← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 19769 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2005-08-22
2005-08-22 15:53 | User Profile
[url]http://www.buffalobeast.com/81/palmiero.htm[/url]
[B]Legislative Juice[/B] [I]Palmiero Tried for War Crimes[/I] By Matt Taibbi
From the gimme-a-freaking-break department: Rep. Thomas Davis of Virginia, chair of the House Committee on Governmental Reform, is leading an investigation into the possibility that Baltimore Orioles slugger Rafael Palmeiro committed perjury during last spring's steroids hearing.
Why is this ridiculous? This is ridiculous because Davis found his righteous motivation to pursue the case by watching Palemiro on TV, reading his statement regarding his recent positive test for banned substances, and concluding, from a distance, that Raffy was lying.
"I don't think it was inadvertent in terms of getting in," Davis said in an interview on Fox News Sunday. "I know he knew he was taking something."
Sen. Jim Bunning, the loony Kentucky Republican who once said his electoral opponent resembled one of Saddam Hussein's sons, responded to the Palmeiro scandal by declaring his intention to push for laws that would mandate two-year suspensions for athletes who use juice. Meanwhile, Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, another righteous Republican, responded to the Raffy mess by announcing that congress planned on being more proactive in declaring jurisdiction over pro baseball, "because of baseball's inability to police their own players."
Great to see all of these guys rushing to protect the dignity of the national legislature from a dumb Cuban jock who lied to protect his home run records. Except for one thing: where were all of these assholes when the President of the United States lied to congress? The parallels between the Palmeiro case and the case of George Bush's communications to congress before the war are extremely interesting, and say a lot about what most members of congress imagine their jobs to be.
The two cases have a lot in common. First and foremost, in both the Palmeiro case and the Bush case, at the time of their respective appearances/statements before congress, it was obvious even to a five year-old that the principal actors were lying through their teeth.
When Palmeiro stood up before congress looking all tan and regal with his trimmed mustache and pulled his O.J.-Simpson, "absolutely, positively, 100 percent not guilty" routine, every baseball fan in the country spit up his milk with laughter.
In the history of baseball, Palmeiro ranks solidly as the sport's third-most laughingly obvious juicer, well behind fellow Oriole Brady Anderson (a midget who overnight went from being unable to reach the warning track on windy day to hitting 50 homers in a season) but only just slightly behind former Texas Ranger teammate Jose Canseco.
Raffy was more obvious than Barry Bonds, more obvious than Mark McGwire, and more obvious than Jason Giambi. When Palmeiro came up to the big leagues, he looked like a fourth-string wide receiver for the Columbia Lions. He had the slim build and the mustache of a male hooker working summers in the Hamptons. He once led the league in singles. Then he shares a locker room with Jose Canseco for a season, and next thing you know, he's hitting 500 home runs. Give us a break.
So when Raffy stood up there in congress with that pious expression and barked into the camera that business about never having touched steroids, everyone in America knew he was full of shit. I would imagine that even some members of congress were sober enough at that moment to know something was amiss. Even so, it took a positive test from major league baseball for congress to come to the defense of the congressional oath. Now, however, emboldened by public opinion and (more importantly) by the promise of continued coverage on the only news outlet in America that matters—ESPN—they're all piling on Palmeiro as though he'd just sold state secrets to the Baader-Meinhof gang.
But as ridiculous as Palmeiro's performance before congress was, it paled in comparison to Bush's. There are about a half-dozen separate incidents involving Bush and congress that a truly awake and self-interested legislature would look back on now and conclude, as this congress did with Palmeiro, that its honor had been violated, warranting swift punishment. Among those:
[I]*At a congressional leadership meeting on October 3, 2002, Bush made representations about Hussein's nuclear capabilities that not only turned out not to have been true, but appear to have been based upon doctored or manipulated intelligence. [/I]
[I]*In the State of the Union address a few months later, Bush made his famous "sixteen little words" gaffe about uranium from Africa—another bald misrepresentation. [/I]
[I]*At another congressional leadership meeting in 2002, Bush made representations about Saddam Hussein's ability to attack the U.S. using unmanned drones that turned out to be the bullshit they seemed even at the time to be to all intelligent people. [/I]
[I]*According to Senator Bob Graham, Bush consciously permitted bad intelligence to be passed to congress throughout 2002; Graham considered this an act of lying to congress serious enough to warrant impeachment. [/I]
[I]*The resolution Bush sought from congress authorizing attack of Iraq was based upon the idea that a regime of inspections would be given a chance to work. We all know the inspections were a sham—and if we could prove they were a sham, the resolution itself would be an act of lying to congress. [/I]
But forgetting all of those specific instances, the entire case for the war was a farce, by a factor of ten more ridiculous on its face than Brady Anderson's 50-homer season. As has been noted often in this column space, the whole charade leading up to the war—the phony inspections regime, the fake drama in which congressional approval was "sought," the utterly idiotic "evidence" of the imminent Iraqi threat offered on the floor of the House in the State of the Union address—all of this was a childish ruse, obvious to the dullest observer. And the thrust of all of it was that the U.S. congress was used like a piece of meat, humped like a blow-up doll, crudely manipulated to give the Iraqi action the appearance of democratic legality.
