Inflammatory Opinion:
The Color of Whitewash
That was 837 days ago.
On December 30, 2003, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft announced at a news conference that he had recused himself from the Department of Justice investigation of who in the Bush Administration disclosed the identity of Ms. Plame. Mr. Ashcroft appointed then-Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Comey as acting Attorney General with respect to the investigation. In the same news conference, Mr. Comey announced that Patrick Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois, would serve as special prosecutor for the investigation.
That was 668 days ago.
Today, October 28, 2005, Mr. Fitzgerald announced that the grand jury considering possible wrongdoing in the matter of the outing of Valerie had issued a five-count indictment against Vice President Richard Cheney's Chief of Staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. The indictment comprises a single count of obstruction of justice and two counts each of perjury and of making false statements.
In other words, this indictment has nothing to do with possible crimes committed in the disclosure of Valerie Plame's identity; instead, this indictment is entirely about directly and by omissions lying to a federal prosecutor and to a grand jury. This indictment clearly signals that lying to the American people, lying to the Congress, lying to the United Nations, lying to the entire world is irrelevant: just don't lie to Mr. Fitzgerald.
If it is now clear to the grand jury that Mr. Libby lied, then it is ipso facto the case that the truth is known; otherwise, no case would exist against Mr. Libby. That the truth is known, and yet no indictments arising from that truth have been issued, speaks volumes. At an unknown cost—likely in the millions of dollars—a federal prosecutor has threatened and jailed people, has obliterated the last vestiges of journalistic source confidentiality, has gone to at least one foreign country to obtain an unpublished report on the Niger forgery, and has otherwise burned 668 days of investigative power by the largest justice department on the planet to come up with a stunning prize: a five-count indictment against a cockroach who allegedly lied to him, an allegation at least to some extent supported by another Administration shill posing as a reporter who, in the end, likely saved herself from a criminal charge by rolling over on the cockroach.
And now, as if to throw out faint hope to those who had expected more—far, far more—the prosecutor intones to the public, "It's not over"; but in the very next breath he says, "[T]he substantial bulk of the work of this investigation is concluded."
In other words, it is over, save for the trial, the appeals, and the punditry.
In other words, the future will look something like this. The United States will continue to slog in a Middle East quagmire of its own making. Thousands of additional soldiers will be butchered by roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades, and small arms fire. Thousands of additional Iraqis will die at the hands of insurgents and coalition troops, and hundreds of thousands more will suffer deprivations because we created a war cut from the whole cloth of cynical lies.
We shall continue to capture foreign men in dark alleys, strip them naked, jam sedative-laced suppositories into them, and then fly them to countries where they will be tortured by whatever manner of modern or ancient abomination the country of rendition favors.
We shall continue to cuddle beside the other monstrosity of empire on the planet, China, ruled as it is by elderly, corrupt, Communist murderers whose latter half of the 20th Century is a horror story legacy of genocide on tens of millions of its own people.
We shall continue within our own borders to inform women that the state has compelling interest in their fetuses and, therefore, in their private bodies.
We shall continue to incarcerate millions to show how tough we are on crimes that are overwhelmingly generated by the poverty we sneer at.
We shall continue to rip open wildnernesses for trees for our oversized homes and for oil for our petroleum-swilling engines of modernity and convenience.
We shall continue to mortgage the nation, recklessly and wildly beyond any semblance of sanity, to other nations of the world just so we can have cheap products because our labor force is and has been losing purchasing power for a generation.
We shall continue to gut the treasury of the republic, handing it out to corporations that have eternal life but no soul to wrest good from the howl of insatiable greed.
We shall continue to suffer a spineless opposition without even the guts to stand up and walk out of the charade that has become the federal legislature.
We shall continue to crank out from our elementary and high schools tens of millions of kids so ignorant that they are vulnerable to any mythology that poses as fact and any policy whose historical parallels in disaster can be hidden.
We shall continue to put up little cameras on every corner of America, just in case someone's committing an illegal act, just in case someone needs to be reminded that being left alone is simply not an option when safety is so very much more important.
We shall continue to pit ourselves one against the other with our pet peeves, our religious pretensions, our insistence that our own sensitivities should be everyone's sensitivities, and our conviction that ours are the noble demands upon others for compliance.
We shall continue an Administration whose leader failed to protect us from a small band of ragged thugs, an Administration whose leader then preened himself on the very rubble his miserable incompetence had allowed to happen.
