Huh? Oh, Degenerative Research Program, I get it
Last night Stephen Hadley, the president's National Security Advisor, was on the News Hour, and in his defense of Bush regurgitating 9/11 in his speech the other night, he said
this:
The president talked about Sept. 11, because that's, of course, the day that the war on terror came to the United States. And the point he wanted to make is that the terrorists who are behind Sept. 11 share the ideology of terrorists that are also against us in Iraq. There are terrorists that have come largely from outside Iraq; they have joined criminal elements; they've joined former regime elements and some Iraqi extremists.
But his point is that Iraq is really part of the war on terror because a number of the folks who are doing damage to Iraqis and to American citizens -- men and women in uniform in Iraq -- share the same ideology as those who brought us 9/11. That's the point. That's why Iraq is really part of the war on terror, and why it's so important for that reason as well that we prevail there.
Time out, because I call bullshit. The deliberate sleight of hand going on here is that there were no terrorists of that sort in Iraq before the war started. At least not in any part of Iraq that Saddam Hussein controlled. In the second graf he conflates the War on Terror with the war in Iraq, as he and his colleagues are prone to do, when even the American public is waking up to the fact that they were completely seperate endevours. Listening to these kind of statements makes me want to pull my hair out. There is absolutely no question whatsoever that he's intentionally trying to deceive people with this tortured logic. One thing he's right about is that there sure are foreign fighters there now. I'm sorry Mr. Hadley, that's a really nice tie you're wearing and all, but you're completely full of shit.
Also, Matt Yglesias over at the American Prospect points out this little
gem from Andrew Sullivan:
THE SYRIAN BORDER. I think it's clear that if you're looking at purely military things that could make a real difference in Iraq, preventing the infiltration of foreign fighters (and, one assumes, supplies and money) from Syria would be the most useful thing. Andrew Sullivan has a series of posts on the subject that includes this moronic suggestion from some readers: The first is that the open Syrian border is a deliberate policy, the fly-trap theory, if you will. According to this theory, we want the Jihadists from Saudi Arabia, Syria and elsewhere to come to Iraq so we can deal with them there.
One sees reasoning of this sort on display more and more nowadays. The key premise is that Bush never makes mistakes, so proponents need to undertake valiant efforts to prove that apparently disastrous goings-on are, in fact, part of a brilliant plan. This is what Imre Lakatos called a degenerative research program.
Oh I get it now Andy & Co., we
want these terrorists in there attacking our soldiers and Iraqi citizens. Boy was I confused...
Kicking Ass: A Liberal Tradition
Garance Franke-Ruta over at the American Prospect's weblog
writes the following:
Instead of attacking the patriotism of liberal victims of 9-11, Rove and the president should focus on catching bin Laden. The United States defeated Adolf Hitler’s army and the Italian fascists in three and a half years, but nearly four years after we got hit by Al-Qaeda, bin Laden is still at large and there appears to be no concerted effort to find him, even though CIA chief Porter Goss recently said we have "an excellent idea" where he is.
As they say, go read the whole thing (don't worry, it's short). This brings up a point that really grinds at my sensibilities. Conservatives have sold the American public the falsehood that Republicans are tougher than Democrats and Liberals, and the "liberal" media has gladly carried the torch for them. In fact, President Bush rode to re-election on exactly that issue. Exit polls show that 22% of those voted for Bush did so because of terrorism/Iraq (and not, by the way, on "moral values").
Need I remind everyone that after America was attacked on December 7th, 1941, our President attacked and
destroyed those who sought fascist world domination? And that man happened to be a LIBERAL? Given Vietnam was a nasty tragedy, when Presidents Kennedy and Johnson perceived a threat, did they not attack? Note to Conservatives, they were DEMOCRATS. Both of them.
As Garance notes, we filthy, stinking liberals wanted the Taliban and Osama bin Laden
smashed into bits after 9/11. I remember reading a plea from an Afghan-American after 9/11, pleading with anyone who would listen, to
not bomb Afghanistan back to the stone age because it was already there. I thought to myself, sorry dude, we're coming, and our fury is coming with us. The Bush administration has
failed to apprehend or kill both bin Laden and Mullah Omar. Failed. Liberals were dedicated to crushing the freaks that ruled Afghanistan, and to helping the Afghan people rebuild their devastated country. Instead of finishing the job, the Cheney administration shifted personnel, money, and materiel to take out a neutered whimp with no weapons, no air force, and a frail army.
