Almost All Of Our Politicians Lie To Us With Alacrity... Which Is Why Bernie Is So Loved Even By People Who Don't Agree With All His Policies

Yesterday in this time slot, we looked at one of the Bloomberg lies from the last debate: "All of the new Democrats that came in and put Nancy Pelosi in charge and gave the Congress the ability to control this president, I bough... I, I got them." It wasn't just the oligrachal hurbris of the word "bought." The word "all" wasn't close to a factual description. "Some" would have been more appropriate and a recognition that he was part of a team-- not even the leader of the team-- might have shown a little

a- humility
b- connection to reality

People create their own narratives, sometimes by exaggeration, sometimes out of wishful thinking, sometimes out of thin air, sometimes, in later life, due to the onset of senility. Chief executives-- particularly in business, but increasingly in politics-- do this is a matter of course. And no one challenges them. That's why CEOs are unfit for public office. Trump and Bloomberg are both absolutely perfect examples. Let me come back to Trump, the world's biggest public liar, in a moment. First a tangent to the fuzzy and deteriorating world of Status Quo Joe. Jonathan Turley explained Biden's latest big lie-- about how he was arrested in South Africa fighting to free Nelson Mandela. (If Biden could dance like these guys, I'd stop writing about what a monster he is. He'd still be a monster; I'd just stop writing about it.)





As you read this, keep in mind that Biden's early career was premised on only one thing: showing Delaware racists how he would fight against integration by derailing busing. Turley on the eve of the South Carolina primary where Biden's entire political career now rests on the shoulders of elderly, largely rural African American voters:

After weeks of confusion, Joe Biden’s campaign have finally admitted that he was not arrested while visiting Nelson Mandela. Biden has made some false claims in the past but this was particularly bizarre. No one had any record of such a historic arrest in South Africa. While Biden did not take responsibility personally for the exaggeration, his deputy campaign manager admitted today that Biden was not arrested but merely “separated from his party at the airport.” That is a bit of a nose bleed of a step down from an arrest with Mandela to an airport separation. Hard to imagine how you confuse the two since one ordinarily involves custody, cuffs, and confinement.

The claim of the arrest was viewed as a pitch to help Biden’s campaign in South Carolina but was widely ridiculed. The problem is that Biden identified his own witness in his account by noting that “I had the great honor of being arrested with our U.N. ambassador on the streets of Soweto trying to get to see [Mandela] on Robben Island.”

However, Andrew Young, who was the U.N. Ambassador at the time, stated “No, I was never arrested and I don’t think he was, either.”

The campaign then tried to explain but only made the claim more offensive that Biden would suggest that he was arrested in South Africa during apartheid: “It was a separation. They, he was not allowed to go through the same door that the-- the rest of the party he was with. Obviously, it was apartheid South Africa. There was a white door, there was a black door. He did not want to go through the white door and have the rest of the party go through the black door. He was separated. This was during a trip while they were there in Johannesburg.”

So Biden remembers separation in going through an airport door as an arrest in the cause of freeing Mandela in South Africa?

Biden has been challenged about past statements like his claiming that he Biden had traveled to Konar province in Afghanistan to give a Silver Star on a Navy captain who refused the medal, because his friend didn’t survive. The Washington Post reported that it “never happened” and said “as he campaigns for president, Joe Biden tells a moving but false war story.”

Biden was also recently challenged for saying that Biden he worked on the Paris Climate Accord with former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who died 19 years before the agreement was signed.

This story however is even more insulting to those who honor the memory of Mandela. It is akin to claiming to have marched with Dr. King because you walked through an airport with him on one occasion. There is a big difference between being separated at an airport and being arrested in South Africa in the same cause as Nelson Mandela.

Yet, it is notable that CNN spent exclusive coverage on “how important is the endorsement of Rep. James Clyburn” to Biden in South Carolina rather than this astonishing claim and belated admission about Nelson Mandela.

