The king was in his counting house,

counting out his money.

The queen was in the parlour,

eating bread and honey.

(From the 18th Century English nursery
rhyme, "Sing a Song of Sixpence")

No doubt you’ll notice what is glaringly missing from this story which was all over the blogs a few days ago and then vanished like a tray of free chili dogs in the Big Tent hospitality shanty. (emphasis added)

McClellan's next step: Changing D.C.
By: Daniel Libit
August 19, 2008

There may not be second acts in America, but White House-press-secretary-turned-best-selling-memoirist Scott McClellan is looking for a third.
…

The Bush White House platitudes McClellan once trafficked in have been replaced by the bipartisan axioms that dot his book. Where McClellan once muttered things like “stay the course,” these days he’s all atwitter about the “permanent campaign,” the “Washington game” and the “culture of deception.”
…

And yet, when asked what advice he would give to a President Barack Obama or Democratic Congress on the matter of handling former Bush officials, McClellan speaks now of the perils of probing the past.

“If Obama were to win,” he said last week, “that would be an issue his administration would have to face early ... because he’s pledging to be a uniter, not a divider — without saying those exact words we campaigned on in 2000. He’s pledging to change the way Washington works, and if Congress were to pursue that, it would be very divisive.”

He continued: “That could be very problematic for his presidency right off the start.”

Yes, indeedy. Having used the power of Congress for eight years to methodically cripple and scuttle the Clinton Administration over trivia...and then having followed that with six years of using the power of that same Congress to cover for a White House ass-deep in treason and slaughter...I’m sure it would seem terribly de-unifying to one the Party of God’s chief wheel-men if Democrats were to finally begin picking through the mile-high midden pile of crime and treachery the GOP will leave in its wake once it is ridden out of D.C. on a rail.

So Fuck Unity.

Unity come only after the reeking Conservative tumor at the center of our body politic is dispassionately exposed to the light, drained of its power and cut out.

Then, hey, let the fucking healing begin, but until then it is long, long past time for the Party whose idea of due process has been “Torture ‘em until they confess and then lock ‘em up forever” to be on the rifle-butt end of a big, fat helping of their very own brand of Old Testament-style justice.

Which is why what you no doubt noticed about this article is that Scott McClellan never even bothered to beg John McSame to lay off the hot lights and polygraphs and subpoenas and special prosecutors if he gets elected.

Yawn.

Why should he?

It is now such an ingrained given among the lords and ladies of the political and media elite that IOKIYAR will always be woven into the very DNA of Republicans -- that Repubicans will always cheat, always lie, always wrap themselves in the Flag and Bible as they cheat and lie, and will never hold a fellow Republican accountable for the evil that they do in the name of God and Country -- that it now literally goes without saying that another GOP Administration would mean four more years of a White House that tells the Congress and the Constitution to lie back and think of England.

But despite the imprecations of fallen angel Scotty Dog McClellan

soon after President Obama appoints an Attorney General whose shock collar remote control isn’t in the hands of the Bush Crime Family, things are going to start coming to light.

And when that happens -- even using the gentlest, most nonpartisan tongs and hazmat suits -- the first year of an Obama Administration will witness a monster’s ball of squirmy, lurid criminals and traitors screaming like damned souls as they are dragged into the daylight from under every stone and loose board in Washington.

These are people who have operated with an open, sneering contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law since long before the moment on January 20, 2001 when Dubya said “so help me God“ and took his hand off the Bible and whenever they have been given the slightest opportunity have butt-scooted their seditious sphincters over every, single sacred precept of democracy.

So as the Commander Guy staggered around the Olympics and then winged his way home to sling around a few empty threats before toddling off to his 253rd vacation, I kinda got to wondering: What the hell is Cheney up to?

Because if Dick Cheney has demonstrated one talent above all others over the last seven years it has been monetizing misery and capitalizing on catastrophe for the benefit of his cronies on a scale that makes Teapot Dome look as innocent as slipping the hostess at the Olive Garden three bucks for a seat away from the loud baby.

And as the Commander Guy’s puppeteer, Cheney is the sole guardian of the greatest treasure the Worst President In History has left: The Pardon.

With an Administration that clinically dead and all eyes and cameras focused on the counting of houses and to pissed offedness of a PUMAs, it is not too hard to believe that, like the Anti-Claus, bunkered deep inside his undisclosed location, Dick Cheney is going over the list of who has been naughty and who has been nice.

Crunching the numbers.

