Drip, drip, drip

[Samantha]

Think about it. So many people outside the Beltway are so critical of the inside-the-beltway mentality. But look at it like this. Washington, D.C. is a unique place. It's the political capital of the world. One cannot handle delicate matters here in the same manner as they would be handled in, for instance, Houston, Texas! A sudden quick move ousting the POTUS would bring shock waves not only throughout the country but throughout the world. Thus the alarm that historically starts to peal when a political tsunami is about to erupt sounds initially like a simple ... drip, drip, drip.

Think about it. Quick sudden replacements of heads of state are more often than not labeled coups. Conversely, deliberate public steps in that same direction buttressed by courts of law, independent counsels and Constitutional commentary over a digestible period of time openly played out in the press are labeled pursuing impeachable offenses.

In that regard, leaking is a well-respected Washington tradition. It turns on the spigot. Leaking is to political Washington what lying is to political Texans: if you don't do it well, you are not a good politician. True, we are talking about intelligence officials, reporters, and government employees, not necessarily politicians. But inside the Beltway, politics is our local sport, so regardless of what spot you play on the team, you must be a respectably gifted political animal, or you do not play. Leak, and leak well, leaving no fingerprints or watermarks.

Drip, drip, drip.

Think about it. Was the revelation of the identity of the thirty-year-old Watergate Deep Throat mystery and the revisiting of the circumstances surrounding the biggest political thriller of our time during this apparent political sea change merely a coincidence? Drip, drip, drip. I think not. Perhaps it was timed for release to enable the politically uneducated of our country to learn the lessons of the past in order to comprehend what is unfolding in front of eyes now.

Think Halderman, Erlichman. Have Karl Rove and others plunged into troubled political waters not unlike those which politically drowned their Nixon-Administration predecessors?

Like the White House plumbers deployed by Nixon to fix the political leaks that threatened his presidency, some starting players in our Washington sport are faced with imprisonment because the plumbing wrenches have been seized by those with legal authority. If the pattern continues, soon we will observe those close to the Office of the President of the United States shore up their sandbags to prepare for the inevitable, tumultuous life-threatening political waves.

And speaking of timing, to those who have consistently said Bush* cannot be impeached as long as the Republicans control the House, there might be a small exception. The small exception lies in election season when political instincts for self-preservation trump standing by one's party leader. In the inevitable it's either him or me political quandary, political animals always throw overboard any excessive weight which might sink their own ship -- even if they are Republicans and the dead weight is George Bush.

Think about it. The residency of George W. Bush* commenced with a determination to restore to the White House the authority previously held by the Executive Branch pre-Watergate. As chronicled by John Dean, then counsel to President Richard M. Nixon, a "Blind Ambition" led to the resignation of our chief executive. Is it not possible that just as the raw thirst for power and control over the political capital of the world led to the resignation of our then liar-in-chief, the same quest to conquer all that oppose them regardless of the means which must be utilized may potentially lead to the downfall of those who occupy the White House now?

And if starting an illegal, immoral war in Iraq, a busted United States economy, a failure to thwart terrorism, and an ever-increasing anti-American sentiment around the world is not enough to start the drip, drip, drip, what is? The price of oil?

Think about it ... is that a drip, drip, drip you hear or is it just me?

[RummyTheDummy]

1. Been hearing the drip drip drip

Thing on DU for close to 4 years now. Have seen very little to suggest there's anything to it. In other words, I'll believe it when I see it.

[Kraklen]

2. Three years ago he had 90+% percent approval.

Now it's in the upper thirties, low forties. Exactly what does "drip, drip, drip" mean to you?

[Samantha]

3. The truth will emerge in small increments or drips

"There was a lot of lying going on during Watergate." Olberman is saying this now as I type this response. Shortly after I posted this thread, I turned on MSNBC and there is John Dean discussing Watergate.

