Polls and Policy from TV Guide?

The neo-con effort to establish security necessities
justified by television scripts

Dreary psychopaths reinventing their integrity, their torture
and their sexual fantasies 90

A brief glimpse of the scandal as seen by MeanMesa:

As more and more details emerge from the now “out of control” scandal of the Bushite Autocracy’s torture habits, we have to wonder: “How could they (we) have been drawn into this disgusting mess?” Of course, they somehow have found the last, allegedly justifying shards of their subhuman, caustic vitriol to trot out as their last frantic vestiges of their claims to humanhood slowly disintegrate. Of course, they make desperate, whiny cries that all their midnight pornography torture episodes were effective -- and in their (our) twisted issue of odorous dishonor -- hence, justified.

It’s time to “kiss the girlfriend!”

Pundits across the air waves, both reactionaries and progressives, have tried to salve the horrifying national embarrassment with an endless addition of more and more “discussion,” always convincingly presented as if the speaker were privy to actual observation of the practices or enjoyed some other kind of credible authority about them. As with so many other matters, none of us is -- any longer -- particularly surprised to find that massive campaigns of lies and misdirection from the Bush regime have left us stunned and remorseful, again. All those who hold up the honor of our country hide our faces and ponder -- “Will there ever be an end to this disgrace?”

The psychopathies of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeldt-Gonzales “horror family” seem to emerge into the light with the sickening regularity of an episodic series of television shows, each one more hideously depressing and outrageous than the one before.

One hundred eighty terrifying, water board driven sensations of death by drowning to “uncover” the same information available on Khalid Shaik Mohammed's previously broadcast Al Jezeera television interview?

The details of these gruesome, sexual gratification fantasies and other facts are still developing, but there is an aside which may be “ripe” enough for MeanMesa’s attention today. What could have inspired this terrible indulgence on the part of someone like Dick Cheney? Although an interesting question, we now face the unnerving material task of trying to rectify the consequences of the matter. Still, we remain curious. What was the motive for all these acts? What was the source that provided the insane motives for these subhuman escapades carried out in our name?

The answers are worse than the questions. Raw vengeance can carry the day only so far. Can we discern the reasons? After all, what else would satisfy the appetite for power and ascendance amid the otherwise humiliating, self crushing boredom of being overweight, effeminate cowards armed -- thanks to us -- with the world’s most powerful army?

Now to the point of this post:

Let’s talk television. (We can painlessly include movies and novels, too. In this case, the medium is NOT the message.) A sinister cycle of carefully grooming the public, both here and abroad, with deceptions disguised as news by the likes of the Foxes and Murdoch’s is no longer a “shocking revelation” to anyone any longer. But what about the fiction? Are the equally carefully crafted themes of fictional plots designed to slowly reconfigure the glacial consciousness of the viewing masses?

For example, the codependent narcotic of CSI reassures us that police investigations can reveal the “truth” necessary to catch any criminal, no matter how ingenious or cautious he might be. We ignore the fact that prosecutors from all across the country now complain that jurors expect this fictional expertise before they convict defendants. Perhaps they simply don’t realize that the popular CSI equipment is more akin to Star Trek technology than fact.

In any event, the message is clear. “Eluding the power of the state is hopeless.” Does it have to do with deterring crime or establishing submission? "Resistance is futile!" (... the BORG...)

Fox’s Jack Bauer -- 24 Hours -- establishes the fictional foundation for the now famously cited H-bomb, anthrax, death ray, insane terrorist in Los Angeles, New York or Atlanta which justifies the necessity of ripping someone’s arms and legs off in order to “foil the plot.” We wonder if Sean Hannity has found a way to watch these films twenty-four hours every day.

The question is, “Did shows like 24 Hours successfully embed this crazy idea into the minds of the electorate? Or even, part of the electorate?”

El Cartel, broadcast here in Albuquerque on the Spanish language Telemundo Network, presents the vindicating tale of government efforts to quash drug cartels. Are these (rather entertaining) tales a move to prepare citizens of Mexico and the Untied States with a fictional model which persuades them that such programs are worth the sacrifice of enduring the inevitable violence they will precipitate? They may be effective. El Cartel may even produce a positive image and acceptance of the value of the policy. But wait, is this the rational approach to prepare a populous to take the right action?

