Ann Davidow

If there is a more despicable public figure than Dick Cheney, it is hard to imagine who it could be. There are lots of right-wing talk-show personalities who deliver vitriol-laced diatribes on a daily basis. And there are political non-entities who are nevertheless able to grab a headline or two by advancing partisan views without attention to either facts or logic in making their arguments. But none of these intellectually-challenged individuals have been Vice President of the United States and conducted foreign policy in our name.

For a person who held high office to suggest that current policy has made the country less safe especially when that person helped engineer the invasion of Iraq, one of the worst foreign-policy blunders in recent history, is outrageous and irresponsible. To say he has "no regrets" about anything that was done during his tenure is astonishing given the terrible human cost and enormous financial strain the war has caused. And his insistence on the obvious nonsense that the dishonorable conduct at Abu Graib was committed by a "few bad apples" is hard for even the dimmest among us to believe, especially after so much information exposing government complicity at the highest levels.

If there were even a modicum of patriotic intent on Mr. Cheney's part, instead of throwing inflammatory rhetorical arrows in public he would request an interview with President Obama and voice his concerns to him privately. The fact that he has chosen to vent through the media is an indication that he seeks to justify behavior that has become ever more suspect over time. To keep repeating that everyone believed there were WMD in Iraq ignores the many dissenters and experts who said there were none and that, in any case, with inspectors on the ground, invasion was surely unwarranted.

And in that perversity that relies on proving a negative Cheney insists that the interrogation methods used revealed "vast quantities of invaluable information" and "saved thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lives." His assertion that little was known about Al Qaeda before detainees' forced admissions only reinforces a sense that the people running our government failed to seek out informed Middle East experts and ignored the warning signs that existed before 9/11. There was plenty of information available had anyone in the administration been paying attention.

But the former administration doesn't take any responsibility for the fact that the attacks occurred on their watch and Cheney says they kept us safe for "almost eight years" (that is if we are to assume we're still on the Bush-Cheney time clock in 2009). It remains a mystery why interviewers rarely mention the years between the first Trade Center attack in 1994 and the one in 2001 - - do the math. When claims are made regarding our safety and the fact that many released detainees return to the battlefield, it is hard to fathom why anyone would believe anything Mr. Cheney or other administration apologists say. Whenever they're on screen one wants to shout prove it!

Or, one may simply be struck dumb by stunningly disrespectful and shameful statements. For Cheney to tell Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation that he thinks Rush Limbaugh is a better Republican than Colin Powell is to plumb the depths of ignoble discourse. Powell may not have supported McCain in the last election but he had an illustrious military career in the Army rising to the rank of four-star general. And he served as Secretary of State in the Bush cabinet - - an administration that undercut his authority and sent him off to the United Nations with seriously flawed intelligence to make the case for war in Iraq. Apparently being a good Republican doesn't necessarily include honorable service to one's country.

Like those pleas in criminal court it would be easier to think that Cheney is just mad as a hatter or of such diminished capacity as to be unassailable for that reason. But he isn't crazy; he's just a mean-spirited egotist who seems to lack a moral compass. Halliburton subsidiaries did business with countries on the enemies' list during Cheney's tenure as CEO; his office acquiesced in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame; he embraces interrogation methods that are universally regarded as torture, and he disdains a political process that has sustained our country since its inception.

There was never a good reason for a man like Cheney to set domestic energy policy or dictate foreign policy; there is even less reason to accept his political advice today.

No doubt about it, the country is awash in conflicted emotions and strained loyalties. It isn’t surprising that, at a time of severe economic duress, there would be divergent opinions about how to ease the concerns of a troubled nation. What is disturbing, however, is the degree to which some of the more bizarre, right-wing assertions have been taken to heart by elements in the population who are in panic mode as a result and whose conclusions about what is going on are based on a series of non sequiturs.

Whether it is the Swine Flu, gun control, bailouts, or attempts to resuscitate social issues, irresponsible members of Congress and fringe groups make irrational claims that play to people’s fears. It doesn’t seem to matter that many such positions rest precariously on thin air. There are enough takers who absorb the gibberish and pass it along the word-of-mouth route. For anyone who ever played the “telephone” game at a kid’s party, you know how twisted the original message becomes when the last person at the table repeats what was whispered to them. From a national perspective what starts out as twisted becomes nightmarishly perverse as it travels from place to place.