Working out the price list for Presidential pardons:

Low Treason…………$85,000
Middlin’ Treason…………$125,000
High Treason/Single Count…………$300,000
High Treason/Multiple Counts………Market Price
War Crimes.…………Market Price
Raping the Constitution/Multiple Counts…………$1,000,000
Raping the Constitution/Single Counts…………$400,000
Looting/Whole Countries.…………15%
Looting/Treasury…………20%
Looting/Single Counts…………50%
Mass Murder/Premeditated………… Market Price
Single Homicide/Premeditated…………$300,000
Attempted Homicide/Premeditated…………$125,000
Mass Murder/Criminal Negligence…………$200,000
Breach of oath of office…………$150,000
Lying/Breach of oath of office in furtherance of criminal activities
Criminal Conspiracy…………Make me an offer.
Mass election fraud. …………$50/vote stolen.
Illegal firings/perjury/violation of civil rights act in furtherance of election fraud. ………… Market Price
Simple Theft. …………$50,000
Eviscerating public safety regulations.…………$125,000 flat rate or sliding scale based on lines ruined and
Eviscerating financial regulatory system.…………$125,000 flat rate or sliding scale based on lives ruined.

And so forth.

Sigh.

It will be a very long list.

Now one, short Presidency ago, Republican Senator John McSame was very clear about the standards he believed the President – any President – should be held to, and why.

Here is the Senator speaking for himself on February 12, 1999. (Emphasis added)

Sen. McCain's closed-door impeachment statement
Released into Congressional Record, February 12, 1999

Mr. Chief Justice, I intend to vote to convict the President of the United States on both articles of impeachment. To say I do so with regret will sound trite to some, but I mean it sincerely. I deeply regret that this day has come to pass.
…

Nowhere in the Constitution or in the expressed views of our founders are crimes intended to conceal the President's character flaws distinguished from crimes intended to subvert democracy. The President thwarted justice. No matter how unfair he or we may view a process that forces a President to disclose his own failings, we should not excuse or fail to punish in the constitutionally prescribed manner evidence that the President has deliberately thwarted the course of justice.


…we are not asked to judge the President's character flaws. We are asked to judge whether the President, who swore an oath to faithfully execute his office, deliberately subverted--for whatever purpose--the rule of law.

…

I do not hold the President to the same standard that I hold military officers to. I hold him to a higher standard. Although I may admit to failures in my private life, I have at all times, and to the best of my ability, kept faith with every oath I have ever sworn to this country. I have known some men who kept that faith at the cost of their lives.

I cannot--not in deference to public opinion, or for political considerations, or for the sake of comity and friendship--I cannot agree to expect less from the President.
…

The circumstances that led to these offenses may be tawdry, trivial to some, and usually of a very private nature. But the President broke the law. Not a tawdry law, not a trivial law, not a private law.
…

Presidents may not be excused from such an abuse no matter how intrusive, how unfair, how distasteful are the judicial proceedings they attempt to subvert.
…

Presidents are not ordinary citizens. They are extraordinary, in that they are vested with so much more authority and power than the rest of us. We have a right; indeed, we have an obligation, to hold them strictly accountable to the rule of law.

Are perjury and obstruction of justice expressly listed as high crimes and misdemeanors? No. Why? Because they are self-evidently so. Just as the President is self-evidently the nation's chief law enforcement officer, despite his attorneys' quibbling to the contrary. It is self-evident to us all, I hope, that we cannot overlook, dismiss or diminish the obstruction of justice by the very person we charge with taking care that the laws are faithfully executed. It is self-evident to me. And accordingly, regretfully, I must vote to convict the President, and urge my colleagues to do the same.

And one President later?

Well, as anyone who is remotely interested in such things and can attest, the lurching, listing, leaking, tanker-full-treason that is the Bush Administration has left a slime trail of felonies, high crimes, low crimes, criminal incompetence, criminal negligence, war crimes, and misdemeanors, years long and a ten-thousand miles wide.

And how has St John of Maverique put personal ambition behind him and leaped into action to meet his "obligation" hold his good, close, personal friend George W. Bush “accountable to the rule of law”?



If Candidate Obama really want to put a bone in the throat of the GOP, all he needs to do is include a sentence in his upcoming prime-time speech calling on Senator John McSame to join him in a bipartisan demand that George W. Bush not issue executive pardons for Alberto Gonzalez, Harriet Miers, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and the literally hundreds of other criminals and betrayers shot though his Administration like radioactive heart worms.

Because come December 2008, holding clear title to the Presidential Pardon Pez Dispenser will be exactly as hard-cash valuable as possessing the only printing press licensed to crank our papal indulgences after merciless dawn breaks over an all-out, debauched, seven year, Commandment-shattering orgy.

Like owning all the poppies on Planet Junkie.