BASTA!
I avoid Beltway Business. For the most part its meaningless dithering. Posturing by egomaniacs and people who have confused being in Washington with having a meaningful life.
Take the recent Supreme Court brouhaha. How come any sane person believed that song and dance? Why was all that energy diverted into something that was never gonna happen?
The first time I read the CV for President Bush's choice for Supreme Court nominee it was obvious he was fooling with us. Not nice at all. I signed the "Stop Harriet" petition and never looked at another story about her. What was there to know except it was all play-acting?
Harriet Meirs was a sacrifice fly. How come nobody is talking about that? How come everyone treated her "nomination" as real? How come they continue to do so? Like we avoided a near-disaster, right? Sure we did.
Hah. Ol' Harriet made the rounds in a Rovian mystery cycle play. She played the game until it was time to pop the ball up into the lights and retire the side so the real nominee could come forward. So she made nice about not being able to betray executive secrets and the President did his manager's kabuki dance and we all moved on.
Thank God. That was truly and excruciatingly boring. Back when Cindy Sheehan was 24/7, I avoided Cindy Sheehan stories because they were intitially painful and eventually embarrassing. A parade of the insane. When 24/7 indignation about Harriet Meirs's revved up, I wondered if I'd be able to stay awake through this sideshow. How long would it take them to get to the real deal? I knew there was going to be one eventually, I just had no idea who.
So what did her time at bat accomplish? Well, it sure galvanized the base didn't it? George W got the message: people are paying attention. So he paid attention back and gave them what he'd planned to give them anyway: a decent nomination. So now they like him again. And by nominating Harriet, he got his licks in for the evangelical base, too. And Laura could give us the party line about "needing to have a woman on the Supreme Court." Everybody's happy and now Harriet can go back to obscurity as the White House Counsel. Or whatever.
Meanwhile, the Dems are looking longingly backwards at Ms. Meirs. They could have had a field day bashing her for weeks. And then they'd have passed her and she would have "grown in office" -- i.e., moved left. Heck, she was already pretty left if you believe that a person puts their money where their mouth is. That girl gave lots of moolah to the Dems and to
Supreme Court nominations are simply operas without the music. And the Greek chorus from the Left doesn't count as singing. Not unless you think discordant wailing about the-end-of-the-country-as-we-know-it sounds musical.
And just wait till we get to the verse about "oh, no! Not another Catholic on the Court!" Believe me, you'll be sick of that lyric by the time the party ends...which I hear is around Ground Hog Day. Tell me, can you really put up with this until Februrary?
If we learned nothing else we did find out that Harriet was a shill, that Rove remains his Machiavellian self, and that life moves on.
Basta.
posted by Dymphna @ 1:27 AM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Hey, A.S.--
I figured that out! Thanks for your endorsement...
..my Italian is limited to what I learned when I lived in an Italian neighborhood...
...thus, "Basta!" yelled out the window was usually enough to get the kids to stop whatever they were doing.
I'm not sure GW has the intelligence to be so Machiavellian. This is going to be a prolonged fight in the Senate. I learned the meaning of "basta" while as a teacher in Miami.I said it a lot!
American Crusader...
I referred to Rove re this dance, as in:
Rove remains his Machiavellian self...
GW delegates. I'll bet sometimes he regrets it.
After three weeks of telling the world that Harriet Miers was the best possible Supreme Court nominee because she is a woman who was not an Eastern Ivy Leaguer serving on the appellate bench, this Republican administration made the case yesterday that the second-best possible Supreme Court nominee is Samuel Alito -- an Ivy League-educated man from New Jersey who has been on the appellate bench for 15 years.
Dubya and his guys also vouched for White House officials Scooter Libby and Karl Rove, saying that they had nothing to do with the leak of a CIA agent's identity and that anybody who did would be fired. Libby was indicted in the case on Friday, Rove has been identified as a leaker but remains on the job --
The Alito announcement was, in political parlance, a "page-turn" to shift attention from the leak probe.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Leadership in the Senate cried "Basta!" today, and demanded the Senate Intelligence Committee complete its investigation (promised two years ago) of this Republican administration's use of the intelligence it received to glean any improprieties during their argument for war in Iraq.