Where do you even start with Trump? By now we all know they every word out of his face is a self-serving lie, right? Well... depends how you define "we." This should be self-explanatory-- if you click on it and blow it up so it's legible:

Basically 32% are not part of "we." For one reason or another-- my guess is IQ-- they're going to follow Trump right into the jaws of the pandemic. Remember what I said about thinning the herd yesterday? I know it's horrible and cruel but that 32% is what I was talking about.

Trump Will Have Vast Powers As President. Thanks, Democrats.

by Gaius Publius

I don't want to let this go by without a mention. There have not been many voices in the mainstream Democratic ecosystem that have taken Obama and his Democratic administration for taking Bush II's war on civil liberties and putting it on steroids.

It's been left to those of us at the margins of the conversation, i.e., not on MSNBC or in the Washington Post, to notice, for example, that via the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act), the executive branch can order indefinite detention of U.S. citizens. Or that Obama's drone kill program normalizes executive execution. As Jonathan Turley wrote in 2012:

On Monday, March 5, Northwestern University School of Law was the location of an extraordinary scene for a free nation. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder presented President Barack Obama's claim that he has the authority to kill any U.S. citizen he considers a threat.

How does this not mean that President Obama asserts the White House right to order you killed?

Seems silly to say it that way, doesn't it? I mean, Obama's one of the good guys (i.e., a Democrat), and he'd never use that power frivolously, right? (Actually, of course he would, but not against anyone you would care about — meaning, ethnically European — except in jest.)

Now all that power that our vengeance-seeking, retributional nation thought was "safe" in Obama's hands will be handed to Donald Trump.

Civil Liberties in the Age of Trump

Suddenly, on the cusp of the Age of Trump, the Washington Post sees a problem (emphasis added):

Glenn Greenwald: Trump will have vast powers. He can thank Democrats for them.

Liberals liked executive authority as long as Obama wielded it. Now they've set a precedent.

Liberals are understandably panicked about what Donald Trump can carry out. “We have a president-elect with authoritarian tendencies assuming a presidency that has never been more powerful,” Franklin Foer wrote this past week in Slate. Trump will command not only a massive nuclear arsenal and the most robust military in history, but also the ability to wage numerous wars in secret and without congressional authorization; a ubiquitous system of electronic surveillance that can reach most forms of human communication and activity; and countless methods for shielding himself from judicial accountability, congressional oversight and the rule of law — exactly what the Constitution was created to prevent. Trump assumes the presidency “at the peak of its imperial powers,” as Foer put it.

Not to mention the extra-judicial detention and murder mentioned above. The cause of the problem, of course, is Barack Obama. The news is that the Post is now willing to notice this:

[B]eginning in his first month in office and continuing through today, Obama not only continued many of the most extreme executive-power policies he once condemned, but in many cases strengthened and extended them. His administration detained terrorism suspects without due process, proposed new frameworks to keep them locked up without trial, targeted thousands of individuals (including a U.S. citizen) for execution by drone, invoked secrecy doctrines to shield torture and eavesdropping programs from judicial review, and covertly expanded the nation’s mass electronic surveillance.

The other cause of the problem, of course, is that partisan Democrats and other Obama supporters found all of this completely acceptable. (I don't mention Republican enablers here, since they will almost always find authoritarian rule acceptable.)

Blinded by the belief that Obama was too benevolent and benign to abuse his office, and drowning in partisan loyalties at the expense of political principles, Democrats consecrated this framework with their acquiescence and, often, their explicit approval. This is the unrestrained set of powers Trump will inherit. The president-elect frightens them, so they are now alarmed. But if they want to know whom to blame, they should look in the mirror.

Something to keep in mind as you cringe considering the Trump possibilities, or when you fall back into Obama nostalgia.

Constitutionalizing State Violence

Just as one likely cause of Clinton's electoral loss was Obama's mad push to pass TPP before leaving office, one certain cause of all of Trump's abuse of executive power regarding indefinite detention, death-by-drone, and mass-surveillance of citizens (with the resulting blackmail opportunities this clearly offers) ... is that Barack Obama normalized what Bush II did, gave it the color of law, and a bipartisan blessing.

