• Getting your wealth from daddy: capitalist.
• Getting your Congressional seat from daddy: capitalist.
• Being a VP at Merrill Lynch and benefiting from billions in government bailout money: capitalist.
• Paying bloated bailouts because they did so well: capitalist.

Suggesting that executive bonuses and pay be limited  in companies that brought us to the verge of a new Great Depression and got billions of dollars, definitely not capitalist.

From the ever verbose Glenn Greenwald:

The incomparably horrific Harold Ford — who sounds ready to challenge incumbent New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in a primary — contradicted himself so egregiously in his cringe-inducing New York Times interview yesterday that it’s hard to know whether one should feel more pity or contempt for him. First, there’s this:

Mr. Ford declined to discuss what he is paid by the bank [Merrill Lynch, of which he is Vice Chairman], but publicly available data suggests that he earns at least $1 million a year. Asked what role outsize pay packages played in fueling the financial crisis, Mr. Ford said he objected to capping executive compensation on Wall Street. “I am a capitalist,” he said. “I believe that people take risk, and there are rewards if they do well; they should lose if they don’t.”

But that was preceded by this:

[Ford] blasted [Gillibrand] . . . for opposing the taxpayer bailout of the financial industry. “It was a mistake,” he said, noting that most Wall Street firms had already paid back the money. “How can you be against ensuring that the lifeblood of your city and of your state survives?”

So the rugged individualist Harold Ford — who inherited his father’s Congressional seat at the age of 26 — is a self-proclaimed “capitalist” who believes that people “should lose” if they don’t do well: unless, that is, the people who “don’t do well” are his funders and controllers on Wall Street, in which case they should be propped up by the U.S. Government with bailouts and loans and Federal Reserve tricks until such time that they can pay themselves tens of millions of dollars in bonuses, at which point they should be left alone in the name of “free market capitalism” and keeping the Government out of the affairs of industry and away from their “rewards.” What Ford is advocating, of course, is the exact opposite of free market capitalism: it’s risk-free crony “capitalism,” warped corporatism, the essence of decaying emerging-market nations in crisis, in which the coercive power of the Government is harnessed by a corrupt financial elite for its own benefit and at everyone else’s expense, to ensure that people like Harold Ford can maintain their chauffeurs and weekly pedicures and helicopter rides he strangely boasted of enjoying.

via Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.

Welcome to the new Banana Republic that we have become.

In an all to common display of craven gutlessness the Senate once again rolled over and gave the White House what it wanted like a prison punk ass bitch. The only hope is that the House finds it’s balls in that other pair of pant in the laundry basket and stands up. Let’s just say I’m not very hopeful about it.

Giuliani muses on vice president, cabinet – Boston.com
Later, Giuliani pivoted from a question about potential picks for secretary of state to this: “Let me answer with the question of what you would look for in a vice president first — again without any presumption that I’m going to be the nominee.”In an answer that mentioned Cheney more than once, Giuliani said, “A vice president has to be a partner in the administration. The vice president has to know everything that’s going on, just in case the vice president has to step in at a moment’s notice,” he said. He added that during a conversation with Cheney on Sept. 11, 2001, he felt the vice president “had a sense that he knew what he was doing.”

Rudy has a knack for making me nauseous. You must be fucking kidding me, Cheney as some kind of positive roll model? And does he have to mention 9-11 every time he opens his mouth? Oh right, it is all he has.

Did $1.5 trillion get us more secure? Buy an awe-inspiring display of American military might? Cheaper oil? A sound dollar? Exactly what did we purchase for so high a price? A generation of hatred? Worldwide disdain? A near total loss of moral authority on the world stage? Did we show Islamic extremists the limits of American military power? When will Congress shut off the near unlimited flow of money? Is it possible for them to finally show some backbone?

The presidency of George W. Bush is a criminal conspiracy to cover the ass of George W. Bush.

Levin was fired for daring to not toe the line and be a good Bushy.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will, unless something drastically changes, approve Judge Mukasey for Attorney General without him uttering the words “water boarding is illegal”. This is not to protect military personnel, it is to protect policy makers, up to and including the president. The interrogators are immunized by law. It is the senior civilian leadership that’s at risk.

