Turn Pro

[Lightning Rod]

Turn Pro
for release 11-09-05
Washington D.C

It's wonderful to see our political process in action. Yesterday Americans sallied forth to the ballot boxes and played out the grand pantomime of democracy. America loves a good race. That's why NASCAR is so popular. And the Kentucky Derby and the Indy 500. And politics.

Imagine Monday Night Football seven days a week. And it's always between the Cowboys and the Redskins. That's American politics. Yes, we buy our tickets and we place our bets but do we ever ask ourselves, as we cast our ballots for this candidate or that candidate or for this proposition or that one, whether or not we are making any meaningful choices?

Is your life going to be significantly different if you vote for the Plutocrats rather than the Oligarchs? I don't think so. The only people that really need to care about whether the Redskins beat the Cowboys are those that have money on the game.

The problem with politics is the same as the problem with all sports--professionalism.

Who runs our government? Lawyers. And doctors are popular these days (Bill Frist and Howard Dean both like to advertise that they are doctors), corporate executives (or their sons) and Professional Politicians (bureaucrats.) Jefferson would be spinning like a pig on a rotisserie in his grave if he could see what passes for democracy these days. The idea of making a career out of politics was repulsive to George Washington as well. They wanted to offer him a kingly crown but he saw himself as a surveyor and a soldier and a citizen/hemp farmer. Participating in government was, to our founders, a duty not a meal ticket.

But times have changed. A printer or a farmer or a factory worker has no time or means to be a politician. It's a full-time job. No more is an average but interested citizen able to play in the big leagues. It takes several million bucks to put a car on the NASCAR track. That's why they are plastered with corporate decals. Both sport and government have become professionalized to the detriment of both.

Sandlot baseball (where anybody could participate just for fun) has morphed into a manicured spectator sport where fabulously paid gladiators jack their bodies up on steroids and pump iron all year-round. It's a full-time job. Oh, forget that it's a bit absurd that a society pays its teachers $30,000 a year, and it's short-stops three million. This is the professional world.

It is the same in politics as it is in professional sports. Football and basketball players are bought and sold by team owners and race cars are billboards for the logos of their corporate sponsors and I think politicians should be required to wear jackets like the NASCAR guys with patches indicating who owns them. (maybe not, the thought of Dick Cheney in a Halliburton T-shirt sort of gives me the creeps.)

But this is what happens when professionals take over. In much the same way as the government mob has legalized the numbers game by calling it the Lottery, they have also legalized bribery by means of 'campaign finance laws.' These laws provide a method for wealthy Olliecrats or Plutogarchs to buy lawmakers outright when the time honored tradition was to pay them under the table. It's a disgrace. When professionalism enters politics you get people like Karl Rove and Tom Delay who are creatures of the shady deal and the dirty trick, forever trying to Simonize their public images.

The Poet's Eye is looking to turn pro. But I know that would take all the fun out of it.


"When the going gets weird, the Weird turn pro."
--Hunter S. Thompson

[Dave The Dov]

"When the going gets weird, the Weird turn pro."
--Hunter S. Thompson

To put a spin on that it's time for the Weird to take over!!!!
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[K&D]

loved this articles, one of my favs.

so, i'm trying to go pro, trying to get into the Doc Studies Program, i can't see anyother way to go pro these days.

[Zlatko Waterman]

Dear LR:

A very witty column. Nice contrasts.

Here's one of the things you get to do when you turn professional:


(paste)

Bush Leagues

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White House keeps dossiers on more than 10,000 'political enemies'



By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Nov 8, 2005, 06:40



Spurred by paranoia and aided by the USA Patriot Act, the Bush Administration has compiled dossiers on more than 10,000 Americans it considers political enemies and uses those files to wage war on those who disagree with its policies.

The “enemies list” dates back to Bush’s days as governor of Texas and can be accessed by senior administration officials in an instant for use in campaigns to discredit those who speak out against administration policies or acts of the President.

The computerized files include intimate personal details on members of Congress; high-ranking local, state and federal officials; prominent media figures and ordinary citizens who may, at one time or another, have spoken out against the President or Administration.

Capitol Hill Blue has spoken with a number of current and former administration officials who acknowledge existence of the enemies list only under a guarantee of confidentiality. Those who have seen the list say it is far more extensive than Richard Nixon’s famous “enemies list” of Watergate fame or Bill Clinton’s dossiers on political enemies.

