Republicans, as of last week's state election, now own all three branches of Georgia state govt, and they're wasting no time proving how little regard they have for the principles of democracy or the spirit of their own state constitution, let alone the US one. In a fever of arrogance, the Georgia House Pubs have re-written the House rules so that radcon Pubs will rule the House, even to the expense of moderates in their own party. One can't help but think that this is going to prove a precursor to the rules we'll end up with in the Washington House, which is currently in the process of doing the same thing for the same reason: to cut Democratic legislators out of the legislative process entirely--screw the peoople those Dems were elected to represent. If they elected Democrats, they don't deserve representation, it's that simple. And screw the US Constitution while you're at it. Why not if it gets in your way?

The rules changes are pure power-plays with two main objectives. The first is cutting Democrats out of the loop, and the second is putting all power in the hands of the House Pub leadership. The linchpin is a novel concept: legislative 'hawks', and you have to read this to believe it.

The new House rules let Richardson appoint legislative "hawks" who can swoop in to any committee with the authority to vote the way the speaker wants them to.

The rules do not specify how many "hawks" Richardson can name, but he said there will probably be no more than two or three. Democrats immediately bristled, arguing the move guarantees Republicans can win any dispute in committee. "I hear them crying," Richardson told reporters later. "I promise we're not going to abuse this."

Yeah, right. Anybody who believes that:

My name is Ocho Abacha and I am the eighth son of former dictator Sonny Abacha. I have $27Mil tied up in Nigerian banks. For a mere $867 filing fee, I will pay you one-third of the $27M if you help me transfer the money into your account. Just click the PayPal button and deposit your $867 dollars into my account, and I will send you all the appropriate paperwork. In only a week or two, you will be a $$millionaire$$!

People who believe anything the Pubs say after a solid quarter-century of nothing but sleazy tricks and bare-faced lies deserve to lose their democratic rights.

Legislative 'hawks' aren't the only change, but the others aren't much better. One echoes the US House in keeping ethics violations (of Republicans, naturally) secret; another allows bills to be 'engrossed'--protected from amendment changes.

I can hear Denny Hastert now, slavering at the idea of 'hawks' in the US House. From Georgia's mouth to Hastert's ear.

It's a Brave New World, a Republican World, and it's time for us to secede. Enough is enough, already.

Those of us involved with or appreciative of the arts and cognizant of their value to enriching the human spirit have wondered for years what's behind their inherent fragility in our educational system. It's true that when public education began it had to fight long-standing religious and agrarian beliefs that education was frivolous, an 'extra' that got in the way of the 'real' purposes of life: working and child-rearing. It's also true that beneath that layer of hard-nosed simplicity lurked something darker--a lingering distaste for and distrust of the human spirit itself. To a people with Calvinist and Lutheran ancestors who lived close to the land, 'art' represented the ultimate debauchery of hedonistic impulses, a descent into the abyss of selfishness and emotional narcissism that was a fundamental enemy of civilization as they conceived it, a return to the animal magnetism they had fought for a thousand years.

All that is true as far as it goes, and important to understanding the American disdain for 'eggheads' and intellectualism, but it doesn't explain why, after almost 150 years of compulsory education, the most educated populace in the world, and decades of lip-service intended to verify the glories of an education and its necessity to modern human beings, we still maintain that bedrock core of barely-disguised hatred for and disgust with any part of education not directly related to getting a job. Some have labored mightily over the last five or six decades to foster an understanding of the importance of a well-rounded education, and while their efforts have been somewhat successful, they have been concentrated on teachers while parents and school administrators tend to remain at least passively hostile: starting an arts program, even as an extra-curricular activity, still always involves a fight with administrators and sharp questions from many parents about whether or not it's really 'necessary' and how exactly learning to play the violin is going to help Susie get a job as an investment banker when she grows up.

Through the 90's, I tried to build a career for myself as an acting and writing teacher--my only genuine skills. I'm very good, paritcularly with adolescents--that most troublesome of school groups--but I don't have a college degree, which meant that I had to find work in the cracks: teaching night classes, for instance, or as an artist in residence, or directing the school play and turning the rehearsals into de facto classes. Before Junior's tax giveaway to the rich, manufactured deficit, and costly but unnecessary war eliminated all the 'extra' Federal money that was paying for such things, I spent ten years on the outskirts of the educational system. It proved to be a particularly valuable experience for the purpose of understanding the way Americans split their belief in education into two parts: the crucial and the dispensable.

