Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Forget Your Troubles, Come on, Get Happy
Headline from the Washington Times' Insight Magazine: "Impeachment hearings: White House prepares for worst." That's the Washington Times, folks--the house organ of the Bush fluffers--so you can assume that it represents something close to the official view of Republican insiders, which is that hearings into the illegal wiretap scandal are a serious threat to the continuation in office of He Who Shall Not Be Named.
The article is behind a subscribers-only wall, but Steve Gilliard has it, and makes a good point about possible impeachment hearings, one you might even characterize as happy: All it would take to drive HWSNBN from office would be the prospect of hearings, which he wouldn't stick around for. "Bush could NEVER take the brutal questioning which would start with wiretaps and end with Iraq and Niger." He'd resign first. Cheney, too. So we'd end up with President Rice, which would be bad, but I'd take my chances for a while.
There are lots of reasons why hearings won't happen, starting with the spinelessness of Dems in Congress and the unfortunate tendency of Repugs to stand by their man when they should join in on the nut-cutting. But on this frigid January day, let the simple facts that hearings might happen, and that they might happen as soon as this spring, and that Repugs are scared shitless over them, wash over you like warm waves on a tropical beach.
Oh Canada: I don't think there's much reason to get too worried about the Conservatives winning the election in Canada yesterday. For one thing, they didn't get a majority, so they'll have to form a coalition with parties that don't share their ideology. For another, party leader Stephen Harper spent the last several months moderating his positions to look more like a centrist, but now that he's in office--if he's like an American conservative--the mask will come off, and he'll be revealed to hold positions far out of step with Canadian public opinion. Up there, the Conservative Party is an uncomfortable coalition of various interests--kind of like the Democrats down here--and just like the Democrats down here, it's hard to see them enforcing the sort of ideological discipline American conservatives have used to keep their varying interests marching in lockstep. And that means that the Harper government's lifespan probably won't be much different than its conservative predecessors, led by Joe Clark and Kim Campbell. Neither of them could keep the PM gig for more than a few months.
Headline from the Washington Times' Insight Magazine: "Impeachment hearings: White House prepares for worst." That's the Washington Times, folks--the house organ of the Bush fluffers--so you can assume that it represents something close to the official view of Republican insiders, which is that hearings into the illegal wiretap scandal are a serious threat to the continuation in office of He Who Shall Not Be Named.
The article is behind a subscribers-only wall, but Steve Gilliard has it, and makes a good point about possible impeachment hearings, one you might even characterize as happy: All it would take to drive HWSNBN from office would be the prospect of hearings, which he wouldn't stick around for. "Bush could NEVER take the brutal questioning which would start with wiretaps and end with Iraq and Niger." He'd resign first. Cheney, too. So we'd end up with President Rice, which would be bad, but I'd take my chances for a while.
There are lots of reasons why hearings won't happen, starting with the spinelessness of Dems in Congress and the unfortunate tendency of Repugs to stand by their man when they should join in on the nut-cutting. But on this frigid January day, let the simple facts that hearings might happen, and that they might happen as soon as this spring, and that Repugs are scared shitless over them, wash over you like warm waves on a tropical beach.
Oh Canada: I don't think there's much reason to get too worried about the Conservatives winning the election in Canada yesterday. For one thing, they didn't get a majority, so they'll have to form a coalition with parties that don't share their ideology. For another, party leader Stephen Harper spent the last several months moderating his positions to look more like a centrist, but now that he's in office--if he's like an American conservative--the mask will come off, and he'll be revealed to hold positions far out of step with Canadian public opinion. Up there, the Conservative Party is an uncomfortable coalition of various interests--kind of like the Democrats down here--and just like the Democrats down here, it's hard to see them enforcing the sort of ideological discipline American conservatives have used to keep their varying interests marching in lockstep. And that means that the Harper government's lifespan probably won't be much different than its conservative predecessors, led by Joe Clark and Kim Campbell. Neither of them could keep the PM gig for more than a few months.
