Drill Baby Drill

Thank you and h/t to Oliver Willis.

Truth is stranger than fiction. You couldn't make things like this up and remain believable. wtf?

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Take The Money And Run

C.R.E.A.M. (“Cash Rules Everything Around Me”)

The year was 1971. I was eight years old. And the things I was into most were model car kits (My pride and joys were my Don “The Snake” Prudhomme dragster and a souped-up police-issue Plymouth Duster called the “Cop Out”), Star Trek TOS re-runs, and...finishing up a thirty-three volume series of books, an illustrated history of the United States. I'd blazed through Plymouth Rock, Colonial America, The Civil War, Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson's hushed-up stroke and the folly of Herbert Hoover, and the crash that snatched chickens out of a lot of American pots—and then repo-ed the cheap tin cookware itself.

I was now into the volume on the coming of FDR and The New Deal. Oh, the Huey Long stuff in that book was cool, as was the chapters on John L. Lewis and the flowering of the union movement in America, but it was The New Deal that utterly fascinated me. Those initials for country-changing agencies embedded themselves in my head—the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), the WPA (Works Progress Administration), the good NRA (National Recovery Administration: “We Do Our Part”). And mainly, it was the way FDR just handled things when he stepped into office. It was...a desperate time in America. Institutions we as a nation had put simple faith in were failing before our eyes and taking hope away with them.

And in many cases, “hope” equalled money, as the FDIC as we know it was not in place at the time, and banks having gambled with depositors' money found themselves being overrun by fearful account holders when news would leak out about them not being as solvent as they could have been. I remember reading about those frightening bank runs—long before “It's A Wonderful Life” became a TV staple depicting that panic. Almost 4000 banks went belly-up, and I remember the photos of people mobbing bank doors, crushing one another in a panic to get at their money that in many cases—was no longer there.

We haven't seen anything like that since those fateful Depression days where FDR closed all of the banks for a business week to settle things down. Your money's guaranteed these days, right? What can go wrong?

Cue Jimmy Stewart frantically explaining what a bank does:

Many investors are on edge after federal regulators seized the California lender, IndyMac Bank, one of the nation's largest savings and loans, last week. With $32 billion in assets, IndyMac, a spinoff of the Countrywide Financial Corporation, was the biggest American lender to fail in more than two decades.

Now, as the Bush administration grapples with the crisis at the nation's two largest mortgage finance companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a rush of earnings reports in the coming days and weeks from some of the nation's largest financial companies are likely to provide more gloomy reminders about the sorry state of the industry.

The future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is vital to the banks, savings and loans and credit unions, which own $1.3 trillion of securities issued or guaranteed by the two mortgage companies. If the mortgage giants ever defaulted on those obligations, banks might be forced to raise billions of dollars in additional capital.

The large institutions set to report results this week, including Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, are in no danger of failing, but some are expected to report more multibillion-dollar write-offs.

But time may be running out for some small and midsize lenders. They vary in size and location, but their common woe is the collapsed real estate market and souring mortgage loans.

And just a little more of ol' Jimmy going “Wa-wa-wa-wa-a-a-a-a-l-l-l-l-l, it's like this...”

Moving quickly to bring an end to its troubles, Wachovia, the U.S. banking giant, reported an $8.9 billion loss Tuesday and sharply reduced its dividend for its first quarter under new leadership.

Wachovia also said it would eliminate about 10,750 jobs, including about 6,350 positions in its mortgage business.

Wachovia's second quarter included a $6.1 billion write-off tied to overpaying for several deals. The bank set aside another $5.6 billion to cover current and future losses. It also cut its quarterly dividend by 87 percent, to 5 cents a share, to save about $2.8 billion a year.

That last little Wachovia tidbit of trouble echoes deeply. As usual, in those 10,000 or so jobs that are just going to “disappaear” it's going to be 90% “the little guy”—people that have nothing to do with the goof-ups that have cement-shoe-ed the company. But then, another piece of news hit closer to home. The kind of thing that makes John Q. Public gulp a little harder and consider the ol' Posturepedic as a safer alternative to the good ol' column-fronted bank. I was sitting in the atrium of the Austin Convention center on Thursday morning during Netroots, surfing a bit for fresh news beyond our little hothouse of progressivism when I clicked over to CNN Money.com on a lark and discovered a breaking news bulletin.

Wachovia's St. Louis securities headquarters had just been raided (later PR spin would dial this back to “inspected” in many news reports) by state regulators from six states over their decidedly peculiar handling of the auction-rate securities markets. Basically, that market had pretty much imploded, and Wachovia was stonewalling investors wanting to find out what had happened to their money. Ten aluminum briefcase-toting agents rolled in with subpoenas blazing, grabbing info and preventing what info that could not be grabbed from being destroyed by desperate execs looking to cover their big, doughy asses.

I'm sitting next to Jesse reading about this and I exhaled a breathy “Oh, shit.”

“What? What's going on? Your computer okay?”, he asked, his head deep into what he was composing on his laptop.

“My computer's fine. It's Wachovia that's fucked. The feds raided their St. Louis headquarters a few minutes ago.”

About forty minutes later, we were at a panel hosted by David Neiwert, Pach and the fine folks at FireDogLake when the subject of money and consumer confidence came up in the discussion.

I piped up and said “Well, it doesn't help when you have the feds kicking in the doors of places like Wachovia earlier today.”

It got so quiet you could hear a pin drop. There were a few gasps and “wha-a-a-a-ats?” of disbelief, (Folks had obviously been in on a few panels in a row and had missed the breaking news.) so I reiterated the story. The Feds had raided the joint—America's fourth largest bank.

There was that sound of uncomfortable shifting in chairs, like people wanted to get up right then and there and rush to the nearest ATM just to make sure their ducats were still there. More than a few sighs issued forth, and there were heads shaking in disgust.

“Wachovia?” one woman questioned in some disbelief.

“Wa-chovia”, I responded. Hitting every syllable so it couldn't possibly be mistaken for the much less prestigious Uncle Ned's Bank and Plumbing Supply of Sucka Falls.

It was then, over my left shoulder that FDL's / Our Future's Isaiah Poole ruefully muttered to no one in particular, “That's the perfect name for 'em. Wac-hovia. 'Cause that's what they do—walk-over-ya”.

It got me to thinking again about the pictures of all those panicked Depression folk clawing at the bank doors for the money they trusted to what they would find to be utterly compromised institutions.

We're in that situation again.

Here.

Now.

In 2008. Some seventy-five years after that rank avarice and callous disregard for the futures of millions of Americans. People are living in mortal fear of their once-trusted banks flying by night like a Five-O spotting three-card-monte dealer. What with the helpful-to-but-a-few banking de-regulation championed by the greediest among us, and the tax-break hand-outs to the selfsame few, while neglecting the backbone of the American economy—it's teeming middle, the working class, it's no wonder the people we see getting their hopes and dreams wood-chippered to bits are who they are.

These bank failures is the last of the Four Horsemen of the Bush Millenium™ now riding in to salt the earth with his blight.

Under the dominating, and unfeeling GOP over the last decade we've seen:

The Military—our defense—broken in a senseless conflict as if they were little plastic “Army Men” stomped under the foot of a petulant child.

The Application of the Law—what allegedly separates us from military juntas and dictatorships—twisted beyond comprehension with the hyper-politicization of the Justice Department and the craven embrace of torture as a part of what we will do.

Our Personal Rights—the expectation of a simple thing like privacy—evaporate under the heat of a false fear stoked to white hotness by an administration that barely hides its laughing contempt for the people under a gossamer mask of “caring” and “security”.

And finally...OUR MONEY—the thing no one can do without—mis-managed, mis-handled, and mis-appropriated for years. HealthSouth. Tyco. Enron. That so-called “corporate” malfeasance bled into (or more likely, upon being discovered, served to eventually highlight) the supposedly less-risky institutions we have come to blindly trust since those dark Depression days...our banking system.

People feel this stuff. They may not sense a tapped phone...or feel the immediate result of justice sneaking cheating glances from behind her supposed blindfold of equality. They may never even grasp the national security nightmare of a shattered defense with a military they rarely get to see. But when the ATM screen reads “Better luck next time—thanks for playing!” instead of doling out their grocery / rent / gas money—that's a hit the American public feels like a salted knife to the gut. The moment you fuck with people's money—THEIR ACTUAL MONEY!—what puts the food in the kids mouths and keeps a roof over their heads, you are messing with the people's tenous hold on what remains of “The American Dream”. Sparking a crisis of confidence in the banking system is the kind of thing that leads to people fighting in the Goddamned streets.

This is George Bush's legacy, folks. The very last thing he was half-way crowing about after eight miserable years—his precious economy—now is as big and sad a joke as that now Cheney-shredded, land-fill buried “Mission Accomplished” banner.

Government-fostered pocket-picking. People don't forget that sort of thing easily. Like who aided it, and who pooh-poohed it.

“Whiners.”, I believe the unfortunate word was? Yes...“whiners...”



Just another word that means, “What the hell do you mean all of my hard-earned money is gone?”

I don't envy the next president at all. “Hope” is going to have to carry a lot of people a lonooooooooonnnng way...especially since the present administration seems to be dead-assed set...on stealing every single piece of “change” folks have left.

