The Price Of Loyalty, Redux

I remember a long, long time ago when a man named Ron Suskind wrote a book with a man named Paul O'Neill, wrote a book called The Price of Loyalty. O'Neill was one of the inaugural class of refugees from the Bush Administration. The book included one of the * first known * public suggestions that the Bush Administration's push to fight in Iraq was, perhaps, somewhat unnatural.

I remember it like it was just spring 2004. I ran out and bought the book, despite its sunny cover photograph of O'Neill and President McCokespoon. I read the book. And I told everyone I knew that it wouldn't be the last time we'd hear the suggestion that the Bush Administration cobbled together a case for war in Iraq from September Eleventh scrap.

Spring 2004? It seems so much longer ago than that. And, it seems incredible today that at one time, voices like O'Neill's and that of Richard A. Clarke were rather singular, so singular that every such claim warranted its own 60 Minutes interview.

The latest voice comes from Rep. John Murtha, a moderate Democrat from Pennsylvannia, a former Marine, and, incidentally, the first combat vet from Vietnam to be elected to the House, recipient of the Bronze Star and two Purple Heart awards.

It's Good To Be King

It is, I must say, mighty nice to wake up one morning and realize that your vote actually counted. Nice to know your vote actually helped elect somebody. Nice.

Rachel Maddow winds up the election results nicely. Go on over and download the Nov. 9 podcast. G'wan. There's nothing I can say here that she didn't.

Bush: Ready To 'Rock Out' With 'Cock Out'

(ABP) President Bush today reiterated the confidence he has in his policies, his administration, and his loyal staff, saying he was prepared to "rock out" with his "cock out."

Bush, besieged by reporters during a stop in Panama, continued as he did throughout his entire tour of Latin America, trying to emphasize the progress made there. Tenacious reporters continued to hound him with questions about other topics, such as his 35 percent approval rating, the indictment of Lewis Libby and the hovering cloud over his own right-hand man Karl Rove, more pronounced scrutiny of his administration's handling of the war in Iraq, and so on.

"Mr. President, do you feel that your administration is in crisis?" asked a reporter in desperation as Bush was walking away.

The president turned around suddenly and reapproached the microphone. "Hey, listen. All I know is I got a job to do. Everyone in the White House, they got a job to do. And we're gonna do it, the job we got to do. And we're gonna do it good. Real good. I'm gonna rock out with my cock out, beeyotch," he replied.

White House Press Secretary later denied that the president had actually said that he was going to "rock out" with his "cock out."

"He never said that," said McClellan. "I asked the president if he actually said that, and he said he didn't. Besides, whether the president said he was going to 'rock out' with his 'cock out' is part of an ongoing investigation, and we don't comment on ongoing investigations."

McClellan also refused to confirm that the president had answered a question about gas prices by saying, "Hey, ass, gas, or grass, you know what I'm saying, baby?"

The Metaphorically Beefy Forearm of Harriet Miers

You're a guy standing in a kitchen with a chick, and said chick hands you a jar of Ragu and asks you to open it for her. You nod confidently, and you grasp the jar lid in one hand and jar in the other, and you apply as much testosteronie to the lid as possible, but it does not come off. You twist and squrim until your hockey-dad vein pops out, until you are scared that if you try any harder, you'll make in your pants. You tap it on the counter, you run it under hot water, you speak to it tersely, but the thing is a modern day excalibur.

You hand it back to her saying it can't be done, and she twists that molhagger right off.

"Well," you say, trying to evoke Clint Eastwood, "I loosened it up for ya."

For the sake of political metaphor, you are Harriet Miers.

It would take month of water drip torture to convince me otherwise, and I do not think it is tin-foil-beanie thinking to believe it. I am certain that it was Miers' job to loosen the jar, and now the neocons are drenching you and me in scrumptuous, Planned Parenthood v. Casey-dissenting, to-the-right-of-Renquist-and-Pinochet, Sam Alito.

Eat up, Bush voters. Eat up, all ya'll. Soon, you'll need a permission slip to masturbate. Nice going!

Canaries

On Dec. 30, 1986, BBC News reported that the basis in reality for one of my favorite analogous adages was disappearing. No longer would coal miners rely on little yellow birds to act as poison tasters of air for them. The canaries would soon be phased out by machines. The phrase itself is still useful, though, because the powerful imagery is still firmly planted on our collective conciousness.

I heard a news story today that I consider to be a canary story. The story should explain where we are and how much traction we've lost in the process of moving the American aesthetic of life upward and forward.

You see, the United States Department of Labor found 85 child labor law violations at Wal-Mart stores in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Arkansas. Child labor laws of course are supposed to frown on children operating cardboard balers and chainsaws, like kids were found doing as Wal-Mart employees.

So, Wal-Mart sat down and wrote its own settlement agreement. And the Labor Department accepted it. Would it surprise you to know that the terms of the agreement don't cause Wal-Mart to have to cop to any wrongdoing? That it incurred a penalty of $135,540? And that it allows those stores a 15-day notice before inspectors visit again?

Child labor is an issue that the United States began visiting at the turn of the last century. It should be one of the most well-settled issues of our time. The notion that children should be relieved from the tasks of earning a living, should be relieved from the risk of job-related injuries, that the job of a child is to become educated and whole, solving quadratic equations instead of mining coal, these notions seemed foreign as America phased out the agrarian economy for its industrial economy, but that was a century ago, and these notions should be hard-fused into us by now. But this government, currently rife with people who allegedly champion "family values" and who all seem to have hard-ons for the medical procedure of abortion because it's "baby-killin'," this government fines $135,540 to a company that reported profits this year of $2.04 billion for something as egregious as allowing kids to operate the big toys?

This is a canary story. Your federal government is falling down on the job when it comes to something as peremptory as enforcing child labor laws, and it is doing that because of the larger, more poisonous atmosphere of pro-corporate, anti-labor fascism that has full-nelsoned the American government. And I continue to wonder how much more it will take before this reality slaps 95 percent or more of the American public in the face.