It's too difficult for me to believe all this is a coincidence. I think the unraveling of Watergate at this time when historically we are at this crossroads is a timed story as opposed to an accidental revelation. I think there is a lesson for the political apathetic to learn, and Watergate held up against the background of what is happening now draws an incredible appropriate parallel.

What do you think?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

6. Can't wait to see them considering this.....

[NervousRex]

4. I hear ya....

Same goes for the "(insert BFEE criminal here) is toast" bullshit that has been flying around for years. All of these lower level crooks will be pardoned regardless of what happens. Rove won't see a minute of jailtime.

[Samantha]

8. I have been wondering if Bush* would pardon Rove if he's found guilty

I think perhaps Rove would fall on his sword for Bush* and Bush would appropriately thank him. Think of the Reagan example.

[Zomby Woof]

26. yep

I point out similar failings in that "argument" all the time.

But approval ratings have nothing to do with Chimp's vulnerability... it's who owns the media.

And it ain't you or me.

Drip, drip indeed. The drips just fall into a vessel of false hopes.

[Samantha]

27. Ahhhhhhhh, ZombyWoof, don't be so pessimistic

I know there have been repeatedly dashed hopes here that Bush* was going down. I too am aware who owns media. But look at it this way -- there's just been too many things. Even Bush* can only keep the lid on so much. It's going to blow. I feel it. The fact that Norah O'Donnell even made a statement about a potentially huge scandal is progress.

If nothing else, look at the cost of a gallon of gas. You know the Republicans are not going to tolerate that long. We know the Muslim world knows how to retaliate against Bush* and they are doing it. Republicans will not allow him to stay much longer. Especially the ones up for reelection in 2006.

[Zomby Woof]

28. I'm an optimist

Which is why my words of realistic assessment must be heeded.

[XemaSab]

29. The dripping has been going on

but in the last week or two I am starting to feel like the drips are coalescing into a tsunami.

[Samantha]

30. Now I know how Stuart Smalley felt when he received affirmation!

Thank you for posting. This is exactly how I feel.

[XemaSab]

32. You're good enough,

you're thmart enough, and doggone it, people like you.

:-)

[sweetheart]

5. Washington is not the political capital of the world

Politics is getting along, negotiating and cooperating with your
opposition to govern in both your best interests. What happens in
washington is just deception and asskissing, but certainly not real
politics. Politics is more spoken in bruxelles, where many cooperate
through government, and no one is left out. Nobody plays a zero sum
game for their constituents and screws the rest. That sort of thinking
is reserved for the baby crib and the insanity colony of human abuse
and degredation.

What is dripping is all the goodwill, running out the the veins of the
nation sucked dry by the vampire corporate media and the corporate state
of cheap labour. The politics of washington is the politics of the
master's whip and the slave's back. It is not really politics at all,
and to give it any credence to the myth is to live on a planet without
atmosphere, where we know no relative comparison. We accept that
washington must be politics because its the capital, rather than
knowing what politics should be, and expecting them of our capital.

Postmodernism has us re-defining knowledge as the latest instance of
the propaganda, and as ever dictionary entry gets re-written, our
culture becomes shallower and shallower until, compressed against the
windshield like a bug, we no longer have perspective.

[Samantha]

7. That is this City's reputation and I agree with it

It is the most prominent seat of power in the world.

I understand your response though and thank you for sharing your perspective.

I do not think these times we are living in now reflect the classic reputation this city has earned over the years. These are completely anomalous times. I think the perspective you share is the idealistic definition of politics; I think the perspective I shared is the reflection of a general consensus over where the strongest seat of power in the world actually exists.

There is no government without politics. Perhaps you deeply resent the shape and form it takes here, but this is a unique place, and I do not think the term "politics as usual" has a niche here. I think there have been other administrations in the past whose politics in the past have made us proud; that is not the case today.

Where else could one start a totally illegal war against a sovereign nation and get away with it? If that's not raw political power, what is?

The literal definition in my dictionary defines politics as "wise in looking after one's own best interests." I can concede the point this present administration is not "wise" but the definition of politics which comes out of Texas tends to substitute the word "sly" for wise. At least, that is the perspective I have learned from Molly Ivins....