What both parties agree can be done, can be done by either party. It's the other way our Constitution gets amended. Or, as Greenwald puts it:

By putting a prettier liberal face on these policies, and transforming them from a symbol of GOP radicalism into one of bipartisan security consensus, the president entrenched them as permanent fixtures of the American presidency. As [Bush DoJ official Jack] Goldsmith put it, Obama’s actions were “designed to fortify the bulk of the Bush program for the long-run.”

Yes, he did say "designed to fortify" the Bush program "for the long run." In other words, Obama's actions were deliberate, to secure for the executive branch by law what Bush had secured by taking. 

Trump will have vast powers as president, powers that we will not be able to curtail. Thank you, Mr. Obama, and thank you, complicit Democrats. I hope we don't forget you, as the vice grip tightens, that your hand was on it too.

GP
 

Dealing With War Crime Investigations Would Be Uncomfortable And... Icky

I guess disbarment is somewhere between a slap on the wrist and a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. But it certainly isn't the thorough investigation of the three Bush Regime shills from the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility. Remember when the far right was shrieking about the martyrdom of Scooter Libby? This would be at least as ugly and it makes the cowardly, self-serving Democrats cringe and cower. All the carefully orchestrated headlines yesterday were along the lines of the NY Times' Inquiry Suggests No Charges and the Wall Street Journal's Justice Likely To Urge No Prosections: nothing to see here; move along please.

It looks like the Justice Department will recommend turning the cases over to The Hague's International War Crimes Tribunal local bar associations for possible disciplinary actions-- meaning anything from going to bed without dinner to, if the general public screams loudly enough, disbarment for John Yoo, Steven Bradbury and Jay Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge. All three wrote and signed memos justifying torture and encouraging others to think that criminal activities were legal.

But there's more. Bradbury was kind of in charge of the Bush Regime DOJ "investigation" and was almost certainly tampering with it, as was Yoo. In yesterday's Washington Post Carrie Johnson didn't even mention that when she reported how ex-members the former criminal outfit ironically known as the Bush Department of Justice were rallying around their colleagues, at the incitement of Yoo's and Bybee's attorneys, and urging gold stars on their permanent records instead of wrist slaps.

Former Bush administration officials have launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to urge Justice Department leaders to soften an ethics report criticizing lawyers who blessed harsh detainee interrogation tactics, according to two sources familiar with the efforts.

And in today's Washington Post the same Ms. Johnson breaks the good news: that even ersatz justice is dead and none of these outrageous criminals would get even a slap on the wrist. Yes, despite how serious the findings are against Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury, the system has been neatly fixed so that none will face any kind of retribution whatsoever, unless being vilified by Jonathan Turley (see below), Rachel Maddow, Firedoglake and possibly even Stephen Colbert is the kind of retribution that fits their crimes.

The only thing scarier than wingnuts who think "moral clarity" is "just words"? Wingnuts who think they know what those words mean

On Friday's Countdown, Jonathan Turley insists that we don't have any choice about prosecuting the Bush regimistas responsible for torture -- it's not only morally but legally required, or "the Bush crimes become our crimes."

"Now, it's true that a serious investigation of Bush-era abuses would make Washington an uncomfortable place, both for those who abused power and those who acted as their enablers or apologists. And these people have a lot of friends. But the price of protecting their comfort would be high: If we whitewash the abuses of the past eight years, we'll guarantee that they will happen again."

-- Paul Krugman, in his Friday NYT column, "Forgive and Forget?"

"People with 'moral clarity' recognized the ultimate existential evil of Communism, and were constantly on guard against its unceasing efforts to bring down the capitalist world by any means necessary. To these early movement conservatives, having 'moral clarity' meant that you weren't the kind of weakling who would be deceived into negotiation with the Commies, or consent to arms control, or be duped into merely containing their relentless march across the globe. It meant that you had the intestinal fortitude (or pure enough vital bodily fluids, as you wish) to do whatever had to be done to permanently exterminate America's implacable enemies -- whether it was to send in the Marines or drop the bomb."

