Karlito's Way

Is Karl Rove going down? That's the 25-cent question, as W's pocket Machiavelli finds himself in the worst political whirlpool of the second Bush term. As allegations of incompetent war planning and management by BushCheney Inc. finally begin surfacing in the media, it looks to most casual and professional observers that the sharks are circling and they will only be pacified with the ample nourishment provided by the metaphorical carcass of Karlito. Think again, folks--this is GW Bush we're talking about, after all. Rove may yet slither away to the safety of the White House and reappear with a reduced role in name only.

The precedent here is Rumsfeld, of course. But even beyond W's loyalty to his loyal vassals is the fact that Rove doesn't want to go anywhere. So he probably won't.

Rove's involvement in revealing a CIA agent's identity to a reporter carries a potential felony conviction. It also affords a real opportunity for the impeachment of GW Bush if any connection can be made between Rove's act and the top two men in the Bush crew. Since the Democratic Party has decided collaboration with the Bush gang is more to their liking than a properly adversarial relationship, it is doubtful that any connection between the Oval Office and Rove's revelations will be drawn by Biden, Kennedy, Clinton, Schumer, et al. This one act of revenge on an intelligence community whistleblower could be the key to unlocking the whole sordid storehouse of incompetence and scandal that is the Bush administration. On the list of crimes that the Bushies have committed this one is admittedly low on the list, but it appears to be a crime that they can finally be directly linked to (the Iraq war and pre-war propaganda onslaught notwithstanding).

Rove will fall on his sword if investigators try to go further up the ladder and see if Cheney or Bush gave the order to release the agent's name directly, but due to the weakness of the press and the pusillanimity of the Dems there's little fear of that. The level of malfeasance here is pretty impressive, though. I particularly like two things about Rove's contacts with Time's Matthew Cooper--the term "double super secret background" is just classic, right out of the mouth of Dean Wormer from Animal House, along with the idea that the discrediting of the Niger uranium story was arranged by a husband and wife team of agent diplomats as some sort of career opportunity for the pair. Grizzled veterans of the State Department like Joseph Wilson do not suddenly get the itch for cheap TV celebrity at age 54, nor do they normally sell out their country to Islamic fascists (unless their last name is Bush, of course).

Wilson's insistence upon the truth put the lie to the Bushies' desperate attempt to link Iraq with attempts to purchase and manufacture nuclear and chemical weapons. It was a straight-up heroic act. Rather than acquiesce to the pressure put on them by the President and his minions to perpetuate a lie that would end up costing thousands of lives, Wilson acted with conscience and told anyone who would listen that the Bush gang was full of shit and bravado, and that they were attempting to force a war on the American people that had no business being fought. He was repaid for his diligence by having his wife's life put in jeopardy. History will judge who was the better man--Joseph Wilson or Karl Rove. My money's on the diplomat, rather than the autocrat.

Do Make Say Think and Sir Richard Bishop

I am an optimist when it comes to music. Mere weeks after I swore off the Bowery Ballroom, I found myself forced to go there again if I wanted to see Do Make Say Think, who were doing a short US tour. The only stops close to my preferred segment of the Eastern seaboard were in Boston and Philadelphia besides NYC. Since I had no choice due to my infirmities other than to see them in Manhattan, the choice was easy. I surfaced from the thick seaweed of the Sargasso Sea and struck out for the Bowery.

It was a good thing I went. They were excellent. Playing older material with one new song to open the set, they swung like crazy and played such gems as "Classic Noodlanding" and "MinMin", along with a couple of tunes off the recent Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn. In their eclecticism this band never forgets to write a song, and even though the arrangements don't vary much from the records the music remains challenging to play. It's always entertaining (and somewhat daunting) to see them switching instruments in the middle of songs without missing a beat. Not easy switches either, like guitar to keyboard--basses are traded for flugelhorns and guitars are exchanged for saxophones. Even though the Bowery sound was typically inconsistent, their performance overcame any muddle inflicted by the soundman. They added a violin player for this tour, who was fully integrated into their sound and added thick, droning texture to the night's set. Their dense, symphonic music leaves me feeling joyous on a good night...and I'm a grouchy motherfucker. Good sounds and good songs, a good drunk and stoned evening. I missed the Mobius Band, who opened, and didn't like Blame Game, who played second. They reminded me of Polvo in their few good moments and mostly just sounded like a band trying to sound like Polvo. Plus they're one of those two guitar bands that doesn't do much of anything with their two guitars except play the same thing. With two guitars.