I hope the big "Mission Accomplished" fanfare continues to haunt Republicans. The
real man had to ride around in a wheelchair, stricken by polio, but his legacy shows he meant business, and the threats at the time were real. Nowadays we have a chickenshit fake that parades around on the deck of an aircraft carrier, crowing about how he dethroned a toothless, piss-ant wannabee. What a total phony.
Turd Blossom
Wow. The world of politics is in an uproar over these comments by
Karl Rove: (he's now George Bush's Deputy Chief of Staff)
"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."
And this as well:
Mr. Rove also said American armed forces overseas were in more jeopardy as a result of remarks last week by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, who compared American mistreatment of detainees to the acts of "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others."
"Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year?" Mr. Rove asked. "Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals."
As
Josh Marshall puts it: "
I guess we needed more evidence that Karl Rove is the most despicable man on the American political scene today."
I couldn't agree more. I wonder if the American political scene has ever had anyone that will stoop as low as this man. I can't remember one. Lee Atwood comes to mind, but Karl has him beat by a mile. I also wonder how history will judge him as well. My guess is it won't be pretty.
I presonally can't think of a more loathesome character, a vile, repugnant creature who knows fecses so well because he flings it and wallows in it constantly.
As Billmon
predicts, folks on the right, including the administration, will come looking for someone to blame for the fiasco in Iraq, and they've got two groups in mind: Liberals and the media. Karl's remarks dovetail nicely into that meme, and Dan Froomkin notes the following in his White House Briefing
column in the Washington Post:
Rove's new comments come on the heels of an interview with David Gregory on MSNBC on Tuesday, in which Rove provided indications that Bush's new PR blitz to regain support for the war in Iraq may include the implication that criticizing Bush's plan is tantamount to supporting the insurgency.
Got that? Criticize Bush's plan, if there acutally is one, and you're a traitor. You're supporting the insurgents. You're either with us, or against us.
If you'd like a primer on Mr. Poop in Bloom, watch the movie
Bush's Brain. It'll give you all you need to know about him. By the way, Turd Blossom isn't my label for Karl Rove, it was given to him by someone very fond of nicknaming just about everybody: George W. Bush.
Curt's Gone Fishing
Here's some fun. Congressman
Curt Weldon (R-PA) has apparently gotten bored with representing the good citizens of Chester, Montgomery, and Delaware counties in the Keystone State, so he's got a new mission: playing 007 and tracking down Iranian terrorists (stop it, it's not impossible).
The short story goes something like this: Curt's been running around silly meeting with ex-Iranian officials from the Shah's regime, even traveling to France of all places, to ferret out possible Iranian-sponsored terrorist attacks on the U.S. He's found one incident where he claims (oh the humanity!) that his contacts helped stop, yes STOP!, an Iranian based plot to fly an airliner from Canada into the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. It turns out there's a couple problems with Curt's story:
- His Iranian contact is channeling information from a known fabricator; Manoucher Ghorbanifar is the same man who also turns out to be the central figure in U.S./Iranian arms-for-hostages deal that almost brought down the Reagan administration.
- His contact is being paid by Ghorby (a cute nickname for an arms dealer)
- The CIA issued a "burn notice" for Ghorby, meaning that he was not to be trusted, and everything he gave our intelligence agencies was poop.
- Of the 19 men that were arrested in Canada accused of hatching the plot none of them were Iranian, and the government up north never found enough to charge them with anything more than immigration violations.
- The folks that run the Seabrook plant never found the story credible.
- And, guess what? No Iranians ever flew an airliner into anything.
Do you think that's going to stop Curt? Perish the thought, he's got a book to peddle! (
Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information that Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America... and How the CIA has Ignored it). And
peddle it he did on Meet The Press this past Sunday.