Unless one listens to the arch-conservative pundits on talk radio and the radical right’s floor speeches in Congress, it is something of a shock to hear the wild ramblings of some folks in the countryside. Obama is a socialist/fascist who will take our guns and set up FEMA indoctrination camps they say. Get your semi-automatic weapons and plenty of ammunition to stand against a government intent on enslaving you, they say. It doesn’t occur to them that if the government really had tyrannical motives a few guns in their hands would be no match for tanks rolling through their neighborhoods, but never mind.

One obvious source of inchoate blather of course is Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann who has been spreading fear about indoctrination camps and all manner of dastardly acts she claims the Obama administration and liberals in Congress are planning. In light of the Swine Flu scare she maintains that flu epidemics always erupt during Democratic administrations. Actually the last great flu epidemic occurred during President Ford’s presidency not that there is a relationship, in any case, between outbreaks of flu and the party occupying the White House.

Most recently her garbled message about the “Hoot-Smalley” (sic) act was just another in the long list of malapropisms and factually-bereft notions she has broached on the floor of the House. The Smoot-Hawley bill, that increased tariff rates, was promoted by Herbert Hoover, pressed by banking interests and passed by Congress in 1930. Seriously, someone should remove her children from their home-schooling program and place them in a real school where they can get educated, as opposed to being left in the clutches of someone so obviously lacking in academic credentials and common sense.

Republicans, also operating in panic mode, are gathering to begin the road back to relevance so they say. The ‘new way’ is to be fashioned by a crop of old hands led by Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, John McCain and others of similar mind. Included in the upcoming meeting of minds is Bobby Jindl, a newer face in the lineup of idea point men and someone with the added attribute of a willingness to perform an exorcism should the need arise. Jindl is considered by some, Joe Scarborough for example, as “up and coming” and a “good thinker” although evidence of the thinker thing hasn’t surfaced just yet. And RNC Chairman Michael Steele continues to flail around about the disarray in the party suggesting that it is really a big tent with people who just happen to wear their hats differently.

Meanwhile, with the retirement of Justice Souter from the Supreme Court and the new role Miss California has taken to “protect marriage” social agendas will no doubt inform the hubbub of opinions that always arise when court appointments are at issue. Apparently Republicans have already begun to vet the probable candidates on President Obama’s short list. And in all likelihood the religious right will try to impose its will if the choice made doesn’t conflate with its stringent ideological conditions.

One of the most important things the administration can do to counteract the effects of a bad “telephone” game is to keep pounding away with the truth even though people whose minds are made up will probably continue to resist being confused by the facts.

The current crop of Republican officeholders seems to assume that most of us are dull-witted clods who are even dopier than they are. The blessed relief at not having to listen to former vice president Cheney's false claims and phony arguments to justify failed policies was short-lived. His reemergence in a series of unpatriotic and duplicitous interviews is like opening an old wound.

Listening to people like Karl Rove, given a platform by Fox News to deliver the propaganda perfected as part of the Bush political apparatus is another reminder of our abused sensibilities. Rove suggests that prosecution or condemnation of torture approved by the Bush White House is like banana-republic thugs seeking revenge on former government officials for disagreement over policies. Is anybody buying the rationale that the torture issue is just about policy differences?

And another voice from the past, former congressman Dick Armey, has taken on the role of tea-bag cheerleader and irascible critic of President Obama. Calling the release of torture memos irresponsible he joins the chorus of right-wing critics who seem to spend most of their time trying to find the right moment to deliver open-ended attacks on the administration. But except for the change of names in his invective, Armey basically spouts the same tired rhetoric that informed his positions years ago. Apparently that's what passes for a new approach in conservative circles.

It is the standard formula employed by the opposition, their incoherent response to every program the president proposes. When George Stephanopoulos tried to pin minority leader Boehner down about what Republicans had in mind with respect to the economy, the environment or health care, his response was a lame, "we have a plan" to be revealed eventually. He has also ridiculed concerns regarding climate change and CO2 as "comical", mistakenly positing that cow droppings are a source of CO2 - - a notion that seems to fit Republican efforts to downplay the importance of carbon emissions.

In that mode Republicans have taken to calling a "cap-and-trade" program the "cap-and-tax" program, much as they continually call the estate tax, a death tax. In adoring interplay during evening floor speeches in the House, Indiana's Mike Pence and Minnesota's Michele Bachmann cast doubt on claims that climate change is influenced by human behavior saying it is rather a naturally-occurring phenomenon and CO2 is but a tiny part of the environmental pie. Bachmann said we have lots of coal, natural gas and oil and should make the most of those resources - - green schemes, not so much.