Take note of the edifying commercial over on the little, tiny screen: a cockroach is getting squashed. But don't forget: on the big, huge screen front and center is the feature presentation.
The 21st Century will now continue.
The Dark Wraith has spoken.
Published 10/28/2005 05:02:00 PM
<< 38 Comments Total
I agree with you to a point regarding your opinion that it is over. As a practical matter though, it may be his strategy to not tell all at this point. Wishful thinking maybe, but you never know.
Monsieur Apparition Sombre:
My mind exactly. Libby is nothing. Nothing will come of this. The aging elderly corrupt men of the world who have sold their souls to become a race of demons, and the younger minions they are grooming, will continue to slice and scrape away at our planet.
Have you read David Mitchell's latest novel, Cloud Atlas? It's not perfect, but it is chock full of ideas about the ultimate results of our actual non-fictive world...
This contradicts, but offers comfort, if true. (Hat tip, Julien's List.)
- oddjob
Good evening, OddJob.
The Raw Story article is driving me batty tonight. How can Fitzgerald go back to a grand jury that closed? I cannot find any indication that Fitzgerald sought the possible six-month extension of the panel, but I have seen all of these inside-scoop types of things about how he's returning to the grand jury with further evidence.
I cannot reconcile the statutory limit on the jury with these statements, and I am at an utter loss.
If he were to empanel a brand new grand jury, there is no way those people could come up to speed on such a case as this in such a short period of time.
As I indicated, I am at a loss as to what's going on with "continuing the investigation," especially since Fitzgerald, himself, said that it had pretty much "concluded."
The Dark Wraith is sometimes left mumbling.
The Dark Wraith is sometimes left mumbling.
One of the suckier conditions of being human....
- oddjob
Good evening, Isabelita. Let me first welcome you to The Dark Wraith Forums.
I do want to read Cloud Atlas. It seems to me that there still exists a relative paucity of timely literature that can relate to what we are now experiencing. References to 1984 leave me somewhat cold because I keep thinking that novel cannot be the scope and extent of the cognates for this time.
I occasionally think of the Eugéne Ionesco play, "Rhinoceros"; but that, too, is not exactly right. Not exactly, anyway.
I will get to the Mitchell novel, though.
The Dark Wraith considers his own version of our era.
Good evening, Mr. Goat.
Yes, strangely, in the face of my burning cynicism, I cannot help but think this isn't it; this isn't the end of all that waiting.
Perhaps it's not; but perhaps it's best if this is the end of Fitzgerald's run. At some point, if those opposed to the way this country is being run become angry enough, perhaps a solution will emerge: a candidate, a strategy, maybe even a speech that will once and for all, finally and permanently, set this wrong to right.
It might just be the case that anger must seeth a little longer before real change—permanent, meaningful change in leadership, in opposition, in expression of desire for a better government—will come about.
The Dark Wraith hopes to move that dialogue of hope wrapped in despair forward.
DW, I hope you're wrong.
But I suspect you're right.
Josh Marshall is reporting that Fitzgerald can impanel a new grand jury if he wishes to continue. I'm not sure what this means, but it seems to imply that the investigation doesn't absolutely have to be over.
So the question becomes: Do I continue to hope, and risk a probable disappointment? Or do I give up hope and be pleasantly surprised if I'm wrong? Decsions, decisions.
Good evening, Charlie. As an aside, I really need to mention your blog at some point in one of my "Open Forum" posts.
Anyway, Fitzgerald can extend the existing grand jury for six months, he can empanel a new grand jury to start from scratch, he can use the permanent District of Columbia grand jury, or he can simply not pursue grand jury indictments at all.
Even if he were to avoid any further interactions with a grand jury, there is an outside chance that he could press charges through a bill of information, but that might not be possible; and even if it were, I cannot imagine an approach like that not coming under extreme fire from defense counsel because of the obvious appearance that he couldn't get a grand jury to see things his way. The old rule is still valid: a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.
I'm not sure I should encourage people to take my grim and cynical view of the world; but I'll tell you this much, Charlie: any ham sandwich that has as much nasty-tasting meat in it as this Administration deserves to be indicted.
The Dark Wraith is starting to think about food instead of politics, again.