Which, of course, brings us back to Scooter Libby, and Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove who were caught up in what appears to be a smear campaign against someone who authoritatively questioned their pre-war pronouncements.
I wonder if the Grand Jury findings can be reviewed by the Senate Intelligence Committee?
I wonder why Dubya refused to remove the famous 16 lines regarding Iraqi uranium acquistion from Africa when the CIA asked him to do so, choosing instead to keep it in and say it was British intelligence.
I wonder if Dubya is really the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and not the President of the United States.
Actually it is more likely he is, instead, the Presidente of Mexico.
Good Night, and Good Luck.
After three weeks of telling the world that Harriet Miers was the best possible Supreme Court nominee because she is a woman who was not an Eastern Ivy Leaguer serving on the appellate bench, this Republican administration made the case yesterday that the second-best possible Supreme Court nominee is Samuel Alito -- an Ivy League-educated man from New Jersey who has been on the appellate bench for 15 years.
Dubya and his guys also vouched for White House officials Scooter Libby and Karl Rove, saying that they had nothing to do with the leak of a CIA agent's identity and that anybody who did would be fired. Libby was indicted in the case on Friday, Rove has been identified as a leaker but remains on the job --
The Alito announcement was, in political parlance, a "page-turn" to shift attention from the leak probe.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Leadership in the Senate cried "Basta!" today, and demanded the Senate Intelligence Committee complete its investigation (promised two years ago) of this Republican administration's use of the intelligence it received to glean any improprieties during their argument for war in Iraq.
Which, of course, brings us back to Scooter Libby, and Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove who were caught up in what appears to be a smear campaign against someone who authoritatively questioned their pre-war pronouncements.
I wonder if the Grand Jury findings can be reviewed by the Senate Intelligence Committee?
I wonder why Dubya refused to remove the famous 16 lines regarding Iraqi uranium acquistion from Africa when the CIA asked him to do so, choosing instead to keep it in and say it was British intelligence.
I wonder if Dubya is really the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and not the President of the United States.
Actually it is more likely he is, instead, the Presidente of Mexico.
Good Night, and Good Luck.
After three weeks of telling the world that Harriet Miers was the best possible Supreme Court nominee because she is a woman who was not an Eastern Ivy Leaguer serving on the appellate bench, this Republican administration made the case yesterday that the second-best possible Supreme Court nominee is Samuel Alito -- an Ivy League-educated man from New Jersey who has been on the appellate bench for 15 years.
Dubya and his guys also vouched for White House officials Scooter Libby and Karl Rove, saying that they had nothing to do with the leak of a CIA agent's identity and that anybody who did would be fired. Libby was indicted in the case on Friday, Rove has been identified as a leaker but remains on the job --
The Alito announcement was, in political parlance, a "page-turn" to shift attention from the leak probe.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Leadership in the Senate cried "Basta!" today, and demanded the Senate Intelligence Committee complete its investigation (promised two years ago) of this Republican administration's use of the intelligence it received to glean any improprieties during their argument for war in Iraq.
Which, of course, brings us back to Scooter Libby, and Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove who were caught up in what appears to be a smear campaign against someone who authoritatively questioned their pre-war pronouncements.
I wonder if the Grand Jury findings can be reviewed by the Senate Intelligence Committee?
I wonder why Dubya refused to remove the famous 16 lines regarding Iraqi uranium acquistion from Africa when the CIA asked him to do so, choosing instead to keep it in and say it was British intelligence.
I wonder if Dubya is really the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and not the President of the United States.
Actually it is more likely he is, instead, the Presidente of Mexico.
Good Night, and Good Luck.
I apologize for the multiple posts. The interface is acting up, and it was indicating that the post was not achieved.
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