[sweetheart]

19. prominent seat of government power... agreed

A few years ago, i got really pissed off at having to pay an extra
15K check to the IRS, so i rented a car from NYC and drove to washington
for the weekend just to see what was going on with all the wasted
tax money. I observed a city of gang thugs driving around in blacked
limosines slinking around like gangsters. There was no sense of a
great nation leader of the free world... it was a city of gangsters
all going after the big godfather chair.

The city was filled with a rubber band-snap like fear, years before 9/11
perhaps that these limo-inhabitants knew that they were rats in a great
house.

I was inspired to tears only in the jefferson memorial. After walking
around the white house, the congress and the supreme court, i felt only
a sick malaise, a city so full of itself and its power that it was
completely detached from the people.

This is in contrast to visiting the house of commons in london, where
i was moved by the profound long term committment to democracy and the
peoples voice.

So if politics is a bunch of people serving themselves, driving around
in taxpayer's limosines as a badge of greatness, protected from the
people and the open air of the real country... then washington gets
some great credit. Funnily, you might be able to drain a swamp and
build a lot of stone memorials, but the vermin have returned just
as if they'd left it a swamp.

It is also no suprise that the city has the largest murder rate and
high drugs abuse problems, given the total lack of concern that the
thuggish patricians have for the common folk they cliam to be
governing. Would that a swamp would reclaim the stone effigees and
we be back to not putting any gods and likenesses before the god
in heaven.

Indeed, you know the place much better. I am just a tourist who has
observed malfesiance and criminality through the droppings they leave
across the commons. Whereas to know the animals is politics.

[Samantha]

20. Interesting perspective -- it saddened me to read it

I have hopes that the clean-up is in progress. Your one thought:

"There was no sense of a great nation leader of the free world... it was a city of gangsters all going after the big godfather chair" I think reminds me tremendously of Bush*. What year did you visit and who was then sitting in the Oval Office? His father?

I saw Bush* coming down Connecticut Avenue one day. It's never been an unusual sight to happen across public officials, well-known reporters, celebrities, successful attorneys walking in parks or driving the streets of D.C. It's one of the things that makes the City so vibrant.

The diversity here among the residents is one of this place's greatest attributes. But these things were not on my mind the day I saw the limo carrying Bush.* A young African-American soldier standing nearby remarked, "There's the President." I wanted to respond, he might be your president, but he is certainly not mine. I turned and walked away before the approaching limo passed in front of me. I can't stand the thoughts that Bush* occupies the White House, at the detriment of Al Gore, John Kerry and truly all the American citizens.

There is so much more here, including the history you alluded to, I hope you give this City a second chance. It is also the home of some of the greatest Americans as well as the least (discussed above). It is a unique place, as I mentioned above, and perhaps if you give it a second chance you might zero in on some of the things that make us proud. As a child, I first heard Martin Luther King speak here. I visit the church, St. Matthews, where John Kennedy was memorialized, and his son, John Jr., stood on the steps to give his father one last salute. This is the place where one day at work I stood by a window and watch Richard Nixon leave the White House for the last time. Not too far from that spot, I have passed George Stephanopolis (how is that spelled?) hurrying to work at ABC. In the nearby park, while eating lunch, Bob Bennett has passed by, talking on his cell phone (probably placing a bet).

I have run into John McLaughlin twice late at night as he left his work and I left mine. We were the only two people on the street corner of Connecticut Avenue and Rhode Island Avenue.

This is also the working space of Justice Stevens, a Republican appointed to the Supreme Court by Gerald Ford, who during the 2000 election controversy penned the words that soothed my soul in a dissenting opinion on Bush v. Gore.

This is a historical, happening place. It's such a shame people visiting from the outside briefly pass by and see only the somewhat dirty facade. There's so much more here.