Isn’t it a bit cynical to assume that the citizens of any country can only be convinced that the right course of action is the dramatically simplified motive presented in a fictional construction? What about the mature, educated citizen who is naturally inclined toward governments and policies which reflect his individual interests in doing the sensible, reasonable things necessary to sustain an orderly civilization consistent with his own values -- that is, values which haven’t been predigested, simplified and presented as caricatures of solutions to the real challenges he and his country might face?

It’s easier for the lazy mind to simply be frightened into agreement with the radical actions taken by a desperate, yet imminently -- and artificially -- honorable television star. This seems to be the case whether a government wishes to vindicate torture or campaigns to defeat drug lords.

Good old Jack Bauer has made legitimate all these responses as unexamined, gaseous justifications for non existential, hypothetical terror threats. Once that was accomplished, the justifications went directly to the neo-con wing nuts in the government even as the hypothetical terrors were left behind on last week’s show.

Good old Jack Bauer laid the groundwork. And from that insane foundation, after Fox “innocently” participated in its introduction, propagation and justification, there emerged all sorts of even more bizarre and grotesque further refinements. For example, Cheney’s torture program, since it apparently never produced much in the way of information, can be assigned to the ambition of terrifying the terrorists, perhaps extracting some sort of vengeance. Vengeance? Useful for national security? In the world of Cheney and Rove, any kind of outrage represented the possible utility of its use for political expediencies. That isn’t news to anyone currently still breathing.

Heh, heh, heh. Tune into channel 69. We are now listening to this same, hopefully rather nervous, idiot (Cheney) insisting that our torture techniques are national security secrets. How do we intend to frighten terrorists with his exquisite torture accomplishments if they remain secret? In his next breath, the old crook insists that the Justice Department has intentionally refused to release the documents supporting “all the lives saved” by this violent extraction of terrorist “information.” Naturally, something like that might assist in his defense in court, in his mind, even if it had to be quickly fabricated at the last minute (maybe in a way similar to the official lies he spread like sunflower seeds to start the war in Iraq...).

We must disabuse ourselves of the trash these television scripts have insinuated into our thoughts. The first step will be to finally reveal that they are no more than cheesy manipulations of our fears, vomited out to make us more accepting of the horrors of our actions and more accepting of the necessities of abandoning our ideals and our Constitutional protections.

If the neo-con monsters who so craftily deceived us before can reinvent themselves into something even remotely coherent, we will have been destroyed by our own televisions! Thanks to them, we now find ourselves not resisting external forces intent on our destruction, but instead, sorting uncomfortably through our own thoughts to detect and eliminate the toxin which has been placed there.

Yes, the Bushites created immense poison all around the world, but our first mission will be to cleanse what their incredible network co-conspirators have placed in our own minds.

Not familiar with the al Jazeera network? It is part of our world and definitely worth knowing about!
http://english.aljazeera.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_English

Any appetite for Chris Matthews? Here he speaks about Cheney's torture justification:
http://www.ecofactory.com/community/green-tv/cheneys-defense-torture-addressed-chris-matthews-hardball

Have we been neglecting our appropriate attention to 24 Hours or El Cartel?
http://www.fox.com/24/
http://foro.univision.com/univision/board/message?board.id=telenovelas&message.id=1135221

Finally, for those with an "appetite" to see a "fictional" representation of an extremely troubling traditional example, may I recommend a movie. The important feature of this movie has no particular relevance to torture scenes or techniques, but rather to the outrage of the attitudes of those in charge.

CAUTION: This film is EXTREMELY PROVOCATIVE. DO NOT FOLLOW THIS LINK UNLESS YOU ACCEPT AND UNDERSTAND THIS WARNING!

http://www.criterion.com/films/532

The Stranger, Camus, Pirates, Somalia and Us

A note to MeanMesa visitors: This posting is a bit removed from what you might expect on this traditionally political blog. If you are a visitor who has never read Camus, consider doing it. If you have, try to remember. The analogy drawn here is far from perfect, but perhaps it will prove thought provoking, and should that be the case, it may have value.