Good evening, Dark Wraith -
Well - perhaps not as good as we all could have wished. I listened very closely to Fitz's news conference today. First – I would like to say something about his style. That clipped, no prisoners, compact presentational mode of expression is very Chicago. I’m sure Mr. Shakes will back me up on this. Mayor Daley always sounds as if he’s annoyed – it’s a Chicago thing, and plays into what went on today. Fitz said, more than once, that he’d rather be home in his own bed, but had to stay and finish because it’s his job. Although refusing to provide a timeline, he indicated (again more than once), that he planned on getting home to that bed very soon.
I would take the man at his word. In Chicago – brevity is a virtue. Why waste time on too many words, when just a few will suffice. The only time a South or West-sider gets all verby, is to punctuate a point. So when Fitz waxed eloquent about Libby’s perfidy – that said one whole hell of a lot. He was clearly outraged at the roadblocks the prosecutorial team ran up against – and he obviously blamed Libby for it. Fitz then said, several times, that further investigation was nigh unto impossible (that Sox inspired baseball analogy), and though the investigation would go on, the bulk of it was over (as you so succinctly pointed out).
Now – we can all believe in Santa Claus, and hope whatever Fitz has he plans to use against Rove and Cheney; or we can tear the rose-colored glasses from our eyes, accept the sop we were given and be grateful for it. I posted on this, tinted lenses intact, knowing that the trail of evidence was so distinct; it could be followed by a blind bat in broad daylight. This, I opined would lead right back to the source – the little emperor himself. I do fear, however, that even that may not be enough. You are probably right – Bush & Company will continue the strip-mining of America, leaving little more than a blasted out shell when they are through.
I don’t know what the final outcome of all this will be, Dark Wraith; but as we are entering the holiday season, I hereby chose to believe in a jolly fat man parading around in a red velvet suit, distributing expensive presents. The Fat Lady Sings will now put on a recording of ‘Santa Baby’, and continue dreaming.
Good evening, Dark Wraith.
Good article. I hadn't realized how many days had passed since all this started. Very striking!
So many thoughts, but one jumped out at me. You indicated a future The United States will continue to slog in a Middle East quagmire of its own making. Thousands of additional soldiers will be butchered by roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades, and small arms fire. Thousands of additional Iraqis will die at the hands of insurgents and coalition troops, and hundreds of thousands more will suffer deprivations because we created a war cut from the whole cloth of cynical lies. which reminded me of the radio news bite I was listening to this morning. Tony Blair was railing against the Iranian leader for his words against Isreal. Sounds as though the war drums are drumming louder. Perhaps, we will have additional death and destruction to look forward to in Iran. The Iranian words could have been ignored, but now such a huge hoopla is being made, it is possible that Isreal might decide they have plenty of backers and could decide to pre-emptively strike. USA, afterall, did show how to do it.
And that, Old White Lady, is what is so mind-boggling to me: was the new President of Iran such a political neophyte that he didn't grasp the fact that he was handing pretext on a silver platter to Israel?
Ahmadinejad had been blessed by being able to talk like a wild revolutionary all his years, but didn't he understand that he now has a loaded gun, and shooting off his mouth like that can get him into a war from Hell?
I swear, if I didn't know better, I'd think someone was doing ventriloquism for that boy. He even got UN Secretary General Annan to use some pretty harsh (for diplomats) language about the incident. That's bad news because it means the UN could lose a united front to resist a call to war against Iran.
Scary stuff, that.
Of course, on the flip side, someone needs to sit down with Saddam Hussein and ask him how a war against Iran goes. I'll bet we wouldn't even need to execute Saddam: as soon as he heard that we were going to start a war with those Persians, he'd die laughing.
The Dark Wraith thinks that might be considered a mercy killing.
The Dark Wraith is starting to think about food instead of politics, again.
Weird. I always have the desire for buttered popcorn whenever I am reading here or on the BB. Not when playing games or on other sites, just here.
Do you have some kind of subliminal messaging going on you haven't told us about, or is this just as good a show as at any theater and I need popcorn to go with it?
Good evening, Wild Clover.
Yes, popcorn is one of the best food items to have here. My problem is that I always overdo it on the butter, and sometimes I get experimental and try something like grated cheese shaken in the popcorn bag. That usually doesn't work out too well, although the cat seems to like it.
Problem is, popcorn gives the cat the Wind something fierce.