I wonder whether the rust from the lures on Curt's floppy fishing hat have seeped into his brain, or whether his little trenchcoat cloak-and-dagger act are designed to shore up his "I Protect America" bona fides at home. Either way, if I resided in the 7th congressional district in PA, I'd be asking why my Representative was flying to France to meet with an old ex-Shah official who pumps him full of crap so he can hawk a book. As opposed to, well, helping President Bush destroy Social Security here at home. I mean, come on Curt, where are your priorities?
The positive part of this saga is that we have two excellent reporters on this story:
Laura Rozen and
Jeet Heer. They have all the goods on our new friend Curt.
This wrap-up from the American Prospect's website also highlights two articles from Laura and Jeet
here, and
here. So if you'd like to dig further, have at it.
Before the United States gets
Ahmed Chalabi'd again like we did in Iraq, we better make damn sure that any of this so-called "information" coming out of Iran is actually true. Or maybe we can continue with the American fun of being
lied to...
Malady On Aisle 5, To Your RIGHT>
This is one very incisive, powerful peice of writing, and it's something I've been contemplating for a long time. Finally, someone gives it life in words:
It’s not true that the Conservatives I know don’t give a damn so much as they are terrified that they were wrong.
Deeply, primally terrified. Their whole psychological infrastructure is cobbled together out of half-baked conservative bumper-sticker ideology, gun lust, socially illiterate hatred of “welfare cheats” and other largely fictional or apocryphal lazy people (read: niggers and other swarthy folk) who want to leech off of them while they work harder and harder for less and less. Despite a lot of bluster about Freedom and Individuality they are, at heart, happiest when they are conforming to the wishes of the Strong Man; when they know exactly their place in the hierarchy.
Security and Enforced Orderliness is their idea Heaven and Doubt is their Hell, which is why they swarm like mayflies towards simple-minded sloganeering instead of actual, y’know, thinking…and why many of them fall madly in love with Fundamentalism. It’s this anti-Faustian bargain where they get the perfect peace of mind that comes from absolute, swaggering certainty that they are completely right about every single thing. And thrown in at no extra charge, they get Paradise after they die, with the promise that they’ll get to see my sorry ass screaming in agony in a lake of fire on Basic Cable for all eternity.
But in exchange for all of this wonderfulness, they have to hand over their souls to truly evil men.
They must agree that they will never, ever, ever question Their Master’s Commands. To blindly obey and to never do the math and never read the fine print. In other words, to tear from their own body and slaughter of their own volition and with their own hands the one capacity that actually makes them fully human: their capacity for free and independent thought.
This is the ancient, unbridgeable and eternally hostile schism between their template for humanity and ours. This is, I believe, why sometimes we fundamentally cannot understand each other; because we are running two radically different and incompatible O/S's.
Out there, deep in the dark, -- they are told – are bearded madmen who worship a Death God that they cannot possibly understand who live just to kill them and their children for no rational reason. Not that there are not bad people in the world who really do need killin’, and real enemies that I want stopped, but they are sold this campfire escaped-lunatic scare-story version of the Ay-rab Terminator which, as it turns out, also happens to be the perfect outward projection of their own deeply perverse ideology.
And in closer, right next door – they are told – are the Evil Liberal Elite who live to sell their great nation out into polyglot slavery to a band of international appeasers, Socialists and faggots. Who are either too stupid to see the threat, or hate their country so much that they cheer on American failure and need to be protected from themselves.
Most of these people are not Nazis, but they are the perfect raw material for our own, homegrown American Rightwing Demagogues; obedient, stupid, bigoted and easily frightened.
And because everything – their very souls – rest on the foundation of the infallibility of Dear Leader, they’ll happily kill anyone in any numbers who might force them to face up to the fact that Dear Leader is a duplicitous, lying sleazebag who has played on their fear and ignorance and patriotism to turn them out like $2 crack whores.
Me? I’m wrong all the time. Make all kinds of mistakes and from time to time get overly attached to something that’s just plain dumb (Does listening to “Snoopy’s Christmas” back-to-back with “The New Shit” by Marilyn Manson at The Ride of the Valkyrie volume count?) And when I do, it’s hard to let go of it, but I do (mostly) and my mom taught me early on that when your wrong, you own up and say you’re sorry.
Period.