If you were educated in the public schools many years ago (during their more functional period), you were probably confronted with Albrect Camus’ 1942 novel, The Stranger. It was presented as a study in classic “alienation.” The story of Mersault, the unintentional murderer of an Arab on the beach near Algiers, his imprisonment, trial, and execution by guillotine, seems to spring to mind, once again, borne on the events of the recent week. Mersault’s narrative of events as he proceeds through the gloomy story suggest many literary ideas of darkness, isolation and existential detachment, but perhaps the most relevant of them is his inner sensation as the unavoidable reality and inevitability of his situation gradually penetrates his practiced indifference.

Now, to 2009. The fourth and only surviving “pirate” (they claim to be members of a Somali Coast Guard) captured by the Navy off the coast of Somalia could have been a snarling, swashbuckling, Captain Blue Beard type. Had that been the case, a certain discrete vindication of all the cheaply manufactured news stories about the piracy there in the region could have possibly boosted the sagging viewer ship (and credibility) of the “alphabet network” media.

Too bad. This pirate is a sixteen year old boy with a mother in Puntland (a region of Somalia along its NE coast) who is already claiming his essential innocence and begging for judicial mercy. Her account of his involvement is the plaintive plea of all mothers finding their sons facing shocking criminal charges. “He fell into bad company, and was used in ways which eluded his sixteen year old understanding of things and judgment.”

Now, the sixteen year old is seven thousand miles from his bed in her house, one of the many we have been shown from satellite photographs, snapped safely from 200 miles high. The surveillance photos of Somalia almost convey the conditions of the place in the image. The pathos they show is too far removed from the frame of reference we bring with our curiosity to provide much more.

Now, the sixteen year old is in a cell in a Federal Youth Facility in New York, New York, USA, with a bed and clean sheets, a shower, and indoor latrine and what he might consider some alien, but tasty meals. His cell is well ventilated, cooled or heated, and equipped with electric lights and running water. He has seen a counselor, and he has had the service of a translator. He has probably been advised that he will be provided the necessities of Islamic prayer.

Before much longer he will receive what is probably his first physical health examination, his first visit to a dentist and his first experience with a psychologist from the Corrections Department. He has most likely been informed that some ambitious young prosecutor will seek to try him as an adult as well as an estimate of the sentence he may face if convicted.

Please do your best to consider what his days were two weeks ago as a sixteen year old in Puntland. Please do your best to imagine what he might be thinking as he boards a jet on his way to the United States, as he is illuminated by flashbulbs and harried by reporters on his way to jail, as he sits in his cell. Camus' old story no longer has to struggle to relevance.

He has experienced all of this surrounded by people speaking a language he has never heard before. The sixteen year old -- his education is unknown if it exists at all -- could probably not point to his location on a globe if asked where, exactly, he presently stood.

His future, most likely, will include a regime of American “youth offender rehabilitation,” accompanied with all the -- to him -- incomprehensible aspects of that process. Even the dreams of his adulthood, casually held three weeks ago, have now become imponderables to him.

None of this implies any special sympathy for the boy. After all, he is a pirate. However, we should be able to extract a bit of understanding about alienation which might serve us in our own lives.

Are we doing the best we can? Have we forgotten anything?

Obama’s Recovery: Partners or Predators?

Is the President playing “Go Fish” or Chess?

Teaching neo-cons that there can more on the table besides a “carrot or a stick.” 86

Americans listened, considered and agreed with the propositions for national recovery presented in the Obama campaign. If there were any confusion, we may now conclude it arose from the painstaking media grooming of its implied image of the depth and severity of the economic looting done under the cover of the Bush autocracy. Over the decades of “conservative” administrations such as Reagan or the senior Bush, we have grown passively accepting of a routine corruption which had been presented as an "acceptable" and entirely "American," neo-con "leadership" principle.

It has gone even further than that.