The next evening I was witness to the potential of the guitar being fully utilized. An acoustic guitar, for that matter, as the amazing Sir Richard Bishop of the Sun City Girls extracted huge amounts of sound from a mere six-string, a loop station, and an amplifier. It was a blindingly hot night at the Glasshouse Gallery, with a large crowd there to see not only Sir Richard but Double Leopards and Akron/Family. I had subway trouble due to service cuts and missed Double Leopards' set, which pissed me off immensely as I own and enjoy their Halve Maen disc and have never seen them live despite the fact that they play in the NYC/Brooklyn area pretty fucking frequently. I paid my $7 to get in literally as the lights of their amplifiers went out, which combined with the heat made me feel like instantly bailing. I didn't think Bishop was going on until after Akron/Family, who were loudly greeting about one of every third person that squeezed past me, which made me poorly disposed towards them and whatever music they'd be playing that night. Then I noticed an acoustic on the small Glasshouse stage and figured I'd at least see who went on first.

I don't own any of Sir Richard's solo guitar stuff, and have only three of the myriad of Sun City Girl releases, but I saw Sun City Girls back in 2002 when they played their first NYC show in over 10 years at the Knitting Factory and knew that it was going to be an evening of intense playing. I was very impressed with his chops in the band format, and didn't really know what sort of approach he'd take to the solo acoustic thing. It ended up being as eclectic as any Sun City Girls' material, ranging from Django Reinhardt-styled speedy jazz runs to monstrous open-tuned riffs, and it was jaw-droppingly good. I recognized two songs from Torch of the Mystics (Blue Mamba and Cafe Batik, I believe) and was awed by the other material. Fingerpicking, straight flat picking, it didn't matter--he could play any style from folk to jazz to classical, and encompassed a staggering amount of musical influence in his playing. Even though the heat made me feel delirious, it was simple and incredible. The crowd was packed in tightly around the stage (after moving up midway through the set by request of the proprietor) and I swear I've never seen one man produce as much energy as he did with one acoustic guitar. He used his looper sparingly, only on 2 tunes, and refused to wilt in the ugliness of the heat as his guitar began sailing out of tune. The only poor moment of the set came when the guys from Akron/Family began clapping loudly out of time with the rhythm of the song...and despite their poor timing, continued to clap for the first 90 seconds of the song until mercifully stopping. After seeing that, I decided to skip Akron/Family's set.

I headed for the door as soon as Sir Richard finished his encore; it was just too fucking stifling in the Glasshouse that night. I left, deciding against another cheap beer. Probably a poor decision, but I blame it on the heat and the euphoria. My optimism had been generously rewarded with two outstanding shows, and I stumbled home feeling 200 degrees cooler in the evening air...then I noticed that I'd gotten ink from the admission stamp all over my white t-shirt, but I felt too good to care.

the Most Appropriately Named American Politician Ever

Dick Cheney, the heartless CEO turned executive manager of the Bush White House, has sunk to new lows, even for him. His statements of May 31st regarding the alleged "last throes of the Iraq Insurgency" have proven beyond measure that his primary concern in this conflict is disinformation. This Dick carefully conceals his ultimate purpose--to fuck us all when we are not looking.

Despite the fact that the corporation he used to run has been cited for more overcharges in billing submitted to the US Army (March 2005, a figure of $108 million), Cheney still insists that there has never been a conflict of interests between the position he currently holds and the one he used to occupy. Added to the $61 million in overcharges that were caught and revealed in 2003, this now makes for $169 million in false charges that have been submitted to the Army that bravely and foolishly sacrifices more of itself every day. As if these tallies were not disgraceful enough in themselves, Dick is now functioning as the official Goebbels of the administration--painting sunny pictures that do not correspond to the reality of the situation on the ground.

Since Dick has declared the insurgency to be losing momentum on May 31st, 2005, 85 US servicemen and women have died. That is more than two lost lives per day. Only in the world of the propagandist does such a measure imply success. It's easy to imagine Cheney, dressed in a Goebbels-style black suit, white shirt, and black tie, sneeringly describing the battle for Stalingrad as a mere skirmish that nears its conclusion with every passing day--assailing unbelievers with assaultive and pejorative language that calls into question their upbringing and political affiliations.