But I remember one woman I lived with once. A knockout red-head. Very bright. Thunder God sex. Hated Fundies but, as it turned out, for exactly the same reasons Conservative Evangelical Fudnamentalists hate Wahabi Muslims. See, she had problems. LOTS of problems, one of which was that she was congenitally unable to apologize.
Ever.
(insert sexy, flashback fadeout here)
She was always full of very pointed advice about how everyone else should live (Funny how 12 years of strict Freudian therapy, god knows how many 12-step programs and a bookshelf full of self-help manuals will do that to a person) but could not bring herself to admit when she had fucked up.
Ever.
Anyway, it’s a long, sad story, but the gist of it is that one evening she was being an utter bitch about something which she had clearly done wrong. I’d finally had enough, shrugged off my Easygoing Guy togs, strapped into my Full Metal Logician armor and went after her. Just verbally backed her right up into a corner and wouldn’t let up.
“Here’s what you said, and here’s what you did. You were wrong. Apologize.”
“But I…”
“Here’s what you said, and here’s what you did. You were wrong. Apologize.”
“I really think you are the problem here, and…”
“Here’s what you said, and here’s what you did. You were wrong. Apologize.”
“I don’t think this attitude is very…”
“Here’s what you said, and here’s what you did. You were wrong. Apologize.”
And then she lost it. Completely, utterly lost it. Started shrieking like she was being knifed.
“Fine! Fine! FUCK YOU! You want to Crucify me! You want my BLOOD! Fine! I’m sorry you cocksucker! There! You happy now!”
As I remember it, she threw a plate – one of those patterned, Pier One oversized things that you use under a centerpiece and that humans never actually eat off of – but it was many years ago and I am as susceptible to the Dynasty-ization of memory as anyone.
I do remember that she cried for an hour, went out, didn’t come back until the next day and never forgave me for it.
Built in to the Right Wing DNA is the same congenital defect, and since they will happily burn the world to the ground before they admit they might actually have been wrong about Bush, it falls to us to keep them backed into a corner as best we can, because once events out here in Realityland begin to pound through the perimeter denial defenses, what comes after ain’t gonna be pretty.
Not to scream blindly into the void for the impossible – Steve’s quite right about that – but to keep patiently repeating: “Here’s what you said, and here’s what you did. You were wrong. Apologize,” in every venue available.
The bad news is, until they wake the fuck up, these people are slaves, and there is no one so ferocious as a brainwashed thrall defending his owner.
The good news is, we are still 49% of the game; wake up and pick off a mere 100,000 and we can begin to turn a lot of thinks around. The more gooder news is that our O/S thrives best when saturated in pure, clean Reality, and theirs rust and rots and flies apart at the seams when the lies that insulate it are peeled away.
The sheer weight of simple things like time and gravity and causality itself are our natural and incorruptable allies. They are merciless, and recognize no Geneva Convention niceties when meting out justice to arrant fools who try to fuck with them.
Oh and the red-head?
She moved to Texas, married money and now thinks muggers and food-stamp recipients should be imprisoned for life or, mo’ better, executed. After all, she had to work hard her whole life, so why should these shiftless scumbags get any help.
Yeah, really.
Via
Atrios, this comes to us from
Driftglass. Believing that one person, and everyone around him for that matter, is always right is inherently dangerous. That's History 101 for me. But think about the word
believe.
It's awfully powerful, and to truly believe means never questioning anything. If you give up questioning the way things are, and how they might turn out, you usually sacrafice control over your life to people that really couldn't care less about you (Paging Jim Jones...oh sorry, he's dead, along with almost his entire flock). I'll have more on this soon, including the need for people on the Right to smash that thing that lives inside us all: The Other.
Can Howard Dean Shut Up?
Please? That's all we're asking for here: get out of the news cycle for
one day.
This does not help:
Dean told a forum of journalists and minority leaders Monday that Republicans are "not very friendly to different kinds of people, they are a pretty monolithic party … it's pretty much a white, Christian party."
Billmon has some analysis that is much better than anything I can provide
here, and
here. Here's one of my favorite quotes:
I said Monday the Democrats need blowtorches like Dean, and I still think it's true. But they don't need one who burns off his own foot every time he turns the flames on.
Speaking of being on fire, head on over to Billmon's site
The Whiskey Bar if you have a couple minutes. He's kicking a lot of ass over there...