We have accepted these gradually growing insults piece meal (Remember the frog who jumps from the boiling water, but remains, comfortably, in the slowly warming, tepid pan?” Yum. Boiled frog.) Americans have slowly and patiently been convinced that a great number of reactionary, neo-con principles are American values or, even, make sense.. For example, in the past couple of weeks from this writing, an “American flag” ship was “piratized” off the coast of Somalia. Its legitimate and honorable “mission” there was the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian supplies to our national friends in Kenya.

But wait.

The reason that ship was flying an American flag -- it had been temporarily renamed after the State of Alabama -- was thanks to a UN ruling. For some reason, the goods of our well intentioned altruism had to be purchased in the US at a price eight times higher than the same commodities could be purchased in the region. For some reason, those commodities had to be transported in an “American flag” ship which plied the waters of the Middle East at eight times the cost of a local alternative.

For some reason? For what reason? The neo-cons have successfully imposed their idea that any good act should begin with a good profit.

The same things happen everywhere. The Indians were persuaded to quit producing generic AIDS drugs, making the Bush Altruism Initiative of aiding African states with that disease one which purchased only “full priced,” first line, American made pharmaceuticals for the effort. Coupled with the irrational neo-con -- and now, Papal -- condemnation of prophylactic supply, promotion and use, the pharmaceutical model of “altruistic” profitability was realized, lubricated and firmly saddled astride vacuous, failed premises of abstinence and other convenient, recent appliances of the prevailing mythology.

These points are presented as example of our amazing, well developed idea that men cannot do good for any reason if it excludes profit. The possibility of assistance, altruism or even cooperation must always be offered in conjunction with an appealing, “oh, by the way,” kind of suddenly and innocently discovered profit.

With this brief account of fundamental neo-con psychology, let us move on the matter of the stimulus and its unwilling participants -- partners and predators.

Why are these participants unwilling and why are these participants, well, even participants in the first place?

First, who are they? The list can easily be extracted from the tedious, frustrating denizens of the current news cycle. There were bankers who got money to make loans and then didn’t make loans. There were health care HMO’s who received an invitation to change their ways, then didn’t change their ways. There were car company executives who were told to rationally reorganize themselves who then proposed “changes” which guaranteed the continuation of their same ruthlessly destructive past policies. There were pharmaceutical companies who were told to release their legislatively protected extortion-strangle-hold on the medical franchise. There were Wall Street “hedge hogs,” oil speculators and investment bankers who were told that they had to “take a hit” on their inflated, imaginary profit and loss statements, who, instead, scrambled around to move their imaginary “profits” off shore so they could pay all of their attention to the looting of the stimulus money (“stay the course,” “cut the taxes,” “make me whole,” et cetera).

All of them were train wreck remnants of the “If anything good is going to happen, it is going to happen to me!” greed ideology of the past. Their obsession of the moment is an arrogant example of their hubris, that is, their absolute rejection of the new “change” and “cooperate” theme of the Obama administration -- and the electorate which created it. Naturally, the first step for these brain dead felons was to purchase some Senators, which they did. By the way, some of our Senators are simply too frightened or honorable to enlist in this outrage. It seems that the real bargains in the Senate are the bourbon drenched neo-con bigots -- hillbillies with an ill advised continuing allegiance to the previous regime of Bush protected avarice.

All these folks seriously believe that what is happening to us right now is nothing more than a current model of what has happened to us in the past. Although this may be more exciting than usual to these “geniuses of capitalism” who are managing the pharmaceutical, banking, health care and other no bid contracting interests, they remain convinced that Obama’s efforts to rescue our economy present nothing new, that is, simply more of the same opportunities which have served their historical extraction practices in the past. They expect and intend to emerge from this “difficulty of the masses” with even fatter pockets and the “ownership deeds” to even more Senators.

Did we ever imagine what feelings a vampire might experience after he sucked the blood from the last living human? In this case, he would convince himself that his last victim was actually not the last living human and fly off gleefully in search of his next prey.