I bought a can of Cheese Whiz™ this evening to go with some generic brand of Club crackers. Something was really defective in the can because, every time I tried to hose a cracker with cheese, about halfway through, this massive POP of air would fire out. It was strong enough to blast the cheese right off the cracker.
I hate it when my food scares me.
Yes, popcorn is generally safer. Except for the cat's Wind problem in the aftermath of a binge.
The Dark Wraith sees life as a series of trade-offs.
Of course, on the flip side, someone needs to sit down with Saddam Hussein and ask him how a war against Iran goes.
Assuming sufficient resources (when I know damn well we lack them and always will under circumstances more or less as they now are), I doubt we'd go to trench warfare as the Iraqis and Iranians did.
- oddjob
And therein, OddJob, is the seed of how we would lose such a war, as we lost Vietnam and as we are losing Iraq: we decline the invitation of the enemy to fight the war on their ground, choosing instead to shape the battlefield to our technological advantage. Unfortunately, war has always been a matter of savage butchery; and despite the points of counter-example (among them the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings), savage butchery is best done on a very personal basis.
Stand-off weaponry is nice, and it can kill a lot of people; but if a kingdom wants to win a war, there will have to be times—important, momentous, awful times—when its soldiers must be where they and their opponents can watch each other fight and die.
That, at least, is how the Dark Wraith sees the art of war at its highest and bleakest.
I didn't make myself clear enough. You are quite correct about technology alone being insufficient as a tool of war. What I was thinking of when I said "resources" was primarily troop strength.
If nothing else, this fiasco in Iraq shows beyond doubt the wisdom of the so-called "Powell Doctrine" (which Weinberger intially promulgated, I believe).
You don't go to battle without an overwhelming advantage, most especially including troop strength, unless the nation's survival is in the balance and the alternative to not fighting is the loss of sovereignty or existence.
It will be decades before we recover from the fiasco of following the advice of utopians like Wolfowitz!
- oddjob
I think they will resort to the draft in the end, especially since the "leave our kids alone" movement is getting in gear!
Good morning, Fat Lady Sings.
I should have mentioned and congratulated you for getting blogrolled over at Shakespeare's Sister.
Now, you brought up Chicago and Christmas in your comment, and that brought my thoughts to walking down the main drags in the Windy City in December, looking at all the beatutiful Holiday decorations in the windows. It's quite a beautiful place, especially at night. It's almost enough to make me forget how corrupt the town is and always has been: the good guys are the ones who pledge to uphold the law... unless, of course, the law isn't on their minds when they're enforcing it.
But they really are pretty darned good at knocking off the street-level punks. It pays pretty well to be mean, and it pays pretty well to wear a badge.
But Christmastime in Chicago is pretty.
The Dark Wraith just wishes it would last longer.
Good Morning, Dark Wraith -
Thanks for mentioning the shout-out at Shakes Sis – it was very nice if her. And about Chicago - I must say there are times when I really miss all that snow. My best friend still lives within The Windy City's environs, so I get sent wonderful wintry pictures. As for the corruption – yeah, OK - but the roads get plowed every winter! Sometimes you just have to focus on the small shit.
Good afternoon, SB Gypsy.
A draft would be almost inevitable were we to engage in any new hostilities. It seems to me that the neo-cons are not stupid enough to initiate it without major pretext, though. I might be misreading the public's mood, right now, but as much as Bush has become an unpopular President, I honestly believe that the majority of Americans would support a return of the draft if the issue were framed well enough within the context of a national crisis of some kind.
I say that not because such an event would renew people's belief in Mr. Bush, but rather because I think Americans are right now—and will with increasing desperation be—looking for some well-spring of national renewal. The artificial "Power of Pride" kick has worn off and is becoming an embarrassment to all but the most red-necked imbeciles.
I worry greatly that the American people might in their desperation actually buy the war drum call once again to crawl out of a malaise that is going to get pretty bad, especially if this Administration becomes a genuine pariah on the national psyche over the next two years. Even if Libby is the only one who goes down under statutory law—and despite my curmudgeonly posture, I honestly hope that will not be the case—the prosecutions of him, DeLay, and Frist, along with the roiling scandal with national implications in Ohio, are going to damage the American spirit in a material and troubling way.
It is not as if the Electorate isn't getting what it deserves, and I'll be right there to rub this catastrophe of leadership in the faces of all those who voted for this nest of vipers; but I do see a time of pain coming to the soul of America.