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“You Must Be, My Lucky (All-) Star...”

Soooooo Not The Tale Of “The Natural”...But It Does Involve A Shady Lady, Temptation, Faith, and a Hotel Room. Oh Wait...

What with the vicissitudes of the extended rollercoaster of a political season, I haven't had much opportunity to indulge much writing on one of my favorite things in the whole wide world—Baseball.

I fell in love with the game 37 years ago, on a July 13th afternoon. It was a Tuesday. I remember that because Tuesday was always a light work-day at my Dad's job and I knew I could spend that day in particular at his restaurant, running behind him like some annoying little Black “Mini-Me”. It was the afternoon of the mid-summer classic—Baseball's All-Star Game, and my semi-apathy towards the sport was instantly replaced by a sense of awe and wonder when the Oakland A's young superstar Reggie Jackson launched one of the hardest hit, most majestic home runs you've ever seen—off an offering by the Pirates' mercurial All-Star hurler Dock Ellis. Seeing Jackson's Superman-esque blast, as he set the new standard for what a slugger looked like—the boozy-looking, flabby free-swingers of the Ted Kluszewski mold would now become anachronisms—I was hooked. His A's in their gaudy green and gold togs would become my first favorite team—but I could never keep up with their exploits the way I wanted to, as the west coast scores even in the early 1970's would be delayed a day or so in the papers and televised sports reports.

So, I shifted my allegiance eastward, to the team of my father's since he saw their Negro League namesakes play at the same hallowed Bronx ballyard—The New York Yankees.

Yes, I became a Yankee fan when they were at their worst, and you could buy a walk-up ticket at the Stadium into the third inning and by the fifth, have the place so empty you could walk down to the field level and hand Duke Sims his Racing Form in the on-deck circle—no sweat . It was the CBS-owned / about-to-be-handed-off-to Steinbrenner early 1970's. (CBS fucked up EVERYTHING they gobbled up during that wave of 70's super-conglomeratization—Fender Guitars, anyone? Gabriel Toys?) And oh, what an embarrassment they were then. A collection of cast-offs, half-talents, wash-outs and a few gems they got lucky with thanks to the still-sane few in management who were still player-developing amidst all the collected hardball detritus.

I remember those horrible Yankee teams well. Manned by the dazzlingly dull Horace Clarke, and the wannabe slugger Duke Sims, and an aging, partied-the-hell-out Ron Swoboda.

And I remember the nadir of those Yankee years—1973, when crappy Yankee pitchers Fritz Petersen and Mike Kekich got all “Ice Storm-y” and swung harder at home than they ever did at the plate in the pre-Designated Hitter days. They swapped wives and families,'cause hey...it was the seventies, ma-a-a-a-a-a-n, and that's what you did, right?

Well...fucking, no, That's what a decided minority in the population played around at doing, but none so publicly and stupidly as these two Yankee fuck-ups. It ended badly of course, as Fritz's wife liked her switch, and Mike's couldn't get-down with the whole funky, bell-bottomed swap-er-oonie, and he was left ass-out when the “arrangement” ended. (Fritz wound up marrying Mike's wife—Um...oh snap?) But it was a dark day for fans of the team, as the ugly bedroom peccadilloes were splashed across the back pages of all the city's tabloids—the Daily News's in-house scold and grump Dick Young had a spittle-flecked day as he went into full-on Archie Bunker mode and used the incident to rail about everything that was wrong in the world at that awful, afro-ed, libertine moment in time. Being a Yankee fan, but thankfully a young one, I kind of pish-poshed the whole thing as silly, and kept on steppin', blindly supporting my pinstripes as the they stumbled around a couple more years as the league's dumping ground for drunks, skunks, and once-talented-but-now-washed-up bums.

I note all of this—right up to the Kekich/Petersen PR bed-shit for my beloved team (My God, if there was sports-talk radio or an ESPN around then....sheeee-iiittt!), because for me over the years as a Yankee fan, that was just about the depth of private bedroom ugly enveloping the team in a public sense. Flat-out dumb-assery played out by a couple of ridiculously naive man-boys in tight double-knits that embarrassed them mainly, and the team second—but no less nastily.

Well, helloooooooo 2008! Thirty-five years later, and sordid tales of “big sticks”, “bounding balls”, and...“yick!”...messy slides-in dominate the news again about...my team. Not quite wife-swapping. Just sloppy, public wife-dissing in favor of...what? Not the mysterious, murderous “Harriet Bird” from Bernard Malamud's “The Natural”, but a corny, ersatz digital era version of the same. With a lot more mileage, and a boatload less mystery about her. Not that I'd expect the mega-talented, but tragically head-cased Yankee star Alex Rodriguez to be savvy enough to pick up on that sort of thing.

'Cause this is about more than just “Physical Attraction” here.

“Borderline” behavior such as this, that is.

You see, for all his macho, there's a bit of the naif in him...which is what's gotten his ass in dutch.here. Yes, we know he's not “Like A Virgin” stumbling headlong into the arms of some “Beautiful Stranger” or something., but still...

Okay...fun's fun “Everybody”. Let's get “Into The Groove” here and look at this tabloid-y mess.

With “Madge” holding our hand or course...'cause we're all soaking in it now...and it ain't diswashing liquid, kids. Bleah.

Everything about an élite pro athlete's life — the nine-figure contract, the 20,000-sq.-ft. home, the beauteous gluteus maximus and, yes, sometimes even the 12-lawyer divorce — is a brawny spectacle. But the breakup of New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez and his wife Cynthia is surely one for the record books, with its allegations of a starry love pentagon and brainwashing via a rabbi. The relationship that appears to have helped unravel the six-year Rodriguez marriage involves no mere Vegas stripper or D-list country star. This couple is fighting about the only woman on earth who can top A-Rod in both net worth and push-ups — Madonna.

Cynthia Rodriguez filed for divorce Monday, with her lawyers claiming that "Alex has emotionally abandoned his wife and children" and that the marriage "is irretrievably broken because of the husband's extramarital affairs and marital misconduct." While Madonna's name isn't mentioned in the petition, Earle Lilly, Cynthia's divorce attorney, told TMZ, "Madonna was the last straw."

Lilly later clarified to PEOPLE magazine that he was not claiming sexual infidelity by the Material Girl and Major League boy, but rather "an affair of the heart." Dodd Romero, Rodriguez's former trainer and godfather to his children, told Good Morning America that Madonna has "brainwashed" the ballplayer with teachings of Kabbalah, the form of Jewish mysticism she practices. "Something has pulled him away from his strong family values and has caused him to search and look for something that really isn't out there," Romero said. (For pro athletes, chatty former trainers pose the same threat that chatty ex-nannies do to actors: they often see their bosses at their worst, and share it.)

Come on, man. Madonna?

Madonna?

I mean, Goddamn...that is sooooooooo 1998. Shit, it's damn near sooooooooo 1988.

Madonna?

Yes, somewhere in the great orange and blue box seats in the sky, I know Steve is laughing his ass off over this All-Star calibre of Yankee drama stupid. As well he should. Beyond his “F' the effing Yankees” mantra (and you should see how he and I used to go at it in our back-channel baseball e-mails—hooooo boy!), this is one of local baseball's most juicy little scandal-ismos to come down the pike in a a while. It isn't quite as kooky-fuck as the Kekich/Petersen “Freaky Friday” bit, but it ranks up there with some of the others. Like the recent shitty, 3:11 a.m. trash-canning of Mets manager (And New York's first Black MLB manager) Willie Randolph last month that re-exposed the long-known and creepy fissures in the team from Flushing, or the infamous Howie Spira spying-on-Dave-Winfield incident the got George Steinbrenner a well-deserved, forced time-out in the eighties.

(But of course, a “head” like me can go back to antics like the juvenile David Cone Mets bullpen “Onanism” bit, or the Yanks' Luis Polonia fucking up with an underage girl who lied to him about her actual “yout”. And of course, the one that freaked me out as a child of the Civil Rights era—Met great Cleon Jones getting busted en flagranté de-fucking-lecto by the cops in a “love” van down south with an jailbait White girl (very “Black Snake Moan”, dontchaknow...), a stash of drugs, and being summarily bounced from the team for said indiscretion. I always imagined the van's doors being flung open, and a cloud of reefer smoke pouring out along with the gutteral strains of The Chakachas' “Jungle Fever”)

What makes A-Rod's incident so head-shakingly dumb is how it only serves to bake hard into people's minds what a grasping, insecure goofball he is. Especially when you look fifty feet to his left and see his peer and evil twin in super-stardom, one Derek Sanderson Jeter playing shortstop.

If you spend any time out in New York City once the sun goes down, and maybe get to know a party person or two, you eventually come to know that Mr. Jeter is one of the town's greatest Lotharios since the days of a sober Joe Willie Namath, his panty hose and his infamous men's club “Bachelor's III”. Jeter has been linked over the years to a veritable “Who's Who” of bodacious babe-a-licious-ness , spanning the likes of Mariah Carey (whose ill-conceived attempt to publicly play off the relationship's still going on after it had ended led to the unfortunate coining of the phrase “Jetering”, the process by which one openly dispels an ended relationship's faked continuance at a public gathering), Jordana Brewster, Both voluptuous Jessicas—Alba and Biel, Scarlett Johanssen, Miss Universe Lara Dutta, Brazilian supermodel Adriana Lima and a favorite chocolate kiss of mine, actress Gabrielle Union, amongst a raft of others, less famous but off-the-chain “hawt” (as the kids say) nonetheless.

