Associated Press photo
President Barack Obama talks with Gen. Stanley McChrystal aboard Air Force One in October. Obama has recalled McChrystal to Washington, D.C., to discuss remarks that McChrystal made to Rolling Stone magazine about the military efforts in Afghanistan that McChrystal has been leading.
Is it something in the water?
A bit too much crude oil, perhaps?
The federal district judge who blocked President Barack Obama’s obviously reasonable six-month moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico has had investments in offshore drilling? Even having owned stock in Transocean, the corporation that had leased the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig to British Petroleum before the rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico two months ago?
Unsurpisingly, the judge, one Martin Feldman, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, appears to be another overprivileged old stupid white man who puts his own selfish financial interests above not only justice but also above the common good.
Fuck the rest of us! He wants to be rich!
The Repugnicans piss and moan about “activist judges,” but I’m sure that they’re just perfectly fucking fine with judges who rule according to their own financial portfolios.
Because he did not recuse himself, Feldman should be removed from his post of power. He obviously cannot wield power responsibly and thus does not deserve to continue to wield it.
Similarly, corporations that violate the public trust (such as British Petroleum, Halliburton, Blackwater, etc., etc.) should be dissolved — not allowed to simply reorganize under another name (such as Blackwater, which is now “Xe.”)
The composition of the judiciary sorely needs to be evaluated. It’s supposed to be about justice for all — it shouldn’t be the fucking rich white boys’ club that it is. The Associated Press reported earlier this month:
More than half of the federal judges in districts where the bulk of Gulf oil spill-related lawsuits are pending have financial connections to the oil and gas industry, complicating the task of finding judges without conflicts to hear the cases, an Associated Press analysis of judicial financial disclosure reports shows.
Thirty-seven of the 64 active or senior judges in key Gulf Coast districts in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida have links to oil, gas and related energy industries, including some who own stocks or bonds in BP PLC, Halliburton or Transocean — and others who regularly list receiving royalties from oil and gas production wells, according to the reports judges must file each year. The AP reviewed 2008 disclosure forms, the most recent available.
Those three companies are named as defendants in virtually all of the 150-plus lawsuits seeking damages, mainly for economic losses in the fishing, seafood, tourism and related industries, that have been filed over the growing oil spill since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers….
Then there is Gen. Stanley McChrystal, in charge of the debacle in Afghanistan, thinking that it’s a good idea to slam his commander in chief in Rolling Stone.
Don’t get me wrong. We shouldn’t be in Afghanistan. Even if things at home weren’t crumbling, even if the American empire weren’t rotting from within, I’d be against our being in Afghanistan, but given that we can’t keep it together here at home — that ruptured oil well that has continued to spew millions of gallons of crude oil for more than two months now, for example — I’m especially against our military overextension.
And I’m usually all for freedom of speech and in general I abhor hierarchies and people at the top of hierarchies gagging those below them, but, it seems to me, it truly is a matter of national security when a general, any general, publicly slams the commander in chief while that general is in charge of an ongoing combat operation.
Further, as many problems as I have with President Barack Obama, I can’t recall any general or other such high-ranking military official having publicly slammed George W. Bush during his or her command in the Vietraq War, even though the unelected, treasonous Bush regime thoroughly botched its illegal, immoral, unprovoked and unjust invasion and occupation of Iraq and left plenty to be criticized.
I can’t help but think that the facts that Obama is black and that he widely is viewed as an “elitist” because he isn’t an abject dumbfuck as is G.W. Bush — we can’t trust eggheads to be good commanders in chief, the conventional “wisdom” (a.k.a. “common sense”) goes, although to be a good commander in chief you have to be intelligent — contributed to McChrystal’s incredibly poor judgment in slamming Obama to Rolling Stone.
McChrystal should have resigned if he felt that he couldn’t follow Obama.
Now, he should resign because instead of telling Obama that he couldn’t follow Obama, he told Rolling Stone that he couldn’t follow Obama.
This behavior — a federal judge flagrantly acting in very apparent conflict of interest and a general in charge of a war slamming the commander in chief — seems to be white male (over)privilege rearing its ugly head.
It needs to stop — because it’s treasonous* — and the stupid white men who are acting in their own best interests instead of in the best interests of those they are supposed to be serving need to be treated like the traitors that they are.
The crumbling American empire cannot endure even more treason than it already has endured beginning at least since the treasonous BushCheneyCorp blatantly, treasonously stole the White House in late 2000.
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*My broad definition of treason is an action or a refusal to act that benefits oneself or one’s own relatively small group at the expense of the nation as a whole. This, I believe, is the spirit of the crime of treason, although it is not the technical, legal definition of the term.
Thus, under my definition, things like stealing presidential elections and starting bogus wars for the war profiteers (such as Dick Cheney’s Halliburton), and selfishly siding with corporations instead of with the people (such as the aforementioned federal judge and U.S. Rep. Joe “Shakedown” Barton of Texas), constitute treason.
If this definition of treason were widely adopted, the traitors would stop being traitors, would stop harming the nation for their own selfish interests.
Robert's Virtual Soapbox 