Obama’s proffered gambit was simple enough. “Stop exploiting our economy. It cannot survive any more of your pretend version of free marketism. All of you parasites have done unacceptably well for yourselves at the expense of everyone else, and now, the 'everyone else' is staggering along, near death, as you contemplate your schemes to extract even more from the ambulance staff which has come to rescue them.”

He has asked the bankers to take his bail out money and change their ways, take a few risks for the good of the country (for them, country = their personal finances). Instead, they have been shopping to purchase each other in the hour of peril while sitting on their bulging coffers of bail out money. He has asked the health care moguls to reconfigure their extortion to include the interest of those in the electorate who might need a doctor. Instead, those same moguls have redirected all their discretionary profits to an ad campaign to wreck his Presidency.

Obama has asked the executives of GM and Chrysler to “bleed a little” and reconfigure their business plans to something remotely rational. Instead, they have collapsed to their road weary, inflammatory “swan song” of blaming the unions for everything. He has asked the Senators to, provocatively to them, think of the good of the country instead of their “astonishingly beneficent campaign contributions.” Instead, they -- along with their neo-con progeny in the House -- have marched lockstep in a dismal phalanx of denial and greed all the while hoping in their wet dreams for Obama's failure and destruction.

Does all this describe a foolish failure of a pollyanna in the White House? Has the new President continued to “walk into the props” of a superior neo-con meat grinder whose sole claim to fame is more experience at cynicism?

Maybe not.

Who is ready to characterize Obama’s rather formidable capacity for effective political strategy based on such a short sighted view of his leadership path as it has emerged thus far? If you have this inclination, perhaps you should consider lowering your voice for a few months. If you think his embarrassing rejection at the hands of the so-called House Republicans signifies evidence of a lethal miscalculation in his political tactics, perhaps you should wait for the next act in this play.

Still, it seems that every ambitiously honorable attempt by this White House has ended poorly, that is, all the entreaties “across the aisle” have resulted in another of his restorative plans being dragged behind the truck of guffawing and boisterously emboldened, medievalist Republicans and other corporate schemers. The “Fox Conclusion?” The President is, aside from being a socialist, fascist, traitor, Muslim, gun controlling, international relations appeasing, abortion financing, gay black man, a ninny. The Foxites believe that they have prevailed. The tea baggers think that their frenzied message, whatever it was, is compelling, that is, has gained traction. The bankers think that they will be vindicated in the future, elevated by their tenacious grip on their publicly financed “McDuck Money Bins” and their complete refusal to participate in the resurrection of the economy or the country, now in a mortal, death grip peril. The AIG boys assume that tax payers won’t remember paying the cash for the outrage of their bonuses.

On the other hand, we can create this model in another frame entirely.

Obama entered his position of power with ambitions to reconfigure the economy (and a long list of other things, too) in a way that would redirect some of America’s prosperity back to those who have patiently provided the resources which support it. He knew, even before his inauguration, that those who had developed a criminal “nutrition” requirement of vast tax money in their pockets would react violently to retain their previous parasitic advantages.

They have. Just listen to them. Today, their lies could be baled like hay at harvest time.

Perhaps President Obama, not really stranded and bewildered on a side track after the neo-cons so arrogantly humiliated his efforts at reconciliation, is actually right on target. These practiced criminals have invested very heavily in their program of promoting themselves as honest “partners” in the rescue effort while disguising their more factual qualities as looters and criminals, that is, “predators,” hiding in wait to loot the life blood from the stimulus money.

Money we have paid and allocated to trying to restore the damage of their past looting.

Obama could have swung the massive hammer of electoral outrage in the first few minutes of his administration in a sweeping correction -- think of it as chasing the money lenders from the temple if that analogy is not too messianic. However, if he had taken this approach, the validity of his plan would have been supported only be his claims of its necessity. In the minds of Americans there would have remained the question: “Are these wounded victims of his really this criminal? Do they really place the prosperity and safety of our country in such a low position of importance compared to their continued wealth extraction?”