As a former senator from the why-bother-with-it state of Wyoming, Dick Cheney has sought and attained unprecedented amounts of power for the office of the Vice President. Rather than using this power to restrain the chicken hawks in the policy-making wing of the administration, Dick has allowed himself to be swept up in their geopolitical insanity, if not directing these operations outright. He was once the person who allegedly provided "statesman-like" experience to this dangerously simple-minded administration; now he appears to be the biggest cheerleader for their illusory plans of conquest in the Middle East. With each passing day he looks more and more like the linchpin of the Iraq criminal conspiracy.

As I've said before, the entire inner circle of Bush and his closest advisers need to be placed under arrest for creating and spreading the lies that served as a springboard to the Iraqi misadventure. Perhaps then US rhetoric about "freedom" might actually have some corresponding reality. Dick is the biggest threat to world peace on this planet, and descriptions of him as the "most dangerous man in the world" are entirely accurate. He has single-mindedly pursued destabilization of the world's biggest oil producing region, which in itself would not be so bad if not for Dick's relentless positioning of Halliburton and its subsidiary companies as those responsible for the rebuilding of Iraqi infrastructure.

Dick is a unique individual in the field of modern politics. It's rare that a war criminal can simultaneously be a financial criminal. A singular achievement by a big fucking Dick.

Aren't You Supposed to Die in the Robe?

One of the basic principles behind the Supreme Court of the US is that anyone appointed to the bench receives the honor as a lifetime appointment. Designed to ensure the independence of the highest Court in the land from the more temporally-minded politicians, this function has been part of the operational policy of the Supreme Court since it was provided for in the Constitution. Surprisingly, the resignation of Sandra Day O'Connor is not that unique in the history of the Court. In fact, including Justice O'Connor, 33 justices have either resigned or retired in the history of the Big Bench out of a total of 110 appointees. One was thrown off the bench by the Senate in 1795 (John Rutledge) after serving one term as Chief Justice due to allegations of mental illness, which were probably politically motivated.

O'Connor's resignation is sure to attract a tremendous amount of attention, due to the fact that her poorly-timed retirement allows the world's luckiest religious fascist, George W. Bush, to name a replacement. With rumors that Chief Justice William Rehnquist will also step down due to his struggles with cancer, this will allow Mr. Bush to equal his two predecessors in the Oval Office in naming two candidates for the Supreme Court. Panic-stricken Democrats would do well to remember that when foreseeing doom on this issue.

What about compulsory service until the end of the justice's life? Two judges who were appointed by Republican presidents (Rehnquist by Richard Nixon, O'Connor by Ronald Reagan) are now passing the baton to another Republican administration (I realize Rehnquist is sick with cancer, but he was sick under Clinton too). Compulsory service until death would eliminate any appearances of collusion between the retiree and the sitting administration. Insanity or senility should be the only reason a Supreme Court Justice leaves the bench, and in the cases of rigorous, well-disciplined minds like these, senility is extremely unlikely.

The Supreme Court is not in that much danger of tipping to the right--it already leaned that way, as proven by Justice Scalia's legislated coup d'etat after the "election" of 2000. The trouble that Bush has had with his execrable UN ambassador pick John Bolton means that he can't expect the Senate to roll over on whatever person he nominates for the bench. He got burned on the Schiavo right-to-die case, and I expect that he'll get burned again if he attempts to pack the Court with right-to-lifers. In combination with his sinking fortunes due to his incompetent management of the "war on terror", he will not risk alienating the American people any further. But who knows? He may plan on his first nominee being rejected in order to sneak someone potentially more threatening to civil liberties and the pro-choice movement.

The most troubling potential outcome to me is that Antonin Scalia will in all probability become the Chief Justice of the Supremes. This arrogant windbag who publicly denigrated American voters by dismissing the importance of their votes in the American election of 2000 will be receiving his plum as obvious payback for the deliverance of the White House to the Bush gang. I'm sure the day Scalia is installed as Chief Justice will feature one of those heartwarming moments where one frighteningly unqualified individual hugs a frighteningly unprincipled one. I never thought I'd ever wish for Bill Rehnquist to stay on, but the known evil is usually better than the unknown, I guess....