At the time it all fell apart, I was on the point of formulating what I thought was a fairly radical explanation that went beyond the simplistic 'It's our Puritan heritage' slogan and got closer to the heart of what was really going on: the arts challenge our basic American assumptions about life whereas we conceive of schools as the place where those assumptions are reinforced. In other words, learning to make your inner life richer and to express your emotions invariably makes you question those very emotions and everything in your life that gave rise to them. That's bad enough, but the idea of 'questions' alone goes against everything we think schools ought to be: the place where you get answers, and the simpler the better.

It turns out I'm not the only one who's noticed this. In last week's LAT (sorry about the delay but it took that long to percolate), Elliot W. Eisner, a professor of education and art at Stanford University, published an article in which somebody people will listen to finally tries to face the facts.

One of the casualties of our preoccupation with test scores is the presence — or should I say the absence — of the arts in our schools. When they do appear they are usually treated as ornamental rather than substantive aspects of our children's school experience. The arts are considered nice but not necessary. Just what do the arts have to offer to our children? Are they really important? Put most directly, what do the arts have to teach? Join me on a brief excursion.

First, the arts teach children to exercise that most exquisite of capacities, the ability to make judgments in the absence of rules. There is so much in school that emphasizes fealty to rules. The rules that the arts obey are located in our children's emotional interior; children come to feel a rightness of fit among the qualities with which they work. There is no rule book to provide recipes or algorithms to calculate conclusions. They must exercise judgment by looking inside themselves.

A second lesson the arts teach children is that problems can have more than one solution. This too is at odds with the use in our schools of multiple choice tests in which there are no multiple correct answers. The tacit lesson is that there is, almost always, a single correct answer. It's seldom that way in life.

A third lesson is that aims can be held flexibly; in the arts the goal one starts with can be changed midway in the process as unexpected opportunities arrive. Flexibility yields opportunities for surprise. "Art loves chance. He who errs willingly is the artist," Aristotle said. Creative thinking abhors routine. Routines may be good for the assembly line, where surprise is the last thing you want. As our schools become increasingly managed by an industrial ethos that pre-specifies and then measures outcomes, there is an increased need for the arts as a counterbalance.

The arts also teach that neither words nor numbers define the limits of our cognition; we know more than we can tell. There are many experiences and a multitude of occasions in which we need art forms to say what literal language cannot say. When we marry and when we bury, we appeal to the arts to express what numbers and literal language cannot. Reflect on 9/11 and recall the shrines that were created by those who lost their loved ones — and those who didn't. The arts can provide forms of communication that convey to others what is ineffable.

Finally, the arts are about joy. They are about the experience of being moved, of having one's life enriched, of discovering our capacity to feel. If that was all they did, they would warrant a generous place at our table.
(emphasis added)

Read over that list again and you'll see that each and every one of Eisner's 'lessons' is in direct conflict with everything else the school is teaching:

• Schools function by rules; art teaches you to break them.


• Schools work hard to dampen or kill emotions because emotions are dangerous to proper 'order' and control; art lets them loose.


• 'Teaching to the test' means inculcating students with a blind acceptance of the 'There's only one right answer to any question' approach to education; art teaches you just how limited--if not utterly bogus and bereft of essential human truth--such an approach is.

And so on.

In other words, the arts are antithetical to the style of education we've decided to favor. They oppose it, undermine it, and often show it up as a fraud. Teenagers are drawn to the arts not just because they're 'glamorous' although that's certainly part of the attraction, but because they confirm what many of the kids feel: that high school doesn't have a whole lot to do with their real lives or the issues they struggle with every day. Arts don't make rebellion more manageable, they give it teeth and sharp claws. If you can keep the arts off in a corner somewhere, like a sort of educational leper colony, you can keep them from infecting the rest of the system with their loathsome openness and endless questioning.