“How is that you think Karl (Rove) and Scooter (Libby) were able to disseminate so much information on Joe Wilson and his wife,” says one White House aide. “They didn’t have that information by accident. They had it because they have files on those who might hurt them.”

White House insiders tell disturbing tales of invasion of privacy, abuse of government power and use of expanded authority under the USA Patriot Act to dig into the personal lives of anyone the administration deems an enemy of the state.

Those on the list include former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, former covert CIA operative Valarie Plame, along with filmmaker and administration critic Michael Moore, Senators like California’s Barbara Boxer, media figures like liberal writer Joe Conason and left-wing bloggers like Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (the Daily Kos) and Ana Marie Cox (Wonkette).

“If you want to know who’s sleeping with whom, who drinks too much or has a fondness for nose candy, this is the place to find it,” says another White House aide. “Karl (Rove) operates under the rule that if you fuck with us, we’ll fuck you over.”

Rove started the list while Bush served as governor of Texas, compiling information on various political enemies in the state and leaking damaging information on opponents to friends in the press. The list grew during Bush’s first run for President in 2000 but the names multiplied rapidly after the terrorist attacks of 2001 and passage of the USA Patriot Act. Using the powers under the act, Rove expanded the list to more than 10,000 names, utilizing the FBI’s “national security letters” to gather private and intimate details on American citizens.

National security letters, which can be issued by an FBI supervisor without a judge’s review or approval, allows the bureau to examine the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of any Americans.

The FBI issues some 30,000 national security letters a year to employers, credit bureaus, banks, travel agencies and other sources of information on American citizens. The Patriot Act also forbids anyone receiving such a letter to reveal they have passed on information to the federal government.

“Those letters helped us build files quickly on those we needed to know more about,” says a former White House aide.

The database of political enemies of the Bush administration is not maintained on White House computers and is located on a privately-owned computer offsite, but can be accessed remotely by a select list of senior aides, including Rove. The offsite location allowed the database to escape detection by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald during his investigation of the Valerie Plame leak. The database is funded by private donations from Bush political backers and does not appear on the White House budget or Federal Election Commission campaign reports.

Bush is not the first President to use the FBI to keep track of his enemies. Richard M. Nixon used FBI files to try and discredit his opponents, including Daniel Ellsberg, the Department of Defense employee who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. Bill Clinton used the FBI to compile dossiers on critics like Conservative Congressman Bob Barr and legal gadfly Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch.

But worried White House insiders say the intelligence gathered by the Bush administration is far larger, more extensive and potentially more damaging than the excesses of previous occupants of the White House. Even worse, it dovetails into a pattern of spying on Americans that has become commonplace since Bush took office.

“We’re talking about Big Brother at its most extreme,” says one White House staffer. “We know things about people that their spouses don’t know and, if it becomes politically expedient, we will make sure the rest of the world knows.”

The White House press office did not respond to a request for an interview on this story and did not return phone calls seeking comment.


© Copyright 2005 by Capitol Hill Blue

[mtmynd]

Thanx for this one, Z'.

Two things keep coming to mind in reading this - "unbelievable!" and "Rove." 'Unbelievable' should be, given the reports that have continuously surfaced on this administration, 'believable,' but this, and other reports, just causes me to shake my head in disbelief - how in the world can this (and so many other 'things'), just keep going on and on without any repercussions?

And "Rove"... a man that is as peculiar as J. Edgar Hoover, and apparently as secretive and manipulative as Hoover himself... even to the point of Rove's private life. Rove is unmarried (like Hoover), and some reports I have come across have even said he is a "gay leather fetishist that enjoys the whips and chains-type of pleasures." Sure, it is unwise to 'believe' every word we read, but there is so much to be said about the instinct that we have when we look into another's eyes... that feeling that tells us 'something ain't right' about another... and Rove is one of several within this admin that I just sense is not on an even keel.

The "Why Bush?" question is not how Dubya and his cabal got to where they are, but "Why are they still in office?" Again, I shake my head in disbelief that we are governed by the likes of what the (questionable) majority have voted into the highest office in the land... indeed, the world. People, generally speaking, obviously have no trust in their own instinctive reflects... a very sad situation and one that BushCo has well-taken advantage of for their own personal agenda.

Again, I enjoy (?) reading these links that you have found and instinctively feel their words are fact telling. At least there are many others that feel the way we do about the 'whole mess' we're all in. The next several months will surely unravel so much more about Bush... I hope the country can and will accept the facts... it should never to late to correct the course of a ship out of control.

[Dave The Dov]

“enemies list” what is this Nixon all over again????
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