Worse still, congress let it happen. It abandoned all pretence of collegial, bureaucratic self-defense. This has become a habit with our legislature, which lately seems to view its own oversight responsibilities not as precious reservoir of political power, but as a terrible burden to be shed at the earliest opportunity. Our congress long ago gave away its constitutional power to declare or withhold military action; lately, in matters like the Dick Cheney Energy Task Force fiasco, it has rolled over repeatedly whenever the executive branch has refused subpoenas or spat in the face of congress's investigatory rights. And unlike the case of Watergate, when congress united in bipartisan fashion to oppose a president who flouted congressional authority, this particular congress seems to love being pushed around by the executive branch.
And after what happened in the fall of 2002 and the winter of 2003—when congress rolled over so completely for Bush's idiotic Iraq plan that it resembled the cat with its ass raised in Hogarth's Harlot's Progress—seeing congress rise to protect its honor from the likes of Rafael Palmeiro is side-splittingly hilarious comedy. It's like hearing a toothless, 55 year-old Bushwick Avenue whore complain, ten thousand blowjobs later, that her date didn't bring her flowers. And they want baseball to apologize?
2005-08-23 14:42 | User Profile
Matt Taibbi is a witty wordsmith I always look forward to reading. And he's right, the US Gov. under Gee Dubya is so morally bankrupt that it is indeed laughable and contemptible when they try to express their selective outrage at any questionable person, period. The double standards are just too blatant in this government.
2005-08-23 21:07 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Matt Taibbi is a witty wordsmith I always look forward to reading. And he's right, the US Gov. under Gee Dubya is so morally bankrupt that it is indeed laughable and contemptible when they try to express their selective outrage at any questionable person, period. The double standards are just too blatant in this government[/QUOTE]
Witty indeed but geeeeeeez. He sounds so suprised that an elected offical LIED!!!!! If you impeached, tossed in jail, or ran off every lying politician the halls of the House and Senate, not to mention the white house would be as empty as Hillary Clintons bed.
This is not even remotely news.
2005-08-23 21:45 | User Profile
[QUOTE=jeffersonian]If you impeached, tossed in jail, or ran off every lying politician the halls of the House and Senate, not to mention the white house would be as empty as Hillary Clintons bed. [/QUOTE]That would be fine with me. I think politicians should be held to an exceedingly high standard of honesty. Anyone who is dishonest with citizens in any official capacity should be impeached and, if found guilty, thrown into prison. Americans are FAR too tolerant of dishonesty from politicians.
2005-08-23 22:54 | User Profile
For some reason, Americans have gotten it into their head that impeachment and imprisoning - never mind literal tarring and feathering - of elected officials are a desperate last resort we must [I]never [/I] succumb to, lest anybody get the idea that Democracy isn't in and of itself the Curative Wonder System that gets dishes sparkling clean, adds shine and luster to drab hair, and makes honest men of rogues like magic. The results of this reluctance to hold politicians to the same standard you'd demand of a per-diem office temp? [U]You're soaking in it![/U]
Someone ought to take a look at the personal-affluence arc of the typical lifelong "public servant". Though they never tire of telling us of their humble beginnings, they [I]all [/I] leave office multi-millionaires.
The pickings are so lush, and penalties so seldom enforced (unless they cross the line and anger Israel, of course) that the latest trend is now for tycoons and industrialists to run for office [I]themselves[/I] - instead of financing puppet candidates behind the scenes as they'd usually do. When friggin' billionaires, who are used to being waited on hand and foot and flying on private jets to lunch appointments, are elbowing each other out of the way to 'serve the commonweal'....*what does that tell you? *
2005-08-24 02:07 | User Profile
[QUOTE]The results of this reluctance to hold politicians to the same standard you'd demand of a per-diem office temp? You're soaking in it![/QUOTE]What a classic!