The proof is in the lack of dialectical tension you usually find in a charter school built around the arts. Worcester has one, and a project I did there gave me a chance to see how it operated. It was a revelation.

In the arts schools, the whole pattern and teaching methodology is different, starting with the way the school day itself is arranged: it's looser, more flexible, less rigidly controlled by the infamous 'bell' (or actually, these days, more normally a really annoying buzzer). There are a few more minutes between classes and teachers can extend their class a bit in order to bring at least temporary closure to a lively discussion. Everything else follows the same pattern: more flexibility. Curricula flow as much from the directions class discussions take as from the course syllabus; literature classes may include discussions of biology and science classes may require the reading of novels. All the usual strict compartmentalization of knowledge fields on which standard American education is based is thrown out the window and replaced by a synthesis that acknowledges that nothing exists in a vacuum and that there are multiple possible answers to any given question, depending on the variables involved.

Do I have to tell you that not only is there a long waiting list of kids wanting to get accepted but an even longer waiting list of teachers who want to work there?

The reason the arts aren't an integral part of the American educational system is simpler and more basic than inherited Puritanism or latent anti-intellectualism: the whole system would have to be reformed to accomodate them because if it wasn't, they would ultimately destroy it. That may be a desirable result for some of us but reactionaries and conservatives get nervous and/or outraged at the very notion of change, however minor. A from-the-ground-up sea-change from a focus on solid, simple, single answers to constant questioning and the instability of doubt would make them apoplectic, and they're the ones administrators worry about; they're noisy. Living in fear does that to you.

Yet such a change is exactly what the new generations will need. The simple answers that have defined American ignorance are what created George Bush, the neocons, and enormous corporate power, as well as allowing SUV's and the Iraq war for oil. Such thinking is, as we are learning every day, NOT helpful. What we need to survive the final--and necessary--loss of our innocence is generations of kids trained to think around corners, make complicated decisions after weighing convoluted options, and face uncomfortable facts--exactly the skills art teaches and standard education avoids. So what are we doing instead? Killing arts programs all over the country and concentrating on teaching a style of thinking that virtually guarantees our demise as a great power. Naturally.

Maybe we should re-think that decision. Oh wait-- That's right, I forgot: we don't know how.

(Special thanks to Kath for igniting this whole line of thought.)

Is it re-run season already? The hearings into torture-maven Al Gonzales' confirmation as the new Imperial AG have a certain quality of deja vu about them. As in, we've seen it all before.

Ashcroft: But I want to make it very clear that I reject racial and religious intolerance, and I reject any current or prior policies of those.

Gonzales: I am deeply committed to ensuring that the United States government complies with all of its legal obligations as it fights the war on terror, whether those obligations arise from domestic or international law.

Not only is Al replaying Ashcroft's string of platitudinal lies with a straight face, he's doing it using Rummy's patented self-questioning tactic.

"Do I regret the abuses at Abu Ghraib?" he asked. "Absolutely. I condemn them. Do I believe that they may have hurt us in winning the hearts and minds of Muslims around the world? Yes, and I do regret that."

As Groucho said when Chico tried the same thing in Animal Crackers, 'It's hard to be wrong when you're answering yourself all the time.'

But--as they say on the quiz shows when you win--'That's not all!' In addition to Johnny's bald-faced lies and Rummy's 'I'll ask the questions I'll answer' technique, eRobin notes that Al has also ganked the Emperor's habit of blaming everybody else.

I'm watching what I can stand of the Gonzales Show. Apparently his strategy is to pass the buck to the president and the governor, who both happen to be BushCo. He left the clemency memos up to the last minute because that's the way the governor wanted it. The governor directed him to be absolutely sure because he only wanted to punish the guilty. He got opinions from the DoJ and the president made his decision. So did BushCo authorize the use of torture or not?

Al's not telling.

One rather startling admission did emerge from Al when he wasn't looking: the Emperor's lawyer and the man who wants to be the chief law enforcement officer in the US believes that Bush has a divine right to be the sole interpreter of the Constitution if he feels like it.

Democrats also pressed Mr. Gonzales to say whether he agreed with another controversial finding in the memorandum regarding the president's power to effectively ignore a Congressional ban on torture if he found it to be unconstitutional. "I guess I would have to say that hypothetically that authority may exist," Mr. Gonzales said.

