Minnage àTrois

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Now I ask you, who in bloggerville could possibly resist the opportunity to use that snarky headline? So when I heard on a Fargo talk radio station this morning that Jesse "The Body" Ventura was running for Senate, according to NPR, the ol' wheels started spinning.

Of course, by the time I got back home, the story, which was spreading faster than the Big Sur fire, was already on ABC's Political Punch and being knocked back down by Jesse, who said not even his wife will know before Tuesday's deadline whether he's jumping into the fray against Norm Coleman and Al Franken.

So what is it? The media are flip-floppers? Or Jesse is?

Jesse's got issues with the two candidates in the fray. Al Franken, says he, is a carpetbagger and a political opportunist... hmmm, wonder if he said that from his casa de Mexico where he pretty much decamped away from Minnesota after his single term as governor. And how much credit does the tax-slashing, surplus-draining former governor want to take for the condition of the highways and byways—and bridges—of Minnesota these days?

Speakin' of highways, apparently Franken hasn't yet discovered there are gosh-darned voters and media north of Hwys. 10 and 200.

Jesse doesn't mince words about Coleman either. Points out that Nahmie has never held a job out in the real world since he signed on to government as an assistant attorney. Always lived off the public, says Jesse. And Nahmie voted for the Iraq war, right in lockstep with you-know-who.

So, if that's your criteria, Jesse, why aren't you running against McCain? The mediocre-student, crash-five-planes flyboy who cracks up himself with jokes about bomb-bomb-bombin' and death-by-tobacco has always lived off the government dole. Well, except for Cindy's gazillions, of course.

No wonder McCain doesn't understand basic economics. Like how Social Security works. Or what the price is at the pump.

At first I was dismayed by the prospect of Jesse in the Senate. But a younger Sunshine pointed out to me he couldn't do any more harm than who's there now.

And at least when the Senate and Congress take on all the trappings of pro wrestling—sturm und drang, kabuki, theatre of the absurd [FISA eff-up, anyone?]—there'd be one authentic pro wrestler in the mix. And who knows, maybe he could bring their poll ratings up out of single digits.
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FISA & the Sagging Middle

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In novel writing, they call it the sagging middle. Beware the sagging middle. It's when your reader, captivated initially by your story premise and characters, dives into your story, reads along chapter after chapter and then....

the story falls into predictability and sameness and if it's a mystery, you don't care whether the detective catches the bad guy. If it's a romance, you don't care if Mr. Big figures out the secret baby is his. If it's SF, you don't care if the technos win over the....

And that's when the book gets set aside and forgotten, or tossed against a wall sayin' it's the same ol' same ol'....

If you haven't met Glen Greenwald before, do stop by and give a read to his commentary on Obama, FISA, and the cautionary tale of the same ol' same ol....

And beware the sagging middle.
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Prairie's Reading: FISA & Brandeis

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The words of Justice Brandeis echo down thru the decades...via McJoan at Kos. And Christy's keepin' us on our toes, what a patriot looks like, over at firedoglake. FISA matters, precisely because of Brandeis' words:

If the government becomes a law breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means 'to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal' would bring terrible retribution.
[From dissenting opinion in Olmstead vs. United States, in which the court upheld the use of wiretaps in a case involving an investigation of bootlegging. Brandeis strongly defended the individual right to privacy from government intrusion.] -Louis D. Brandeis, 1928

"Dodd's Speech"

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Remember when Senators stood up on principle and said "enough"?

Nope, me neither, unless I happen to stumble across an ol' uncolorized Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

Well, brace yerself and take a look at this. Because Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd has taken the floor to remind his colleagues and all of us what Democracy is supposed to look like.

Christy has commentary at Firedoglake, you'll find links there to other bloggers as well. Because reporting on the vote on FISA and telco immunity—for actions to peek into every American's privacy that began before 9/11 and have continued for years...without warrants and in defiance of the Constitution— is too important to trust to the Very Self-Important Media and its all infauxtainment alla time.
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Ho-yer.

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Atrios said...I went...he's right. What digby said on Sell-out Steny.
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Contemplating Mortality

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We learned this morning of the too-swift passing of comic George Carlin, soon after the abrupt death of Tim Russert. Unexpected, both, though likely predictable, given their health histories.

Deaths happen abruptly every day. And all you who stop by here from time to time readily recognize those names. If not, go google...

Because right now, I'm contemplating mortality in a much more personal way. Friday evening I got one of "those" calls...a dear cousin, now half a continent away, had died from a massive stroke.