Peak Oil & The Washington Monthly
Kevin Drum over at the Political Animal analyizes and provides a summary of the current coverage on the topic of Peak Oil here, his coda here, and I have my take here. Go read up if you have some interest in where we're headed as a nation.
He asserts the idea that the fallout from the depletion of world oil supplies doesn't have to be as painful as it needs to be, and that we can avoid any kind of crisis that comes down the pike if we buy ourselves enough time to invent new technologies to push the fall-off point to some future date in time.
Fair enough, and technologically correct, but the one thing he fails to address is the political will to demand that Americans start to conserve energy, that business and government pour vast amounts of money into a real effort to develop alternate sources of energy, and that politicians need to "market" the idea to the public.
I think it's pretty clear that oil men from Texas aren't up to the job. And who's going to add that to their party plank when they run for president? Anyone who does run on the issue in even a small way will be painted by the media as a fear monger and a crank, so good luck.
I have immense respect for Kevin, and I appreciate him bringing an issue that's this vital to the American public to the forefront, but I'm as pessimistic about the issue as he is optimistic, and in the end we're really not that far off in our assessments.
I've neard enough from men who've enriched themselves by way of profits from oil companies, we need new voices.
What Happened to My Stool?!?!
I'm a fan of a guy named Ed Kilgore. He's come under some criticism from folks on the Left, but he's a Democrat and he's from Georgia, so I'm willing to listen. He's got some really cool digs
here as well. (Heck, I'm in for the logo alone, but I'm simple, so...) He's also a contributor over at the brand, spanking new
TMPCafe, and while discussing "Where's the Outrage on Iraq", he clears the bases with this
one:
The second factor is simultaneously obvious and often ignored. It is best described by the following (faulty) syllogism:
Some Arabs came over here and killed a lot of Americans. Bush went over there and killed a lot more Arabs. Since then, no Arabs have come over here and killed Americans. Thus, Bush's invasion of Iraq is responsible for our safety since 9/11.
I don't know about you, but in conversations with non-political people during the 2004 campaign, I heard some version of this "Bush must be doing something right" argument repeated over and over again. And in my experience, telling people they are falling prey to the post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this) logical fallacy is not a terribly effective rebuttal.
Republicans understood this dynamic, which is why the Bush-Cheney campaign did not dwell on back-and-forth arguments about the original rationales for the war, or respond to John Kerry's pointed criticisms of the administration's success in fighting terrorism. Their whole message was that George W. Bush's characteristic resolve and decisiveness had intimidated terrorists into inaction, making him the Indispensible Man in the war on terror.
If I'm right, Americans will finally reassess Bush's leadership in this arena when it becomes obvious he hasn't given us much safety, or when the costs of stabilizing Iraq become truly intolerable. And in the white-hot GOP competition to succeed Bush in 2008, it will be interesting to see if some candidate or faction of the party decides to re-open the intra-Republican argument about foreign policy and national security, thus sawing off one leg in the stool supporting Bush up until now.
Sawed-off is one way to describe our erstwhile president, and I personally think Ed will be spot on with his little prediction. It seems to me that the press is getting a little more aggressive with our current administration, but we're only getting a whiff of that so far. I predict that given the mess George W. Bush has made over the last five years, the time spent between Nov. 3rd, 2006 and Jan. 21st, 2009 will be very painful for him and anyone else that's fallen in with him and his bankrupt lot. Here's to Ed and Fuzzy being
right.
Friday Night News Dump
I love it when folks get all lathered up about big news getting dumped on the media on a Friday night. These folks must be
pulling at their fingers, and pacing back and forth, and
frothing and mishandling themselves, and all for what? What constititutes their indignation is that Americans aren't paying attention. They fail to realize that Americans don't want to pay attention. It's Friday Night for
Peggy Noonan's sake!
This is a telling sign of the American condition, not some statement about the current failures of the American media. In other words, people
don't care. It's as simple as that.
If a news report came out on a Tuesday morning that said, "Jailers splashed
Koran with urine - Pentagon", then yes, we might have some media attention and maybe even some informed punditry weighing in, but the reality is, Tuesday morning or Friday night, Americans are not politcally aware and will continue to be that way. Blissfully so.