-- Sara Robinson, in a Campaign for America's Future post,
"Redefining 'Moral Clarity'"

by Ken

I've been trying to write a post that should be ridiculously simple, because it really consists of nothing more than distilling the wisdom of three incredibly wise people. It shouldn't require anything more than this simple 1-2-3:

(1) Read Paul Krugman's Friday NYT column, in which he argues that we have to prosecute the crimes of the Bush regime, because otherwise they're not only likely but certain to be repeated. This is Krugman in top form, which means it doesn't get any better.

(2) Watch the above clip from Friday's Countdown, in which Jonathan Turley (after Keith O actually quotes from Krugman) takes the argument a step further. Confronted with demonstrable war crimes, he says, we don't even have a choice. It doesn't matter that prosecuting the torturers might be inconvenient, as AG-designate Eric Holder seemed to be saying to the Senate Judiciary Committee in his confirmation hearings. We are not only morally but legally required to prosecute. Otherwise the Bush crimes become our crimes. This is Turley in top form, which again means it doesn't get any better.

As a bonus, Keith plays the clip of Texas Sen. John Cornyn, apparently campaigning for the title of World's Dumbest Human, haranguing AG-designate Holder with his insistence that he accept Dumb John's 24-style "hypothetical" -- that we have a terrorist in possession of information that can only be extracted via torture, a "hypothetical" that flouts reality in ways that are clearly beyond the understanding of a brain-dead blitherer like the senator.

Really, I think the Senate needs to adopt a rule whereby people like Senator Cornyn be required to wear a dunce cap -- with minimum cone diameter and height specified -- anytime they appear in the Senate or on Senate-related business, like campaigning.

We should talk about the 24 phenomenon someday. I suppose the show, ghastly as it is (being concocted out of the worst writing and acting in, well, the history of writing and acting), is forgivable as mindless escapist entertainment, on the order of the really, really bad James Bond movies. But people like "Dumb John" Cornyn and Bill O'Reilly, not to mention the Fox Noise viewership, think they're watching something of documentary-like accuracy and insight. In reality it's not only bullshit, but bullshit so appallingly stupid that you would have to be truly brain-deficient to accord it the slightest seriousness. Which, as it happens, brings us to --

(3) Read the above-noted Campaign for America's Future post by Sara Robinson, making an important connection regarding the phrase "moral clarity." As Chimpy the Prez demonstrated the other night in his pathetic "farewell address," it falls really clunkily out of the mouth of a bozo like our Chimpy. (Clearly the Senate Dunce Cap Rule, and its presumed corresponding House version, needs to be adopted by the executive branch as well. And for that matter by the judicial branch too, for the use, not only of Supreme Court Justices Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito, but also of all those lower-echelon judges stuffed into the court system on Chimpy's watch.)

In the clip intro, Keith O in fact makes specific reference to Chimpy's use of the phrase "moral clarity." I think we can see him wince involuntarily at the association of the phrase with a person so utterly devoid of any kind of purposeful morality. And I think most of us hear the phrase the way Keith did, as just some words that wingnuts as just part of their clueless delusion. It sounds like "just words" to them -- and as with so many other words, they have no clue what they mean. They just like the sound of them.

But here comes Sara, picking up on something very different, and very important. She notes that conservatives use the phrase "moral clarity" a lot.

And it always sounds absurd to progressive ears, coming as it does from members of an administration that shredded the Constitution, deprived people of due process, committed horrific acts of torture, and lied the country into the worst military debacle in its history. It's always bewildering to listen to such people lecture the rest of us on "moral clarity." What in the hell are they talking about?

They keep using those words. It turns out that they don't mean what we think they mean.

Over the holidays, Sara reports, she "devoured" U.S. Vs. Them, in which J. Peter Scoblic
"looks at the way the conservative penchant for 'othering' (a word I coined to describe their perpetual need for someone to project their own demons onto, and then hate on) has shaped US foreign policy from the beginning of the Cold War through the current administration."
From this she has gleaned the definition I've quoted above.