The extent to which it materially affects their support for wars, their spending habits, and their overall political leanings will determine the extent to which they will reach foolishly and rashly for a quick-fix way to make themselves feel better.
And that's what worries me most.
The Dark Wraith sees some difficult times ahead.
Good afternoon, Fat Lady Sings.
Yes, and getting the roads plowed is surprisingly important to political survival. I recall Mayor Marion Barry of Washington, DC, who was so incompetent that the snow piled up to the point where many neighborhoods became inaccessible for days and days. When asked if he had formulated a snow-removal plan, the good Mayor snapped something like, "Yeah. Spring."
Mr. Barry has problems with staying an elected official.
The Dark Wraith sees important lessons there.
Good Afternoon, Dark Wraith,
Since when has it mattered what the majority of us think about anything?? He's gonna do what he wants(the cartman president), and we all get to "just watch, and comment upon" what he does...
There are enough hawks in the halls of power right now to get the draft going, but it will depend on the next two elections.
If the democrats don't take it back with the support of the antiwar crowd, there's no stopping it for another 4 yrs after that. With another "political capital" type prez, that'll take us to 2012, and the draft will be a shoe-in.
Wow. It's not like we needed that much help to be thoroughly bummed out. I suppose it's not enough to say that I, personally, am not doing any of the things you envision us continuing to do. Neither are you. Neither are your commenters. So that makes - what - ten of us?
For the moment I'm clinging to the notion that the plan was first to get DeLay out of the way, then Cheney then Bush. I know, by then it will be pretty much too late. But it's better than nothing.
Thanks, by the way, for the link-title code. I've been meaning for weeks to look that up.
I'm curious to know why the WH official A was not named.
Or the State Dept. official..and why he met with the judge on Wed.
And why he requested info on the Niger documents from Italy.
I wonder will the press continue some of the questions they have finally begun asking after two years of this unlawful war.
Fitzgerald is actually a Flatbush boy. Although I have read he at least pronounces Chic-aw-go correctly..and I'm feeling nostaligic for my hometown right now. Almost miss the snow and riding on the Lake Street el to get off at Lake and Randolph for the old Chicago Theatre or the screeching sound of the metal wheels on the rails making the turn for Marshall Fields and then Adams and Wabash to walk to the Art Institute.
Good evening, Mary Ann. My excitement right now centers on the DeLay soap opera. It seems to me that he will go down, and he'll probably go down pretty hard; but, boy-o-boy, that whole trial is going to make World Wrestling Federation match-ups look like daycare spats.
It's best, obviously, to watch that one from a safe distance, though. As one Texas lawyer put it, no one wants to get in the middle of a fight between a polecat and a skunk. Tom DeLay and Ronnie Earle make a polecat and a skunk look downright gentlemanly by comparison.
From my perspective, the more DeLay makes a huge public stink, the more damage he's going to set upon the Republican Party when he's finally convicted. This is one of those cases where acting in one's own self-interest imposes a strongly "negative externality" (to use an economics term) on the broader group whose interests he's supposed to advance.
I suppose, if I were DeLay, I'd be fighting tooth and nail, too: under Texas law, that money laundering charge against him carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Not to mention those minimum sentencing guidelines the Republicans have always been so gung-ho on foisting off on the judiciary. It would appear that the minimum sentence for Mr. DeLay, were he to be convicted on the most serious charge, would put him away long enough for his Congressional Depends™ benefits to kick in while he's still in the Big House.
There's always good stuff to look forward to. Mr. Scaif and the other rich pigs who funded years of harrassment against Bill Clinton are going to be so upset: private funds didn't need to be spent by the millions to bring Republicans down. All we had to do was let them hang themselves while we blogged about it.
The Dark Wraith finds the grinning points in this era that is otherwise so dreary.
Good evening, elf.
There are several possible reasons why those officials weren't named. The best case scenario is that some of them are still targets of investigation. A less exciting scenario is that it is simply common courtesy not to name them in order to minimize the possibility of retribution.
I find it somewhat hopeful that the rumblings of a new grand jury are moving around this weekend, although I am concerned that a new grand jury would take weeks and weeks to get up to speed in order to understand enough to issue informed indictments. It is possible, however, that Fitzgerald wants a new grand jury precisely because he wants to ram through indictments by putting them before a panel that has no clue as to what's going on. That was what Ronnie Earle did down in Texas when he went to a brand new grand jury and drove a truck through the panel: those grand jury members couldb't possibly have had a solid idea of how to discharge their duties and the power they had to ask lots and lots of questions and require lots and lots of witnesses.