The most you've probably heard about these relationships is that they existed (save for the Carey end-game drama which she inanely prompted). You don't hear about wild canoodling, or stripper bars, slap-fights or other embarrassing peccadilloes involving him and the various women in his life. Why is that? It's because for all of his tom-catting about, he's remarkably discreet and un-messy in the way he conducts his life. They don't go to Page Six about him, and he doesn't give 'em cause to. When you're comfortable in your own skin and operate from a base of confidence, you tend to run your ship with an even keel. That's a manifestation of his whole personality, which flows through his whole “game”—on-field and off. I get the feeling that A-Rod cuts his eye those fifty feet leftward these days and probably hates/respects/is awed by him more than ever.

(SHOWN BELOW: DEREK JETER'S MADDENING ROGUE'S GALLERY OF CONTENTMENT—CLICK FOR LARGER)



You see...for all his mighty ability—and make no mistake, Alex Rodriguez is one of the seven or eight best all-around players in baseball today (including Tampa Bay's B.J. Upton, the Marlins' Henley Ramirez, Philly's Jimmy Rollins, the M's Ichiro, Detroit's Miguel Cabrera, and a few others), he is a flat-out mess of a person in his head.

In an ironic, but not unheard of twist, either the Gods, the Fates (or maybe even...Satan?) smiled down and gave Alex Emmanuel Rodriguez an otherworldly combination of positives to build a life from—stunning physical looks, off-the-charts marketable talent, a ridiculously affable personality and a nimble, cognitive mind. With all of that, he is still an emotional basket-case, unlike other like-gifted big-name personalities like George Clooney, Tom Brady and the aforementioned Jeter. Rodriguez' infield mate isn't a perfect person by any means, but what demons may haunt him do so well beyond our view. A-Rod's psyche-spawned spectres however, tear at him before our very eyes. For example, the man's got Daddy/abandonent issues to beat the band. His father Victor, a talented ballplayer in the Dominican Republic booked back to New York when Alex was nine years old and the marital split-up was kept from young Alex ostensibly to shield him from heartbreak, but he went on for years deluded, thinking that Daddy was merely “away” for a while. You can imagine how that kind of over-kid gloving can addle a person, no matter how talented. It's the sort of thing that when eventually discovered by a child, can easily trigger the obvious approval / validation junkie issues Rodriguez exhibits today. With all he has going for him, there's a Cecil Fielder-sized hole in his soul. Coming up with such fanfare with the Mariners in 1994, the young star dazzled everyone—until he came up for free agency six years later and signed a salary-structure busting contract with Texas that vociferously pissed off the mellow, and seemingly betrayed Pacific Northwesterners unexpectedly to no end. It also engendered ill will from baseball fans in many small-market cities as he became the poster child (rightly or wrongly) for excess in the game. Quite a blow for an “approval / validation junkie”. He's been a superficial statistical wunderkind and a grasping, mind-fucked enigma ever since.

He saw his best buddy (and talent lesser—let's be honest) Jeter rack up World Series ring, after ring, after ring, after ring, and while hated for his NY success, be acknowledged as the intangible-stuffed baseball magician of the age. Hated but respected, alá Michael Jordan, while A-Rod himself was just...well, fucking hated. So, he overplayed the affability card to get the love he craved from fans and the media and it never worked. He marketed himself on the outside package of perfection, and took a wife to buttress that palatable, “Joe-Perfect”, “I-can-sell-whatever” image—even though he was clearly not ready for that level of commitment or personal responsibility. He shtupped about like so many of his baseball brethren—on the road eighty-one plus days a season with chickies galore, all too willing to serve it up to even hundred-thousand-aire bench-riders—imagine the amount of ego-swelling (and everything else-swelling) ass a mega-star stud like him could bag?

But again...it was never about the sex, really. It was all about that gaping hole in his soul. Let's keep it real fellas...when we fuck around illicitly, it's due to a combination of three things really:

1.) Validation of self-worth—“I need to know they still want me!”

2.) Because we can—“It's nice to know I can still do it!”

3.) The thrill of the risk / danger involved—“Real men can get away with this—I wanna be a real man!”

Sex itself is easy to get. Gift of gab, a bit of personality, and lacking that—money to spare'll get you your share. Validation and a settling of internal turmoil are harder things to procure, and A-Rod's quest has clearly been dominated by those latter vesperous grails. But anyone who's watched Alex Rodriguez over the years with any kind of closeness could also see there was a deeper searching in this strangely yearning, superficial “man with it all”. A searching for the self-satisfied, seeming completeness constantly on display by the placid, settled, actual “man with it all” standing fifty feet to his left—one-hundred and sixty two times every year with that shit-eating semi-smirk permanently pasted on his mug. Goddammit to hell, how do I get me some...of...that?

Doesn't know how—the poor schmuck. So he fills his life beyond the ballpark with messy grab-assery. A cocktail waitress here, a stripper there. Nothin' classy. Just “empty calories” for a hungry soul.

Enter the relationship equivalent of Olestra, good ol' “Madge” Ciccone.

Madonna's made a career of collecting and discarding a string of men—a lot of them emotionally boys, actually—who've either had a certain something to offer to enhance her image or career. To further her music career (Jellybean Benitez), to secure Hollywood cred (Sean Penn and Warren Beatty), to get her the desired “exotic” baby (Carlos León), or to simply burnish her vaunted “I can get 'em while they're hot” status as a man-catcher par excellence (Jose Canséco and Dennis Rodman at their 90's supernova-fame hottest ). As the years have worn on and her desire has shifted towards a quest for stability and centered-ness, she settled down with director Guy Ritchie and had her second child Rocco, semi-scandalously adopted what some would call a “boutique” baby with little David from Malawi, and perhaps most interestingly, threw over her Catholicism for the Judaic mysticism of Kabbalah for added gravitas.

Mama got peace. Mama got soul. Mama's got it all, now. Family, success, her own odd version of that beatific Jeter-esque look of completeness, and she was willing to share that “secret” (“Lose insecurity now—Ask me how!”) with anyone willing to ask.

Except...unknown to the myopic, questing slugger, time was also passing Mama by on the front she'd staked out from her just ripened-fruit days as a “Material Girl” to her cougar-ish “Beautiful Stranger” December bloom. And it just so also happens that—oh yeah—it can't do anything but help to put a sort-of fading one-time sexpot back on the “Hoochie-Mama” front burner than to snag a hard-to-get dude of the minute. Or at least, appear to have.

Take A-Rod's searching stupid, mix with Madonna's crafty sense of timing and ability to exploit—garnish with the 21st century / 24-hour paparazzi age and you have a silly, exploding scandal that works in favor of a master of media manipulation (Madge) and tarnishes the clutchy dope. (Guess the hell who?)

It's a cocktail of sordidness served alongside a heaping plate of “What-the-fuck?” in Ms. Alex Rodriguez—his wife Cynthia. And Ms. Cynthia is not the typical “baseball wife” in that she is not defined by or is subservient to the relationship to her famous ballplaying husband. That's a thing that's expected from an MLB significant other, and I can speak from a level of intimacy on this—as I dated a woman who I would remain friends with for years after she married an MLB All-Star and one-time free agent superstar. The shit she was supposed to just “deal with” (and hubby damn sure pressed the envelope famously in NY—no further comment...) was unconscionable. Cynthia Rodriguez is not that kind of baseball wife. She's a daughter of a supremely prominent South Florida family, went to the best schools there and nabbed a Master's Degree in Psychology—she would also teach said subject in schools, and use her expertise to help the grasping A-Rod through a slew of issues in his life—actually brokering the desperately craved reunion between he and his dad, and mackadociously enough, stepping in to fix the negotiations the slugger's agent Scott Boras broke between he and the Yankees when they nearly let him walk in a fit of pique. She's one smart, tough and connected cookie...and it seems that A-Rod in his emotional “walkabout” of an adulthood ultimately craves that kind of woman.

Trouble is, he apparently craved more than one of 'em as evidenced by his open sniffing around the equally no-bullshit Madonna.

But Cynthia Rodriguez is no Goddamn piker and A-Rod picked the wrong woman to dick over publicly.

So of course the woman who helped negotiate your quarter-of-a-billion-dollar contract isn't gonna take your overactive, high school-jock libido bullshit lying down.

She's gonna jet her ass over to Paris and crash at Lenny Kravitz's villa, 'cause you see...she knows people too.

And yes, she's gonna melt that fucking AmEx card down to its base petroleum elements with a $100,000 spree—which is an ass-whippin' you'll just have to take.

Because for all of your bicep-flexing, longball-bashing might A-Rod? It's clear you're kind of weak in the ol' security / confidence arenas.

