If you had told me, five years ago, that on the fifth anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in history Ground Zero would still be nothing but an enormous hole in the ground, I wouldn't have believed you -- just as I wouldn't have believed that a major American city could be thoroughly trashed by a Category 4 hurricane and then left to moulder in the mud for a year while various federal, state and local bureaucrats and hack politicians tried to make up their minds what to do.

I would have said that while those kind of things can and do happen in Third World kleptocracies or decaying Stalinist police states, they're simply not possible in the richest and most powerful nation in history. Even if the voters could somehow be bamboozled into accepting such incompetence, the wealthy elites and corporate technocrats who own and operate the world's only remaining superpower would never stand for it.

You can learn a lot about a country in five years.

What I've learned (from 9/11, the corporate scandals, the fiasco in Iraq, Katrina, the Cheney Administration's insane economic and environmental policies and the relentless dumbing down of the corporate media -- plus the repeated electoral triumphs of the Rovian brand of "reality management") is that the United States is moving down the curve of imperial decay at a amazingly rapid clip. If anything, the speed of our descent appears to be accelerating.

The physical symptoms -- a lost war, a derelict city, a Potemkin memorial hastily erected in an vacant lot -- aren't nearly as alarming as the moral and intellectual paralysis that seems to have taken hold of the system. The old feedback mechanisms are broken or in deep disrepair, leaving America with an opposition party that doesn't know how (or what) to oppose, a military run by uniformed yes men, intelligence czars who couldn't find their way through a garden gate with a GPS locator, TV networks that don't even pretend to cover the news unless there's a missing white woman or a suspected child rapist involved, and talk radio hosts who think nuking Mecca is the solution to all our problems in the Middle East. We've got think tanks that can't think, security agencies that can't secure and accounting firms that can't count (except when their clients ask them to make 2+2=5). Our churches are either annexes to shopping malls, halfway homes for pederasts, or GOP precinct headquarters in disguise. Our economy is based on asset bubbles, defense contracts and an open-ended line of credit from the People's Bank of China, and we still can't push the poverty rate down or the median wage up.

I could happily go on, but I imagine you get my point. It's hard to think of a major American institution, tradition or cultural value that has not, at some point over the past five years, been shown to be a.) totally out of touch, b.) criminally negligent, c.) hopelessly corrupt, d.) insanely hypocritical or e.) all of the above.

There is more - if you can stand it. I am finding it all too depressing.

Today, however, no one person is in charge of the overall hunt for bin Laden with the authority to direct covert CIA operations to collect intelligence and to dispatch JSOC units. Some counterterrorism officials find this absurd. "There's nobody in the United States government whose job it is to find Osama bin Laden!" one frustrated counterterrorism official shouted. "Nobody!"

The whole article is worth reading, from the Washington Post.

In another segment in which the president was apparently speaking to an aide who asked about his plan for upcoming remarks, Mr. Bush said, “I’m just going to make it up, right here — I’m not going to talk too damn long like the rest of them.”

Makes you feel safe, no? Probably the same way he planned for Iraq. More here and here.

"In February 2000, Mother Jones has learned, the Lays paid about $4 million -- an amount greater than Lay's entire salary from Enron that year -- to buy variable annuities . . . While stocks and most other ordinary investments are open to attack by creditors, life insurance policies and annuities are protected in many states . . . Once the annuities reach maturity in February 2007, Kenneth and Linda Lay will be guaranteed monthly payments of $43,023 and $32,643, respectively, for life."

From Billmon via Mother Jones.

Higher than the U.S. estimate, the tally likely is undercounted. Proportionately, it is as if 570,000 Americans were slain in three years.

The whole thing is here. About 450,000 Americans were killed in World War II.

"Should the United States allow a country openly hostile to it and armed with nuclear weapons to perfect an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering nuclear weapons to U.S. soil? We believe not. The Bush administration has unwisely ballyhooed the doctrine of "preemption," which all previous presidents have sustained as an option rather than a dogma. It has applied the doctrine to Iraq, where the intelligence pointed to a threat from weapons of mass destruction that was much smaller than the risk North Korea poses. (The actual threat from Saddam Hussein was, we now know, even smaller than believed at the time of the invasion.) But intervening before mortal threats to U.S. security can develop is surely a prudent policy."

Josh Marshall points out the credibility of the authors, which makes the article even more troubling.

"...let’s face it, most people are full of weird ideas about shit they don’t know anything about. I know I am."

The kind of refreshing honesty and humor you wish the real "journalists" had the balls to write.

Jay Leno

NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

If you go around your day to day life thinking that the government is trying to protect you or your rights, you are just a fool. A sucker. We are all suckers in their game today. There are people out there who know - fat cat U.S. Senators, some cabinet level people, maybe some members of congress and a couple of corporate executives - old, balding, with enough in the bank for the rest of their lives, but yet they sit there, with their mouths shut, protecting Bush and Cheney and the rest of them, while the administration breaks the law on a daily basis. Why can't one of these old bastards stand up on the floor of the senate or house, go on a talk show or something, and let the American people know just what the hell is going on? What are they afraid of? What could happen? This government has stolen our freedom. This government lies to us daily. Alberto Gonzales is not my Attorney General, he is George Bush's personal lawyer, and he is protecting his patron. He is not worrying about the citizens of the United States, he is worried about the interests of the Bush family and their billionaire friends. I am spitting angry this morning, and you should be too. Something has to be done. We can't wait another three years for this government to change, we can't afford to.

"The vast majority of the country supported the Afghanistan operation, as did most of the world. But the left and the rest of the world checked out over Iraq, and obviously not because we believed that all use of American force is immoral --- it was because the plan was fucking hallucinatory."

Read the whole thing here.

WASHINGTON -- Grover G. Norquist has become one of the nation's most influential activists by portraying his group, Americans for Tax Reform, as the leading ''grass-roots taxpayers movement," which gets thousands of politicians to sign a pledge against any new tax.

Behind the ''grass-roots" activism, however, is a multimillion-dollar donor list that is the envy of Washington. And the Massachusetts native has always refused to name his financial backers.

But interviews and copies of Norquist's donor lists, obtained by the Globe, show that contributors include an array of special interests ranging from tobacco companies to Indian tribes to a Las Vegas casino.

It wouldn't be bad to have policy debates in this country, to honestly talk about issues like taxes, etc. But you know what? These guys are devoid of ideas - they are just crooks. They are looking to score, plain and simple. "Conservative Advocate"? The guy is a nut, and probably a thief.

Card, 59, has been the focal point of much discussion in Washington about how physically and politically exhausted the White House staff must be in the sixth year of a presidency buffeted by recession, terrorism and war. Card has told interviewers that he gets up every morning at 4:20 a.m., arrives at the White House an hour or so after that and works until 8 or 9 at night.

How can any respectable reporter shovel this much shit for the administration?

"buffeted by recession" that your policies exacerbated, "terrorism" that your administration failed to prevent "and war" that you chose to engage in. And now everyone in the most well rested, vacation filled administration is tired... oh my.

Goodbye Andy "You don't roll out a new product in the summer" Card. You will be another footnote to history, a trivia question at best: Who was the longest serving chief of staff for the worst president ever?

"Stand firm," DeLay said in his closing. "Resist evil. Remember that all truth and blessings emanate from our Creator." He then departed with Tan to see a cockfight, according to a written account by one of the trip participants.

From the Washingto Post article Former DeLay Aide Enriched By Nonprofit.

When are people going to realize that there are stone cold crooks running this country?