Politics

I didn’t write about it last week because I am sick or the American attitude towards guns. The country’s cowboy past has it hog tied and blindfolded. Yes the guy was a nutcase and was liable to go off the deep end sometime. But America’s complete inability to come to terms with its adoration of violence, as typified by its love affair with hand guns, made his lunacy far more deadly. A lunatic with a knife cannot perpetrate mass murder. A lunatic armed to the teeth with rapid firing hand guns can. End of story.

So. Of course I sympathize with the families of the victims. But spare me the nonsense. America loves guns. It is a violent culture. It will always produce mass killers as a result. That there are more hand guns in America than people tells me that America is not serious about violent crime. That some folks advocate carrying side arms as a deterrent against crime is a sign of the moral bankruptcy of the American attitude towards violence: can you imagine the mayhem at the first “citizens shoot out” in some midwestern mall? Everywhere else in the world has this issue nailed. Ban hand guns. For those of you who advocate the “guns as deterrent” argument go look at the international figures for violent crimes. Go look at the numbers of accidental deaths.

The facts don’t lie: America has this one horribly wrong. What’s the NRA slogan? “Guns don’t kill, people do” I agree. People do kill. So why arm them to the teeth?

So what’s new about that? Well I suppose the news is that at least people are now getting their views aired. The controversy over pat Tillman’s death is an example. Here’s the New York Time’s report: Panel Hears About Falsehoods in 2 Wartime Incidents

The news is not that the Pentagon lied after being pressured by the Bush regime, it’s that we would never have heard this story were it not for the last election. Only after the Democrats took control of Congress along with the associated oversight power did this kind of story start reaching the public. Bush and his spin masters had no intention at all of letting us know the truth. It is disgusting enough that Tillman’s death, and Lynch’s capture were faslely spun into war-fervor inducing publicity stunts, it is worse that our government is in the hands of people who are willing to lie about soemone’s death in order to build support for their own cause.

It is astonishing that the main stream media is not incensed over this. A gross distortion of the truth was spread about in the media in order to whip up support for the war. Why are the talking heads not beside themselves with rage for being played for such fools?

Maybe becasue they still can’t, or won’t, grasp the breadth and depth of the corruption inside Bushville.

Here is an example of how screwed up this scandal is. I have linked to a sample available over at Talking Points Memo:The TPM DOCUMENT COLLECTION – Scrawled Notes About Motivations for Firings

So here is someone’s [Monic Goodling’s?] scribbled notes about the reasons the US Attorneys were fired. Lots of jottings and what looks like “brainstorming”.

A couple of worthwhile comments arise here:

First: Notice that Senator Domenici is specifically mentioned as having complained about Inglesias. This confirms earlier speculation that there was political pressure, during a tight election, to get a change that might help in the local re-election efforts [Rep. Heather Wilson did indeed retain her seat against a vigorous Dem. challenger}

Second: This document dates from February 12th 2007. The Attorneys were fired on December 7th 2006. So they were trying to figure out why the firings took place two months later?

Just an example of why this thing will rumble on: they’re lying about something and trying to hide someone’s influence.

Leahy is an old hound dog on the trail. Let’s see what he finds.

Different, but the same. Now the White House wants us to believe that the missing e-mails from 2002-2004 [the dates seem to move around every time one of their spokesfolks opens his or her mouth] went missing because of a poorly managed and/or executed transition from the old Lotus Notes system to the newer Microsoft Outlook system. Are you kidding me? Even I know that when you are making a transition of that nature you back everything up beforehand just in case things go wrong! Duh! Do they really think we are so stupid? Or are they that incompetent that their IT people didn’t follow IT 101 procedures? Don’t forget that all documents generated within the administration that pertain to running the country are covered by the Presidential Records Act [I don’t know if that’s its correct title, but you get the idea!]. The bottom line is that the nation, America Land of The Free, owns whatever these people write while they are in office. The reason we own it is so later generations, interested parties etc can look at the record and write informed history or analysis.

Those documents belong to the country not the White House.

And these bozos say they simply lost them?

As my father would say: “tosh!”.

We weren’t born yesterday. Hand the stuff over.

Ok this story keeps on giving:

According to an organization called CREW [Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington] the White House may have “lost” more than the e-mails they ‘fessed up to today. It turns out that during the Plamegate investigations the Special Prosecutor ran into trouble trying to get at the facts in part because huge swathes of White House e-mails dating from between 2003 and 2005 have been “lost”. The Prosecutor duly informed the White House who were then supposed to make sure they “recovered” the files and, obviously make sure that such a thing should not happen again.

Whoops!

So here we have a White House claiming that it lost some files after it has been specifically told it has a problem and has been given a remedy. Given that they must have been sensitized to the issue it strains crdeulity for them to say the losses continued subsequent to 2005. That’s either blatant incompetence or it’s a lie. Probably both.

Are these folks really that stupid? They have already admitted to losing national archive material [Presidential and White House communications]; some of them have said they just erased it; others are now saying they “lost” it. Is there anyone in there who is even vaguely competetent? Anyone who is not so unethical that they would not trash material protected by the law? Did they not realize that there are laws dictating the preservation of government communication?

And whose bright idea was it to use Republican National Committee e-mail accounts, run over open, minimally secure, public networks to conduct government business?

Please! This stinks, and the smell keeps getting worse. No wonder Leahy is getting so agitated. At the beginning of this scandal I thought it was going to be fun, a sidebar while we tried to get on with bigger issues [Iraq war anyone?]; but now it seems that the floodgates to a major scandal are breaking down. Bush himself must be getting worried.

Oversight is such a pain for a guy like George. That doubles the fun doesn’t it?

Addendum:

Late this afternoon we find out that the RNC did start preserving e-mails, it’s just that Karl Rove kept erasing them. As I said this is getting bigger by the hour!