Fitzgerald may try the same tactic.
Here, of course, I'm giving him far more credit than I do in the article above. My sense is that, whether or not Fitzgerald is on the up-and-up, he's dealing with a systematic corruption of monumental proportions, and there is no support whatsoever yet from the Congress in getting to the bottom of the matter. That's what makes this whole ride a whole lot different from Watergate.
More importantly, a whole lot more damage has been done to the nation by the unabated continuation of this Administration than could ever have been done by the continuation of the Nixon Administration. People can say what they will about old Richard Milhouse Nixon, but no one in his or her right mind would say Nixon was in any way dangerously incompetent like this band of neo-cons we have now.
That, of course, is just the Dark Wraith's opinion of comparative history.
Good Evening DW,
You're probably right about Nixon..doubt he could believe some of this stuff, as much as I loathed him and most of the people he surrounded himself with. Ultimately he was encouraged to become a small time crook and almost succeeded. It was how he started out and apparently knew no other way to seek office.
These guys on the other hand have been working at this a long time. They even have colleges to assist in developing their personal reich-stag.
Fitzgerald was forced to play this narrowly. And I am pretty sure he smelled something rotten.
He made specific reference to an article published in 2003 regarding this investigation.
I am hoping he is able to take advantage of some of the new information being reported.
I wonder if he likes to fish.
Good evening, elf.
Many years ago, my much older brother took me on my first trip to Canada. He wanted me to see places where our father had taken him long before in the days when the old man was still a young and vital man of the outdoors. We drove for a time that seemed like forever to me. I remember realizing at some point that there were no longer lights on the roads and that the Earth had become impentrably dark: we were coming to the end of the world, past civilization. I had lived in the country, and I knew how dark the night could be, but we were traveling in a new kind of darkness, a swallowing blackness made even more perilous to me as the roads became less smooth and the trees along the roadsides became menacing as they became more numerous.
My brother drove more slowly the farther north we went. More than a few times, large animals darted ahead across the headlight beams.
Even though it was early August, we had the windows up because it was pretty chilly outside.
After winding about some backroads that didn't seem like roads at all, we came to a small place of a few buildings that made for a town in this place so far into the north country. Looking back on that trip, I guess it wasn't as far into the Great Unknown as it seemed to me at the time. I never bothered to ask my brother about that trip. It wasn't a good time at all, and I'd prefer not to bring it up as a topic of conversation on the rare occasions I see him anymore.
I have no idea what time it was when we arrived there, but it must have been terribly late. We stayed overnight in a small place I don't recall very well, and in the early morning, we set out again, taking the car as far as practicable before the trees and rocks made driving impossible. From there, we hauled a small, lightweight canoe type of boat across a woods. I wasn't as strong as I had imagined myself, so we had to stop quite a few times for me to catch my breath.
The woodlands finally opened up to a large lake. I thought it was a river at first because it seemed narrow along the banks on the sides; but as I looked straight out, it opened up, and I could not see the other side, although there were some small islands dotting the water. I remember reaching in to scoop out some of that water to drink and being struck by how cold it was.
We put the canoe into that cold lake and set out, using the rather small paddles to move away from shore. I got the impression that we were not on a single lake, but more like on a chain of lakes, but I don't know about that one way or the other.
We didn't break out the fishing gear for quite a long time. We were so far away from shore when I realized how far we'd gone that I got quite scared, although I said nothing. Talking always got me in trouble, so it was always best to keep quiet, especially around ill-tempered people, and most people seemed to be on the ill-tempered side, or just waiting for an excuse to be.
Pretty soon, we got around to fishing.
I had no intention of falling in, but my brother admonished me anyway about being careful when moving about in the boat, lest we tip over in a lake "so deep."
I wasn't catching anything, and I wasn't even feeling any hits on my line. My brother, somewhat frustrated himself, finally broke out some lead sinkers: the one he put on my line was about the biggest sinker I'd ever seen. "Just let the line out," he told me; so I did.
It wasn't 10 minutes until I got a solid hit. I pulled back almost wildly and knew I had my prize hooked. I reeled and reeled and reeled: I sure had let out a lot of line. It was pretty exciting when I saw the outline of a nice, big, silver fish fighting its way up from the depths.