So much for the SCOTUS...hypothetically, of course. Al thinks the Emperor can interpret the Constitution without their help and ignore whatever Congress says by deciding for himself if what they said was Constitutional. Convenient. Between Rice getting her confirmation questions beforehand and C-average Junior setting himself up as a Constitutional judge, I think we're seeing what the Pubs mean by 'streamlining the govt' and making it more 'efficient': they're going to remove all the gooky parts and the confusion, and make Karl Rove Junior the Last Word. Well, that's what emperors are for, after all.

But the prize for the Response of the Day has to go to Joe Biden.

Mr. Gonzales said he could not remember some key details about how the memorandum was developed or applied, prompting several Democrats to charge that he was being evasive. "We're looking for candor, ol' buddy," said Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware.

'Candor'. From a Bushie. Isn't that cute? So hopeful, so optimistic, so Liberal, so Democratic. So clueless.

Looking to get milk from a bull is optimistic, I guess you could say, but ultimately unhelpful and possibly dangerous. But that's our Democratic party. Hope you enjoy them.

The Carpetbagger Report, which is becoming a regular read for me, has two important posts today that you ought to check out.

The first concerns the blood all over the floor of the House that belongs to Republicans the Emperor Georgius' hatchetman, Denny Hastert, considered insufficiently loyal to the Imperium.

Three Republican committee chairmen--VA Affairs' Chris Smith, Appropriations' Bob Livingston, and the Ethics' Committee's Joel Hefley--known for their independence (Livingston once wrote to Newt Gingrich when he was Speaker, 'I shall run this committee as I see fit'), have been replaced by reliable Publican stooges who can be expected to do as they're told without asking embarrassing questions or allowing reality to intrude on their Committee's duty to rubber-stamp the Emperor's fantasies or call attention to his garage-sale mentality as he auctions off the govt to corporate contributors. Smith, in particular, was a thorn in the Emperor's side.

Why, exactly, did Smith fall out of favor with GOP leaders? It was simple: he constantly argued that Republican budgets did too little for veterans.

Smith in the past has angered party leaders by saying that stringent GOP-backed budgets undercut veterans' programs, a sensitive subject when the Bush administration and Congress are trying to show their wartime commitment to troops and veterans.

And if there's one thing House GOP leaders can't tolerate, it's lawmakers who want more money for veterans' programs.

The second advises us that the Bush/Cheney penchant for refusing to testify before Congress unless they know what the questions are going to be in advance is spreading. Now Condi Rice, due to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the 18th, has thoughtfully been provided by Chairman Dick Luger with a full list of them in plenty of time for Karl to decide how she's going to answer.

Pretty soon we'll be able to skip the middle-man and let the Secs stay on the golf course for extra rounds. Questions will be submitted directly to Rove, Dan Bartlett will write in the answers, and everybody can go home. No muss, no fuss, no messy arguments or inconvenient facts slowing down the smooth performance of an unnecessary govt. The next step after this is for us to wonder why we've got a Congress at all. Much more efficient to dispense with all that nonsense. Then Karl can do the asking as well as the answering and everybody won't have to go home because they won't have to show up in the first place.

I like it. It's elegant, simple, smooth. Democracy has always been so damnably messy. Imperialism is so much easier to deal with. You don't have to think at all. The Emperor announces his will, the Duma Congress bows toward Crawford, and we all go back to watching the game. What a relief.

July, 2002: Alberto visits the DoJ.

Alberto Gonzales: Now look, guys. His Imperial Maj--strike that. Too early... The President wants-- no, needs--the freedom to interrogate those dirty Muslim terrorists at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, but that loony, left-wing Constitution has all this nonsense in it about 'unreasonable search and seizure' and 'the right to counsel' and 'speedy trials' and all that Liberal tripe--

DoJ Lawyers: Well, what do you want us to do about it? It's the law of the land.

AG: No, no, now. You're looking at this all wrong. The Constitution isn't the law, it's just a...guideline. And it has to be interpreted, see. So, actually, it means whatever you say it means.

DoJ L: It does?