Most scientific opinion, however, is not dismissive about carbon emissions. In a 2002 article Bernie Fischlowitz-Roberts wrote, "increased atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases trap more of the earth's heat, causing temperatures to rise"- -  ‘melting ice, raising sea levels, creating more destructive storms.' http://www.earthpolicy.org/. And in a May 2008 article the following: "... widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely it is not due to natural causes alone." http://www.eia.doe.gov/.

The premise that we are all dumb as posts seems to animate a right-wing opposition that seeks to avoid being implicated in obvious failures with respect to the environment, the economy and foreign policy. They ask us to believe that releasing CIA memos endangers us and that invading Iraq was a good idea as they try desperately to refurbish their tarnished record. CNBC's Larry Kudlow wrote in a June 2002, NationalReview.com article that "The shock therapy of decisive war will elevate the stock market by a couple-thousand points...The world will be righted in this life-and-death struggle to preserve our values and our civilization. But to do all this we must act." What a guy.

But the most serious indictment of our government these past eight years is the disclosure that interrogators were told to use extreme methods in the hope of getting detainees to suggest a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. To justify invading Iraq the Bush White House was willing to go to extraordinary lengths, disrespecting and deceiving the American people in the process. Whatever steps are taken going forward, there must be an honest assessment of what was done in our name, and we the people must stand up and say "never again." We're a lot smarter now.

Life in the slow-witted lane should be the new motto for right-wing media types and ultra-conservative pols in Congress. Fair and balanced doesn't describe what goes on at Fox News where intelligent discourse isn't part of the harangues that fill its air time, nor does it animate conservatives' talking points on Capitol Hill. Old uninspiring fall-back positions suggest that Republicans need an intra-party stimulus program.

In a bizarre, non-political chat on Fox, wrestler Hulk Hogan's fulminations about his divorce were the topic. His ugly divorce caused him, he has said, to empathize with OJ Simpson - - a deplorable outburst said one guest. But the host and another guest said they could understand and sympathize with the rage OJ must have felt when he found Nicole's "19-year-old boyfriend" at her house. Such assumptions require an oh-well attitude about what happened that night in California and acceptance of the non-fact that Ron Goldman was Nicole's boyfriend. But I guess there's a kind of lunatic balance in the exchange.

On the political front, when a government report suggested home-grown, right-wing extremists might commit acts of violence, conservative apologists said the report was an attempt to stifle debate.  No-one was angrier than Sean Hannity who, with that bright-eyed maniacal gaze of his queried, "what about William Ayers and Reverend Wright"- - talk about beating a dead horse. And for one terrible moment I had a mental picture of Hannity actually beating a dead horse in real time.

Of course Hannity and others on the right willingly ignored how Quaker and other peace advocacy groups were infiltrated by government officials during the Bush years. Tagged for what were deemed ‘leftist' proclivities such groups received special attention. To speak out against the invasion of Iraq, well that was tantamount to treason viewed through the haze of paranoia that enveloped the Bush White House. Did those scary Quakers and peaceniks actually pose a real threat to the republic?

And in the surreal world of Fox News there was indignation, after April 15^th, about criticisms by other news organizations regarding the tea-bag demonstrations. In a conversation between Bill O'Reilly and Greta Van Susteran she talked about "the real people" who expressed their views on tea-bag day and were accosted by "vulgar, rookie" reporters from other news groups, while he wrote off CNN and MSNBC as if they were just fly-speck nonentities. But, as has been noted elsewhere, Fox News made itself the story instead of just reporting it. That's what happens when commentators morph into special-event sponsors. The largest groups on tax day were the ones attending gatherings cheer-led by Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity et al. What could be more vulgar than that?

Were organizers really pleased with the behavior of their groupies? What kinds of people raise large posters of Hitler and Mussolini to imply Obama's is a fascist regime, or ask "what country do you really come from?" questioning his place of birth. Where did all these disruptive, hate-filled poster people come from? They aren't about constructive alternatives; they just want to have their way about abortion, guns, taxes and government that doesn't interfere except to impose a narrow set of ‘values' on the general population - -  in short the conservative Republican way.