And I say this as the BIGGEST of Yankee fans ever. I can love the team, and cheer like a madman when you fire off a mortar like you did against Toronto off the foul pole up at Rogers Centre Saturday, but as a guy...a REAL GUY? You leave some shit to be desired on the personal tip. And you were messy, silly and stupid in mucking around with a stone, self-interested operator like Madonna. How in the hell did you expect that to turn out? Her “E” Inside Story's on once a month, knucklehead. And did you notice we're not talking about her husband Guy Ritchie in all of this? Wanna know why? Because when it comes to Madonna and a some dude, that's what it's always going to be about—Madonna...and some dude. You're in her orbit, man. Be you a flash-in-the-pan director husband, or a quarter billion-dollar compensated sports super-duper-star.

Get it?

Now...it's time for you to start growing the fuck up, and start handling your business tidy-like. You've probably scuttled the marriage irreparably, and guess what? You don't have Madonna, either. Lose-lose, brother. That quest for peace or completeness? Yeah, well...there are ways of going about getting to that—but the hope here is that you've learned that dipping your wick in allegedly mystical, magical punanny will not get your ass “clear”.

Understand?

Now, I fully grasp that this transgression will not stop the ladies from loving you. Mrs. LM and my softball team-mate “Y” will fight off all comers for the loins of the chiseled A-Rod. But you need to get a bit more experience in the maturity department in dealing with the ladies, Alex. Date as many as you want like your “buddy” Jeet, but please...at least try to be a touch more discreet, and here's a thought—maybe classier in terms of who you choose, and how you comport yourself. Okay? Great. Do it.

And lastly, for God's sake...will you once and for all stop trying to pull that Goddamned outside breaking ball? It ends up a weak grounder to short nine times out of ten!

There's more...

Baby Daddy Trauma—Vito Power-less

“Papa Was A Rolling Stone...Well, Well, Well, Well, We-e-e-e-e-e-ell...”

To live your life as a prominent New York Republican is to drive a rickety, shock absoirber-less jalopy full of nitroglycerin “Wages of Fear” style down a pitted, boulder-filled road. It's a hell of an achievement bouncing along for those years one manages to avoid destruction—until they come to the inevitable, explosive, “Oh-my-God-did-you-see-that?” ending.

It's a Dem city, and as far as the major population centers, a Dem state. But Republicans do get elected to offices of prominence here. They may flourish in the hothouses crafted to keep them alive if you will, but as is the case when anything particularly rare self-destructs, it is a wonder to behold, baby.

Some of you may be old enough yo remember the state's last, real GOP colossus, former governor Nelson Rockefeller. “Rocky” was of that Rockefeller stock. Wealthy, haughty, but with just a touch of the old school noblesse oblige the rich of his generation couldn't really shake. He was sort of Bloomberg-esque in his core policy stances as a Republican, meaning he was for the most part a moderate. But he could switch into hard-core “Law n' Order” Nixonian darky-hating in a fucking heartbeat, which he often did as he got older, enacting the infamously draconian “Rockefeller” drug laws that brutally over-punished a generation, and his creepy cheering on of the massacre at Attica Prison in 1971. Rockefeller would run three times, unsuccessfully for president, but would years later nab the next best prize—the office of vice president when Gerald Ford needed someone to fill his stumble-prone shoes after he unexpectedly ascended to the presidency in 1974 (Thanks, Tricky Dick.). Rocky would finish out the Veep term and semi-retire to private life with his extensive African art collection, his doting wife Happy Rockefeller...and his 26-year old assistant and mistress, one Megan Marshak.

Now, as a born, bred and buttered New Yorker who came of age in the so-called “disco” era, it was hard not to know how the ballers and shot-callers rolled. Famous folk were messily indiscreet with their attempts at being discreet, and Rocky was no exception. He liked 'em young, but he couldn't afford to mess about with the debutante daughters and granddaughters of the people of his rarefied set. That was unseemly. No, his type rolled up to a club like Studio 54 or Xenon and never got their asses out of the limo. When you don't sweat working, why sweat shaking your ass unnecessarily? An advance man would simply enter the place, scoop up a handful of clean-ish-looking lovelies and out the door they would go into a super-stretch hog from Dick Gidron Cadillac and cads like Rocky's sweaty, uncouth arms. He was a reknowned ass-hound with a libido unbound. He also didn't exactly take the best care of himself, living life out loud as an unrepentant voluptuary. He ate to excess. He drank to excess...and in the end, fucked to excess. Rocky keeled over from a massive heart attack in his 54th Street fuckpad office/apartment ass-naked and on top of a terrified Marshak, pinning her under his bacchanalian bulk. She called another young friend on the phone for help, the then fresh-faced journalist Ponchitta Pierce instead of an ambulance and Pierce upon arriving realized the gravity of the situation (quite literally—she had to pull the massive, dead-weighted Rocky off her friend) and called for medical help—too late. The garrulous Rockefeller scion was gone. And the embarrassment over the sordidness of his death only multiplied in town when the after-the-fact cover story—placing him at his office desk high atop his family's namesake building complex Rockefeller Center—got torpedoed by eyewitnesses and later reports from the responding EMTs.

A classic case of “Comin' while goin'”. Farewell, sweet horndog prince.

We move on to New Yorks' next GOP would-be royalty, one Rudolph W. Giuliani, whose meteoric rise to power and subsequent ignominious fall has been well chronicled here. But let's key in on the abortive attempt to resuscitate his moribund political career this past primary season, where his creepy, underhanded peccadilloes were unearthed anew, revealing heretofore untold tales of ass-grabbery and dirt-doing. Giuliani was touted as the “golden boy” early on this year in the GOP sweepstakes by the myopic pundit class who'd been tossing Rudy's arugula since September 11th—totally either forgetting or willfully ignoring the real ugliness of his local past.

It didn't take long, really. As predicted here, New York's press exhumed the corpse of Giuliani's lifeless political career here and ran “new” tests on it the way scientists do with ancient Egyptian mummies to discover new things about an old death. And in so doing, the world—but more importantly—GOP primary voters would hear anew about his callousness toward his second wife Donna Hanover, and new revelations about his diversion of and misuse of city monies and personnel to hide his Viagra™-fueled chickie-chasing. In no time flat, thanks to said intrepid investigative reporting and people finally starting to look at the previously reported stuff, he was done-er than he was after his first political death in 2000. Not only did the re-animation not take, but the freshly-turned sordidness seemed to bond to Rudy's very DNA like a virus he can't shake. It's with him forever now. Incurable. Always laying there ready to “outbreak” whenever he shows his face in a poliitical setting. Oh, did I mention the impending trial of his trusted “wingman” Bernard Kerik and how the exposure of his power-crazed hubris cast a bright light on the rapid, downward moral spiral of Giuliani's second mayoral term in NY? Didn't have to, did I.

And now, here in the summer of 2008 we have the latest New York Republican hot-house flower to wilt and then burn in the sunlight of the national stage, poor GOP Congressman Vito Fossella.

Fossella is, (and probably soon will be, was) the lone downstate Republican congressional representative from New York State. Why does that matter? “Downstate” New York and it's immediate “exurbs” while counting for about 10% of the state's land mass actually holds close to 65% of its population. It's where the bulk of the congressional power lies, and as the party demographics break down at a 5:1 Dem to GOP ratio there, any Republican who can get elected there is in essence a rare beast. A winged, golden-maned, diamond-shitting unicorn in terms of political rarity.

Fossella's district? The overwhelmingly White (80%—unheard of anyplace else in Downstate NY) and decidedly xenophobic tip of Southern Brooklyn and ALL of Staten Island—a borough that put forth secession plans as soon as the city's first and only Black mayor was elected. Needless to say, they dropped the whole secession idea once Rudy was elected, but hey—that's Fossella's base, people. “The Fighting 400,000” or so who hate progressives and anything remotely so with a white-hot passion. They voted Vito into the legacy GOP seat (previously held by Susan Molinari of the odious Molinari family that effectively rules the borough) and he's held it for a decade. Nowhere near a star on his own, nor much of an intellect or bill-writer, Fossella's been little more than a guaranteed rubber stamp for Beltway D.C. policies, ruling his little fiefdom not so much with an iron hand, but with a sure vote. As an NY GOP “star”, he's that dog at the circus that walks / hops gimpily on its hind legs—and is cheered for, not because he's doing it particularly well, but mainly because he's even doing it at all. A big, swollen whale in a two-gallon fish-tank Vito was.

And when wingnut bigwigs came to town, Vito was a man to see, as he sort of validated their presence in the otherwise largely Democratic city. In fact, this past April when Vice President Cheney parked his Star Destroyer near town, he made a special local appearance with Vito to raise funds for Fossella's now-dead campaign for another term.

A now-dead campaign because of this little story you may have heard about:

Rep. Vito J. Fossella (R-N.Y.) was arrested overnight in Alexandria and charged with driving while intoxicated, court records showed today.

Fossella is scheduled to appear in Alexandria General District Court on May 12 for an advisement hearing, the records said.

Which the details of, got hoarier...

The arrest capped a long and seemingly upbeat day. In the morning, he attended an address to a joint session of Congress by Ireland’s prime minister, Bertie Ahern, six days before Mr. Ahern’s resignation. Then he went to the White House for the ceremony for the Giants.

The details on where Mr. Fossella went after that are sketchy. The Daily News reported that the evening ended at a Washington pub and that Mr. Fossella and a friend were so drunk they had to be asked to leave.

And hoarier, as they leaked out like shit from an overstuffed diaper...