Political Junkies have to start realizing that well over 51% (or 78%) of the U.S. population doesn't even bother with which way the political winds blow. (note to self)
Our citizenry has become so completely indifferant to the politics and governance that bind our republic together that they figure it will always be there, completely unaware, or worse yet, willfully ignorant, that the whole structure is crumbling right under our feet.
Big Brass Alliance
High Crimes. Nothing Less.
We here at the MC could not be prouder to be on the list.
Thanks to
Shakespeare's Sister for putting it all together...
Bust-Out
Something
Josh Marshall wrote some time ago, December 3, 2003 to be exact, rings true more and more about the current administration. He was writing about the Medicare bill for
The Hill at the time, but the mode of operation is now an established standard:
What we’re seeing in Washington today has an uncomfortable resemblance to what, in mafia lingo, is called a bust-out.
It goes something like this.
Say you’re a gambler and I’m a mobster. I’ve lent you lots of money. But now you can’t cover your debt. I could pursue the matter through your kneecaps or toss you out of an office window, but instead I take a more constructive approach.
You own a shoe store. I take it over your operation, order everything under the sun and fence all the merchandise for as much money as I can get as quickly as I can. I run out every line of credit you have and generally squeeze the place of every dollar I can get out of it. And then when I can’t squeeze anymore, I torch the place and collect on the insurance money.
Sure, it’s not the most sustainable business model. But I have my money back, and what happens to you is your problem.
What happens to you is your problem. Absolutely God damned right. This goes for our military being overstretched in Iraq, the budget deficit at historic levels, leaving our kids and grandkids to foot the bill, and his whirlwind tour of the country in the last few months to propagate the destruction of Social Security. On that count alone, he's batting two for three; not bad for someone who's failed at everything he's ever attempted.
This dry-hole drilling wannabe Texan, born in New Haven, CT., sure has amassed quite a record.
Trust me, when George W. Bush leaves office, he won't care about America's problems, and there's a good reason why: he never did in the first place.
What He Said
Eric Alterman (Writer, Teacher, and Doctorate holder) has his
say about how Watergate would be treated in today's media culture:
Nixon would get away with it today. In today’s media atmosphere, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the entire right-wing media would create a propaganda firestorm designed to destroy the character of whomever came forward to tell the truth about Nixon or whomever chose to report on it. Had Felt been suspected of acting patriotically, today, people like Bob Novak, a man who feels free to reveal the identity of CIA agents when it suits his political purposes, would be leading the way in destroying his character, in order to obfuscate the truth. What the Bush administration has already done with regard to not just Iraq but across the board, is arguably worse than Watergate, and in many ways, even more cynical. Yet the creation of a right-wing media designed to pummel anyone who honestly reports on its actions—or questions its motives—prevents us from focusing our attention on its myriad misdeeds. Add this to the religious devotion of conservative Christian evangelicals to the Republican party no matter what “reality”-based journalism may uncover and you can see how easy it would be for a Nixon to stonewall this type of allegation today. (I raised this possibility in my L.A. Times Book Festival panel discussion with John Dean and he explained that Nixon actually had something in mind like the creation of the conservative media empire back then, and had he not been forced to resign, it probably would have happened a decade or so earlier.)
I couldn't agree more. What I find repugnent is cancerous, faded filiments like Charles Colson, G. Gordon Liddy, and Patrick Buchanan, all ex-Nixon administration officials, making the rounds on TV and print calling Mark Felt (Deep Throat) dishonorable. Here's Buchanan on
Hardball last night:
"I don‘t think Deep Throat is a hero. I think Deep Throat is a snake."
He's only a snake to Pat because he helped bring Nixon's criminal enterprise down. If he had just kept his mouth shut, Pat would be praising him to no end. As Ben Bradlee, formerly the editor of the Washington Post said tonight regarding the Watergate scandal, "Liddy's one to talk, he hasn't been out of jail that long".
Why do we tolerate these faded re-treads in our news media at all? And back to Eric's point, I believe the Bush administration has now perfected the criminal bust-out gang at the highest levels of American government, and I'll bet the media we have today, much less the Republican-controlled Congress, will never investigate.
"...you've got a Republic, if you can keep it..."