When will someone in a position of power actually do something about it? There is no ambiguityabout torture. It’s wrong, it’s illegal and it’s actionable. As Wategate veteran John Dean suggests, can’t we at least get a special prosecutor to investigate war crimes?

Crooks and Liars has the whole thing here.

Senate Again Passes Child Health Bill – New York Times
In a situation of unusual political complexity, Republicans dictated the decision to pass the legislation speedily. It appeared their goal was to short-circuit attempts by supporters of the bill to reach a compromise that could attract enough votes in the House to override Bush’s veto.

Bush vetoes bill on children’s health care – Yahoo! News
President George W. Bush on Wednesday vetoed a measure to expand a popular children’s health care program, launching the first in a series of major battles with Democrats over domestic spending.
ADVERTISEMENT

The legislation would have provided an extra $35 billion over five years for the health program, which is administered by the states. Taxes on tobacco products would have been raised to pay for the increase.

The health bill enjoyed bipartisan support. The veto is likely to anger a number in Bush’s own Republican Party who fear the issue will cost them votes in the congressional and presidential elections.

UPDATE:

McClatchy has more

What took so long to do this? There’s only $6 billion under criminal investigation. I guess it made more sense to piss off a broad swath of the voting public than it did to actually exercise genuine oversight in the corruption ridden patronage fest that Iraq has become.

Warrantless Wiretaps Not Used, Official Says – New York Times
Mr. McConnell argued on Tuesday that the expanded surveillance powers granted under the temporary measure should be made permanent.

He also pushed for a provision that would grant legal immunity to the telecommunications companies that secretly cooperated with the N.S.A. on the warrantless program. Those companies, now facing lawsuits, have never been officially identified.

Democratic Congressional aides say they believe that a deal is likely to provide protection for the companies.

Democratic leaders have now largely accepted the idea of warrantless surveillance of international calls as long as the target is foreign, but they have been arguing that a special court should play a stronger role in reviewing the surveillance after it has been conducted, to make certain that Americans are not being caught up in the program.

About damned time. All roads lead to the White House…

Someone has to explain to me,  what existential threat justified descending into what can only be called barbarism? 9-11? If that’s the case in what way has debasing our legal system made us safer? Are we less likely to suffer mass casualty attacks because we torture people that may not even deserve to be imprisoned?

Gonzales could get say in states’ executions – Los Angeles Times
The Justice Department is putting the final touches on regulations that could give Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales important new sway over death penalty cases in California and other states, including the power to shorten the time that death row inmates have to appeal convictions to federal courts.

The rules implement a little-noticed provision in last year’s reauthorization of the Patriot Act that gives the attorney general the power to decide whether individual states are providing adequate counsel for defendants in death penalty cases. The authority has been held by federal judges.

Under the rules now being prepared, if a state requested it and Gonzales agreed, prosecutors could use “fast track” procedures that could shave years off the time that a death row inmate has to appeal to the federal courts after conviction in a state court.

Top general may propose pullbacks – Los Angeles Times
Administration and military officials acknowledge that the September report will not show any significant progress on the political benchmarks laid out by Congress. How to deal in the report with the lack of national reconciliation between Iraq’s warring sects has created some tension within the White House.

Despite Bush’s repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

Glenn Greenwald – Salon
At its core, the history of the Iraq War has been authored by an indescribably deceitful and very intellectually limited political and media elite, perfectly symbolized by Kit Bond. These are people who spent four years hailing the Great Progress the Leader was making in Iraq, claiming we were “clearing and holding” neighborhoods of all the Terrorists, that Freedom was on the March, that anyone who questioned any of this was either brainwashed by the war-hating media or a Friend of The Terrorists.

And now, four years later, with the War plainly having been a failure, and their assurances all exposed as false, what are they doing? Hailing the Great Progress the Leader is making in Iraq, claiming we are “clearing and holding” neighborhoods of all the Terrorists, that Freedom is on the March, that anyone who questions any of this is either brainwashed by the war-hating media or a Friend of The Terrorists. Nothing ever changes. It just plods along with the same idiot slogans and the same people spouting them. And they do it with no shame, no acknowledgment of their own past behavior, and no loss of credibility.

