NANCY PELOSI JOINS REPUBLICANS IN 293-PERSON CURTSEY TO KING GEORGE

BARACK OBAMA ISSUES PRESS RELEASE PROMISING TO BE “KINDER, GENTLER MONARCH” WHEN HE ASCENDS TO THRONE

HARRY REID GOES FISHING ON LAKE TAHOE, SAYING HAIL MARYS

The horrible FISA bill passed yesterday, despite heroic rear-guard action by our own Harold Feld. Nancy Pelosi, the best-looking Republican grandma in the People's Chamber (who also happens to be the Democratic Speaker of the House, go figure) led the charge. Obama was invisible before the vote and issued a watery piece-of-shit press release afterwards. Harry Reid said some empty nonsense.

Congressman Delahunt, who represents me (among others), voted against. Go Bill Delahunt. (Maybe the 3,342,985 calls I made to his office over the last few months gave him the encouragement he needed, but the action was his alone.)

Well, so, immediately after the roll call was published I went down to the Tisbury Town Hall, into the Town Clerk's office. There, I made damn good an' sure I've got nothing to do with the Democratic Party. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me 4,345,395 times, shame on me. I told said clerk, “I want to change my registration,” and she said, “Yeah, and I know why.”

I don't know how it is where you live, but in my little home town, a DemocraticPartyectomy takes less than a minute. I highly recommend the procedure. It does wonders for one's blood pressure.

After the jump: Democrats--monarchists or fascists: which one of these?

UPDATE: I edited this post for clarity. My points are probably still unclear, but I wanted to be up front about my revisions. [Read More!]

The courageous Cindy Sheehan famously asked the coward George W. Bush to tell her what was the “Noble Cause” for which her son Casey had given his life as a soldier in Baghdad. Bush was too cowardly to answer, of course, but over on Eschaton, Atrios the dog-barker has a pithy little post that pretty nearly sums it up, and addresses Harold's question about citizen and “real” journalism at the same time.

So we'll spend a hell of a lot of money and lose a lot of lives presiding over an occupation and using our military to provide security for the private security which will be guarding the commercial interests involved in oil extraction.

And since it's against Village etiquette to suggest that we we are engaged in an imperial colonial adventure, it will be almost impossible to debate the merits of our policies in Iraq or even have a vaguely honest discussion about what those policies are.

Like Atrios, I don't think the war was about oil alone. It was about Bush's vanity and sociopathy, the Cheney/Cheney cabal's lust for war and conquest for the sake of war and conquest, the Cheney/Cheney cabal's lust for war profits, and the Cheney/Cheney cabal's hatred of the constitution and the idea of demoncracy. It was fueled by the infantile jingoism of a lazy and kitsch-loving populace and a reasonable admixture of patriotic altruism on the part of some of the troops.

But now it's about the oil, mostly. And Bush's vanity, and the Cheney/Cheney-cabal lust for war profits. But mostly it's about the oil. Possession of which satisfies all the other subgoals.

Leopold Senghor was still the head honcho of Senegal when I was there as a Peace Corps Volunteer (& later as a grad student). The famous father of negritude was pretty well regarded as the guy who got Senegal its independence from France. But he was ridiculed a little (sort of like the proverbial crazy uncle) because his wife was French, and white. And because he spoke French, Latin and Greek better than he did Wolof. Senghor was Serrere, & spoke that language as his native tongue. But everybody in Senegal spoke at least some Wolof. It was (and is) that country's lingua franca. I knew several Americans who were quite fluent in the language, including my friend Richard.

I remember one time Richard was going on about Senghor's horrible French accent when speakng Wolof. In a radio address the night before, at one point Senghor had said something like, “ha 'bugge nga' ak 'bugulo nga' amul barrak waxtan”, meaning “between 'I like you' and 'I don't like you' there is no bench for discussion.” And Richard thought that was horribly undiomatic Wolof. (Note: my Wolof is very, very rusty. I probably got that all wrong, but that's how I remember it.)

Whatever. It stuck with me. And so, with reference to this recent nonsense about a “compromise” on the FISA bill, and with a nod to the late Mr. Senghor, I would just like to say, that between 'legal' and 'illegal', there is no bench for discussion. Bush and Cheney and all the other monarchists in their administration think there's a need to pass a law saying that when phone companies break the law, they're not breaking the law. Fuck that. Y'know, that's why our so-called founders invented the so-called judiciary. Y'know, so that there would be a well defined place and way to sort these things out. When you're making ex-post facto laws to exonerate your buddies, you're not fooling anybody. Or, to quote another sage, I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it.

As we say in broken Wolof, Rekk-- that's all.