I wanted to go see it. Alas, truth is I go movie theaters as often as Daniel Ratcliffe flies on a broom. I catch them all, six to nine months down the road when they come up on Netflix.
I must say, I was in SF and lived through the Jonestown/Milk/Moscone massacres and I’d rather relive those awful days somewhere where I can weep privately.
Depends on the amount of legislation that is queued up when the new Congress arrives in January and how fast the Democrats can move that through for Obama’s signature in the first week after the inauguration.
There is a lot of prep work that can be done in those committees not directly involved in major legislation–Judiciary and Government Operations for example on the part of staff (yeah, Lieberman is the donkey sitting on the tracks). This work could be shifted to DoJ after the confirmation of the new AG and most importantly new US Attorneys. A lot can occur without public notice while the major legislation moves through.
If there is the will.
“What’s the minimum amount of backward-looking clean-up you think the Democrats can do without putting their legislative agenda and political momentum as risk?”
Ah, ahem, is fixing New Orleans considered “backward leaning”?
Three dam years New Orleans has sat in ruins while the country ignores the city. The birthplace of jazz, America’s only native art form, has had its cultural heritage and legacy destroyed by a greedy and stupid president. Americans, and I mean here, too, turn their backs on the city, Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.
Dare democrats “risk their legislative agenda” by doing what they should have done THREE YEARS AGO!!
Obama- your task is to fix New Orleans and the sooner the better.
and may I remind congressional Dems that Lieberman’s committee totally refused to help Katrina victims, but now, you welcome him with open arms?
But they opened their arms at Obama’s request.
At this point I don’t think there’s much they can do, because for months Obama and Democratic leaders haven’t articulated why it’s necessary to do cleanup, and have emphasized ‘looking forward.’ At this point, cleanup won’t just be considered looking backward, it will be considered a reversal/a lie.
There’s too much to even think about – sadly. So, I say, pick one thing and go to the mat. For me, this would be the Department of the Interior. It’s small enough not to become a bog (unlike THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT), but large enough to make a difference and be noticed.
What’s the minimum amount of backward-looking clean-up you think the Democrats can do without putting their legislative agenda and political momentum as risk?
South Africa had a Truth & Reconciliation Commission, which put criminals in jail, and carried out a complete revolution in their society, and restructured their government. But I guess we are not in their class.
Nothing will happen until we all admit to who runs the country.
When the collective, debases themselves to see how little/how much they can do before the apple cart is upset, they cease to believe in the rule of law & therefore become co-criminals.
It`s better to stand alone in upholding the law & fail, than to kneel & hope.
Otherwise open the jailhouse doors for all.
If criminals can remain free, then free the criminals.
Absurd isn`t it.
The “tough on crime” bunch who have locked up so many for so little, should be deal with in like manner.
1,000,000,000 dead in Iraq, almost 5000 Americans dead, maybe 35,000 physically wounded with 100`s of thousands more, mentally crippled somewhat, & the worry is if the agenda or political momentum will suffer.
HAHHHAHAhahahhhaaaaaha.
The fact is that criminal prosecutions are likely to fail in a spectacular way. It would only take one “true believer” in a criminal jury (someone who believes as perhaps 30 percent of the general public do, that anything done to keep the country safe is justifiable) to give the criminals the opportunity to say: “See, I’m innocent!” (which of course is not what “not proven guilty” in our justice system means.)
Very public inquiries by panels are likely to emphasize the erosion of the Constitution, but very unlikely to get real information with the umbrella of “executive privilege” hanging over any proceeding.
The only way (per Scalia, believe it or not) to avoid being blocked by executive privilege is an impeachment investigation. While such a procedure would be technically possible in January, it will never happen. Why? It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that the senior Democrats who “took it off the table” were afraid of the truth. They had to have sat through briefings in silence, had to have been complicent at least by failure to act on information they had…there is no other reason for their inaction now.
From Obama’s standpoint, needing their support for his future success on his aggressive agenda, forcing the political destruction of some Democratic leaders isn’t a wise move. So the mediochre middle ground, a show hearing, seems the only resolution that might be hoped for.
It should be handled much like the Colonials handled the aftermath of the Cylon occupation of New Caprica – quietly and efficiently…
Does anyone think that the quid pro quo would be stated so obviously? Like, “We’ll give you your alternate energy program if you lay off investigating 9/11, Guantanimo and that anthrax thingie”?
I don’t think so. I suspect the Repubs will try to stop everything, at least initially, and if that pushes the country further into depression or their allies in the corporatist world yank their chains then they’ll get in line.
Investigating anything? Expect more Dems found in bed with dead women or live boys, or some kind of malfeasance that can be immediately equated to torturing and killing Iraqi taxicab drivers.
Believe me, if you think that the intelligence services would listen and document your minor offenses and not produce blackmail material for those with power you have sadly underestimated your real enemies.
Blackmail, bribery, murder. There’s an old saying: “If you control the coroner you control the city.” Just ask Dr. Michael Baden.
The least we can do is to bring to trial those who refused to answer congressional subpoenas, viz, Rove, Mies and Bolton, Otherwise, we forfeit national honor and build future legislative programs upon a foundation of sand.
As so often happens, the right thing is also the best thing. So it is here. But, I doubt very much if this morally bankrupt civilization can ever do the right thing—anymore. Our ethical compass has been lost; we are in deep peril.
Can Obama repudiate Bush’s signing statements and return the laws passed by Congress to what they were meant to be? That would be one step forward.
the signing statements are actually a theoretical tool. They are put there as a contingency in case the Executive finds itself in court trying to defend itself for non-compliance with the law. In that case, the Executive would argue that the law does not apply to them, as they clearly laid out in the signing statement.
But Obama doesn’t need to undo the signing statements. He merely needs to obey the laws as written, or, at least, not rely on Bush’s signing statements as a legal defense.