To get his very own gold star, the officers asked Vito to complete a very hard big-boy task: recite the alphabet, starting from D. “Mr. Fossella started: ‘D, E, F, H, G, H, I, J, L,’”. Ohhhh, so close! While the alphabet on Staten Island does have 2 H’s (see local dictionary, yes = “Huh” and no = “uh-uh”), he missed the K!

And then...oh, my...

When cops stopped Rep. Vito Fossella for drunken driving, the married congressman said he was rushing to see his sick daughter on nearby Grimm St. - the home of the mystery woman who later plucked him from jail. Fossella's spokeswoman has insisted the single mom, Air Force Col. Laura Fay, 45, was only a "good friend," but the Staten Island Republican implied to suburban D.C. cops that Fay's 3-year-old was his.

“The subject stated that he was driving down from Washington D.C., to Grimm St. because his daughter was sick and needed to go to the hospital,” a police report obtained by the Daily News reveals.

The report describes how Fossella, who has a wife and three children in New York, failed a sobriety test by reciting the alphabet wrong, swaying while standing on one leg and stumbling while trying to walk a straight line.

“When I looked at his lips, I noticed they were stained red,” the Alexandria, VA cop wrote. “He stated that he had about two or three glasses of wine...”

Cops said Fossella had a blood-alcohol level of 0.17, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08.

Seven hours after his arrest, Fossella was released to Fay, who lives 3 miles from thespot where cops stopped him for running a red light.

Susan Del Percio, a crisis management consultant hired after the arrest, refused to answer “yes” or "no" when asked if Fossella fathered Fay's daughter.

“This is a demeaning and highly inappropriate question,” she said yesterday. She gave the same answer when asked the question the previous day.

And you knew from the jump that it would end with this...

“I have had a relationship with Laura Fay, with whom I have a three-year-old daughter,“ Fossella, 43, said in a statement.

Fay, 45, is a retired Air Force intelligence officer who may have met Fossella when she served as a congressional liaison from the Pentagon.

“My personal failings and imperfections have caused enormous pain to the people I love and I am truly sorry.”

Cue The Temptations, ya'll:

“And Mama, some bad talk going around town saying that Papa had three outside children and another wife.

And that ain't right.”

Vito fought the scandal-caused, inevitable loss of his seat for about...oh, ten days or so once it got out that he'd been playing “Johnny Applesperm” up and down the eastern seaboard, but the die was cast. The GOP bosses in D.C. told “V”, 'See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya', and set out to find a replacement to run in Fossella's stead in November. Which was greeted not with the rumble of a multitude of footsteps of would-be candidates, but rather, the plaintive trill...

...of crickets.

Woefully few wanted the job it seemed, and that's a “tell” and a half about the state of things in a severely wounded Republican party. It was a mere 18 months ago when there was braggadocious talk among the Beltway set—and in wildly hyped books even—about “A Permanent Republican Majority”. (I swear, I don't know what's funnier—Hugh Hewitt's nutrageous pronouncements or the thought of him karaoke-ing Kelis' “Milkshake”) The 2006 congressional mid-terms began to show the folly of that ill-founded hubris when Democrats overcame Karl Rove's trusty diamond-encrusted abacus and whomped the wingnuts royally. And then, in the several congressional special elections since then, it has been loss after loss after loss. Throw in the poll trending since '06 where the GOP is across the board, apparently in for a further drubbing on Capitol Hill and in dire straits in the presidential race, and the writing appears not merely on the wall for the Grand Olde Party, but it is laser-etched into the inner eyelids of anyone who can read...

The Republican brand is right down there with Valu-Jet, The Yugo, and fast-food tomatoes right about now. Fossella was one of the last of Congress' northeastern Republicans, having seen most of the last ones picked off like fat, wooden carny ducks a year and a half ago, so you would think he'd at the very least be a bit careful with his shit. But he decided to blithely open and star in a crappy, road-tour of “Big Love: The Musical”, thinking he'd get away with it. Didn't go down that way, br'uh. But the fact that the party hierarchy had so much trouble finding a sucker-ass replacement to run in his place shouldn't be too big a surprise.

It takes time to run a campaign. And time is fucking money if you haven't forgotten, kids. When the internal polling party-wide comes up with orphanage fires and kitten-punting testing better among voters than the GOP, potential candidates are going to be piss-poor few and far between. Why bother?

Why bother, indeed?. I'm not the only one who's noticed this trend. Take a trip over to Kos' place and use the search function and watch the assembled carnage arise from your browser window. It's an avalanche of apathy, a dirge of despair, and an ode to overweening oh-shitty-ness.

NY's wingnuts finally found a sap to run for Fossella's seat, Todt Hill resident Frank Powers, but not without having several candidates they asked say 'Are you out of your fucking minds?' I got belly-button lint to pick, man!', and keep on steppin'. Thus with one fell swoop, or actually several rather unfortunate boudoir up-swoops and down-swoops, yet another Empire State Republican not only screwed up his political career and for extra measure, very possibly chucked a sure seat the party desperately needed to hold against an elephant-drowning sea-change on the way.

It's Vito power-less, and unfortunately for the Republicans—his party even moreso. And double-fuck the idea of McCain electoral coattails, folks. He doesn't even have a jacket on...and his party's much more in need of something along the lines of a dress with a fifty-foot train attached..

And I think we all know how ridiculous that would look...

There's more...

The Fall Of The House Of Bush

Even The Dour Poe Looks Happy Beside The Besieged Bush.

“And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate.
(Ah, let us mourn!–for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.”

“The Haunted Palace” poem from Edgar Allen Poe's “The Fall Of The House Of Usher”

Patience is a virtue. So too can one's being incredibly busy. Both of those factors figure into this story, as I'd actually begun to write this tale two weeks ago . The main “arc”? Merely the brutally obvious unraveling of the world around President George W. Bush like it was a stray thread-yanked whirlwind of revelation to even his staunchest defenders that his presidency was not the lovely burnt sienna toned painting they'd deluded themselves into believing it was,...but rather, the earthy, brown bed-shit of a two-term disaster.

The bullet points of the tale?

T'was to begin with the embarrassing, five-hour FBI raid on the home and Office of Special Counsel, Scott Bloch, whose “job” was to investigate federal whistle-blower complaints, and other deeply internal Federal probes of in-house wrong-doing. Issues like digging about for “Hatch Act” (of 1939) violations by one Karl Rove, who in his possible (and patently obvious) law-breaking was using federal monies and employees as a taxpayer financed, campaign workforce—patently illegal under the “Hatch Act”.

And then some...via TPM:

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents raided the Office of Special Counsel here, seizing computers and documents belonging to the agency chief Scott Bloch and staff.

More than a dozen FBI agents served grand jury subpoenas shortly after 10 a.m., shutting down the agency's computer network and searching its offices, as well as Mr. Bloch's home. Employees said the searches appeared focused on alleged obstruction of justice by Mr. Bloch during the course of an 2006 inquiry into his conduct in office.

----------------------------------------

Bloch's agency is a little known one that is charged with investigating whistleblower complaints, Hatch Act violations, and the like -- but who is himself being investigated for retaliating against whistleblowers and politiciang his office. The Office of Personnel Management's inspector general has been conducting that investigation since 2005. The feds are apparently investigating whether Bloch tried to obstruct that investigation by deleting his hard drive, among other things.

To give you an idea how fraught this investigation is with unique issues. Bloch is not only busily investigating the White House for political briefings Karl Rove and his aides made to various agencies, but he's also conducting an investigation of the politicization at the Department of Justice and issues related to the U.S. Attorney firings -- a probe that he complained was being blocked by the DoJ. Of course, he can't do much to block the DoJ investigation of him.

When Eliot Ness and his G-Men roll up into a Bush appointee's office, shut down the in-office network, knock out the e-mail system, and grab everybody's computer and the file server, then hit his house and grab his shitty Dell Inspiron with every piece of porn and Pure Prarie League music in it because they caught wind that he'd been clumsily calling “Geek Squad” guys to purge files from all of his and his staff's computers—that is a big-ass deal. This is the kind of stuff that was dealt with in the heady “We are the grown-ups!” years, in the dead of night, by shady people called in on the Red Cheney-Devilphone™ to bring the shredders and lead-lined safes to clean up a messy situation.

Those days are long gone, as months are short, scores left unsettled are coming a' cropper, and fewer and fewer seem to fear the hoarse, feeble quack of our crutch-wielding duck of a president.

Feds bustin' in the door and snatchin' ever'thang from a Bush appointee?

Could that have possibly gone down in 2003? '04? '05, '06, or even early '07?.

Yeah, I thought not.

The story's second bullet point was to be the odd, open-air bus-crushing of another Bush-picked toady-in-trouble, one Lurita Alexis Doan. You remember Doan, don't you? She was the Powerpoint-hypnotized head of the Governmant Services Administration busted for the aforementioned crime of using her office as a de-facto arm of the RNC as opposed to a free-standing government agency. When caught out there on her CLEAR violations of the “Hatch Act” she was reduced to a laughable, spluttering paranoid mess in front of Henry Waxman's congressional committee. She was a textbook case of Bush's “Heckuva Job” cronyism exposed at its worst. Unable to be defended. Rank in its stupidity. And of course...tolerated up until this month in spite of clear evidence of wrong-doing, even after being told to resign or face criminal charges. This is the kind of person Bush used to snigger at us all about as he backslapped them and told the world how Jonas Salk and MLK weren't fit to wipe these people's posteriors. No more.