Places I have worked have attorneys busily defending people in the news. Some of them have extremely interesting problems and some, for instance, are preparing for testimony at Senate hearings. If one is a political and news junkie as am I, the question must be asked, where else can one get all of this without even asking?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I hope you give Washington a second chance. It deserves it. And hopefully if you do, it will be deBushed by that time.

[sweetheart]

21. I would serve any democratic administration

It would be my honour to re-visit washtington during a better democratic
experience. The last time was in 97 as i recall. I walked a long way
in that visit, all about the place, using my body as a sponge to feel
every single vibration of washington, and then sort them out in dreaming
later. I "saw" so many things that day, and it made me sick and feel
the need to leave the country, truth be told.

I felt like an alien when i was supposed to be visiting my nation's
capital. I felt not the least vibration of inclusion. But that was the
clintonism anyways... a republican liteism that appeals to nothing in
this kucinich left.

I would love to write for a democratic administration.... and i feel like
that by visiting washington, i would merely leave a trail of fear, that
the republicans watch all tourists and monitor them to make sure they
are not terrorists, and wage war on them, especially if they are
opposition.... its like baradur with all that provincial charm of that
eye on the tower. ;-)

What you say about nixon inspires. I heard about him leaving on armed
forces radio from berlin. I never saw justice, or equated it with
washington DC, MLK even... that gives me inspiration. Thanks for
that.

For me to ever feel like america was "my" country again, i need to
see an end to the war on drugs. There needs to be a powerful end to
the destructive prohibition. Until then, i am the enemy, the evil
underbelly of the war on drugs, and washington is the city of the
enemy, where guards in towers monitor all the phone calls and you are
canvassed by crowd watchers.

THe only city i remember more baradur-like than washington was
saint petersburg... minas ithil. We've usurped the CCCP to become
the new corporate stalinism. The civil war is overturned, and
jefferson davis is flying his flag from the white house. What is a
free slave supposed to feel.

The war on drugs needs to end, the divisiveness needs to end, the
patriarchy needs to end, the misogyny needs to end, teh war needs
to end and the hate of the rethuglican erosion of the rights of
women needs to end. We are at a critical historic juncture, no matter
the ones before, and if we don't take back washington, it will fade
back in to a swamp.

effin' a we need to take it back.. :-) for MLK and the good guys.

[Samantha]

22. I will hope to see you during the 2008 inauguration of a Democratic

president. Sounds like you were here during the impeachment hangover. Washington has seen better days, and hopefully it will once again.

Do you think that drip, drip, drip of the original subject of this thread signals the fall of the Bush* administration?

[sweetheart]

23. At this point, i'm looking for the maxima

At some point, the public will tire of the lies, or they will become
permanently enslaved. It could go either way. The world changed again
today with the london attacks of 7.7. At least the europeans and
americans won't get the date reversed with this one.

I will only take drip drip seriously when tony blair resigns. He's like
the frill on bush's hair, bush's poodle... and when the poodle gets
stepped on, the dripp dripp will be serious... and if we do our media
lashback planning right on the left, the public will toss the republicans
out of the WH and the legislature by 2008.

If not, it will be the obligation of persons of goodwill to pull the
plug on the project and go back to nations where human rights are
preserved. The danger of this race to the bottom where capital crosses
borders in search of the cheapest labour, whilst labour is bound
behind immigration, is so destructive to the planet, that the choice
to support the US criminality after 2008 will hinge on a democratic win.
The alternative is unthinkable, it is that bad, but would have to
require the total economic undoing of our great country.

I no longer have perspective on drip drip drip.... he'll go in 2008, and
its our job to hammer him in to the ground until the republican
job satisfaction is 10% before the 2008 election.

Here in the land of blog, we have the luxury of the suspension of
disbelief, and can paint a canvas of the republican demise, and so
we should, that like an orchestra, the writers of the world put
bush in to his cage, and all his criminals with him.... yes, every
day i drip drip drip for me.