AG: Sure. Now the Emp-- The president is looking for a very narrow definition of torture--

DoJ L: How narrow?

AG: Very narrow.

DoJ L: Well, how narrow is 'very narrow'? Can't you give us something to go on? A concrete example?

AG: Sure. In fact, I brought you a whole book of them so you'll know what we mean.

DoJ L:(reading) How To Make the Infidels Talk: A Handbook of the Inquisition by Torquemada.

AG: Right. Strictly defined, the word 'torture' only applies to the techniques described in that book. No thumbscrews were used? Then it's not torture. No Iron Maiden? Not torture. If we're not boiling them in oil, whatever we do is legal. Now, I already wrote a memo last January about how antiquated and irrelevant the Geneva Convention is, and another one about how anyway it only applies to official soldiers enlisted in official armies, not civilians who could be terrorists for all we know and might have valuable information that would save American lives if we could just force it out of them somehow, with, like, non-torture techniques--sleep deprivation, making them stand on stools with wires attached to their genitals--

DoJ L: Whoa, whoa, just wait a second. Wires attached to their genitals? That's torture, no two ways about it. We can't--

AG: No, it isn't. Not if the wires aren't attached to actual current. Then it's just the threat of torture, not actual torture. See the difference? Same if we hold them under water so they can't breathe but not long enough to kill them.

DoJ L: That's not torture?

AG: No, no. That's 'hard questioning'.

DoJ L: So the difference between legal torture and illegal torture is whether or not you intend to go through with it?

AG: Exactly. Well, that and the implements used. The Malay boot is torture; depriving a prisoner of sleep until he goes insane isn't. One is Medeival, the other is modern. Medeival=Illegal. Modern=Legal. Now I have a list of questions here. All you have to do is run down the list and come up with the answers they indicate, and we're in business.

DoJ L: Why don't you just give us the answers you want us to come up with? That would be easier.

AG: Because that would be illegal interference in the workings of the Justice Dept by the White House Counsel. If all I'm doing is asking questions, there's nothing illegal about that. You're advising me. That's what you're supposed to do. In fact, I think it would be better if we just didn't mention the source of the questions at all. Pretend they came from some amorphous 'somebody' or other.

Mr. Gonzales has spoken of the memorandum as a response to questions, without saying that most of the questions were his.

Then I can stay out of it and make believe like this is all coming from 'somewhere else'. Good cover.

DoJ L: So we just follow these questions--

AG: --and you'll get the answers His Holi-- The president wants to hear. And you know what happens to people who don't tell him what he wants to hear... (DoJ L's draw their fingers across their throats) Exactly. Word to the wise. Here. (hands them each a paper)

DoJ L: What's this?

AG: If anybody does find out I was over here--you know what this town is like: gossip, gossip, gossip--this is what you say.

DoJ L:(reading) 'While Mr. Gonzales personally requested the August opinion, he was only seeking objective legal advice and did not ask the Office of Legal Counsel to reach any specific conclusion.'

AG: That should take care of any possible objection.

DoJ L: But you are asking us to reach a specific conclusion.

AG: Not if you want to keep your job, I'm not. The King-- The president is going to appoint me Attorney General after we stea-- win the election. That means I'm going to be your new boss. Are we clear?

DoJ L: I don't know. We'll have to ask Mr Ashcroft--

AG: Forget it. Johnny One-Note is off somewhere trying to put people in jail for reading the wrong book or wearing the wrong t-shirt. We're not going to bother him with this. I didn't.

Mr. Gonzales's request resulting in the original August 2002 memorandum was somewhat unusual, the officials said, because he went directly to lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel, bypassing the office of the deputy attorney general, which is often notified of politically delicate requests for legal opinions made by executive-branch agencies, including the White House.

DoJ L: Oh. But you're asking us to say that torture is OK. We're not real comfortable with that. What if people blame us for this?

AG: Don't worry about it. After the announcement of my nomination to be Attorney General--'AG the AG' has a nice ring to it, don't you think?--I'll let you write another opinion rescinding this one so I can go into my confirmation hearing and say the whole issue is moot because the Justice Dept decided against me. Let's see that fat pig Teddy make something out of this then.