No. Obama has let these “bottom feeders,” perhaps emboldened by the likes of Carl Rove, Joe the Plumber, Sara Palin, AIG, Wall Street, Newt Gringrich and other “tea-bagger-wanna-be’s” -- well, you are familiar enough with the pathetic denizens of this long list, emerge into the light. He has allowed them to “show their true colors,” their traitorous lack of commitment to the national survival driven by a narcotic, decades long habit of successful greed.

If we were describing a “trial” of this past behavior of his now screaming critics, what we have seen so far would be the “discovery phase.” The character of these criminals had to be exposed, finally revealed to their victims, in this case the American tax paying electorate. Obama has presented the evidence we lacked before, and that evidence seems quite capable of penetrating the thrall of the controlled media’s past efforts to keep us hypnotized.

No one believes he has cock roaches until they reveal themselves in the light.

Remain calm and hopeful. All this had to happen first. The crimes had to be exposed and defined. Our national situation is, most likely, going to collapse to a truly desperate state as 2009 proceeds. We taxpayers and voters will be confronted with Obama’s compelling evidence as he ultimately makes his case for change. That will bring us to our trial’s “sentencing phase.”

To think that the foundering mess we see at this moment is a truly representative preview of that probably means that we are slowly loosing our collective hope. If any of us has decided to take that path, take it without me.

For the "media view" of the economic recovery plan,

http://cbs5.com/campaign08/obama.economic.recovery.2.904768.html

and a background look at some of the criticism of the recovery plan:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/white_house/jan-june09/obama_03-24.html
http://www.newsmax.com/us/GOP alternative budget/2009/03/27/196690.html
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/obama/2009/02/05/president-barack-obama-fires-back-at-critics-of-economic-stimulus-plan.html

and finally, our traditional "Wiki" explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009


MeanMesa visitors who are not well acquainted with the economic recovery plan can find a wide variety of information available in the Google entry for this topic. As Americans we are spending an immense amount of our tax money in this effort to resuscitate our "critically ill" country now that the Bush parasites have been sent back to Texas. Its our money, our President and our future. Who could remain uninterested at a time like this?

The Astonishing Innocence of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens

The Elephant in the Parlor

How to extend the toxin of the Bush Justice Department beyond the collapse of the autocracy. BD86

The question arose some time ago. The longest serving Republican in the Senate was facing a serious corruption problem. One might consider such a problem, at least in the Republican sense, to present itself simply. That is, for them a corruption problem might imply, in one sense, “not enough looting,” and in the other sense, “to much looting” to either hide or ignore under investigation. Republicans worthy of the name are expected to graft and connive their way to a certain, minimum amount of ill gotten gains then successfully conceal it under the guise of “tax cuts,” “no bid contracts” or other similar criminal mechanisms.

Poor old Ted Stevens, however, wound up with a house. There were no bills, payments or ownership clouds for distraction or protection. His down to earth, folksy style of corruption delivered itself in this particular case as a a massive, material house renovation, contributed by his “friend,” Bill Allen, and constructed by Mr. Allen’s oil field services firm, VECO. Aside from the obvious question of why anyone would want anything built by this band of Sanford and Sons style hillbillies, the precise compensation provided to the thoroughly “for sale” Senator Stevens for this “pay to play” arrangement has little to do with this MeanMesa posting.

This posting deals, instead, with the startling exoneration of the old Senator previously convicted of no fewer than seven corruption charges and headed for jail. By the way, when we say “previously,” we, of course, are speaking of his conviction in September, 2008. Those were the dark days when Autocrat Bush Jr. was “hunkering” in his bunker waiting for the Russian troops to enter his Berlin on the Potomac.

The old Senator was always full of insipid bluster. (Research his explosive threats of retaliation against his Senatorial buddies when they humiliated him by exposing his $250,000,000 “bridge to no where” as a new, all time low in earmark quality. The bridge didn’t, of course, actually go to “no where,” at all. It went to some inaccessible real estate with an interesting possibility of profit for its equally interesting, eager and enthusiastic owners.) Stevens had delivered a veritable Philippic as to his inevitable innocence along with his demand for a “speedy trial.” By "speedy trial" we have to assume a trial so "speedy" that legal certain errors could be understandably committed by hurried prosecutors.

