Tag bad politicians
A Two-Way Street
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Unclear On The Concept – WikiLeaks Edition
Proving that when the world is united against something, no obstacle is too much to overcome, the powers-that-be only needed about a week to trump up sex charges using CIA plants, freeze bank accounts and payment mechanisms, shut down websites, and detain without bail WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange.
Meanwhile, 10 years on down the line after 9/11, this guy is sitting in Pakistan making a mockery of them all:
It is encouraging to see that not every government in the world is in cahoots: the Office of the Vice President of Bolivia is mirroring WikiLeaks on its official website
Meanwhile, the anonymous thousands of users of the website 4chan are using the power of the Internet against the Swiss bank that froze WikiLeaks’ assets, MasterCard, and PayPal
Yesterday’s disturbing revelation — that the U.S. government sanctioned one of its security contractors in procuring young boys to be given as prostitutes to Afghan warlords. And, according to that post, it’s not the first time the contractor, DynCorp, has been involved in sex slavery — they also ran human trafficking operations in Bosnia, Moldova, and the Ukraine.
What else has WikiLeaks uncovered? See for yourself.
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An Aggregation Of Nincompoops
According to Alex Massie, writing in Foreign Policy, that’s how the Obama Administration is seen by counterparts in Europe, having piddled away the enormous political capital among those groups much the same way he has with the American public: an inability to turn an overwhelming legislative majority into forward progress, lack of follow-through on foreign policy reforms and initiatives that were seen as “must-haves” by the European public after eight very long years of George Bush, and waffling on global issues like “cap and trade” policy for climate change…all due to what is perceived as political incompetence. What we see as “insider baseball” with stories about in-fighting between Obama advisors like Rahm Emanuel, the rest of the world sees as fiddling while Rome burns.
Posting at True/Slant, journalist Jamie Malanowski brings a more American perspective:
Sometime, somewhere, some friend of the president needs to give him a swift kick in the ass. Somebody ought to explain to him that the country is hopping mad, and it’s mad not because `government is too big’ but because people don’t have jobs and the government isn’t doing anything about it and—here’s the kicker—highly bonused investment bankers whose skins were saved by the public continue to wager and collect without impunity. It would do the president a world of good if instead of inviting Republicans to come over for milk and cookies, he began directing throwing his weight around—ordering this, directing that, opening an investigation on something else. He must stop yielding his authority to compose the national narrative to tea baggers and Fox Newsmen.
The publisher of Harper’s Magazine, John R. MacArthur, suggests that maybe what Obama needs to get his skinny ass in gear is a primary challenge in 2012, and he offers a specific suggestion: Howard Dean. Dean, who got the boot as DNC chairman after his 50-state campaign strategy helped Obama win in 2008, has been very vocal as the progressive opposition to the hopeless health care reform legislation, and has been winning back support from the disaffected liberal Democratic voters who feel badly betrayed by Obama. MacArthur implies that Dean would only be needed to rattle Obama’s chains a little, not actually offer any stiff resistance to Obama’s re-election bid, but this Politico profile from a few weeks ago points out that Dean might have the juice needed to be a serious contender. Either way, what should be painfully obvious to anyone is that appeasing the Republicans and continuing to try to move to the right is a losing proposition, and if Obama won’t take the hint himself, then maybe somebody else needs to.
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Qualifications For President
Writing at the group blog “Dangerous Intersection”, blogger Erich Vieth outlines what he sees as the basic qualifications one needs to enter the world of large-scale politics in this country. Here are just several of his points:
- You’ll constantly need hit people up for big money, i.e., you’ll need to engage in rampant bribery on an unimaginable scale.
- You’ll need to be willing to almost always say what you don’t mean.
- You’ll need to pretend that you are without flaws or a flawed history.
His larger point is that we continue to hold on to an assumption that public service should attract the “best and brightest”, while the reality is that the whirlwind of insanity that is our present political system chases away 99% of the most qualified people and instead tends to attract people with the fewest principles, the least amount of personal integrity, and the greatest potential for rising to a level of utter incompetency. Looking at the profiles of most of the present occupants of the U.S. House of Representatives is like reading a roll call from a rogue’s gallery of the worst kind. How else can you explain people like this or this or this, or any of the other scumbags who pretend to do the people’s business on the Hill. And that’s just the criminals, never mind the spineless, gutless flagpole sitters.
There’s one less candidate for President on the Republican side today after the dog-and-pony show straw poll in Iowa, but when you look at the dozen and a half people running from both parties and then consider the “compromises” that Erich’s list points out as being sort of a baseline for anyone considering public office, how could you vote for a single one of them, Republican OR Democrat. These people represent not the best that America can offer to the world, but every single negative trait, (in)ability or weakness magnified 100x over. Regardless of which one finally manages to win the election, we are already locked in to choosing someone who is guaranteed to undermine us even further.