[Samantha]

24. Sweetheart, those are some beautiful words

"Here in the land of blog, we have the luxury of the suspension of
disbelief, and can paint a canvas of the republican demise, and so
we should, that like an orchestra, the writers of the world put
bush in to his cage, and all his criminals with him.... yes, every
day i drip drip drip for me."

I hope to read more of your posts here at DU.

[Samantha]

9. A self-serving bump

for the drip.

[oxbow]

10. Calling Deep Throat 2005. Come in Deepthroat '05. Over.

Election season is just around the corner. If you wanna drop some incriminating documents in the press' hands, the time is coming soon. And we promise to give you a better codename, too. So come on, give a dog a bone!

[Samantha]

12. I love this response because I was thinking the same thing!

Where is our Deep Throat? And do you by any chance have a code name in mind?

Perhaps Deep Throat is operating under cover so to speak and we just need to wait for the revelation. Perhaps it won't be coming from Woodward and Bernstein this time, and better yet, perhaps there will be more than one. Tenet is writing a book I have heard. Could it be he? I read once that the CIA conducted its own investigation into the Plame affair because the Administration refused to do so. The results were handed over to the White House I believe. Will we ever be able to read the Tenet report?

[oxbow]

15. We'll call him Bushwacker

or Roundup, Shrub-B-Gone, whatever he likes. We'll call him Apollo the Golden Boy if he wants. I just wanna see some spilled beans dammmit!!!

[Samantha]

16. Okay, I love all three of these

They sound like pesticides. Pesticides eradicate weeds. Bush* is somewhat more than a weed, but maybe pesticides can also rid the White House of unwanted Texan rodents, particularly if the pesticide is called Round-up.

[Independent_Liberal]

11. Yes! Drip, drip, drip...

Thanks for pointing this out. Very interesting.

[Samantha]

13. Do you feel there are political parallels between Watergate and the Plame

affair?

I seriously do. I have yet to read any comments on whether the timing of the revelation was a coincidence or a forced reckoning. What do you think?

Nixon's position was I am the President and I am surrounded by enemies. Bush*s demeanor during the last five years reflects exactly that same sentiment.

The Plame Affair is at its heart the Bush administration acting in a manner, to borrow Richard Clarke's phrase (and book title) Against All Enemies. The Bush White House may indeed fall as a result of a retaliatory strike against an anti-Iraq war proponent, Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his weapons-of-mass destruction expert wife, Plame.

The Nixon White House fell in a punitive strike conducted illegally against one of its enemies, The Democratic National Committee, headquartered at the Watergate, and chaired by Lawrence O'Donnell, whose offices the Plumbers sought to bug.

Both Nixon and Bush* emit the aura, I am the above the Law. Nixon found out differently -- will Bush?

[Samantha]

14. More on the political parallel between Watergate and Plame

"There is a way to untie the Watergate knot," Woodward quotes Deep Throat in a special now airing on NBC.

"It was a Halderman operation," he continues on.

Is there a way to unravel the Plame Affair? And was it a Rove operation?

We look at that story. We watch this story. Will the Plame Affair end in the same manner as the Watergate investigation?

This is the drip, drip, drip we now hear, the echoes of the former White House plumbers resounding again at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The plumbers today leave different footsteps but perhaps they lead down that same path to the resignation of a president. We can only hope.

Drip, drip, drip.

[grace0418]

17. We all know how the Grand Canyon was formed, right?

It didn't happen in a day. We just have to be patient. And look for ways to chip away at the cracks in the facade.

[Samantha]

18. Will the MSM look for ways to chip away at the cracks

or will it be forced to "frog march" along in the process?

[NewJeffCT]

25. You didn't get the flyer?

If you didn't hear, the Bush Admin gave permission for religious groups to distribute pamphlets at the Grand Canyon that state it was formed by Noah's flood.

[grace0418]

31. LOL,

Sadly, you're probably not even kidding.

[NewJeffCT]

33. No, I am not

unfortunately, it is true.

[grace0418]

34. I figured it was.

Take all the worst ideas in the world and some dumbass conservative has already implemented them.