The crowd seemed to enjoy publicly expressing outrage over the state of the economy, government spending, job losses, and, oh yes, fear that the president will take their guns away. But they aren't the only ones who are angry; a lot of "real people" resent that, at a time when we should be strengthening the national "ties that bind", a politically-motivated, media-promoted event was what happened instead. However organizers spin it, this was a divisive exercise that simply fed the anxiety of a nervous public in need of reassurance and a sincere political work ethic. And why the wasteful truckload of a million tea-bags in D.C. - - was it an ironic reference to the "million-man march" or was choosing that precise number of no particular significance?

In the face of so many pressing problems, an electorate misled by radical, dull-witted elements is a profoundly worrying national condition. To put that in perspective, consider the consequences of a person like Minnesota Congresswoman, Republican Michele Bachmann, one of the country's leading purveyors of misinformation, home-schooling  her five children - - just one of many alarming indications that cultivating an enlightened American public is a more daunting task than we might have imagined.

There's a strain of contrarianism in the country these days that attracts followers who oppose any idea that falls outside their chosen belief system. It isn't that questioning what the latest opinion mill is churning out is wrong. But taking an oppositional position about everything to make political points isn't a valid form of criticism or a way of mounting constructive arguments. It's just misleading gibberish.

Opposition is expressed at every turn by the right-wing media and resistance-minded Republicans in Congress. Compromise seems not to be a goal, nor is devising reasonable alternatives. When every option is couched in terms of tax-cuts, and presidential initiatives are treated with disdain, there is a crushing sense that our political system is degraded by a lack of seriousness and by self-serving politicians whose only objective is to claim victory in the next election cycle.

There are, of course, ideological differences between the two major parties and among splinter groups of various descriptions that should be respected. However, on some big issues the degrees of separation are so profound, the reasoning so deeply flawed it is impossible to find any basis upon which to begin intelligent conversation. For example, at an event hosted by the Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, writer Steven Miller, discussed his book Green Hell, that contests the importance of environmental vulnerabilities. He instructed listeners to heed Oklahoma's Republican Senators Inhofe and Coburn who say global warming is nonsense - - Inhofe has declared global warming a "hoax" while Coburn, calls it "a lot of crap."

In his remarks, Miller said he couldn't think of a single instance in which human factors impacted the environment in ways that caused serious health risks like cancer or respiratory illness. But there are numerous such examples one of which is the infamous Love Canal in upstate New York: "Twenty-five years after the Hooker Chemical Company stopped using the ...Canal ...as an industrial dump, 82 different compounds, 11 of them suspected carcinogens ... [percolated] upwards through the soil, their drum containers rotting and leaching their contents into the backyards and basements of 100 homes and a public school ..." (Eckart C. Beck, the EPA Journal, January 1979)

More recently, as depicted in the film "Erin Brockovich", the PG&E Company in California was found liable for contaminating the ground water surrounding its plant with the substance Chromium-6, a known carcinogen. In that case, people in the area were adversely affected by cancers, miscarriages and birth defects.

As for global warming, a PBS "Nova" documentary on the subject explored an alarming phenomenon of what was referred to as "global dimming", a climactic condition caused by polluted particles in the atmosphere's cloud masses. This dimming of the sun has had the effect of disrupting normal rainfall patterns, creating droughts and famine in some parts of the world. The irony is that this condition represents a "tug of war" between atmospheric warming and cooling. The polluting particulates that create the dimming effect cool the climate while masking the harmful effect of greenhouse gases that trap heat - - toxic global twins in a vulnerable environment.

In an article about the Nova film, producer David Sington says one reason people "reject the idea of man-made climate change...is that on the whole people tend to believe what is convenient to them. Faced with a choice between an awkward fact and a comforting fiction, most people will take the fiction any day." And he suggests that such skeptics are "more prevalent in the USA than in Europe" because "American rhetoric tends to present prosperity as the natural consequence of political freedom. Like Democracy, it becomes a moral good in its own right. Anyone who seems to question the wisdom of unconstrained economic growth risks appearing un-American, if not downright immoral." (PBS.org)

Perhaps politicians like Inhofe and Coburn, encouraged by writers like Steven Miller, believe the country is more threatened by ‘tree-hugging environmentalists' than scientific research would suggest. Sadly, much contrary opinion relies not on fact but on convenient fiction. However, protecting the environment is demonstrably a patriotic endeavor. And expanding green industries could jump-start the economy in ways that would create jobs, develop new technologies and fashion a new version of prosperity.