We're too young, we baby boomers think. Such does not happen to us. And yet it does...

Before she was a mom and a wife and a grandmom and a watercolorist and all the other things that formed her adult years, Mary Jo was Aunt Irene's little girl, the only girl with four brothers, Sandy's year-younger cousin—our birthdays only hours apart from being the same date. We shared growing-up years in the way cousins do, family gatherings and holidays, but also walking together to the old Fairgrounds, and sitting on her mom's bed to giggle over who was the cuter Beatle, Paul or George. I still say George.

At 59, she was far too young to go.

There are a lot of families who think those thoughts. The statistical 850 a day who die abruptly from heart attacks. The victims of car accidents or urban violence or the violence we have allowed to be inflicted in Iraq based on lies. The flag-draped coffins coming home under cover of darkness—too young to go.

Some say be patient, just wait, there's change coming, as Frank Rich posited about the future, whoever gets elected, this morning on the Imus Show. But there is also the fierce urgency of now.

There are things that can be done now. There are things that must be done in the future. FISA's immunity for telcos must be stopped now. Democracy where people are valued for more than the money in their wallets must be renewed, and I'm one that doesn't think that can happen without truth and full accounting and accountability for these years.

Our legacy, Mary Jo's and mine, was grandparents who immigrated from Germany long enough ago that we qualify as a Dakota Territory pioneer family, my dad fought in WW II as a Marine. The legacy I crave for my grandson, for her grandchildren, is one of honor and wisdom and the restoration of the promise that drew our ancestors to this land.

Mary Jo Yales...cherished and missed by those who knew and love her still. JoY at her heart, and so I will remember her.
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Kabuki? Or Real Change?

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Unity is the mantra of the Barack Obama campaign.

But the upcoming Senate debate on FISA/telecom immunity [just passed by the House] is the first real test of Barack Obama's unity leadership. He says he'll work to strip telecom immunity from the bill. For the man who would be our next president, more is expected than "work."

A two-step process.

Immunity for the telecoms cannot be part of the bill that goes to the Deciderer. First, it must be stripped from the Senate version. And it cannot, must not, be restored in conference.

Leadership matters. Accountability matters. We look forward to more of both. And that's no small change.
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independently yours....

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So.
Sell-Out Steny, Cave-in Congress and the lobbyist culture have united in quisling lockstep to give Contemptible George all that he wanted and then some on the FISA/telco immunity vote in the House.

Stomping on civil liberties and the Constitution to CYA Chee-knee and his cronies.

Heckuva job, Nancy Pelosi. Heckuva job, Collin Peterson. Heckuva job, Earl Pomeroy.

All that's left now is to choose...choice is still a right, isn't it? Or did that slide away under cover of the obtusers, too?

Anyway, as I was saying, do I choose to leave the North Dakota Democratic Party, just quit? Do I choose to take up residence in Minnesota, make a move? That does hold some appeal...I could vote for Franken for Senate...and my wee cabin in the tall timber is in Oberstar's district, not Peterson's.

Change comes in all sorts of guises.

And I could still be a supporter for Obama. An independent supporter for Obama.

Or, an Independent....
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Thugs Walk Among Us

There’s a sorry videoclip making the rounds of YouTube—a deputy tipping a quadriplegic man out of his wheelchair, facedown so he can see it coming, onto the hard concrete floor.

I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch it. Our family knows what it is to be wheelchair reliant, and frankly it’s a little like gawking at an injury accident scene along the highway. I just can’t look.

But I can listen, and this morning I heard the defense attorney for the deputy lamenting that all that YouTube coverage means his client can’t get a fair trial.

Cry me a river.

I want an outraged jury. I want them to look. And decide based on the cold hard facts. Not let the woman off the hook because the facts show her for the thug that she is. And no better are the sniggering deputies around her.

We live in a thug culture these days. It starts at the top. A little shoot an old guy in the face and get away with it here. A little waterboarding and Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and other tortures there. And gaming the legal system. Trying to backdate the laws, skirt the responsibility, withhold the evidence, rationalize the blame—boogga-boogga, ticking timebomb anyone—and you’ve got a whole societal norm that extends from the Oval Office right down to the local sheriff’s office saying, hey, we’re the law, we get to do whatever we want. And get away with it.

And look where it gets us.

The media play no small role in this situation. This morning, instead of telling us anything about FISA, for example, the Morning Mouths are giving us More Hill, Less Bill, then proceeding to wallpaper Bill all over the airwaves.