It's the Bush administration's special approach to accountability: stand staunchly beside an administration official as the allegations pile up and his or her credibility dwindles to nothing, and then months later -- long after the administration could derive any credit for the deed, and it is widely assumed that they are content to let the official fester in office for the duration -- the official abruptly and inexplicably resigns. So it was with Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales. And yesterday General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan stepped down.

But Doan, who gained mucky prominence for her clueless cronyism, wants everybody to know that she's not stepping down voluntarily. She was fired. And not only was she fired, but she was fired because she refused to cave to political pressure. Or something.

“I would rather get fired for something I believe in, and a cause I was willing to fight for, rather than to believe in nothing worth being fired for.” That's what Doan told Government Executive Magazine in an email last night. It's far from clear precisely what this "something" she believes in is.

Under fear—and that's really all it was—of deeper, more embarrassing investigations as he fades into the post-power phase of his presidency, Bush canned Doan's ass like Aunt Luberta's syrupy peaches. What made the firing doubly damaging was its un-typically messy handling. Normally the members of Bush's “Losers Brigade” are eased out the door, borne aloft on a sedan chair with rose petals and florid lies strewn before the press eunuchs carrying them out. This was an ugly departure, missing only building security flanking her on the walk-out and a pat-down for filched Post-Its™ and boxes of Sharpies™ at the front door. Although, it wouldn't surprise me if there's a shitty Xerox of Doan's White House ID card photo with a hastily scrawled “Do Nott Let In Bildeng!” on it behind the security desk at 1600 Penn.

Those two recent incidents were my main bellwethers indicating the spreading cracks in the foundation of “The House Of Bush”. Then there was to be a window-rattling return to the newly smoldering potboiler of Karl Rove's legal troubles with the resurgent Don Siegelman case as handled by our own Hubris Sonic:

WASHINGTON -- The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday subpoenaed President Bush's former chief political adviser, Karl Rove, to testify about whether the White House improperly meddled with the Justice Department.

Accusations of politics influencing decisions at the department led to the resignation last year of Bush's attorney general, Alberto Gonzales.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Let the 45 day countdown begin. It was a mistake for Rove to leave the White House, he has little protection now and can get no help from the president's lawyers. They didn't release Siegelman because they thought he was guilty, it must have been really obvious to the appellate judge that he was railroaded.

Rove has since tried to hide behind plans for a legalistic stall, and even been forced to do his favorite thing in the whole wide world—outside of skulking about maternity wards for wriggling, downy-haired snacks—which is to go back and re-tell a story when his web of lies tightens about his scrotum.

While watching him flinch and squirm from those constricting canards pinching at the short n' curlies, other Bushian roof tiles and siding have begun peeling from the edifice at an alarming rate.

We saw the brutal volleys from the Obama camp, and most shockingly—the press—after Bush's noodle-armed serve of the “appeasement issue”, idiotically injecting himself into the presidential campaign. Obama's verbal nad-kick crossed Bush's eyes something fierce, and then doubled over Dubya's reluctant pal McCain with the deft tying of ol' McGollum™ to his previous statement regarding diplomacy, and to the electoral boat-anchor that is Bush. Worse still, it even prompted a few reporters to go punch up “the Wiki” where they found out about Grampa Bush's “Charles Foster Kane”-ish craven cuddling up to history's murderous little paper-hanger. Accounatbility? Ow! Owwww! Owwwwweeeeeee!

I dashed out of the house yesterday morning, watching only the local all-news station for the weather, so I missed much of the morning's TV, although while walking east on 23rd street to an appointment, the big screen TVs in the appliance store had an interesting and additional depressing Bush news flash that made me laugh, and probably made Bush chuck a Moussy bottle at the ol' Philco.

Apparently John McCain was so deathly afraid of being seen by the wider public with the two-term tragedy Bush at a downgraded fundraiser in his home state! (moved to a private home in Arizona making it a gold-plated “Tupperware” party instead of the planned big-room event), that the only extant visual evidence evidence of it was blurry “Bigfoot”-grade video of Bush and McCain sitting in the back of a limousine at the Phoenix Airport.

About 15 seconds worth, thank you very much.

How embarrassing is that? It's “What's Eating Gilbert Grape” embarrassing, that's what. With McCain in the neurotic Johnny Depp role and Bush in the part of the house-bound, “Oh-my-God-we-can-not-be-seen-with-her-she's-a-mess!” mom. Minus mom's good-hearted-ness and any reason for sympathy, that is.

And then I stopped at a diner for a light breakfast and almost Danny Thomas-ed my coffee over what I saw on the large TV screen near the door.

Little Squatty McMelon's incendiary new book “What Happened” was being discussed—in grave tones as the tome evidently gives Mr. Bush the grand, slow tour of the chassis-view of a Greyhound Americruiser.

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the public with a “political propaganda campaign” led by President Bush, aimed at “manipulating sources of public opinion” and “downplaying the major reason for going to war.” McClellan said Vice President Cheney was “the magic man” who steered policy while leaving no fingerprints.

--------------------------------------------

News of McClellan’s tell-all book seems to have soured White House officials’ impression of him. Current Press Secretary Dana Perino said McClellan was obviously “disgruntled”, while Fleischer said he was “heartbroken”, and Bartlett called the book “total crap”.

MSNBC’s Kevin Corke reported this afternoon that White House officials, on background, went even further, calling McClellan a “traitor” and likening him to Benedict Arnold. He said the White House was “upset,” substituting that word for a word he said he could not repeat on television:

CORKE: I have heard on background they are upset. I’m using the word upset because that’s not the word they used, and it is not the word I can say on TV. Another person said they are flat out angry about what transpired here. I heard the word “traitor” and “Benedict.” I think another person said to me, not far from here, it was like a shot to the gut when you are not looking. […]

O’DONNEL: Quickly Kevin, a White House staffer said to you on background—they used the word “traitor”?

CORKE: “Traitor.” Absolutely. And I raised my eyebrows, and he said, It is what it is.

That sound you heard wasn't thunder. It was the fucking chimney on the house falling down. “Boom!”

Not the roof just yet—but a major part of “Manor Bush” is severely structurally compromised.

McLellan's rough Sacajawea-dollar dropping on his mouth-breathing boss, wasn't totally out of the blue. We caught wind of this last November and dealt with it when juicy details about the book leaked out.

What—if I may paraphrase Mr. McLellan—the fuck happened?

I think it was this:

McLellan was put out in front, every day for months without so much as a fly-swatter to fend off questions about the veracity of his boss and peers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. His job was to beat the wolves back, and to change the tenor of the story around the leak and the subsequent lies about it.

I believe he knew he was lying for the boss, but that they were “good soldier” lies of necessity.

Unfortunately, the sordid mess he was tasked with smoothing over was impossible to finesse, and he became identified personally with the stumbling and bumbling in the cover-up. He was clearly frustrated with this particular project, and on several occasions pretty much threw his hands into the air in exasperation and resignation over what was a hopeless situation for him. He of course, left before the Libby trial and its negative verdict, but the damage had already been done. His inability to spin bug-eaten straw into 14-karat gold was held against him, I think. His being unable to stand and lie with the cool authority of Tony Snow—and thus take some heat off the White House—made some in the White House not like him. “How dare he not effortlessly play the 'true believer' role as we need him to!”

“Fuck him. He's dead to us.”

Note that McLellan got no hook-up at FOX, or at the Journal, or any other bastions of walk-in wingnut welfare.

And even before that, but it didn't take a genius to see it coming. Just a casual student of political history and human-fucking-nature:

(LM) I too, have come to if not a belief in "cyclical" patterns, a belief at least in "the law of averages". So much skullduggery -- and yes, patently evil acts have been perpetrated by this administration, particularly in the name of this war and all of the wrangling of people and facts involved in it that THEY'VE GOTTEN AWAY WITH, that the law of averages just seems to be coming into play now. They're the lean whip of a guy who had the fast metabolism seemingly forever, snarfing down burgers by the bagful -- shakes by the gallon, and now thirty-plus years old, BOOM!, the jello-shaking gut appears, he can't get up the steps anymore, and his chest is always hurting him now. Bad news is on the horizon for this "fella".

-------------------------------------------------------------

3.) A major whistleblower who produces documents detailing Bush admin misdeeds. Call me an optimist, but there's always somebody who just...breaks under conscience's weight.

There is always somebody who gives it up. Always. If not necessarily for conscience, at the very least to cover one's ass. McLellan was pooh-poohed as hyping the book based on a juicy editor's pull-quote or two at the time. Now? Not so much. He's got people running around the West Wing with their faces a rich “Buchanan Purple” in rage. Got 'em tossin' around words like “Traitor!”, “Benedict!”, and “Shot in the gut!”. It severely damages Bush's desperate legacy rebuild as he staggers drunkenly into the political sunset—brass-knuckle-clad cock-punching the reasoning for his horrific war from the deep, deep inside, and it also pimp-slaps John McCain's campaign dead in the grille as he's running on the prosecution of this heinous, misbegotten conflict. It ties McCain to Bush as surely as if he were Slim Pickens' Major Kong lock-straddling that big, dumb bomb all the fucking way down to the white-hot heart of a doomsday mushroom cloud.