DoJ L: And then after you're confirmed? I mean what's the real policy going to be?

AG: If you have to ask that question, you're not smart enough to work for me. Get your resume topped up. You're going to need it.

I had originally intended 'America's Future' to be two linked posts, with the previous being the first. A sort of Good News/Bad News joke. Then eRobin stole some of my thunder in a comment to it, and I almost decided to bail on the second since her impassioned response and eerily unerring eye for the flaws in any argument said a good deal of what needed to be said on the other side, and much more concisely than I would ever have been able to manage it. But then on reflection I decided to plow ahead anyway and, as we used to do on the playground when I was a kid, pretend she didn't say that.

You will note that the title of the previous post ends 'As Told By Tom DeLay', and there's a reason for that. I wanted to lay out the real radcon Pub agenda--as they envision it--in all its stark anti-democratic, pro-Roman, Robber-Baron-worshipping glory, everything they fully intend to 'create' ('re-create' is more like it) absent--or in spite of--opposition. That's the Bad News half: at root, they're autocratic believers in a monolithic Christianist theocracy, and they're going to use all their considerable power to make that vision a reality.

What I had not yet said, as Rob so astutely rapped my knuckles for, was this: What they intend to do is one thing; what they will actually be able to pull off is something else again, for two reasons (neither of which relies on a response by the Democrats, thank god).

1. Greed (Or As the Greeks Called It, Hubris)

Rob rightly points out the Biblical injunction that 'Pride goeth before a fall', jamming her finger in the general direction of Trent Lott as a case for consideration. Riding high, one of the Big Three Power Brokers in the GOP, Lott was nevertheless knocked off his pedestal when he over-reached himself a couple of years too early and tried to sanctify arch-racist Strom Thurmond's late and unlamented Segregation Party by saying (in public, the idiot) that 'If Strom had won [the presidency] we wouldn't be having the problems we're having now.'--an encomium on Strom's retirement that brought the underlying racism in the Republican agenda to the surface where everybody could see it.

Unfortunately, Lott's not a good example. He wasn't brought down by the opposition but by his own party, and his crime wasn't championing racism, it was championing racism two months before the mid-term elections when the Pubs were concentrating on regaining the majority they had lost when they drove moderate Jim Jeffords from their midst and forced him to declare as an Independent and caucus with the Dems. As we are seeing right now with DeLay, that would never happen today. If Lott had kept his mouth shut, he'd be Bill Frist and the Senate would be doing what the House is doing: defying convention, tradition, ethics, common sense, and even the law to protect him from the consequences of his mouth. Much less serious irregularities than DeLay's felonies forced them to dump Newty in an earlier time, and look at the difference: today, with prison sentences hanging over his head, they re-write the rules to make Tom immune from censure should the worst happen. We now face the possible spectacle of a US House Majority Leader running the country from his jail cell.

Times, you see, have changed. DeLay, as he so famously said a while back when asked to put out his cigar by a waiter who mentioned that smoking in the Senate Dining Room was forbidden by govt rules, is the govt; then it was hyperbole, now it's fact. They will simply ignore the kinds of issues that might have caused them problems before the Emperor Georgius stole his squeaker of a mandate using crooked election officials and rigged voting machines. The law is what they say it is, and they will bend it to accomodate theft, corruption, bribery, possibly murder for all I know, whenever the perps are Pubs.

That sounds bad, but contained within it, just as Rob said, is the seed of their destruction: Greed, and the arrogance that comes with the power to feed that greed as often and as deeply as they want, always--ALWAYS--carries a stiff price tag on its left sleeve.

Long-time reader eagle2 calls the BA 'Rocco's Gang'. It's a reference to a character in a Bogart move called Key Largo played by Eddie Robinson. Rocco is a gangster, and his motto is 'Enough Is Never Enough'. It's an apt description of the radcon Pubs' dominant attitude now that they are in charge of all three branches of the national govt and are bidding fair to extend that control--by hook or by crook--down to the local level. They believe, as all such people do, that they are immune from consequences, that they are invulnerable, that they are immortal.