When there were voices loudly crying out against the use of torture, including voices of WW II vets and professional interrogators saying it does not work…including a Senator who has lost his way who knew first hand torture did not work…those voices were given short shrift for more of the BushCo spin. And media consciences were shut down for whatever reason they told themselves—bad for the corporate bottom line; it’s unpatriotic; it’s treason; oooooh, it’s hard and it gives me a header… but no reason excuses such compliance.

Meanwhile, who watches the watchdogs when they’ve been so watered down and hamstrung and w-ussified by Bushie that they’ve lost their will? The Congress, the media are both complicit in the thug culture. But so has been the rest of the country. Fear worked, for a while.

It’s not just the Congress that needs a spine, it’s every last one of us. We’re working on it, and so far, we’re looking pretty fair. And Congress may even be sitting up and taking notice.

And it’s important cleanup work we have to do. Because when a country is debased, when people are made beasts, then they have lost their claim to leadership and honor in the world community…and in their own hometowns.

Accountability matters.

So give that deputy her day in court. If I were on the jury, I’d sentence her to every payday for the rest of her life write out a check to that man in the wheelchair. Doesn’t matter the amount so much, it could be one dollar. Let him collect a bigger compensation from the government that failed him…and all of us. Let's all of us wheel a mile in his shoes.

There’s a segment of the country that believes dinosaurs walked the earth with man some six thousand years ago. As long as thuggery is ennobled, for whatever excuse, they still do.

Obstructed Views

Driving the morning errand circuit today, I stopped in the left turn lane at a busy intersection. Had the green light, but facing me in the opposite left turn lane was a honkin’ big SUV that totally obstructed my ability to see the oncoming traffic in the lane next to him.

Even craning my neck to the left ’til I bumped the window, couldn’t see what was coming.

The political-media world is a lot like that these days.

We try and try to stay our course and prudently see what lies ahead, but the view is too often obstructed by honkin’ big SUVs. [Yeah, I tried to come up with some clever, snarky phrase for that, but the caffeine’s not kicked in yet this morning.]

The radio news talks about the latest headlines and kinda slips in “bailout for two bond companies…” What’s this? You mean it’s not all about putting money back in people’s pockets? Saving people’s homes? Protecting the little guy?

Why are we not surprised.

Politicians are busily lining up arguments for their points of view on the FISA retroactive immunity issue. Orrin Hatch was spinnin’ away first thing this morning on Imus. Short take: civil liberties are for wussies, we gotta protect our patriotic American phone companies….

Wouldn’t have anything to do with CYA for the White House spin machine and its 935 and counting lies that led us into the criminal enterprise of corrupt cronyism known as the occupation of Iraq, now would it?

That’ll be bailout for the big boys, too, while the foot soldier is down to one foot and struggling for decent healthcare in a grossly underfunded VA system.

Senator Chris Dodd’s filibuster intention is being pecked away at by the lockstep rubberstamp Republicans…but also too many Democrats who still haven’t found their spines. Maybe they think those ski poles in Davos would be a working substitute?

Or is this just more “bailout for the big boys”?

Lots of media sturm und drang about Hillary’s campaign style these days. She brought her guns blazin’ to a knife fight was one take on the SC debate. Maybe the Chicago political organizer and his team and the hand-wringing media guys need to remember just where Hillary grew up—she’s got The Chicago Way in her DNA.

Picking our way through this tangled course to the election, to every vote that comes along, whether it’s votes in Congress or our own in a voting booth, demands much. If we have expectations of our politicians, we gotta remember that face lookin’ back in the rearview mirror is our own.

Will we be able to say on Election Day, I chose the right way to travel, I stayed the course, I cut through the obstructions and fog and followed the right road, and there’ll be no mea culpa’s from me once the journey’s done?

Well, will we?

Citizen Activism: for democracy

Senator Chris Dodd will be giving a lesson in Democracy 101 as he stands up against the FISA bill. For too long, Congress has abrogated too many responsibilities for oversight and leadership. You can learn more from Jane over at firedoglake.com. Please at the very least, learn about what civil liberties have been eroded from all of us. Tell Senator Dodd you support his effort. Jane makes it easy, here. First thing Monday, contact your Senators and ask them to support the foundations of American democracy, support the filibuster of Chris Dodd.

Some are the times for kickin' back and taking life easy. Now is the time for joining the vital battle for rule of law, the Constitution, and restoring our rights. Please join in.