This is NOT the way Bush wanted this thing to end. He was hoping for a “skate”. He wanted to ride out on a sea of platitudes, shaded by an election involving personalities that would distract from him. Steve back in the day always spoke of how he expected Bush to go out spittin' and shittin' with teeth a' grittin' as the hounds tore at his ass. I never believed that. Now, I'm not so sure. I think the skatin' away ain't gonna happen. And while I don't think there'll be an episode of “Cops” featuring a sweaty, tank-topped Bush being dragged off to the hoosegow, he will almost certainly not leave 1600 Pennsylvania intact. There will be bruises and scars.

Picture the belligerent drunk stumbling out of the bar at closing time.

He's on his way out at least. Loud and stupid, yes. But thank God that son-of-a-bitch is almost out the Goddamned door.

Then you catch a whiff of something awful, and realize he's shit in a booth. Not the bathroom—but a booth in the bar proper. Some heinous shit—pardon the pun. So instead of letting him just walk out the door on his own, the bouncer kicks him dead in the middle of his back as he staggers out for good measure. “Boom!”

McLellan's book and its subsequent firestorm is a bouncer's swift Size 13 in the back. A vicious move by a one-time friend. A one-time right hand man. And a sure sign added onto the rest of the exiting drink-tosses, face-spits, and leg-out trips that the end won't be pretty. He'll leave with his popularity at Nixonian levels. Nix-fucking-onian. His original posse, gone—save for Dick, and who the hell knows where his ass is these days. I'll bet there's a layer of dust on the swivel chair in his White House office. It leaves only a lonely “Baron” in a tumbledown manor. With parapets leaning and stones pulled free—letting in a chill wind. Echoes in an empty house. “The centre cannot hold, and things fall apart”.

The Baron sits bolt upright—there's a dagger in his back. Who would do such a thing?

There are numerous “Poe”-isms from his works that'd cap that off. Stuff from “The Raven”, or “The Premature Burial” come to mind. I like to close things like this out with musical codas. The obvious musical punchline would be The O'Jays “Backstabbers”. But I think another tune from the “City Of Brotherly Love” seems more apt...

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I Believe The Term Is, “Sweat Like A Pig”?

“Hello Karl-O...”

I'm no behavioral scientist, but after we dealt with the tale of Karl Rove's uh...“people's” seeming over-reaction to “60 Minutes' airing of an interview with Don Siegelman—a.k.a. someone who is rapidly earning the moniker of “The Wrong Man To Have Fucked With”, it would appear that our favorite porcine protagonist appears to be getting a bit hotter under his wattle-spilled collar.

Via Crooks and Liars and Dan Abrams' “Verdict”:

So what happens when a journalist actually does his/her job and exposes corruption at the highest levels of our government? They get complaint letters from the criminals they exposed. Abrams detailed tonight that he received a 5-page letter from Rove complaining about the great reporting he’s been doing on the political prosecution of Don Siegelman.

“Today the House Judiciary Committee asked Rove to testify under oath about the case. But just last week, we asked Rove‘s attorney, Robert Luskin, in an E-mail whether Rove would testify if subpoenaed by congress. His attorney said, quote, 'Sure. Although it seems to me that the question is somewhat offensive. It assumes he has something to hide even though Gov. Siegelman‘s uncorroborated assertions aside, there is literally no credible evidence whatsoever to substantiate his charges.'

Now under pressure from congress, Luskin has completely backtracked, telling roll call, quote, 'Whether, when and about what a former White House official will testify is not for me or my client to decide but is part of an ongoing negotiation between the White House and congress over executive privilege issues.'

Since Rove has said he had no conversations with the White House about it, what is the executive privilege here? Rove also sent me an angry five-page letter yesterday suggesting all sorts of questions he thinks I could have and should have asked various guests in the program including the former governor himself.

But he only suggested questions, no answers. We‘ll probably talk more about that letter later and I‘ll be responding to Mr. Rove.

Mr. Rove, this is your opportunity to answer under oath many of the questions you suggest I should have asked. Your attorney had said in no uncertain terms you would testify. We have the E-mail. And since you seemed determine to get to the truth, I would think you would embrace this opportunity to testify to congress.

We are not going to let this story die. A jury found Don Siegelman guilty. But if his prosecution was driven by partisans after him because he was a Democrat, in this case needs to be revisited, and an appellate court has ruled it will be.

Counsel Robert Luskin's letter to Abrams on behalf of Rove—a five-page jobbie(!)—absolutely reeks of the same panicky over-reaction shown in the nutty string pulling that got Siegelman's damning “60 Minutes” interview blanked in half of Alabama. Seems pretty bent out of shape over things Abrams didn't actually say in his report. Oopsie! For all the bluster about the cool and calm and confidence of Rove, one cannot help but notice a strange hypersensitivity on this particular issue. There's an over-compensation at play here and a sloppy one at that. Blackouts? Five-page letters to a program that half the “Countdown” audience tunes out of?? Hmmmm...

Why, if I didn't know better, I'd be tempted to say that in Rove's supposed “post”-political career (Yes, I put “post” in scare-quotes. I'd take note of the decidedly Rovian ad-pushes in the still crimson-necktied North Carolina and other potential swing states. It's almost as if his team is trying to get their shots in now—peculiarly early—for some reason. Maybe someone's worried that there may be more pressing fish to fry come general-election crunch-time), hastened by an oddly-timed resignation and a lame-duck administration that inspires outright derision and not a worry of retribution, there may be actual concern about the freshly emboldened people out gunning for him.

You see...when you “ratfuck” enough people for a long enough time, the odds are that at some point, the law of averages will out, and you yourself may feel the not-so-gentle-probings of rodentis phallicus. Siegelman's down for the “slam-bam” and has no interest in lube or sweet talk. It would appear that others aren't terribly concerned with the mess that is sloppy seconds either. Via Newsweek:

The trial of Chicago developer and political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko has been closely watched for any mention of the defendant's onetime friend, Barack Obama. But last week, prosecutors threw a curveball, telling the judge that one of their witnesses is prepared to raise the name of another prominent Washington hand: Karl Rive. Former Illinois state official Ali Ata is expected to testify about a conversation he had with Rezko in which the developer alleged Rove was "working with" a top Illinois Republican to remove the Chicago U.S. attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald.

The allegation, which Rove denies, quickly reverberated in Washington. Democrats in Congress now want to question Ata. They believe he can help buttress their theory that Rove played a key role in discussions that led to the firings of U.S. attorneys at the Justice Department in 2006. The House Judiciary Committee "intends to investigate the facts and circumstances alleged in this testimony," panel chairman Rep. John Conyers of Michigan said in a statement to NEWSWEEK.

Investigators are intrigued by the timing of the alleged conversation about Fitzgerald. According to the Rezko prosecutors, it took place in November 2004—weeks after Fitzgerald had subpoenaed Rove to testify for the third time in another matter he was aggressively investigating, the Valerie Plame CIA leak case. A source familiar with Ata's testimony (who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters) said that Ata was meeting regularly with Rezko that fall. The two men shared a concern about Fitzgerald's ongoing probe of Illinois public officials. In one of those conversations, the developer allegedly told Ata that Bob Kjellander, a prominent GOP state lobbyist, was talking to Rove about getting rid of Fitzgerald. The reason: to "get a new U.S. attorney" who would not pursue the Illinois corruption probe, the source said. Ata, who has pleaded guilty to corruption-related charges and is now cooperating with the Feds, has no evidence that the conversation took place other than what Rezko allegedly told him, the source says.

Intrigung...to say the least. But Rove according to the article denies the allegation whole-heartedly. Until that is, his all-over-the-place ass-coverer lawyer Luskin decided that statement should be...well, qualified just a bit. The categorical denial shifted to that old standby of soap-opera amnesia victims and pressured White House hacks “I don't recall” when it came down to GOP bigwig Kjellander's pressing him on Fitzgerald's removal.

And then, Luskin tried to hop into the DeLorean yet again, to go back in time and “fix” things...

I (Paul Kiel of TPM—ed. note) spoke to Luskin just now, and he said that his statement ought to be qualified a bit: his statement on Kgellander stands as is, he said, but during the independent counsel investigation, he said, Rove was "frequently" approached about canning Fitzgerald: "a number of people approached Karl and suggested that Fitzgerald be removed because of the alleged politicization of the investigation, but he never took any follow-up steps except to say that I can't talk about that. He didn't want to do anything seen as compromising Fitzgerald's independence." Those approaches, Luskin said, came during fundraisers or other political events "in an unsolicited way.... Karl simply never responded and did not take any action."

That is an awful lot of frantic ass-covering isn't it? Like a butt-nekkid Charles Barkley trying to stitch a pair of bermudas from a single square of Charmin. It's interesting to note that this was supposed to be Rove's freeing “cool-out” time where he could lay back without having to deal with the day-to-days of shtupping two other government branches in the pooper and instead freelance as an as-needed, Ratfucker Emeritus—doing the neccessary odd bit of craven evil to minimize Democratic gains this election cycle and to steal votes at the presidential-level wherever possible. Having to deal with pesky, subpoena-level shit like this was not part of the game plan. And it resurrects all sorts of ugliness, like the U/S. Attorneys scandal, and the specter of GOP criminality as we enter the stretch run of election season.