Confused, hate-filled, dissociative thinking characterizes the country's tea-partiers poised to appear at a number of locations on April 15^th. Having finally come to realize that the "Boston Tea Party" had quite different historical connotations than their current anti-tax protests they have taken to carrying signs that say "taxation with representation isn't so good either."

There's just no pleasing these folks. They try one tactic after another apparently hoping something will strike a responsive chord with more than the rag-tag, sub-rational minions they have managed to attract so far. The hysteria attached to the charges these purveyors of confusion circulate brands the movement as simply another political device designed to undermine the Obama administration. And although one would think the foaming-at-the-mouth types would be an embarrassment for The GOP, they actually allow party leaders to avoid having to become overly or overtly involved even as Republican tax policies are promoted by tea-bag evangelists.

But the mix of signage and verbal offensives lacks a meaningful message and represents rather the angst of malcontents in the throes of a demonic impulse encouraged by the irresponsible machinations of right-wing media pundits and party extremists. Why else would there be such a mixed-bag of protesters, some of whom accuse the president of fostering socialism while others call him a fascist, question the validity of his birth certificate, say he's a secret terrorist or the spawn of Satan?  He was born in Kenya says one protester, not sure says another. The hope must be that such doubts might bring the president down and, then support for a fresh round of tax-cuts would restore the lifestyle of the rich and famous who would pepper the country with jobs and prosperity even though they did no such thing with the riches they amassed during the Bush years.

In the astonishing verbal rampage that took place on Glenn Beck's show over the weekend, the progressive movement was misrepresented in a narrow perversion of what the term means and what most progressives stand for. And in a particularly disjointed and "inciteful" diatribe a fictionalized Tom Paine appeared in 18^th-century garb to bemoan the country's "decline" and what was described as "national suicide". He joined together a "they" who overspent and flew planes into the World Trade Center just to make sure the two scariest scenarios Republicans can conjure up were conjoined in one horrifying message - - government spending and terrorism.

And all of this spectacularly outlandish garbage was accompanied by films of Hitler in the background just in case anyone missed the point of how threatened our society is by the government now in power. They'll take away our liberties one woman cried on a call-in program, as if our civil liberties were so secure during the past eight years. Although admittedly it is concerning that President Obama hasn't countermanded some of the more questionable Bush policies, it is to be hoped that he will work to guarantee the individual liberties that were undercut in recent years.

But what exactly does Beck mean when he promotes a "march on Washington" for the purpose of ‘taking back America'? It's that kind of talk that he and other fringe ‘patriots' engage in that is so unsettling and so unhelpful in moving the country to a more stable place. When did we become such an untutored, intellectually stunted population willing to be led by people who understand so little about the world? We have known for some time the power of cults in society, but why have so many given themselves over to the cult of disinformation, delusion and tea-bags?

For the less intellectually-endangered members of this rabid species their time would be better spent protesting companies that off-shore profits and outsource jobs. Taxes may be a hot topic, but tax policies have never been the prime mover of our economy and will not be the engine of our prosperity in the future. It may be a source of amusement for people animated by the ravings of self-described patriots of uncertain credibility to take to the streets and see themselves in news clips interviewed by actual reporters, but theirs is a transitory and unproductive endeavor.

In reality they are being used by political zealots whose fervent flag-waving masks the emptiness of their rhetoric and the shallow nature of their goals.

Didn't the Democrats just win large majorities in both houses of Congress and didn't the country elect President Obama by a healthy eight million vote plurality? In November voters seemed ready for change and even some Republicans were willing to soften their stand on social issues in the hope that a new administration would address other more pressing national concerns.

How then has an obstructionist minority managed to gum things up, achieving power denied them in the electoral process and pretending their party is really where the country's at. Whenever an opportunity exists to impede the administration's agenda they are hard at it, which wouldn't be so hard to stomach if there were real substance behind their "no" doctrine. However, their empty sloganeering, their sniping tactics in Congress, their obeisance to the gun lobby and their financial backing of Norm Coleman's never-ending appeals of the Minnesota election are just dead-end politicking.

The right wing has its intractable advocates, of course, who support people like Representative Cantor and Senator Cornyn and think Representative Bachmann is on track even as she runs off the rails. Massaging the base works on some level, but minority efforts to hamper the simplest congressional procedures, hold up nominations and project their narrow vision on a public that has in many respects moved on, is simply a partisan blockade. Making conservative opinion part of the record is certainly one aspect of the core Republican mission, but acting as if it should serve to define our national principles is way outside the mainstream of current political thinking.