At this point the Bushies found themselves facing a quandary. The old bird from Alaska, having been a very visible ranking member during their years of tax extraction, had to be saved the humiliation of a prison cell. Yet, unlike the more collegiate forms of loot accumulated by the more sophisticated Republicans during that period, old Senator Stevens had wound up with a house -- a real “elephant in the living room.” Worse, his bourbon soaked, hillbilly coconspirator, Mr. Bill Allen, had confessed to every category and item on the Grand Jury’s list of indictments in an effort to mitigate some of his own consequences.

Judicially, Governor Palin had already, by this time, clumsily transformed Alaska into a “wet dream” of neo con principles of “free market” opportunities embarrassingly beyond even her “drill, baby, drill” fiasco. Now, the meat handed state judicial monster had staggered out of even her gaseous control.

The Alaska State Senate, equally contaminated by the numbing Senate Presidency of Ted Steven’s son and joyfully lubricated with vast oil money was running for its own cover under the humiliating embarrassment of Palin’s recent Vice Presidential campaign. The sole Alaskan Congressman, the well aged and well paid Don Young, was scampering for his own cover from the now free range indictments.

Alaska has had its own legacy of notable Senators. Ernest Gruening stood as one of the first voices against the war in Vietnam. Mike Gravel followed that brave stand and delivered the VSW (Village Safe Water) legislation to Alaskan Natives. Both solid, albeit moderately zany, Alaskan Democrats, offered the promise of a mature, forward thinking presence for the state before the greediest Alaskans assigned that promise to this sink hole thirty years ago.

The Brain of the Bushites, Mr. Karl Rove, issued his marching orders to the Justice Department. The trial could not be swayed with the same cheap tricks as, for example, the kangaroo court which had placed the duly elected Governor of Alabama in an isolation cell in a Federal Prison while the election results were purloined and delivered to a mindless Republican monkey who had just lost. No, the “Stevens-matter” had to be handled differently.

The rescue of this -- possibly talkative -- old crook had to be effected after his conviction. Rove correctly estimated that the details of the crimes were too sleazy for even a Bush pardon, and the Stevens conviction had already delivered the Alaska Senate seat to a Democrat, Mark Begich. So, the full investment by the administration became targeted on keeping the old man quiet. A book of memoirs scratched out over the years in the penitentiary by Stevens’ ghost writers could capsize the final stinky remnants of the Bush legacy more severely than the whispers of an affair with Secretary of State Rice.

The Federal prosecutors were instructed to blow it. Coasting below the surface of the media’s infatuation with the election of Obama, the case could be quietly dismissed as a mistrial based on mistakes made by the prosecutors of the most fundamental rules of evidence and discovery. By the way, mistakes which a new law school graduate would never make. By the way, mistakes so suspicious as to be described as “perplexing” by both Krauthammer and Toutenberg on the weekly PBS yelling match. "Outrageous" and "egregious" were not ever words which caused Carl Rove to lay awake at night. "Perplexing" elicited no more than one of his furtive, mischievous smiles.

A legitmate, sincere and duly elected President and his administration may eventually return the Justice Department to its traditional, internationally envied state of honor and respect, but the new Attorney General, Eric Holden, finds his formidable sworn allegiance to Constitutional rule compels him to dismiss the case -- regardless of the compelling facts of guilt and conviction -- based on the sabotage engineered into it by Rove and the Bush cronies.

Yes, the screwtape twists and insults of the Bush autocracy live on beyond the grave. Happily, once cleansed and rectified by our return to democracy, the odor will not last forever.

The author of MeanMesa enjoys the credentials of having lived in Alaska for thirty years and having been intermittently employed by VECO as an engineer and designer. For a more complete version of the VECO story,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VECO_Corporation

for a more complete account of the Justice Department attack on Governor Siegelman,

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/21/60minutes/main3859830.shtml
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1627427,00.html

and for a more complete account of the Ted Stevens trial

http://alaskacorruption.blogspot.com/2009/02/prosecutors-in-ted-stevens-trial.html
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-stevens12-2009apr12,0,1940960.story
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6054711.ece