It's a perfect storm of distraction for the GOP's one-time ace (remember “The Math?”) message master and vote rainmaker. And from the looks of his clunky and ham-fisted responses to these things, they may wind up as more than just “distractions”. Yes, Luskin will do his lawyerly best to stall, dodge and clog up the works to try and keep Rove's incendiary hands off any Bibles between now and January 20th 2009, but I think people tend to get a liitle bolder when they feel a bully can't hurt 'em any more.

I think you'll hear Rove's name come up in a few more stories in ways that'll put him even more on the defensive as the months trundle on. Whether there'll be enough dimes dropped to maka a dollar remains to be seen. But a simple law of science is that oil and water do not mix—and a once-greasy,impossible to catch pig is now starting to sweat a little. Sweat's mostly water last time I checked.

Catch a piggie by the toe...if he hollers, don't let him go...

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Missing: Lobbyist Vicki Iseman

69 Days

since Vicki Iseman went missing. Where is she, what does she have to say about her relationship with Johnny Free-Ride McCain? Can you imagine if the press were not able to interview AmericaHater© Jeremiah Wright? or if they were not able to find Monica back in the day? Where is Vicki? Free Mumia Vicki!

h/t to Bollox Ref

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Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman (D) Released On Appeal

Lookin' A Little Moist There As We Play Out The Clock, Karl?

It hit like a thing falling out of the sky late yesterday. Potentially devastating in a “Donnie Darko”-sh way and just as freaky and unexpected.

For those with a stake in it—those whose law-flouting acts precipitated it, it's a late-in-the-game “Hail Mary” from the opponent unexpectedly connecting near the goal line.

Those little “plip” and “flutter” sounds you hear are sweat beads a' running and sphincters a' puckering.

Sweet music indeed to the ears of those on the side of right.

Ex-Governor of Alabama Is Ordered Released

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Donald Siegelman, former governor of Alabama, was ordered released from prison on Thursday by a federal appeals court, pending his appeal of a bribery conviction that Democrats say resulted from a politically driven prosecution.

In its order, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, said Mr. Siegelman had raised “substantial questions” in his appeal of the case and could be released on bond from the federal prison in Oakdale, La., where he has served nine months of a seven-year sentence. The order did not say what those questions were, but his lawyers have argued for months that the bribery charge on which he was mainly convicted revolved around a transaction that differed little, if at all, from a standard political contribution.

Mr. Siegelman’s lawyers maintained that — as is standard in many white-collar crime cases — the veteran Democratic politician never should have been imprisoned in the first place while he appealed his conviction.

“He should not have been manacled and taken off in the night,” said his lawyer, G. Robert Blakey, also a professor at the University of Notre Dame, citing the ex-governor’s immediate imprisonment after his conviction, a point of contention for his supporters.

The chief prosecutor in the case, Louis Franklin, told The Associated Press that he was “very disappointed” by the order but hoped to eventually prevail.

Mr. Siegelman’s case has been cited by Democrats here and in Washington as Exhibit A in their contention that politics has influenced decisions by the Justice Department, which prosecuted the former governor. In addition, Mr. Siegelman’s conviction in June 2006 here sharply polarized the political climate in this state, and suggestions by his supporters and others that the former Bush White House political director, Karl Rove, may have been involved have only increased the tensions.

Republicans have angrily denied the accusations of politics, but Mr. Siegelman has picked up some outside support for his claims of political prosecution. The House Judiciary Committee has held hearings on his case, and 44 former state attorneys general, Democrats and some Republicans, signed a petition last summer urging Congress to look into the conviction.

The court’s order came on the same day that the Judiciary Committee made a request to the Justice Department that the former governor be freed temporarily to travel to Washington next month to testify about his assertions that he was prosecuted for political reasons. A committee spokeswoman cited difficulties in getting information from the department as a reason for wanting Mr. Siegelman’s testimony.

Why does all of this matter? Let's go back, as the Incredible Jimmy Castor used to say—“Way back...to the days of the trogolodytes.” courtesy of the muckrakers over at Josh Marshall's posh, investigative digs.

A lifelong Republican attorney from Alabama, Dana Jill Simpson, has come forward and sworn out an affadavit claiming that in 2002 a close associate of Karl Rove claimed that Rove had told him that he'd gotten the Department of Justice to investigate then-Alabama Governor Don Siegelman (D) and that he was sure the investigation would eventually take Siegelman out of politics. Is the claim true? Was Rove successfully using the DOJ to pursue politics by other means as far back as 2002?

The 'denials' from the other parties on the conference call have either been feeble, non-responsive or non-existent. And the charge is serious enough that you would certainly expect that if the claim could be roundly denied it would be roundly denied.

Then there's the White House and the Department of Justice.

Had the last five months not happened, perhaps there'd be no reason for either to deny the charges. But we already have a rather detailed predicate -- abundant evidence of inappropriate contacts between the White House political office and Main Justice.

A few journalists -- included a TPM reporter -- have put this question to the DOJ and the White House. Did Rove have any contacts with the DOJ about investigating Siegelman and did he tell William Canary that Siegelman would be "take[n] care of"?

But the White House refuses to answer the question. As does the Department of Justice.

For those who aren't familiar with the case, in a nutshell, during the 2000 campaign season when Siegelman, a popular statewide Dem refused to play the Southern Dixiecrat role and back the word-mugging Texas Governor and would-be President-elect during the endorsement and post-November hanging-chad phase—and vociferously came out against Bush, he made an enemy of the administration and its heavily-wattled kneecapper Karl Rove. So, using the Justice Department as a political blackjack early on, they went after Siegelman in a shady bribery prosecution that many of the main witnesses have since recanted testimony for, (as well as the exposé that a slew of Republicans were also implicated in the “crime” but miraculously were never prosecuted for it). Siegelman was quickly tried and jailed pending appeal as the “My Cousin Vinnie-fication” of the Southern courts held sway.

But Siegelman wouldn't just make do with his bread and water, and his supporters wouldn't just shut up.

They fought back—in the actual courtroom and the virtual “court of public opinion” of the media. They (his diligent daughter and his lawyers) would keep shining a light on the ugliness of what went down, and in so doing would continually “scatter the roaches” involved—to the point where when CBS' “60 Minutes” devoted a segment to the injustices of the trial last month, said segment was “accidentally” blacked out of much of northern Alabama due to what was first reported as a network “glitch”, then changed to an affiliate “glitch”, but is widely believed to have actually been a heavy-handed bit of ass-covering to blunt the story's impact on concerned Alabamians.

Needless to say, it didn't work, and the pressure continued to mount to where this stunning reversal occurred yesterday evening. It opens the door for Siegelman and his “team” to go to Washington and participate in the one thing the Bush administration hates with a passion—no, not respecting Brown people, but rather, embarrassing congressional hearings that implicate them in wrong-doing. Henry Waxman's already got a seat warm for Siegelman, so we can expect some fun and fireworks on Capitol Hill.

But the telling thing here is the over-the-top attempts to drown this blowbacking furor in the bathtub. You don't black out half a state's TV signal during a damning investigative report unless you're worried about how it's going to play and who's going to be implicated. This isn't about the local “Boss Hoggs” on the hook for their usual shenanigans. That kind of flexing comes from the bespectacled “King Wild Boar” himself, Karl Rove. The e-mail deletin', testimony-changin', shiesty son-of-a-bitch has his M.O all over that move, but in spite of it—Siegelman is out, and free to speak and more importantly, (and worst of all for the Bush admin) fight back directly.

Strange things happen in the final months of a lame duck administration. Some people don't push back as hard, as they're gearing up to bounce and do their own thang, whole others flip the script and use the “you can't hurt me” timing to allow scores to be settled. Ol' Karl isn't in the government any more per sé, but he's still quite vulnerable here for what appear to be obvious prior misdeeds against Siegelman, and as much as he may want them to , Mike Mukasey and his people may not be able to maintain their “prevent” defense for him until time runs out.

What's the “prevent”?

“This coverage is generally used as a “prevent defense” to be used near the end of a game or half, meaning that the defense sacrifices the run and short pass to avoid giving up the big play with the confidence that the clock will soon expire.”

That has been the Rovian gambit all along—“Do the dirt, get the lead, and then stall until the clock / administration is over. Don't give up the big play”.

Siegelman's abrupt and according to the appellate court—much justified release is a “Hail Mary” into the “Red Zone” that hits, close to the goal line—and if you think it isn't, remember the “unsportsmanlike conduct penalty” Rove's team took with the northern Alabama blackout of “60 Minutes” (An FCC investigation?). That's a desperation move.

So take a deep breath. Take in the aromas. The bite of spring grass. The tang of freshly-popped fear-sweat, and the heavy, earthen funk of worry-shit.

It's not quite the smell of victory just yet, but we're sixty yards closer to it than we were 48 hours ago. And as shocking as it is to us, imagine how unsettling it must be to the bastard(s) counting every heart-stopping second off their “get over” clock. Probably seems like eternity after yesterday.

Tick...tick...tick...

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