Glenn Greenwald – Salon
This is one of those types of legal outcomes which — understandably so — can drive laypersons, along with conscientious lawyers, crazy. The result, on its face, is grotesquely unfair, outrageously so.

After all, the whole point of FISA is to make it illegal for the government to spy on us in secret. And yet spying on us in secret is exactly what the Bush administration did; that is the crux of the lawbreaking here. But precisely because it spied on Americans in secret rather than with judicial oversight, nobody knows whose conversations they surveilled and we cannot find out.

It is because of this illegal behavior that the plaintiffs are unable to show that they were subjected to this surveillance. To dismiss the case on the ground that the plaintiffs are unable to make this showing, then, is to reward the Bush administration with the ultimate prize (immunity from judicial review) for having broken the law.

Worse still, it means that if the Government breaks the law in secret, it can be immune from being held accountable in a court because no one individual can ever prove that they were directly and uniquely harmed by the illegal conduct, and thus would lack standing to sue. That result is as destructive as it is Kafka-esque, and it is what happened yesterday.

TPMmuckraker July 2, 2007 5:48 PM

Here’s a reminder of what was promised when this mess started:

“If there’s a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is,” Bush told reporters at an impromptu news conference during a fund-raising stop in Chicago, Illinois. “If the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of.

I guess we know what “taken care of” means now.

The president says Democrats have it all wrong: the public doesn’t want the troops pulled out — they want to give the military more support in its mission.”Last November, the American people said they were frustrated and wanted a change in our strategy in Iraq,” he said April 24, ahead of a veto showdown with congressional Democrats over their desire to legislation a troop withdrawal timeline. “I listened. Today, General David Petraeus is carrying out a strategy that is dramatically different from our previous course.”

Increasingly isolated on a war that is going badly, Bush has presented his alternative reality in other ways, too. He expresses understanding for the public’s dismay over the unrelenting sectarian violence and American losses that have passed 3,400, but then asserts that the public’s solution matches his.

“A lot of Americans want to know, you know, when?” he said at a Rose Garden news conference Thursday. “When are you going to win?”

Also in that session, Bush said: “I recognize there are a handful there, or some, who just say, `Get out, you know, it’s just not worth it. Let’s just leave.’ I strongly disagree with that attitude. Most Americans do as well.”

In fact, polls show Americans do not disagree, and that leaving — not winning — is their main goal.

Can someone get a message into that bunker once known as the White House? George, it’s the American people and they want their country back, now!

Governing by polls is a weak approach, certainly. But completely ignoring reality, Congress and the expressed will of the people until you can retire and blame someone else while truly patriotic Americans die is criminal. We deserve better than this inept, strutting fool currently occupying the seat of power. Impeachment sounds better and better everyday this travesty is allowed to grind on.

This is, in fact, a comment about… betrayal.Few men or women elected in our history-whether executive or legislative, state or national-have been sent into office with a mandate more obvious, nor instructions more clear: Get us out of Iraq.

Yet after six months of preparation and execution-half a year gathering the strands of public support; translating into action, the collective will of the nearly 70 percent of Americans who reject this War of Lies, the Democrats have managed only this:

* The Democratic leadership has surrendered to a president-if not the worst president, then easily the most selfish, in our history-who happily blackmails his own people, and uses his own military personnel as hostages to his asinine demand, that the Democrats “give the troops their money”;
* The Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans;
* The Democratic leadership has given Mr. Bush all that he wanted, with the only caveat being, not merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government, but optional meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government.
* The Democratic leadership has, in sum, claimed a compromise with the Administration, in which the only things truly compromised, are the trust of the voters, the ethics of the Democrats, and the lives of our brave, and doomed, friends, and family, in Iraq.You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions-Stop The War-have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic beans.

You may trot out every political cliché from the soft-soap, inside-the-beltway dictionary of boilerplate sound bites, about how this is the “beginning of the end” of Mr. Bush’s “carte blanche” in Iraq, about how this is a “first step.”
Well, Senator Reid, the only end at its beginning… is our collective hope that you and your colleagues would do what is right, what is essential, what you were each elected and re-elected to do.