None of which is, of course, true. They are not immune, and sooner or later all the Roccos cross that invisible line between what even the blindest of us will tolerate and what we won't. When that finally happens--and it will--the backlash will be severe. Think 'French Revolution'. Think 'Toussaint L'Overture'. Think tumbrils and guillotines and swords and firing squads. Even if it doesn't go that far, it won't be pretty and there won't be any Scarlet Pimpernel to save their sorry asses from the wrath of the 'mob'.

DeLay's statement was an announcement that the over-reaching has already begun, that opposition will be pushed ruthlessly aside no matter where it comes from--and that includes other Pubs....

2. Power Corrupts (Ouroboros Lives)

The, um, 'ambitious' radcon agenda is already making a lot of Pubs nervous. The Emperor Georgius' second term hasn't even officially started yet and still cracks are appearing everywhere in the Pub facade. Denny Hastert, the ex-wrestling coach who is now the Speaker of the House (what a good choice, ay?), has had his hands full since the election keeping those Nervous Nellies in line, spectacularly failing to prevent open rebellion on at least two occasions and facing the prospect of far more serious dissension in the ranks as the core of the radcon agenda reaches the House floor.

Democrats are promising a fight over Social Security, and some Republicans, fearful that upending such a popular program will hurt them at the polls, are grousing. Cantankerous conservatives nearly killed the measure overhauling the nation's intelligence agencies, and a bill providing prescription drug coverage to Medicare beneficiaries before that. It will be up to Mr. Hastert to corral his fractious caucus - quickly, because both sides know Mr. Bush's sway over Congress will erode as the 2006 midterm elections draw near.

Screw 2006--Congress can read the polls and they know the Emperor's popularity is sinking into the cellar mere weeks after the election he 'won' by the width of the proverbial hair. They're sensing the danger in the radcons' attempts to turn back the clock and they're skittish as hell. If the mob doesn't like the Emperor's programs, it will be them that get the brush, not him.

But the argument over programming is the least of Hastert's problems. Buried under the current focus on permanent tax cuts for the rich and the gutting of Social Security to provide a $$$BILLION$$$ windfall for Wall Street and all the rest of it is a simmering, smoldering rag waiting to ignite an explosion: the radcon WH and Congress are as crooked as the Fifth Hole at Pebble Beach, riddled with corruption. The stealing is becoming more open, and the thieves don't even apologize any more. The govt is for sale to the highest bidders.

From the Inauguration to the writing of laws, corporations pay for access to The Halls of Power, and then they pay more for control. Industry flacks from PR hacks to corporate lawyers to corporate lobbyists to the members of corporate BoDs are running virtually every govt agency, having bought their way in with contributions from their corporate employers. The Vice President, for example, is the de facto Halliburton representative in the WH, arranging $$BILLIONS$$ in govt contracts for them, contracts they win without bidding, open-ended contracts with lots of room for automatic approval of cost over-runs and new, extra charges.

The Emperor's House has become a cesspool of bribery, secret deals, stock manipulation, extortion, and outright theft. That's what excessive power does: it takes the binders off. Anything goes.

These two flies in the ointment work together: the hubris increases the level of corruption by creating the illusion that there's no price to pay, and the corruption feeds the natural greed of Rocco's Gang--the more they get away with, the more they want to get away with. It's the Nature of the Greed Breed: Enough is never enough.

The Good News is that, together, Greed and Corruption at that level make the urge to brag about what a hot-shot you are and how much you're getting away with almost irresistable. The worse it grows, the harder it is to hide, and while the greed may be forgiven by the populace (who share it, after all), the corruption will not, and bragging about it will make them positively livid.

Self-destruction is a beautiful thing when it's done by criminals and bastards like these. There's something primal about it, something of the inevitable justice that reality always exacts and always has--eventually--from the caves to the board rooms. If they just knew when to quit, could tell when enough was enough and learned to accept it, they could probably go on stealing and looting and lording it over the plebes indefinitely. But they don't. They can't. And they won't.

And that is where our most genuine and realistic hope lies: not with the Democrats whose courage and willingness to scrap for what they supposedly believe is, let's face it, less than overwhelming. No, we are counting on the Pubs themselves to screw it up. The have in the past and as long as they remain in thrall to their own insufferable egos, they will do so again in the not too distant future.

I live for that day.

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