This definition of "moral clarity" has been a major factor in U.S. foreign policy ever since. From that day unto this, the conservative movement has never been without a demonized Other to focus its vaunted "moral clarity' on. "Moral clarity" is why conservatives hate summit meetings; why they've scuttled every attempt at arms control and non-proliferation; why every problem in the world can only yield to a military solution; and why defense is the only valid government expense. To people with "moral clarity," these choices are obvious. Those who disagree (like those progressive pantywaists who refuse to acknowledge the threat, or are willing and eager to coddle Pure Evil by parleying with it) are, perforce, inherently weaker and less morally serious. If you've ever marveled at the depths of conservative moral self-righteousness, now you know the deep well from which it springs.

It is, in a word, Cheneyism. I've written before, a number of times, about the "higher truth" Big Dick clearly thinks he's in possession of, which justifies the campaign of atrocities to which he has devoted the portion of his life that isn't devoted to enriching beyond measuring his pals the greedy Repulicronies.

Of course the collapse of the global Communist menace was an existential nightmare for these people, whose thinking (for want of a better word) was based so overwhelmingly on death-sworn opposition to that "other." Of course they tried other "others," like the homos and liberals (same thing, no?), but even they realized that, fun as we are to demonize, we really aren't up to the job of being the required Other. And make no mistake, it's a big job. It remains to be seen whether the Islamofascists are up to it.

Whenever you hear a conservative go on about "moral clarity" . . . there is always an enemy. They are always out to get us. They will stop at nothing. You cannot coddle them or negotiate with them; you can only survive by annihilating them. And people who see the moral world clearly will not waste time or breath questioning these essential truths.

It's pretty stunning stuff when you read it that way. It really makes you realize that conservatives live in a world of paranoia, xenophobia, and seething aggression that most progressives can't even fathom. And their entire moral universe has been twisted to serve their externalized fears; to take that will to project their own demons onto someone else and then destroy them, and elevate it as the highest possible moral good. It's a definition of "morality" that renders the rule of law meaningless, but readily justifies genocide and torture as moral acts of self-preservation.

Is it any wonder that the Bush regime has done everything in its power to prop Osama up? It's as if the regimistas' entire foreign policy -- and most of its authoritarian domestic policy too, come to think of it -- came straight from Al Qaeda HQ.

"Once we understand what they're really saying," Sara writes, "it becomes pretty obvious that one of the first things we're going to need to do in this new era is challenge this horrific definition of 'moral clarity' and overwrite it with one of our own."

We believe moral clarity is defined by the Constitution, embodied in the rule of law, and on display wherever the dignity of other people -- including those whose interests oppose ours -- is upheld. And, in case there's any question about where the real moral clarity lies here: Ours is the morality America was founded on. Theirs is one that almost put that light out forever.

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Can Chimpy's latest lies about Iraq plans backfire? Also, Jonathan Turley goes (calmly) ballistic about impeachment, and we recall Gavin M's apt words

Today in Meseberg, Germany -- in Full Chimpy Mode,
where you can't easily separate the lies from the delusions

"For once, a Bush backfire in the Middle East wouldn't actually further entangle us in the region, but would serve the interest of the American people."

--Dan Froomkin, in his washingtonpost.com column today,
"Another Backfire in Iraq"

Just how screwed up is the Bush regime's foreign-policy apparatus? So screwed up, Dan Froomkin suggests, that this latest screw-up might actually help us. "President Bush's brashest attempt to lock in his Iraq policy beyond his presidency," he writes, "like so many other Bush initiatives in the region, appears to be backfiring spectacularly."

Dan goes on:

Secret negotiations between U.S. and Iraqi officials over a multi-year security agreement aren't so secret anymore. Details have been dribbling out over the last several days (see my June 5 column, Bush's Secret Iraq Deal).

And the American demands seem to be infuriating Iraqi lawmakers, some of whom are even threatening to kick out U.S. troops entirely.

"An ironic result of Bush's overreach," Dan writes, "could be that the domestic debate over American troop withdrawal -- in which presumptive Republican nominee John McCain is Bush's most ardent defender -- becomes moot, with the Iraqis insisting that we leave on their terms."