I can't fully describe for you, elf, what happened next. It must have been a few seconds after I saw them that I realized my prize fish was surrounded in a sort of wide triangle by the heads of three other fish emerging from the black depths. The only thing was, these other fish coming up were larger than any I'd ever seen in my life. The fish I was reeling in, which had looked so nice and big when I first saw it, was just dwarfed by these other "things." I couldn't even put them in my mind as fish, they were so big.
I honestly wanted nothing more than to have the fish on my hook break free because those huge things were going to follow it straight up and right out of the water. I was absolutely convinced of that.
My brother couldn't get the undersized net into the water quickly enough, anyway, and that prize of mine did, indeed, manage to get itself free. It shot under the boat. I'll never forget those big fish, what they did: I thought sure they'd chase it; but instead, they just disappeared back into the depths. They didn't even turn around. It was almost like they just sort of put themselves in reverse and pulled away, disappearing, still facing up.
My brother said we'd have better luck over by one of tthe shorelinea not so far from where we had launched. He was right. We caught a couple of really nice ones, which we fixed over an open fire in the late afternoon.
Sleeping out there by that lake, whatever its name was, that night wasn't enjoyable at all. The bugs were terrible, but I was far more concerned about those huge fish coming to get me.
That was, of course, just plain silly. Those kind of fish can be found only in the deepest, coldest, blackest water of the lake, where I vowed to myself never again to go.
Besides, I could catch plenty of good-eatin' fish up a lot closer to the shoreline, up where I wouldn't catch glimpses of things that scared the Hell out of me.
The Dark Wraith has told his story for the evening.
Someday, maybe I'll tell you about my brother.
This little ditty has nothing to do with this thread, other than an oblique mention in your first paragraph.
There was a young woman from Niger,
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger.
They returned from the ride with the woman inside,
And the smile on the face of the tiger.
Actually, Fat Lady Sings, it seems to me that your limerick is yet another (and appropriate) allegorical reference to the dangers of venturing too close to the wild side.
The Dark Wraith avoids fish and tigers these days.
Good afternoon, Dark Wraith.
Interesting fish story. Isn't there some thing about how when men tell fish stories, the fish get bigger with the retelling? Now, we're not saying that about your story.
We wouldn't mind having a couple cans of tuna opened and put out in a bowl.
We've also heard about this thing called camping. We've wondered why people think it's fun? We've heard that it's intense! :)
Good afternoon, The Fat Lady Sings. That is a terrific limerick. Tigers are great!
People can say what they will about old Richard Milhouse Nixon, but no one in his or her right mind would say Nixon was in any way dangerously incompetent like this band of neo-cons we have now.
No, that's true. That administration mirrored its master in that it was fundamentally, criminally, evilly twisted, but it was not incompetent except where the twisted part interfered with its operations (and that interference ultimately overwhelmed everything else).
- oddjob
It was how he started out and apparently knew no other way to seek office.
My father was stationed in San Diego during Nixon's first successful campaign (for a House seat). He once told me he clearly remembered how shamelessly Tricky Dick red-baited the Democratic incumbent.
He always used really slimy dirty tricks, just like Rove, Atwater, & Terry Dolan. You could make a case that an awful, awful lot of what's wrong in today's national politics can be tied to Nixon. His administration became a how-to (and how-to without getting caught) shop for younger political operatives.
- oddjob
You know, Oddjob - that's quite true. My father worked at Lockheed back in the 60's. Nixon came through on his '68 campaign jog. My father was assigned to show Nixon around. I will never forget what my dad said when he got home that day. He looked at my mother and said, ‘No man should ever treat his wife that way – not ever.’
It made an impression. My father was vocally anti-Nixon after that. Now – I don’t know the specifics of what happened that day – but it does raise lots of questions.
You've mentioned that quote before somewhere else, or someone else's father had an identical experience, because I remember reading it, and thinking then that it was indeed telling.
Back to post topic:
Newsweek reporting that Rove's lawyer shared some plausible deniability with Fitzgerald, and so appears to have gotten Rove off the hook.
- oddjob
Oddjob - yup - that was me! I think I mentioned it on dKos many diaries ago. And you are right - how someone treats those around them is very telling. Good people are just that - and all the time.