Nevertheless, Senate Republicans continue to stall Obama nominations to important posts. Tammy Duckworth, nominated to be Assistant Secretary at the Department of Veterans affairs, was held up by North Carolina's Senator Richard Burr for unknown reasons. One would think Duckworth, who lost her legs in combat serving our country, would be a shoo-in for the position. And there's the ever-present and oh-so-limited Senator Cornyn blocking the nomination of Dawn Johnsen to head the Office of Legal Counsel. Strangely, he says she lacks the "seriousness and necessary resolve to fight terrorism" although it's more likely he objects to her pro-choice advocacy.

The right wing calls Harold Koh, State Department's legal advisor nominee, a "threat to democracy" because he's an international law expert. The "fervent opponents of ...Koh turn out to be enthusiastic defenders of John Yoo" (ThinkProgress.org 4/4/09) that guy who penned the infamous memo referring to the Geneva Conventions as "quaint". As for Chris Hill, Obama's choice for Ambassador to Iraq, his nomination is being held up by Kansas Senator Brownback, a position embraced by the far right.

A conservative news group describes Obama as "polarizing", but isn't it the right wing chorus line that divides with its use of procedural impediments and claims we are headed for socialism, and questions like ‘do you want the government making health decisions for you'? In fact such decisions are made every day by insurance companies. And when clinics and hospitals servicing the needy close for lack of funds, the uninsured and under-insured, denied access to cancer therapy and meds, are essentially presented with a death warrant - - the most polarizing outcome possible.

One boost to the economy, distressingly, is that gun sales are up because the right wing claims Obama is going to take our guns away, though that isn't on his agenda. No doubt folks on society's lunatic fringe are building up their arsenals; one gun-shop owner says he's having trouble keeping ammunition in stock. In the next spate of shootings by frenzied wingers or distraught workers who have lost jobs, the charge of gun confiscation will have become moot. General Wesley Clark once invited people who like assault weapons to join the armed forces "we've got lots of them" he said. Now there's an idea.

In any case, reasonable people should be calling their senators to express displeasure about Obama's delayed nominees. Veteran's groups may have put enough pressure on Senator Burr to encourage him to finally lift his hold on Tammy Duckworth's appointment. Whatever the reason, her confirmation now appears assured.

Their constant rant often makes conservative positions seem more widely held than they really are. It can be exhausting trying to refute all the false claims and hysterical accusations that continue to consume a lot of right-wing air time. Sometimes one feels that the only thing left to say in response to all the nonsense is "oh please just shut up."

We live in a world of anomalies - - situations that defy commonly held rationales for the way things are supposed to work. The Bush Justice Department was run by functionaries who were hired according to religious or partisan credentials rather than expertise and a commitment to established law - - in short, a department run amok.

A new administration brings hope for change on many levels. For starters Attorney General Holder overturned the conviction of Senator Stevens because of improper conduct by the prosecution team. Holder sent a message that such behavior would not be tolerated by his office and he declined to order a new trial for Stevens.

The message was an encouraging one for the future of the Justice Department. Still, the promise of a level playing field remains more theory than practice for many ordinary Americans. And, unfortunately Holder's decision has spawned a series of non-sequiturs from Republicans, most particularly Governor Palin. The fact is that prosecutorial misconduct doesn't in and of itself mean the charges against Stevens were unfounded. Palin's suggestion that Alaska's newly elected Democratic Senator Begich should step down and another election be held is an absurd attempt to forge a political coup.

Whatever exculpatory details failed to surface during trial, the number of tangential convictions and the nature of the charges were substantial. Stevens was always a major "porker"- - remember the bridge to nowhere?  In any case the preponderance of the evidence seemed to suggest that he used his office to obtain benefits and provided favors in return. An inept prosecution doesn't necessarily prove a defendant's innocence.

Elsewhere on the judicial front did it seem odd to anyone else that Eliot Spitzer's hooker assignation received the kind of attention it did from law enforcement and that the threat of criminal charges regarding cross-border sex forced him from the Governor's office? Did his forays into suspect behavior on Wall Street and at AIG perhaps make some of the nation's high rollers on ‘the street' and in government uncomfortable? After all Republican Senator Vitter received a mere touch of scorn for his hooker involvement as did convicted bathroom felon, Senator Craig, and both remain in office. But the roof fell in on Spitzer. According to Greg Palast "naming and shaming and ruining Spitzer - - rarely done in these cases - - was made at the ‘discretion' of Bush's Justice Department".