Dan quotes Chimpy himself, at a joint press conference this morning with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, responding to a question from Washington Post reporter Dan Eggen, in Full Chimpy Mode -- where it's difficult if not impossible to separate the lies from the plain delusions:

I think we'll end up with a strategic agreement with Iraq. You know, it's all kinds of noise in their system and our system. What eventually will win out is the truth. For example, you read stories perhaps in your newspaper that the U.S. is planning all kinds of permanent bases in Iraq. That's an erroneous story. The Iraqis know -- will learn it's erroneous, too. We're there at the invitation of the sovereign government of Iraq. . . .

And as I said clearly in past speeches, this will not involve permanent bases, nor will it bind any future President to troop levels. You know, as to -- look, Eggen, you can find any voice you want in the Iraqi political scene and quote them, which is interesting, isn't it, because in the past you could only find one voice, and now you can find a myriad of voices. It's a vibrant democracy; people are debating.

Isn't it good to know that those Iraqi voices branding our Chimpy as a wacko, Muslim-hating, imperialistic turd have his seal of approval? Maybe he does get the idea of democracy. (Nah, I don't think so either.)

Now, if you delve into coverage of the "secret" negotiations, you discover some interesting things about the permanent bases that Chimpy insists we're not negotiating for:

* We've actually scaled back out "request," from some 200 such bases to the mere 58 apparently specified in our latest proposal.

* More important, there is at play here a bit of linguistic sleight of tongue. You see, we're not demanding ownership of the bases in question. We just want to lease them, presumably for a long, long time. (More or less the way we "lease" Guantanamo Bay?) Our friend Siun was all over this story Sunday at Firedoglake.

This fake-legalistic lie-mongering, by which Chimpy manages to insist that the U.S. is not negotiating for "permanent" bases, is clearly yet another coldly calculated Bush regime lie. Although the calculation was clearly done by someone with significantly more mental agility (one can imagine Chimpy jumping up and down and frothing at the mouth when this morsel of verbal legerdemain was explained to him), in my mind his role as supreme mouthpiece for the deception qualifies by itself as a "high crime" worthy of immediate impeachment and conviction, followed by prosecution for war crimes which will result in his dying in prison. That's assuming the death penalty, of which he is after all such an enthusiastic fan, is off the table.

(Incredibly, there are still people, either mentally impaired or just bald-faced liars, who pretend it's still an open question as to whether Chimpy has lied to the American people. How are they allowed to walk in the company of decent folk without being showered with abuse for their imbecility or deceit?)


SPEAKING OF TALKING ABOUT IMPEACHMENT, JONATHAN TURLEY
-- IN HIS LACONIC WAY -- WAS BREATHING FIRE ON COUNTDOWN

Howie wrote earlier today about Kucinich and Wexler on impeachment, and in today's "White House Briefing" Dan Froomkin quotes ("via the Crooks and Liars blog") the pithiest moment of Georgetown law guru Jonathan Turley's rant last night on Countdown:

The framers, I think, would have been astonished by the absolute passivity, if not the collusion, of the Democrats in protecting President Bush from impeachment. I mean, they created a system that was essentially idiot-proof, and God knows we've put that to the test in the past few years, but I don't think they anticipated that so many members of the opposition would stand quietly in the face of clear presidential crimes.

The good professor, Keith Olbermann's No. 1 go-to guy for legal and constitutional counsel, spoke as calmly, logically, and tartly even-tonedly as always, but man, he was breathing fire! I'm delighted that Crooks and Liars has video up -- if you didn't see it, you owe it to yourself. (Of course I might also observe that I don't recall Professor Turley himself being quite this fire-breathingly gung-ho about impeachment before.)


STILL, MY FAVORITE WORDS OF WISDOM ON CHIMPY'S
NEVER-WILL-BE, NEVER-WAS IMPEACHMENT ARE GAVIN M'S

For some time now I've had these pearls of wisdom, from our friend Gavin M (of Sadly, No!) tacked up on the wall of my office cubicle, right below Homer Simpson's timeless observation "Trying is the first step towards failure":

There seems to have been a fairly seamless continuum between 'talk of impeachment is premature' and 'the moment for impeachment has passed.'

One grows suspicious of these moments-for-action that so often seem to whoosh by in the night without mention.

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