Also heard Curt Schilling is done, how the Sawx gonna win without him?

Good question. Will have to run down to Fenway and hang out at the players’s parking lot and ask Dice-Kay, and Beckett, and Lester, and if I can get through the jig-dancing Irish fans, Jonathon the Closer how the hell they have been managing without him and what they plan to do going forward?

More seriously, with all that time on his hand, will Curt campaign for McSame as he did for Bush in New Hampshire? Will it matter?

Ta ta from Titletown, as our Mayor calls the capital of the BlueBayState.

Let the trashing begin. I’ll check back later.

We need to look on the bright side — at least that is what my mother always told me at times like this.

Should this bill pass the Senate and get signed by the Preznit in Chief, why, there is no end to the mischief that we can enjoy. When we get hauled up before the local magistrate, all we have to do is cite some obscure opinion that was supposedly rendered that says it is okay if the Preznit says so, but that they cannot see due to “national security.” It will take that magistrate the rest of his life to figure out that it does not really exist or is a bunch of hoakum.

In the meantime, we get all kinds of chuckles laughing at the havoc we cause and the fun we had…

The Lakers SUCK.

I blame Bill Clinton’ penis for everything that’s happened since 2000. I call it the $600 billion dollar blow job and I think Gore has good reason to be pissed.

Barack disappoints me.

I go to Fenway when the Red Sox are NOT playing. I enjoy watching the grass grow. Somehow, it’s more interesting than baseball.

Where’s freepatriot? I need the company of someone whose trash talking makes me laugh.

Oh this isn’t the bitch fest thread? It’s the trash talk thread. Sorry.

A good thing happened this week. I met a classmate of EW who’s an entrepreneur and capitalist, Jeff Glass, a interesting guy. Wondered if EW knows him.

Maybe a “Stop calling your Congressman” campaign, on the basis that it’s a waste of time and effort. Reinforce the low ratings. The time is really ripe for some radical deviation from the normal approach to the relationship between the people and Congress.

I was watching C-Span this morning after the FISA vote, when they were taking calls from D’s, R’s, and I’s, and I was struck by how uniform WAS the condemnation of the FISA bill across the political spectrum. Only one out of about 12 callers (a Republicon, of course) voiced approval of the bill. Several Republican callers said that they had been gravitating toward the Democratic Party for a while but now they weren’t sure where to go. I imagine those who self-select by watching and calling C-Span may be highly unrepresentative of the population at large, but it was still a bit encouraging hearing the callers’ reactions.

On the silent treatment idea, I think it would be ESSENTIAL to provide substitute venues for venting. The public needs to have some form of assurance that it’s thoughts are being expressed, even when Congress is ignoring the public.

I stopped communicating with Snowe after she excused the military on the Cole incident. I communicated my concerns before 9/11, and after 9/11 asked “NOW how do you justify half-assed vigilance?” She blamed the Navy.

It would be nice if Mr Obama explained his position on this one. I too feel that the telecoms do not deserve immunity, Mr Obama feels differently and I will gladly listen to his reasons. The world is much more complex than the average american can comprehend and I am quite sure that he has reasons for his vote, now, lets hear them.

Just to conclude – I feel an obligation to dump a bucket of water on my “silent treatment” idea. A significant number of people (sheep) are positively JAZZED by the leading celebrity-politicians.

It’s no more possible to quell them than it is to cause an empty house at a Miley Cyrus concert.

But in principle, the empty house is indeed unnerving.

Another comment on the possibility of criminal action – criminal action can’t be brought by a private party, so the fact that the criminal penalty is in the statute is mostly a curiosity.

And probably, if the government brought a criminal charge against itself, Congress would pass a one-shot statutory immunity, because the criminal violation was lawful.

If power is based on principles, what principles are they based on? That’s my question for Mr. Obama. Because it would seem that the Congress is attempting to sell out the Bill of Rights to telcos and abusers of the law and our Constitution. It seems that it is, indeed, just “a piece of paper” that the President can ignore with almost complete impunity…as long as those abuses remain hidden from all but the few who get to benefit or suffer by those abuses. At some point, the abuses will grow, have grown, and they continue to this day because…little is done to punish those who have committed those abuses, either politically, and especially legally.

In fact, the abuse has gotten so bad that some loyal Americans and supporters of the U.S. Constitution are left with the helpless and crazy opinion that other countries will have to sort out our politics for us…and some of us, at this point, even advocate for that; for foreign countries to enforce their human rights, and other treaty and legal obligations against our own citizens so that justice and human dignity will be served well.

It is, indeed, a sad and dangerous time that has fallen upon us, the American people, because of the arrogance and power that has been wielded with little restrain, nor concern, for our own well-being. As long as Bush and his coterie are happy, what happens to us appears to be of little importance.

The Guardian has a fairly efficient summary:

Nevertheless, despite these welcome improvements, the bill fails at the most fundamental level to restore the independent judicial check on executive power that the Bush administration has done so much to undermine. Now, instead of determining whether probable cause exists for the issuance of a surveillance order, the Fisa court will be reduced to reviewing the adequacy of the surveillance procedures established by the Bush administration. Instead of evaluating the sufficiency of the assurances that were given to telecommunications companies to obtain their cooperation, the federal district courts in which the lawsuits against the companies have been filed will be authorised to do little more than determine whether such assurances were in fact provided.