It is said, there's plenty of blame to go around as the country's financial meltdown plays out. However, when the powerful and well-placed purposely look the other way, preventing discovery and protecting scoundrels, their actions or lack of action represents a betrayal of the American people. Public anger should be directed at those who keep trying to invent reasons other than stupidity and malfeasance for our economic woes. Too often the right questions are posed but the wrong conclusions are drawn.

It's as if we were beset by a national Stockholm Syndrome, that state of mind in which captives begin to identify with and become one with their captors, out of fear and an inability to find a means of escape. A free-wheeling capitalistic structure that is supposed to fuel our economy and provide jobs is off-shoring profits and unabashedly sending jobs out of the country - - not just to stay competitive in terms of a product but to boost the bottom line even at companies doing quite well enough, like AT&T who made huge profits but is said to be spending millions to staff its facilities in India.

Will regular folks remain cowed in the face of greed and a political system that promises justice but talks past their real concerns? In the end, if no effort is made by government and no pressure brought to bear by individuals to stem the tide of job exports, top executives will continue to command outrageous compensation while the wages of mid-level employees and labor flat-line. It won't matter then how many banks are bailed out because our system will no longer provide a viable template for a healthy economy.

In the early days of his business Henry Ford kept his prices low enough so that his employees would be able to buy his cars. But today, corporations no longer care about providing jobs for our indigenous workforce, let alone the wherewithal to enjoy the good things we were taught to believe would be the reward of our democratic institutions. "Liberty and justice for all" is part of the pledge for heaven's sake. It's what we were promised and what we should demand.

As children we were often told that "sticks and stones can break your bones but names can never hurt you". Today's kids are told to "use your words". But in fact names can be hurtful and words can incite the less stable, more paranoid members of society to engage in destructive verbal games and even resort to sticks and stones.

When a caller to a morning show warns that "the brown-shirts are on the march" it is clear the radical right's fear-mongering has reached the weak links among us. Others accuse the Obama presidency of being a socialist enterprise. Obviously these people don't understand the terms they use or realize they are being played by political opportunists who stake out provocative positions to advance their personal agendas.

In tandem with wacky media pundits their alter egos are represented by elected officials like Minnesota's manic Michele Bachmann who is organizing "tea-party" protestors across the nation. Apparently Bachmann and her confederates fail to grasp what the Boston Tea Party was all about. In the 1700s protests reflected colonial anger at being required to pay taxes to the British government; the cry then was "no taxation without representation". Throwing that tea into Boston Harbor was a forerunner of what would become our Revolution a few years later. The thing Bachmann, et al seem not to have fully absorbed is that these days we elect our very own government, elections being the means by which the American people ordinarily seek redress for their concerns.

When Bachmann says her supporters are "armed and dangerous" she comes close to encouraging insurrection. With the country in a fragile state, and anger growing in the countryside, her ‘call to arms' is a reminder that the right to free speech doesn't extend to ‘crying fire in a crowded theater'. Guiding an imperiled audience to an orderly exit is the primary goal, not inducing a stampede that could lead to injury or death.

There must be something in the air out there in Minnesota. Norm Coleman continues to dispute the November election of Al Franken. Republicans seek to deny him his Senate seat with one legal challenge after another, something Texas Senator Cornyn says and, undoubtedly hopes, could take years, and the Party is apparently prepared to finance that process. As court decisions in Minnesota repeatedly fail to support his positions, it is rumored that Coleman may appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. One can only hope that, after their shoddy and much-criticized performance in 2000, the Supremes would have the good sense not to hear the case if it is brought to their door.

It may have been too much to expect that the November election would usher in a period of civility in Washington, in light of the serious issues the country faces. But instead of being willing to examine problems from a fresh perspective, the minority assails the notion of "change" as something almost un-American. Their budget alternative seems to assume an economy, already recovered, in which Republican ideals of tax cuts and smaller government could once again be taken seriously.

Freezing discretionary government programs and scrapping the stimulus package are antithetical to the spending most experts feel is necessary to revive the economy. Their plan would, however, extend unemployment benefits, funding that South Carolina Governor Sanford, Louisiana Governor Jindal and Texas Governor Perry have all said they would refuse. Perhaps the "strings" to which these men object have been removed from the Republican budget proposal.

But it isn't only the lack of substance and factual departures that stain the reputation of the minority and its advocates and create an unhealthy vituperative atmosphere in Washington and around the country. There's a level of antagonism, antipathy, envy, whatever it is, that animates the opposition, as exemplified by Bernie Goldberg's virulent and irrelevant book entitled A Slobbering Love Affair - -The True (and Pathetic) Story of The Torrid romance Between Barack Obama and The Mainstream Media.

At the beginning of the campaign McCain was considered the media pet, but even dedicated journalists can be excused for failing to be inspired by his shopworn rhetoric and sleep-inducing events. Clearly the press follows ‘the story' and Obama was and continues to be the story; besides, ‘gosh darn it, people like him'. The Democrats fielded a bright, charismatic, hard-working candidate - - no apologies for that. As for slobbering during the campaign, most of it was by love-starved men ogling Sarah Palin.

Today's "loyal opposition" is far more oppositional than it is loyal. From hysterical attacks by elected officials to luminaries at Fox News Channel who make stuff up as they go along, to the right-wing media establishment, distorted reportage and commentary are unfortunately swallowed whole by a disturbingly large audience.

Supporters of the Iraq invasion claim we've "won" there and are cheer-leading us on to Afghanistan; in fact we're holding a tiger by the tail in Iraq and face an uncertain future in Afghanistan. Recently, National Standard editor, William Kristol, reaffirmed his original position vis-à-vis Iraq even though he has been and continues to be consistently wrong - - e.g. Shiites and Sunnis get along just fine, there's a functioning central government, and our presence helps to stabilize the region and protect us from terrorists.

In reality, ethnically-cleansed neighborhoods helped lower the level of violence; a central government exists in name only as the Kurds operate in a parallel universe; Sunnis we paid to stop killing our troops are furious they haven't been included in the Malichi government as promised, and there remain thousands of Iraqi refugees.  Besides, Saddam Hussein's removal strengthened Iran, and allowed Al Qaeda to flourish; our support of Iraq's long war with Iran is often ignored. In sum, our interventions in the region have rarely produced positive outcomes. Somewhat ominously, Kristol supports administration proposals for Afghanistan. Could he actually be right this time?

In Congress Republican criticism has become an end in itself rather than a springboard for serious debate. When Speaker Pelosi said on a recent Charlie Rose show that she felt Republicans weren't being obstructionists but rather were following the dictates of deeply held ideological convictions, she seemed at first to be excusing "the party of no". Upon reflection, however, her point was really more damning than simply accusing the minority of bad behavior. After all, if Republicans are bound by an unyielding ideology they are unlikely to develop new ideas and solutions apart from codified political certainties, even ones that haven't worked very well in the past.

One often hears it said, despite all that has happened, that government shouldn't interfere or over-regulate markets - - that they will self-adjust, although there is scant evidence to support that view. Even former Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan, said he had misjudged the capacity of the market to discipline itself. Yet Republican Paul Ryan of Wisconsin insists the country will begin to realize that his party tells the truth and people will reject a large government presence in their lives. Ryan may touch a nerve in some quarters, but at this moment, it has to be obvious across a broad spectrum of a financially threatened populace that government is its refuge of first and last resort.

On Sunday's "Meet the Press" John McCain repeated the suspect Republican talking points - - that his party had offered a viable alternative stimulus package, that they will present a budget plan of their own and that the only way to achieve real bi-partisan solutions is for the parties to sit down across a table and thrash out their differences. The problem with his last point is that Republicans keep coming up with the same proposals; in their current budget the only available numbers reflect once again that taxes are the defining element - -  they would lower the bottom rate to 10% and the upper rate to 25%. If the Bush tax cuts transferred enormous wealth to the already wealthy, just imagine the capital enhancement that would accrue to that same group as a result of these proposals.

In truth it isn't always possible to breach the chasm that exists between conflicting entities. Republicans talk about jobs but pose solutions that depend on lowering taxes - - for people who are unemployed and businesses short on customers. Words are meaningless in the absence of sound ideas; playing word games is a pointless exercise that amuses some folks but does nothing to heal the nation's festering economic wound.

Rush Limbaugh suggested last week that the people of Fargo should find another word to use instead of "dike" as they struggled to shore up the banks of the Red River. He used North Dakota's distress for an adolescent attempt at what must pass for humor among his supporters. And his party of choice pitched a flimsy budget proposal that made them look almost as silly as their most favored standard-bearer.