Per the ever-insightful Digby:

I do know this: they would not have made this “compromise” and then brought this to the floor without [Obama’s] ok, and probably without his direction. He is the leader of the Democratic Party now, in the middle of a hotly contested presidential campaign. If he didn’t come to them and say to get this thing done before the fall, then they came to him and asked his permission. That’s just a fact. They aren’t going to do anything he doesn’t want them to do.

So, it’s not really a capitulation. It’s a strategy.

That doesn’t make me feel any better toward Obama, but it does remove a little of the WTF frustration.

Having designated himself a Ring Bearer, Obama has done the impossible and reached the summit of Mt. Doom. Like many before him, he faltered. He chose not to toss the One Ring back into the fire. He’s sure that he’s the one who can use its powers for good. The Ring, and Mr. Cheney, are leering at his hubris. – earlofhuntingdon

I love the way you used the Lord of the Rings as a metaphor so much that I just have to repeat my praise! Thanks for making me smile – something I haven’t done much since yesterday.

Marcy has been uncharacteristically, totally absent on this thread so far. What’s she up to? Is she taking a well-deserved break? Walking around the block breathing deeply to deal with the anger we all feel? Or combing through the fine print of the front end of the FISA bill to learn just exactly how the authoritarians and their collaborating donkeys intend to screw over American citizens?

As Admiral Nimitz radioed to Admiral Halsey during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Where the hell are you? “The world wonders?”

Thanks Selise.

Dragon Fire Leaves Constitution in Ashes
The ribs at the Hunan Palace were particularly good last night and there was a bubbly salsa DJ scene at the El Monte Sagrado. Folks out by the fire pit chattered until 3:00 AM and the moon and clouds portrayed a eerie fan dance upon high. So the 2008 Summer Solstice has come and gone with the Constitutional fire wall guaranteeing privacy gutted by a fearful, greedy Congress that has cynically exploited the publics Constitutional hopes and opposition to the war to finally align with the rogue war dictator against their constituents. And who fiddled as the Constitution burned? Testifying in the House Judiciary Committee Scott McClellan confirmed what most of us already knew: that Bush’s political strategy was a fig leaf of blatant Rovian lies including the strident fearful propaganda leading up the Iraq invasion. But in expanding FISA and excusing the President’s lawlessness Congress has collectively turned and hollered over their shoulders “so what?” Most of the folks at the Hunan Palace and dancing at the El Monte were oblivious that the legislative imprimatur was yesterday given to the spawning dragon seed of the Executive Branch beast now genetically aligned with craven multi-tentacled organism of the societe anonyme. Back in the day this alignment of government with corporate interest through the theater of violent coercion was commonly called “fascism.” But see how temporary even our clearest understandings can be. This dragon hatching was attentively coddled in the name of “freedom.”

–Tazor Raoule

Congress has an approval rating of 12% lower even than Bush and Cheney. Now to anyone slightly smarter than pond slime this would be an indication that whatever Congress is doing it should be doing something else. But as the House FISA vote showed yesterday, to pols like Hoyer and Pelosi, it means doing more of the same, i.e. giving the worst and most deeply unpopular President everything he wants and more, including covering up for his illegal programs (warrantless wiretapping, supporting his disasters (Iraq), and, of course, promising him that they will never hold him accountable for anything he has done.

The truth is that Pelosi and Hoyer are part of the Bush Administration. They think like it, they act like it, they believe in what it believes in, they even have the same contempt for ordinary Americans that it has. The last 7 years could not have happened without them. The reason that the Democrats never mounted any serious opposition to Bush is because they were not opposed to what he was doing. Now some of you may point out that were some Senators like Feingold, Dodd, Kerry, and Kennedy who did oppose Bush. To you I would say show me where they opposed anything except here and there and once in a while for short periods. Harry Reid once said that a single Senator could bring the Senate to a halt if he or she wanted to. But this never happened because no one in Congress really cared enough to make it happen.

Looking back over my scandals list, it strikes me that it is not just about what Bush, Cheney, and the Republicans did, but what the Democrats did not do, and what the media made light of or did not report at all.

All of these groups fundamentally don’t understand the blogosphere. They think that we are not paying attention, that we will not understand what they are doing, that we will not remember, ultimately that we do not count. And they think all these things at the same time that the mainstream media has been discredited, the President has a JAR of 24% and the Congress has a 12% approval rating. A democracy can not function under such conditions. More importantly neither can our society.

Appreciate that.

Selise, I missed the Holt statement, I believe, though caught part of the streamed hearing ew liveblogged when McClellan did his prototypic Parrythrust and usually am too busy for internet, yet, appreciate your proximity to the profiling data. CQ tried to lure me into a ‘plan’ with a research assistant. Better to do the review personally, and it is as free as the time I can allot for it. I mentioned MThompson @157 only illustratively, looking at your suggestion seemingly about the worthwhile spectrum of ‘local’ efforts when the ‘global’ enterprise clouds. The Hoover link I provided the other day was part of early PAA research I had begun. As I worked in the communications business, and had other involvements with it, as well, PAA was a natural link for a new project. One to stack on the credenza, for later evaluation.

Austin’s Scott Horton interviews Harper’s Scott Horton on ‘Travel Advisory’ 44 min.
http://antiwar.com/radio/2008/…..horton-11/